My Themes for 2015. Yours?

Yet another new year has begun. As I write this, I am looking out on a glorious, sunny day. There has been rain these past few weeks, after many years of draught. This morning, the sunlight shines beautifully on orange and yellow leaves – the last few on the pear tree in our garden. There is a sense of well being in nature.

Is there a sense of well being in the world at large?

The question doesn’t meet with an unambiguous yes. War. Destruction. Terrorism. Children being killed. Rising inequality. Looming water crisis.

In our personal lives and choices, it is important to remember:

“It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.”

As I think about our sphere of work – the industry, technology, entrepreneurship, business – I carry much the same feeling with me.

And with that sentiment, here is a reflection on some of the themes I am pondering for 2015.

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Special 25% Discount For IBM SmartCamp Entrepreneurs In India For The 1M/1M Mentoring Program

In an effort to continue supporting the energy and enthusiasm of entrepreneurs involved with SmartCamp in India, IBM is partnering with the One Million by One Million (1M/1M) global virtual incubator to help entrepreneurs get high quality mentoring and other kinds of support.

As a follow-up to SmartCamp, IBM is offering a 25% discount to the $1000 a year 1M/1M program. Here’s an ROI analysis of the program.

Please take a look at the 1M/1M web site to understand the program in more detail, as well as attend the weekly mentoring roundtables, where you will have a chance to speak with Sramana Mitra, 1M/1M’s founder, directly.

If you are interested in taking advantage of this special membership discount, please contact Irina Patterson at irina@1mby1m.com.

1Mby1M Deal Radar 2014: Clickable, San Francisco, CA

When the going gets tough, the tough get going. Some technology startup veterans will tell you that when the markets are crashing, it could be a good time to pick up great technologies at rock-bottom prices. SuccessFactors was such a company. It was born out of the dot-com crisis of 2001 when Lars Dalgaard bought some well-funded technology companies that had gone bust and resurrected them with his vision.

After the dot-com crisis, the economic crisis provided another such window of opportunity to Mike Onghai. Inspired by the success story of SuccessFactors, he bought the assets of Clickable in 2013. >>>

Do You Agree With Peter Thiel?

I don’t. On a number of issues. Most of all: Don’t play little ball—swing for home runs.

Over 99% of the businesses that seek financing get rejected. Asking every entrepreneur to swing for the fences is dumb advice, in my opinion.

Acc. to Peter, a small idea = bad idea.

I couldn’t disagree more.

I just published Bootstrapping With A Paycheck, where we have case study after case study of businesses that have been successful by starting small, taking small amounts of risk, and developing very nice businesses.

Sorry Peter, I don’t get why every entrepreneur needs to swing for the fences.

Your thoughts?

Ten Lessons I Learned From a ‘Failed’ B2B Software Startup

By guest author and 1M/1M member Luis Montes

Below are ten key lessons our team learned following an unsuccessful two-year launch of PatientDox – a cloud-based startup Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solution for healthcare providers. It is our intention to not only learn from our mistakes but also help other tech entrepreneurs and colleagues avoid them.

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1Mby1M Incubation Radar 2014: Pronounce Names, San Jose, CA

In today’s increasingly multi-cultural society, you often come across the need to find the correct pronunciation of a name, a place, or even an item on the menu. You could find the correct pronunciation of a place in a dictionary, but how do you find the correct pronunciation of a name? >>>

Three Reasons Why Doctors Are Not Using Your Physician Portal

By guest author and 1M/1M member Luis Montes

There has been much promise and hype by home health (HH) EMR companies around the use of physician portals. In fact, almost all existing EMR systems offer some sort of physician portal application. Physician Portals have been deemed to be the future of inter-provider communication and patient health information (PHI) exchange. Portals are supposed to offer substantial improvements over conventional methods of PHI exchange currently used today among health care providers >>>

May 10,000 Cloud Startups Bloom

The cloud services market has fueled a boom of immensely successful startups, most of which have raised millions in venture funding. Take analytics platform company Birst, which started off in the high-end financial sector, raised $64 million in venture capital, and is now growing fast as a regular Silicon Valley-style pre-IPO company. Technology Business Management solutions provider Apptio raised a $7 million series A to get started and within the year got to $6 million in annual recurring revenue. Its customers include 29 of the Fortune 100 companies and has to date raised a whopping $136 million.

Business analytics provider Adaptive Insights raised $100 million in funding and has over 2000 customers. Huddle, enterprise collaboration service provider, raised $38.2 million in funding and now has close to 80 percent of the Fortune 500 as clients. Email marketing company iContact bootstrapped for three years to $1 million using services and then raised $53.4 million in three rounds. They eventually got acquired for $169 million. Mobile website maker DudaMobile bootstrapped using a paycheck and then went on to raise $18.6 million.

However, not all cloud startups have gone the heavy funding route. There are many under-the-radar cloud/SaaS startups that are also developing as bootstrapped businesses. Analytics company DataSong has bootstrapped all the way—for 11 years—and expects to do $6.5 million in revenue in 2014. Another such company in our 1M/1M premium program is Happy Grasshopper, which has chosen to bootstrap so far, and is approaching a $3 million run rate in 2014.

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