Bootstrapping Course: Welcome

Nowadays, startups can be built while a founder is still fully employed. Many entrepreneurs start as solo founders and achieve great progress until they need a team. Virtual teams are common these days and easily affordable.

At 1Mby1M, we support employed entrepreneurs and solopreneurs who are at the very beginning of their journeys. They might not even know what to build or how to build it.

We encourage entrepreneurs not to quit their day job until their business becomes fundable or sustainable. 

Hundreds of thousands of entrepreneurs get rejected by investors and accelerators every year. Y Combinator rejects over 95% of their applicants. Andreessen Horowitz rejects 99% of theirs. 

In this mind-boggling stream of rejections, there are numerous high potential companies that need to bootstrap their way to fundability or sustainability.

We accelerate their learning with the 1Mby1M Curriculum and over 1000 case studies of real-life success stories. 

We support their fund-raising efforts through personal introductions to investors.

If you enjoy this course, check out 1Mby1M Basic, our curriculum-only option.

If you’re trying to assess why you’re getting rejections, use the 1Mby1M Self-Assessment.

Featured Videos

Thursday, July 29 – 540th 1Mby1M Mentoring Roundtable for Entrepreneurs

Entrepreneurs are invited to the 540th FREE online 1Mby1M Mentoring Roundtable on Thursday, July 29, 2021, at 8 a.m. PDT/11 a.m. EDT/5 p.m. CEST/8:30 p.m. India IST.

If you are a serious entrepreneur, register to “pitch” and sell your business idea. You’ll receive straightforward feedback, advice on next steps, and answers to any of your questions. Others can register to “attend” to watch, learn, and interact through the online chat.

You can learn more here and register to pitch or attend here. Register and you will receive the recording by email, even if you are unable to attend. Please share with any entrepreneurs in your circle who may be interested. All are welcome!

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Rajeev Singh-Morales, Founder and Managing Partner at Alma Mundi Ventures (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Talk about the companies themselves.

Rajeev Singh-Morales: Let me start with one that was just sold about two months ago. Returnly is a firm that we invested in five years ago. It was sold to Affirm for $300 million. It was founded in 2014 by an immigrant from Spain. We invested in 2015 in a convertible note. E-commerce is booming now. Most people buy stuff that they want to return.

Video FAQs

Cloud Stocks: Appian Strengthens AI Offerings

According to a recent report, the global business process management market is expected to grow from $8.8 billion in 2020 to $14.4 billion by 2025 at 10.5% CAGR. Reston, Virginia-based Appian (NASDAQ: APPN) is among the leading players in the industry.

Bootstrap First, Raise Money Later: Ben Hodson, CEO of JobNimbus (Part 6)

Ben Hodson: By the end of 2013, we were in a position where these guys would say, “Hey, we would pay for this. This is better than a lot of stuff out in the market.” We decided to take the money that we earned on our latest project RepeatSys. We had about $50,000 each. We were going to put it in JobNimbus to feed it with our own money and then sell off RepeatSys, which we basically sold at cost.

Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapped TEOCO to $175M with Services

There is, of course, a myth that you cannot build a large company by bootstrapping. What a total pot of crxp! Meet TEOCO Founder CEO Atul Jain, and get your preconceptions checked and readjusted.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your story. Where were you born, raised, and educated? Tell us a bit of the backstory of your current entrepreneurial story.

Atul Jain: I was born in Kanpur, India. I was born in a lower-middle class family. My father was an engineer in PWD. I am the youngest of three children. The eldest is my sister Manu Jain and I have an elder brother Naveen Jain. At the age of eleven, I received a merit scholarship from the Government of India to study in a residential school. After I finished high school in 1976, I studied at the Indian Statistical Institute and graduated with a Bachelors and Masters in Statistics. My goal and dream all along was to be a Professor, so I came to the US to do a Ph.D. at the University of Illinois. I did my research in probability theory in the field called Brownian motion. I completed my Ph.D. and got caught up in a game of cards called bridge. Five years later, I realized that my life was going nowhere and my career was going nowhere.

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1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Rajeev Singh-Morales, Founder and Managing Partner at Alma Mundi Ventures (Part 1)

Rajeev Singh-Morales, Founder and Managing Partner at Alma Mundi Ventures, discusses the Europe – US bridge for tech startups.

Sramana Mitra: Your name is so interesting. It seems like there is a whole story in your name and your firm’s name. Do you want to start with a little bit of background?

Asana Builds Tools for Pandemic Driven Remote Working Conditions

According to a recent market report, the global the global Enterprise Collaboration Market is estimated to grow from $47.2 billion in 2021 to $85.8 billion by 2026, translating to an annualized growth rate of over 12%. The current remote working conditions have accelerated the need for cloud-based collaborative services. Work management platform Asana recently reported results that beat estimates.

Bootstrap First, Raise Money Later: Ben Hodson, CEO of JobNimbus (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: What period of time did you do that mode of existence of doing consulting to pay down your debt? 

Ben Hodson: That was from about 2008 to 2012. During that time, I started a bunch of smaller companies that tried different things, but I made most of my money off of consulting. None of them went anyplace. They were ideas that weren’t to fruition. I think the big mistake that I made there was trying to run three or four different things at the same time.