How To Reduce The Infant Entrepreneur Mortality Rate

By guest author Irina Patterson

Over the past year, we have been talking to various investors – VCs and angels, and incubators and accelerators. What we discovered that the entire startup ecosystem is structured to look for and invest in the less than 1% of the entrepreneurs who are ready and fundable.

For example, Highway 12 Ventures, a $75 million venture fund in Boise, Idaho, gets 500 deals a year. They invest in four. That means that less than 1% of the entrepreneurs who apply succeed in getting financed.

One of the Silicon Valley’s super angels, Mike Maples, told us that he gets 7,000 deals a year and invests in 12 to 15. That’s a 0.21% hit rate. The flip side: a 99.79% rejection rate.

The sad story is that there are way too many non-fundable businesses floating around in each community. Those businesses contribute significantly to what we call high infant entrepreneur mortality rate.

Our 1M/1M Program is designed to help those early stage at-risk-businesses to become strong and sustainable by using thoughtful bootstrapping. And for those ideas that are simply bad business ideas, 1M/1M guides entrepreneurs on how to develop better ones.

We believe that the global economic system will perform significantly better if we can help those 99% of entrepreneurs who are non-fundable for one reason or another. 1M/1M Program is designed to empower entrepreneurs regardless of their potential to attract investment.

If you are working with early-stage entrepreneurs, you can use 1M/1M Program to reduce your local infant entrepreneur mortality rate.

Here is how: 1M/1M supplies the methodology, the curriculum, the connections. Your organization provides your local entrepreneurs with community support. We see this as a powerful synergy of combining resources, without wasteful duplication.

We see it as an example of truly democratic, distributed capitalism 2.0.

Note: The 1M/1M team has invested significant resources to engage with and understand the challenges of the Incubator industry around the globe. You can sign up for our opt-in mailing list to get this information via email on an ongoing basis.

The Myth About Seed Funding

By guest author Irina Patterson

We, at 1M/1M, have invested significant resources to dispel the myth about seed funding. We engaged with and interviewed some very successful entrepreneurs who bootstrapped multimillion dollar businesses without outside funding.

Here are just a few examples: Zoho [CEO Sridhar Vembu], RightNow [CEO Greg Gianforte], eClinicalWorks [CEO Girish Navani] ClubPlanet [CEO Andrew Fox] and Finisar [CEO Jerry Rawls].

These entrepreneurs kept building their technology and technology-enabled services businesses and kept validating, until they closed their first key customers. Then, some did take outside money and scaled their business into multimillion dollar companies.

But some of them never took outside money and still own 100% of their multimillion dollar ventures.

1M/1M supports bootstrapping. As long as an entrepreneurs have a place to live, money for food and serious work ethics, we can teach them how to build a multimillion dollar company, block by block. We don’t recommend they waste time looking for seed funding too soon. When they’re ready, we can advise them to do so, but not too early, not too soon.

Note: If you are considering becoming a 1M/1M premium member and would like to join our mailing list to receive ongoing information, please sign up here:

MBA vs. 1M/1M, Let’s Do The Math

By guest author Irina Patterson

I recently read a book by Philip Delves Broughton called Ahead of the Curve – Two Years at Harvard Business School.

The book is about Philip’s firsthand experience at HBS during 2004-2006. The book is so sarcastic that, reportedly, it made Harvard very unhappy.

I enjoyed the book, but it also made me wonder if getting an MBA is worth the investment.

Philip left a job as a Paris correspondent for The Daily Telegraph (UK) to get his Harvard MBA in 2004. At the time he had a wife and a small son and his second son was born while he was at HBS. His school-related debt for the two years at HBS amounted to over $170,000.

When he graduated, Philip couldn’t get a job related to business. He writes for The Financial Times now. So, he went from being a writer to being … a writer. I am not sure that is what he had in mind when he applied to HBS.

In the book, among other things, Philip tells a story how he and his buddy started a media business while at HBS, how it didn’t go anywhere, and how the HBS entrepreneurship professor wasn’t of much help.

I don’t know if Philip still pursues entrepreneurship. If he does, I think he could appreciate our 1M/1M Premium Program.

After all, one year in 1M/1M  costs $1,000. One year at HBS cost Philip $85,000.

Note: If you are considering becoming a 1M/1M premium member and would like to join our mailing list to receive ongoing information, please sign up here:

How Do You Scale Mentoring?

By guest author Irina Patterson

To date, on this blog, we have interviewed more than 30 incubator managers and more than 40 angel investors, and all of them are looking for solutions to scalable and effective mentoring resources.

