Featured Videos

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Geoff Ralston, President of Y Combinator (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Exactly. Our spectrum is broader. Yours is specifically the ones that who will get funding.

Geoff Ralston: Forgive me, but I disagree, Sramana. You’re broader than the batch, but YC is broader than that. When I first wanted to start a company in the ‘80s, none of this content was available. Now, there’s so much freely available content and programs that help you take the first step.

Sramana Mitra: That’s the most important thing. I have another couple of nuances that we are seeing. There’s bootstrapping with services. Very good companies are coming out of this mode of entrepreneurship. Oracle was founded in this mode. Alteryx is one of my favorite case studies. I met Dean Stoecker in 2013. He told me this incredible story. They’ve gone public since.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Geoff Ralston, President of Y Combinator (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: At 1Mby1M, we are in the pre-Series A zone. We don’t care if it’s at napkin stage. We work with that entire spectrum of pre-seed, pre series A. Typically, investors have steered clear from companies that operate in this mode. This category uses virtual company architecture extensively. What are you seeing? What is your perspective on this category?

Geoff Ralston: I’m not 100% sure how you’re defining the category. Let me talk about bootstrapping.

Sramana Mitra: Specifically, bootstrapping with a paycheck. They’re keeping their jobs, starting a company on the side, and starting to validate and getting quite a bit further before quitting their jobs. They have a validated business before quitting their jobs.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Geoff Ralston, President of Y Combinator (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Let me try to unpack what you said. COVID has been a gamechanger. Until COVID, you wanted people to come and be in Silicon Valley for the three-month program. What is your current perspective on geography? Can they be from anywhere?

Geoff Ralston: It is certainly true that the pandemic left us with few choices. The end of winter 2020 batch was entirely virtual. Our Demo Day had to be entirely virtual. It was impossible, in 2020, to bring a whole bunch of folks together. Our summer 2020 batch was entirely virtual. We completely rebuilt our summer 2020 Demo Day as an entirely virtual program. That’s also true for the next batches.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Geoff Ralston, President of Y Combinator (Part 1)

Geoff Ralston is President of Y Combinator. We had a terrific discussion on what we each are seeing in the startup ecosystem.

Sramana Mitra: Geoff has been involved with Y Combinator right from the beginning. Why don’t we take a look back on the evolution of Silicon Valley and Y Combinator.

Do NOT Dilute Equity Too Soon

At 1Mby1M, we believe that Ownership Matters.

Mark Zuckerberg retained 26% equity in Facebook.

Zuckerberg’s net worth has crossed $100 billion in 2020.

How did Zuckerberg retain 26% equity in Facebook?

>>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Jose Deustua of UTEC Ventures (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: How much of your portfolio has this follow-on funding?

Jose Deustua: All of them have raised funds.

Sramana Mitra: All of them have received funding from what source? What is the primary source? 

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Jose Deustua of UTEC Ventures (Part 3)

Jose Deustua: We also have a platform called Anvi. They teach English. Currently, we know that most people in Latin America are not good in speaking English. They need to speak English to progress in their work. Even though there are a lot of solutions about how to learn English, this platform is new in the sense that it incorporates both the coaching, coach, and the student.

They also focus on specific segments that are not well-addressed by these huge brands of English courses. There’s another option that’s made for cooking lessons.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Jose Deustua of UTEC Ventures (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Talk about the companies. What problems are they solving?

Jose Duestua: We have one startup that’s focusing on changing the way teachers teach in K12. In Latin America, we’re lagging behind in using technology in classrooms.

This startup is trying to put all textbooks on a platform where you can learn from the platform but also incorporate artificial intelligence. You can customize educational training and programs for each student.