The Million Dollar Club: IndiaCakes

Also in the Million Dollar Club is IndiaCakes, an online cake delivery shop based in Pune. Founder Manit Nagrani started off by observing that Indians around the world would like to celebrate their loved ones at home on special occasions by sending them cakes.

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The Million Dollar Club: MMIS

Portsmouth, New Hampshire-based MMIS develops and markets software products for secure collaboration and compliance for healthcare and pharmaceutical businesses. Founder Michaeline Daboul has shepherded the company through significant pivots to arrive at a value proposition that customers are resonating with.

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The Million Dollar Club: Orangescape

Chennai, India-based Orangescape, a platform-as-a-service (PaaS) company, has reached its million-dollar mark by catering primarily to large enterprises trying to move out of Lotus Notes to Google. Co-founders Suresh Sambandam and Mani Doraisamy spotted a gap in Google’s App Engine and over the last couple of years, successfully plugged it for many large customers.

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The Million Dollar Club: iFood.tv

It was 2006, and Vikrant Mathur and Alok Ranjan were learning how to cook. After seeking out advice from every cooking website they knew, they found that text-based sites were lacking in their instructional capabilities. No resources existed that incorporated visual elements or a means to reach out to recipe authors with any questions. The two decided to take matters into their own hands.

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The Million Dollar Club: Introduction

If you haven’t already, please study our free Bootstrapping course.

I had two conversations last week, each of which reinforces a simple phenomenon that I have constantly emphasized over the last five years in my writings.

On Wednesday, I had lunch with Brian Jacobs, General Partner at Emergence Capital. We were discussing our respective startup portfolios, and Brian mentioned that his firm’s preferred stage for investment is when a company has about a million dollars in revenues. Presumably, at that point, the experimentation with product, business model, pricing model, customer acquisition strategy, cost of conversion, and other key issues have settled down. That means, a cash infusion of, say, $7 million will result in a somewhat predictable set of outcomes. Most importantly, the fresh cash would accelerate customer acquisition, and hence revenues.

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1Mby1M Deal Radar 2013: Listar, Miami, Florida

Search and shopping are two universal online activities. As the process typically goes, a user will pull up a search engine with a purchase already in mind, looking for a place to buy it. But when Simon Vielma was approached by a girlfriend for help finding a pair of shoes she’d seen on a friend’s Facebook, he began to wonder whether the two could be combined. >>>

Startup Lesson: Talk to Customers Before Building Anything

In our One Million by One Million (1M/1M) global virtual incubator, we always advise entrepreneurs to talk to customers before building anything. We ask them to do as much research as possible. Some listen, some don’t.

Gülin Yilmaz has listened. She is a classic example of the tenets that it pays to talk to customers, and that it pays to do your research. >>>

1Mby1M Incubation Radar 2012: Car Rental Bookers, Greece

Using the Internet to book services such as car rentals is now routine for many drivers and travelers. Internet booking capabilities, however, exist almost solely for global operators and franchises. Barriers to entry for SMBs include the high cost of development and the need to cover a minimum territory before entering into a global distribution system (GDS). In 2004, travel industry veteran Stathis Katinas teamed up with software architect Tristan Mcevan to support these small and mid-sized car rental operators, creating a tool to give them a greater online presence. >>>