Most mentors are active or retired entrepreneurs, senior executives, and incubator managers themselves. Most seek not only emotional satisfaction from mentoring but also a return on their time (and often money) investment.

If you are a senior executive, your time is worth anywhere from $500 an hour and up. Mentors spend anywhere from two to 100 hours a year with each entrepreneur. So, they invest anywhere from $1,000 to $50,000 in each entrepreneur in terms of time.

Now, consider an alternative. The 1M/1M Premium Curriculum covers all the core groundwork on bootstrapping, positioning, market sizing, customer validation, financing, customer acquisition, team building, and so on. In addition, we have electives that are specific to industry segments like Web 3.0 and e-commerce, cloud computing, healthcare IT, online education, mobile and social apps, gaming, outsourcing, and more.

At 1M/1M, we ask each entrepreneur to spend at least 50 to 60 hours digesting the curriculum so that by the time they engage with a local, live mentor, they have already mastered the basics.

Once entrepreneurs know the basics, local mentors could do higher caliber coaching. This way, everyone stands to get greater return on their time (and money).

By everyone, we mean the entrepreneurs and their local mentors, the incubators and regional economic development organizations and, of course, the local and global communities at large.

Note: The 1M/1M team has invested significant resources to engage with and understand the challenges of the Incubator industry around the globe. You can sign up for our opt-in mailing list to get this information via email on an ongoing basis.

How Much Is An Entrepreneur’s Time Worth?

By guest author Irina Patterson

Ms. Sramana Mitra, the owner of this blog and founder of 1M/1M, interviewed hundreds of successful technology entrepreneurs, many of whom are her good friends.

All of them built successful multi-million dollar technology companies by trial and error. Many made mistakes that easily cost them a few million dollars in lengthy experiments. Many of them lost a few years here and there because of lack of knowledge or experience.

The 1M/1M Premium Program has been built on what has been learned from those multi-million dollar mistakes.

We strongly believe that if entrepreneurs follow the 1M/1M methodology, they will avoid such costly mistakes and save themselves a few years and a few million dollars.

Note: If you are considering becoming a 1M/1M premium member and would like to join our mailing list to receive ongoing information, please sign up here:

Does Your Region Experience Brain Drain Of Technology Entrepreneurs?

By guest author Irina Patterson

For the past three decades, serious technology entrepreneurs have come to Silicon Valley to seek help with their early-stage businesses. Ms. Sramana Mitra, the owner of this blog, founded the One Million by One Million program (1M/1M) so that they wouldn’t  need to come to Silicon Valley.

1M/1M is a global initiative that aims to nurture a million entrepreneurs worldwide reach a million dollars each in annual revenue and beyond by 2020, thereby creating a trillion dollars in global GDP and ten million jobs.

1M/1M supplements regional economic development resources with Silicon Valley’s expertise, methodology, and connections.

The 1M/1M platform allows entrepreneurs worldwide to stay home and get the same quality of help and connections that is available to those entrepreneurs based in Silicon Valley.

Being part of 1M/1M, entrepreneurs worldwide don’t have to spend money on relocation. They can even keep their day job until they are ready to work on their own business full time. When they succeed, they will contribute to their local economy, not Silicon Valley’s.

If you would like to learn more about the program, please join us at the next 1M/1M Strategy Roundtable any Thursday. Everyone is welcome.

Note: The 1M/1M team has invested significant resources to engage with and understand the challenges of the Incubator industry around the globe. You can sign up for our opt-in mailing list to get this information via email on an ongoing basis.

Business Incubator Series: Dave Knox, The Brandery, Cincinnati, Ohio (Part 3)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Dave: When we select our companies, we’re trying to get a feel for who the entrepreneurs themselves are. Are they ones who would benefit from a mentorship-driven network, in terms of being coachable and being open to change?

The final thing is just looking at the team’s – for lack of a better term – hustle, drive, and passion for creating a meaningful company. >>>

Business Incubator Series: Dave Knox, The Brandery, Cincinnati, Ohio (Part 2)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Irina: What are the core benefits that your accelerator provides?

Dave: The Brandery is about accelerating the path of a startup. We’re lucky to have a great network of mentors, ranging from startup founders to venture capitalists to consumer marketing professionals.

Through that mentorship we provide a very deep network of connections for our companies.

The second thing that we provide is a focus on the brands and consumer marketing of the startups. That’s something that most others don’t offer. >>>