Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Momchil Michailov, CEO of Sanbolic (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Switching gears, what are some unsolved problems? What are pain points that you’re hearing from your customer base that are interesting problems and that you and your peers are not solving? These are emerging pain points that need a whole new entrepreneur to go after.

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Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Momchil Michailov, CEO of Sanbolic (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Help us with the competitive landscape. Whom do you compete directly or indirectly? What does that landscape look like?

Momchil Michailov: Software-defined storage has been a hot and trendy area. In flash storage and software-defined storage, there was a total of $1.2 billion of venture investment last year. For the pure software stack, we have been positioned against companies like ScaleIO, which was recently acquired by EMC. We are certainly compared a lot to a company called Nexenta and a number of other players out there.

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Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Momchil Michailov, CEO of Sanbolic (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Let me get a few things straight because I think we’re dealing with a fairly complex ecosystem here. I want to understand the real positioning of your company in that fairly complex ecosystem. We have the data center vendors, enterprise, and customers who run their own large-scale data centers. You are enabling these enterprise customers to layer on software around data center on top of the basic infrastructure provided by the data center vendors?

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Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Momchil Michailov, CEO of Sanbolic (Part 1)

The cloud infrastructure space is going through a huge upheaval, as it moves from a largely hardware architecture to a primarily software-based model. This discussion digs into the issues and unearths some areas where there are clear opportunities for new entrepreneurs.

Sramana Mitra: Momchil, let us introduce you to our audience. Tell us about who you are. What are you doing?

Momchil Michailov: Thanks for having us. This is Momchil Michailov and I’m one of the co-founders of Sanbolic Inc. I happen to be in Boston today, but we’re both a North American and a European company. A lot of our development is done in Bulgaria in former Eastern Europe. The rest of the company is here in Boston.

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Are We in an Accelerator Bubble?

In a recent special issue on digital startups, The Economist writes:

The exact number [of accelerators] is unknown, but f6s.com, a website that provides services to accelerators and similar startup programmes, lists more than 2,000 worldwide. Some have already become big brands, such as Y Combinator, the first accelerator, founded in 2005. Others have set up international networks, such as TechStars and Startupbootcamp. Yet others are sponsored by governments (Startup Chile, Startup Wise Guys in Estonia and Oasis500 in Jordan) or big companies. Telefónica, a telecoms giant, operates a chain of 14 “academies” worldwide. Microsoft, too, is building a chain.

Predictably, many observers talk about an “accelerator bubble”. Yet if it is a bubble, it is unlikely ever to deflate completely. Accelerators are too useful for that. Not only do they bring startups up to speed, provide access to a network of contacts and give them a stamp of approval. They also perform a crucial function in the startup supply chain: picking the teams and ideas that are most likely to succeed and serving them up to investors.

In this post, we will discuss are we or are we not, and what is the prognosis for the trend?

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Venture Capital in Slow Growth Markets: India, EdTech, Cleantech

There are a number of relatively slow growth markets in which we do a lot of business: India and EdTech are two examples. These are also two markets that I am passionate about, and have covered prodigiously for a long time. In a way, these markets, and many others that have similar characteristics, share very similar trajectories vis-a-vis entrepreneurship, venture capital, and exits. Another market in which 1M/1M doesn’t have much presence, but I have invested in, is Cleantech. The story is somewhat similar there as well. Let’s take a look at these slow-growth markets, and how they will emerge over the upcoming years.

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How To Fund A ‘Fat’ Startup

These days, we focus a lot more on lean startups than startups that require capital to get going. The entire industry has moved away from the ‘fat’ startup category. However, infrastructure software, hardware, networking, chips – they need capital. Even in cloud software, to build complex technology like personalization and analytics requires some investment.

How do people fund those?

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Funding Rejection Statistics Of Key Players

You’ve often heard me say that over 99% of the entrepreneurs who seek financing are rejected. This post offers a set of rejection statistics culled from credible sources on some of the key players:

YCombinator: 97.15%

YCombinator started as a summer programme and the roots still show, with courses running for three months, about the length of an academic summer break. Teams all join at the same time, in batches. Applicants are rigorously screened and the best invited for interview. For the latest batch 74 (including six not-for-profits) were selected from a field of more than 2,600. Those lucky few get paid between $14,000 and $20,000 to attend. In return they have to hand over about 7% of their firm’s equity. [Source: The Economist]

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