Roundtable Recap: February 26 – Tackling TAM and the Path to Fundability

The Core Challenge: Top-Down vs. Bottom-Up TAM During this week’s 1Mby1M roundtable, we saw a recurrence of an issue that plagues nearly 80% of the startups that pitch to us: the confusion between Top-Down TAM and Bottom-Up TAM. Most first-time entrepreneurs struggle to define a Bottom-Up Total Addressable Market, yet this metric is the bedrock

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Series A Crunch: How 1M/1M Can Help

If you have the stomach for it, the metal to carry on, the energy to bootstrap to a point where either you CAN get funded, or generate enough revenues and become profitable, we can help.

Series A Crunch: Bootstrapping Works

Just because you have been rejected by VCs doesn’t mean you cannot build a great business. Marc Benioff was rejected by pretty much ALL the VCs he approached. Didn’t stop him from building Salesforce.com into a multi billion dollar enterprise with global impact.

Series A Crunch: Forget Freemium

What is your business model? Do you have one, or is it TBD? Is it Freemium?

Series A Crunch: Obsession With Exit

Do you know the difference between a business model and an exit strategy? Are you building a business that has a real, viable business model? Or are you trying to do an Instagram?

Series A Crunch: Tyranny of the TAM

What is TAM? Perhaps, the biggest factor in whether a VC funds you or not. TAM = Total Available Market. Note: Top Down TAM doesn’t matter. You need to present a Bottom-Up TAM Analysis. And to get funded, that TAM needs to be very large. Billion. Two billion. Ten billion.

Series A Crunch: Customers vs. Investors

What have you been doing for the last six months? Chasing customers? Chasing Investors?

Series A Crunch: Real vs. Pseudo Entrepreneurs

Much is being said on a daily basis about the Series A crunch. This is our series on the subject. In short, byte-sized posts, I will give you my thoughts on how to deal with the issue. Please note, this advice is entirely for entrepreneurs, not investors.