Seed Capital From Angel Investors: AngelList Founder Naval Ravikant (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: How are you viewing the other funding exchanges? I saw that CapLinked got funded.

Naval Ravikant: I don’t know if anybody uses it!

SM: Why did it get funded? And it got funded by people you know quite well, right? >>>

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: AngelList Founder Naval Ravikant (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: What percentage of your entrepreneurs are first-time entrepreneurs?

Naval Ravikant: That’s a good question. Probably 80% or even 90%.

SM: On the investor side, I understand they are accredited investors. But then there are experienced angel investors, and then there are accredited but not very experienced investors, who are tantamount to dumb money, in my opinion. >>>

Seed Capital From Angel Investors: AngelList Founder Naval Ravikant (Part 5)

Naval Ravikant: There are a quite a few companies that still exist organically on the side, and we are trying to push more toward that. We want the entire system to be organic; I don’t want people emailing me and saying, Hey, would you email me out? That is not what we are trying to do here. We are trying to create an open, social community.

Craigslist is a very good analogy for what we want to do. The way Craigslist started was that people were moving into the area in 1995–1996; this was in San Francisco. And they needed a place to live, so they would say, Hey, I hear this Craig knows where you can find some roommates. >>>

1M/1M Working With Microsoft On Startup Grants Program

Menlo Park, California – March 31, 2011: The One Million by One Million (1M/1M) initiative is working with Microsoft on its India Startup Challenge, through which Microsoft BizSpark is offering $100,000 in total grants to four startups with winning ideas in the cloud and mobile categories.  The 1M/1M initiative, set up by Sramana Mitra with the goal to help a million entrepreneurs each reach $1 million in revenue and beyond, is offering resources to help entrepreneurs make the most of this opportunity.

“The 1M/1M philosophy is to focus our entrepreneurs on customer acquisition and early validation without raising equity at low valuations and giving away large portions of the company early on,” explains Sramana Mitra, founder of 1M/1M. “Toward that end, we coach entrepreneurs to create value, validation and valuation by bootstrapping. Microsoft’s grant is a great opportunity for entrepreneurs to access resources without having to give up any equity at all, nor having to incur debt.”
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1M/1M: The Entrepreneurship Curriculum

I was talking to Apoorv Sharma of the Indian Angel Network this morning and he asked me some questions about the 1M/1M curriculum, which, as I answered them, seemed like questions that may be on other people’s minds as well. So here is an explanation of the 1M/1M curriculum:

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Seed Capital From Angel Investors: AngelList Founder Naval Ravikant (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: OK, so, team, traction, social proof, and product are the four criteria. How do you gauge team?

Naval Ravikant: Team is hard; we do not meet the people, so we just look at where they have been and what they have done. If they are at Stanford that helps, or on Facebook. All the usual metrics one would use, we use.

Traction is evidence that customers are adopting the product. This metric is different in different spaces, and right now the traction bar for social network companies or a Groupon clone is set a lot higher. >>>

1Mby1M Deal Radar: Digital Photo Academy, New York City

Typical studies of of the economic contribution of the arts tend to focus on the income jobs in the field produce. This approach is wrong, says Financial Times columnist John Kay, and reveals only a poor understanding of wealth creation. As funding for libraries, museums, and public school programs in art and music is cut, sometimes severely; as uninformed or weakly reasoned comments about the lack of value of a fine or liberal arts degree circle the blogosphere, it is more important than ever to try to truly understand the role of the arts and humanities in the economy, education, and public life. (For a more thoughtful debate than most, readers may want to see this week’s New York Times Room for Debate piece Career Counselor: Bill Gates or Steve Jobs?) To this end, the 1M/1M Deal Radar is seeking stories of entrepreneurs in these fields. But we want to do more than simply give examples of artists, writers, and others who have been successful in setting up a business; rather, we want to show, through their business’s story, what has made it work. The first such Deal Radar company is Digital Photo Academy, a workshop series that delivers 960 digital photo workshops and 80 photo retailer demonstrations a year in 25 cities and metropolitan areas in the United States. Workshops focus on both techniques in the field and the use of plug-ins and software for photographs. >>>

1M/1M: Online Education Module Of The Curriculum Is Ready

Readers, we have just released the online education module of the 1M/1M premium curriculum. In it, you will find a synthesis of the various trends and opportunities that I see at this point, along with case studies and video lectures. The opportunity is clearly huge in multiple dimensions, and I am convinced that many businesses can and will be built in this segment over this decade.