1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Julie Lein, Managing Partner at Urban Innovation Fund (Part 1)

Julie Lein, Managing Partner at Urban Innovation Fund, discusses pre-seed and seed funding in companies focused on the betterment of cities.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s get you and Urban Innovation Fund introduced to our audience.

Julie Lein: I’m the Co-Founder and Managing Partner of the Urban Innovation Fund. We are a venture capital firm that invests in startups shaping the future of cities. We invest across a variety of verticals. These are what you might consider more traditional smart city sectors like transportation, energy, PropTech.

573rd 1Mby1M Entrepreneurship Podcast with Steve Eskenazi, Angel Investor

Steve Eskenazi is an Angel Investor, and we had a number of interesting trend conversations.

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573rd Roundtable Recording with Steve Eskenazi, Angel Investor

In case you missed it, you can listen to the recording of this roundtable here:

Roundtable Recap: Startup Trends Discussion with Steve Eskenazi

During this week’s roundtable, we had as our guest Angel investor Steve Eskenazi. We had a number of interesting trend conversations.

iBay

As for entrepreneur pitches, up first we had Pradheep from Singapore pitching iBay. The company has significant traction.

Capriquota

Next we had Olabode Qudus from Ogun, Nigeria, pitch Capriquota, a concept stage venture with a little bit of validation.

BEI.RE

Then we had Ranga Krishnan from San Jose, California, pitch BEI.RE, a prop tech venture that also has some degree of validation.

You can listen to the recording of this roundtable here:

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572nd 1Mby1M Entrepreneurship Podcast with Andrus Oks, Tera Ventures

Andrus Oks is Founding Partner at Tera Ventures, based in Estonia. We have a great discussion on entrepreneurship in the Baltic and Scandinavian countries in particular.

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572nd Roundtable Recording with Andrus Oks, Tera Ventures

In case you missed it, you can listen to the recording of this roundtable here:

Roundtable Recap: April 21 – Spotlight on the Northern European Startup Ecosystem

During this week’s roundtable, we had as our guest Andrus Oks, Founding Partner at Tera Ventures, based in Estonia. We had a great discussion on the Baltic and Scandinavian countries in particular.

Peep

As for entrepreneur pitches, today we had Elif Aydin from New York, pitching PeeP, an app for identifying street parking. Also an excellent discussion.

You can listen to the recording of this roundtable here:

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Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrap First, Raise Money Later

If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. 

I wrote a book called Billion Dollar Unicorns a few years back. Writing this book took me through the extensive process of talking to entrepreneurs who have built tech companies with valuations above a billion dollars. While there is a tremendous amount of serendipity involved in any extraordinary success story, one recurring theme comes up in these case studies. I am particularly excited to share this nugget because it applies broadly to all classes of entrepreneurial ventures.

Bootstrap first, raise money later.

That’s what Fred Luddy did when he founded ServiceNow back in 2005. Leveraging his domain knowledge and expertise in IT ServiceDesk software, he rapidly acquired 12 customers before raising funding. Initially, he started charging $25 per seat and the 12 customers paid up. He raised $2.5 million in venture capital WITH 12 customers, and ample validation.

Soon they clocked $850,000 in revenues in their first year as a real company. In 2010, they had grown to $45 million annual revenue run rate with 350 enterprise customers. They ended fiscal 2013 with revenues of $424.7 million.

Prior to listing on the NYSE in 2012, ServiceNow was venture funded with $83.7 million in investments received from JMI equity, Greylock Partners, and Sequoia Capital. They raised $162 million in their IPO. Soon after listing, ServiceNow had touched a valuation of $3 billion. Since then, the stock has skyrocketed. It is currently trading at $234.03 with a market capitalization of $41.96 billion. Clearly, a mega hit Unicorn that started, however, by bootstrapping first.

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