The Startup Velocity Question: What Hinders Acceleration in VC Funded Companies?

I have been running 1Mby1M since 2010. I find myself saying to entrepreneurs ad nauseam that VCs want to invest in startups that can go from zero to $100 million in revenue in 5 to 7 years.

Startups that do not have what it takes to achieve velocity should not be venture funded.

Experienced VCs, over time, have developed heuristics to gauge what constitutes a high growth venture investment thesis. 

1Mby1M Udemy Courses with Sramana Mitra: Bootstrapping

Over the course of two years, we have released over 70 courses on Udemy with the aim to democratize entrepreneurship education at scale globally. This series of posts aims to help you find the one you need easily and provide you with discount coupons.

Bootstrapping an EdTech Venture to $6M, Ready to Scale with AI: Daniel Santos, CEO of Prepory (Part 1)

This story is a great example of an EdTech company that has built a validated, bootstrapped, profitable business that can potentially be scaled using AI.

Featured Videos

Building a Venture Scale Cyber Security Startup in the Age of AI: Alon Jackson, CEO of Astrix Security (Part 1)

Alon comes from the rich ecosystem of Cyber Security entrepreneurs in Israel. He has built an excellent, high growth AI Cyber Security company. You will find an in-depth discussion on his strategy that has included raising $85M in funding.

Building a Venture Scale Two-sided Marketplace for College Prep to 8-Figure Revenue: Empowerly CEO Hanmei Wu (Part 1)

EdTech is notoriously difficult to build at venture scale. Hanmei is doing it.

Building an AI Platform Company for Real-Time Applications: Vantiq CEO Marty Sprinzen (Part 1)

The world is severely short of AI talent to build complex solutions. It is essential that platforms offer layers of abstraction on top of which systems can be built without getting deep into the weeds. Vantiq is innovating with such a platform and offering excellent business model options including revenue sharing, outcome-based pricing, etc. Very cool company.

1Mby1M Entrepreneur Bootstrapping an AI Deep Learning Venture to over $5M ARR: Bharath Gaddam, CEO of Data Poem (Part 1)

It is always thrilling for me to listen to 1Mby1M entrepreneurs achieving great things. This interview capture’s Bharath’s 6-year journey of bootstrapping to over $5M ARR. At this point, I am fairly confident that Data Poem can blitzscale to become a legitimate Unicorn. Not fluff, not fumes, clear, concrete ROI-driven revenue growth that is set up for repeatability and velocity. 

This is a text book case study of the 1Mby1M Bootstrap first, raise money to Blitzscale later philosophy. I have no doubt that VCs are going to salivate to get into this rocket.

Building a Legitimate, Profitable FinTech Unicorn Using AI: Cynthia Chen, Founder of Kikoff (Part 1)

In the past year, 330 out of 1200 Unicorns have lost status. You read a lot about Unicorns that raise lots of VC money and then fail to scale. Cynthia Chen tells a very different story. She has raised about $43M and built a highly profitable $100M+ ARR company called Kikoff. Read on to learn how.

Building a High Growth Vertical AI Company in Healthcare: Ganesh Padmanabhan, CEO of Autonomize AI (Part 1)

Ganesh has executed on a textbook case study of building a vertical AI company in Healthcare with a clear human-in-the-loop strategy that VCs are salivating over. Read on, much to learn.

Bootstrapping a High Growth Cyber Security Venture with a Paycheck: Christian Geyer, CEO of ACTFORE (Part 1)

Christian convinced the Board of his employer to let him incubate a Cyber Security startup idea as a division of the company with an express intent of spinning it off.

Now, the company has been spun out, doing almost $20M in bootstrapped annual revenue, and may soon find a lucrative Exit. This is a phenomenal story for entrepreneurs considering the Bootstrapping with a Paycheck route.

Building a Venture Scale AI Developer Tool Company: Moderne CEO Jonathan Schneider (Part 1)

Jonathan has found a great, very large niche within the AI-powered Developer Tools space.The idea was born out of deep domain knowledge and customer exposure. VCs love such depth of technical insights and have funded Moderne lavishly.

Bootstrapping a New Age AI Services Venture: Anji Maram, CEO of CriticalRiver (Part 1)

Anji has bootstrapped CriticalRiver to $50M in revenue and is introducing AI into his services business model. We expect to see a lot of this happening all over the tech services ecosystem. AI Services is going to become a massively valuable category.