1M/1M: A Policy Suggestion To President Obama

Now that President Obama has used his State of The Union address to turn the spotlight on innovation and entrepreneurship, and his CTO, Aneesh Chopra, just wrote a post on TechCrunch with some concrete steps, I’d like to reiterate the call for a tax policy that would really help bootstrapping entrepreneurs:

As I keep on saying, 99% of the entrepreneurs who seek funding get rejected for a set of specific reasons, mostly because they are too early for even angel financing or SBA loans. They need to bootstrap. >>>

1M/1M Strategy Roundtable For Entrepreneurs On Thursday, February 3

Indian Angel Network (IAN) will be co-hosting the next free online strategy roundtable on Thursday, February 3, 2011, starting at: 11 a.m. EST/8 a.m. PST/9:30 p.m. IST. All are welcome. You can find more details and register here.

1M/1M Strategy Roundtable For Entrepreneurs On Thursday, February 3

Indian Angel Network (IAN) will be co-hosting the next free online strategy roundtable on Thursday, February 3, 2011, starting at: 11 a.m. EST/8 a.m. PST/9:30 p.m. IST. Entrepreneurs with IAN will be given first priority to pitch their businesses, but all are welcome to attend. You can find more details and register here.

January 27 Roundtable Poll Winner

Andrew Cohen’s Brainscape was chosen the best business of those presented at yesterday’s roundtable through a poll on our 1M/1M Facebook page. Congratulations! In case you missed it, you can read Sramana Mitra’s roundtable recap here or listen to the recording found here.

Roundtable Recap: January 27 – Non-Dilutive Financing Through Revenue Sharing

During this week’s One Million by One Million roundtable, we started with a discussion of our hot-off-the-press news: 1M/1M Announces Partnership With Persistent Systems; CrowdEngineering First Beneficiary. This partnership speaks to a core philosophy of the program where we encourage entrepreneurs to get as much customer validation as possible before raising too much money, use other people’s channels if you can get to them, don’t burn too much cash, and all that good fiscal conservative stuff. And, oh by the way, we also really like the idea of the 1M/1M entrepreneurs building valuation and negotiating leverage through these business development efforts, instead of signing off large chunks of their company in form of equity early on.

For a more elaborate explanation of the deal, please read my blog post 1M/1M: Alternative Financing For Startups Using A Sales Channel Partner. I have discussed at length why revenue sharing channel deals may serve as perfectly fine alternatives to raising equity (or even complements) because of their non-dilutive nature.
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January 27 1Mby1M Roundtable Recording

In case you missed it, the recording is here.

1M/1M: Alternative Financing For Startups Using A Sales Channel Partner

In this post, I want to discuss today’s news: 1M/1M Announces Partnership With Persistent; CrowdEngineering First Beneficiary, and explain the thought process behind it. It is a creative sales channel strategy that acts as alternative financing to mitigate some of the severe limitations of early stage startups.

In my experience, building a marketing channel/sales channel is one of the most expensive pieces of a startup P&L, and a notorious contributor to small companies running out of cash and going out of business. Typically, this happens for a number of reasons: >>>

1M/1M Announces Partnership With Persistent Systems; CrowdEngineering First Beneficiary

Menlo Park, CA, and Pune, India – January 27, 2011: One Million by One Million (1M/1M) and Persistent Systems have announced a partnership to connect entrepreneurs to customers. The 1M/1M initiative set up by Sramana Mitra has a goal to help a million entrepreneurs reach $1 million in revenue.

Headquartered in Pune, India, Persistent Systems is a leader in outsourced product development. Persistent works with more than 250 customers and will be reselling and also be a channel for products from select 1M/1M entrepreneurs. In addition, Persistent Systems will also provide outsourced product development services to these companies.
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