1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Cindy Padnos of Illuminate Ventures (Part 1)

Responding to a popular request, we are now sharing transcripts of our investor podcast interviews in this new series. The following interview with Cindy Padnos, Illuminate Ventures was recorded in September 2017. 

Cindy Padnos, Founder and Managing Partner at Illuminate Ventures, discusses a topic that we’ve been highlighting recently: the need for multiple seed rounds as a way to bridge the Series A gap.

Sramana Mitra: Tell us about Illuminate Ventures. What is the focus of the firm? How big is the fund? What sized investments do you make? >>>

400th 1Mby1M Entrepreneurship Podcast Part 2 – With Heidi Jannenga, WebPT

Heidi Jannenga, Co-founder and President of WebPT, discusses how they raised $1 million WITH $1 million in revenue already booked, and then turned that $1 million into $17 million in revenue.

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Roundtable Recap: May 16 – 400th Roundtable Full of Wisdom from Successful Entrepreneurs

During this week’s roundtable, we celebrated our milestone 400^th episode with four entrepreneurs ‘teaching’ their lessons from the trenches. Of these, three are 1Mby1M entrepreneurs, and one is a 1Mby1M case-study.

Future Today
First, Vikrant Mathur, Co-founder of Menlo Park, California based Future Today, discussed his 10+ year journey of building a profitable bootstrapped business to over $10 million in revenue. Vikrant has had to navigate major shifts in his industry and he candidly explained how he has maneuvered. Vikrant’s lessons are perfectly in tune with the 1Mby1M methodology, and a great validation of the philosophy we have practised and preached for over a decade now.

WebPT
Next, Heidi Jannenga, Co-founder and President of Phoeniz, Arizona based WebPT discussed another text-book case study of the 1Mby1M methodology: Bootstrap First, Raise Money Later. Heidi raised $1 million WITH $1 million in revenue already booked, and then turned that $1 million into $17 million in revenue. Very powerful and inspiring story.

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199th 1Mby1M Entrepreneurship Podcast With Deb Kemper, Golden Seeds

Deb Kemper is Managing Director and Chair of the Boston Forum at Golden Seeds, an Angel Group and Micro VC focused exclusively on women entrepreneurs.

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398th Roundtable Recording On May 3, 2018: With Jennifer Carolan, Reach Capital

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

Roundtable Recap: May 3 – Spotlight on EdTech

During this week’s roundtable, we had as our guest Jennifer Carolan, Co-founder and General Partner at Reach Capital, a venture firm with 100% focus on EdTech. The conversation was an excellent exploration of the state of the union in EdTech investments.

Vpharmacist
As for entrepreneur pitches, we spoke with Tamilvendan Rajaraman from Chennai, India, pitching Vpharmacist, an online pharmacy that is bootstrapped and executing very well, competing in a crowded market.

You can listen to the recording of this roundtable here:

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1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Heidi Roizen of DFJ (Part 1)

Responding to a popular request, we are now sharing transcripts of our investor podcast interviews in this new series. The following interview with Heidi Roizen, DFJ was recorded in March 2016. 

Heidi Roizen, Operating Partner at DFJ, discusses her important article, “How to Build a Unicorn From Scratch – and Walk Away with Nothing,” and imparts crucial lessons to entrepreneurs on how to look at terms in a venture financing situation.

Sramana Mitra: We have been living in world of unicorn mania. We have tried to put some perspective on this issue. There are good sides to the unicorn mania. There are bad sides to the unicorn mania. Let’s start with one

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Diversity in Tech: How can the innovators crack this code?

By Guest Author Anita M. Sands

A few months ago, I spoke about culture and microbehaviors at a tech company’s conference in San Francisco. To illustrate what “microbehaviors” are and how they can cause a feeling of exclusion, I described the difficulty I often have as an Irish person—unschooled in American sports—contending with the baseball metaphors my colleagues use all the time. >>>