Best of Bootstrapping: AI Chatbot Startup Bootstrapped with a Paycheck

It took CoRover CEO Ankush Sabharwal and his co-founders two years to launch their first customer, The Indian Railways. During this time, the founders held on to their jobs, diligently fulfilling their responsibilities while also pursuing their dreams. Here is our conversation from 2023. Sramana Mitra: Let’s go to the very beginning of your journey.

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Roundtable Recap: June 26 – AI Investment Thesis with David Evans, Sentiero Ventures

During this week’s roundtable, we had David Evans, Managing Partner at Sentiero Ventures, discussing his firm’s AI investment thesis. Espotz As for entrepreneur pitches, up first we had Parshavv Jain from Ontario, Canada, pitch espotz. Inflahormony Next, we had Yamini Bynagari from San Ramon, California, pitch Inflahormony. Void Then we had Venkat Kalyan from Brisbane,

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What Makes Your Startup Hard to Copy

AI is making it easy to build ultralight startups. AI is also making it easy for copycats to flood the market with competing products. Investors HATE a market full of copycats. If you are looking to raise funding, you have to be able to establish a defensibility thesis. By and large, if you are building

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Chase Customers Instead of Concept Financing

First time entrepreneurs, for the most part, do not qualify for Concept Financing. If you are hitting up pre-seed VCs in search of Concept Financing, you are wasting your time.

Roundtable Recap: May 29 – AI Investment Thesis with Warren Packard, AI Fund

During this week’s roundtable, we had Warren Packard, Partner at AI Fund, discuss his firm’s investment thesis. Instead of founders pitching, the AI Fund operates as a Venture Studio and recruits repeat entrepreneurs with domain knowledge to build ventures based on their ideas. Revive Analytics As for our entrepreneur pitches, we first had Modi Daryani

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Best of Bootstrapping: Pre-Seed Fundraising is a Low Probability Game

For our Seed Capital series of podcasts, I’ve interviewed hundreds of investors, especially micro-VCs and angels who play an important role in the early-stage game. The toughest round of funding an entrepreneur will seek to raise is Pre-seed. How do you increase your odds? Pre-seed has the lowest probability of success. Over 99% of the

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680th 1Mby1M Entrepreneurship Podcast with Mark Phillips, 11 Tribes Ventures

Mark Phillips, Founder and Managing Partner at 11 Tribes Ventures, discusses a non-Unicorn chasing investment thesis.

Calling All Angel Investors

We are doing a retrospective on my blog on Seed Capital from Angel Investors as part of the 1M/1M project. As we speak with a variety of angels in different regions, what strikes me is the number of startups out there looking for seed capital.