155th Roundtable Recap: January 3 – Last Few Hours To Vote For 1M/1M New Year Challenge 2013

The voting phase of the 1M/1M New Year Challenge is coming to a close at midnight on January 3 and several promising entrepreneurs are emerging as the frontrunners. Everyone is now able to view the entries here (according to their ranks) and the 20 finalists will be announced on January 4. If you are a contestant, be sure to collect enough votes to make it to the final 20. We’re watching an exciting finish to the contest in these last remaining hours!

All are invited to join us for the competition finals on January 10 and January 17.

During today’s roundtable, the first for this year, we worked with three entrepreneurs.

SpaceTrip4Us
Manoel Belem from Sao Paulo, Brazil, pitched SpaceTrip4Us, a motivation training program for schools using Space Travel metaphors. The project is not yet validated, and the first order of business is to substantiate that schools are willing to pay for this offering.

eduberry
Then Niraj Harlalka from Ahmedabad, India, pitched eduberry, an educational institution management software that is currently making some revenues, but has sales cycle issues, as well as positioning issues. We worked on some of those today. We also had a discussion about long sales cycle businesses and their lack of popularity with investors.

Luxury Quotient
Lastly, Deepak Kumar from New Delhi, India, pitched Luxury Quotient, which he conceives as a boutique retail concept focused on the half a million luxury consumers in India who currently spend a billion dollars on luxury. This spans travel, apparel and accessories, jewelry, etc. Deepak wants to get exclusive rights to represent certain high-end brands and sell into this segment. My hunch is that the billion dollars that get spent in India on luxury gets spent on rather well-known brands such as Gucci and Louis Vuitton, and the unknown brands have a very small niche market. Gucci and Louis Vuitton will not offer exclusive rights, so I am not convinced about the size of this opportunity. I am sure a niche business can be built on Deepak’s premise, but it is not a billion dollar opportunity.

You can listen to the recording of today’s roundtable here.

As always, I would very much like to hear about your business, so let me invite you to come and pitch at one of our free 1M/1M public roundtables. We will be holding future roundtables at 8 a.m. PST on:

-Thursday, January 10, 1M/1M New Year Challenge Final 1, Register Here.

-Thursday, January 17, 1M/1M New Year Challenge, Final 2, Register Here.

-Thursday, January 24, 158^th 1M/1M Roundtable, Register Here.

-Thursday, January 31, 159^th 1M/1M Roundtable, Register Here.

If you want a deeper relationship with me, you are very welcome to join the 1M/1M premium program. If you have any questions about the program, please, first study the website, especially What to expect from the 1M/1M premium program and the FAQs. If you have additional questions, please email me, and I would be very happy to respond. Please note that I work exclusively with 1M/1M entrepreneurs.

I also invite you to join the 1M/1M mailing list for the ease and convenience of getting updates. This way we can stay in touch, and it will help you to decide if 1M/1M is a program for you.