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.

Best of Bootstrapping: How FormAssembly CEO Bootstrapped a Virtual Company with a Paycheck

Cedric’s story is a textbook case study of the kind of entrepreneur we want to see emerge and grow in every corner of the world: a solo entrepreneur who is a developer and a product guy capable of getting to validation while holding onto a day job. Today, FormAssembly CEO Cedric Savarese has almost 50 employees spread around the world, and while it maintains a small office of fewer than 10 people in Indiana, the bulk of the company has scaled as a virtual workforce. Excellent model, and I encourage aspiring entrepreneurs to read this carefully.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of background?

Cedric Savarese: I was born in France and expatriated to the US. I grew up in a small town not so far from Paris.

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Best of Bootstrapping: How RainmakerForce CEO Mack Sundaram Bootstrapped Decisively to $5 Million+

Mack has built a successful business optimized for autonomy and profitability. Excellent navigation!

Sramana Mitra: Let’s go to the very beginning of your journey. Tell us where you’re from. Where did you grow up? Where were you born and raised?

Mack Sundaram: I was born in South India in a village near Chennai. I spent some time of my childhood in Chennai and Pondicherry. I later went to school in New Delhi. Since then, I moved over to the United States where I had an opportunity to pursue a doctoral degree in Economics. That’s where the transition happened.

We’re a middle class family from India. There was a lot of support and pressure for doing well in education. I appreciate my parents for doing that, but there was always the push to find something that you really like to do. I still remember my parents telling me many times as a child that I’ve got to find something.

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Bootstrapping With A Paycheck to YCombinator and $10M Series A: Ryan Chan, CEO of UpKeep (Part 1)

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

Ryan took a hobby project that he bootstrapped with a paycheck and managed to get into YCombinator.

From there, he raised a $10M Series A from a top-tier Silicon Valley firm, Emergence Capital.

Excellent execution thus far.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start from the very beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born and raised? What kind of background?

Best of Bootstrapping: How SmartBuyGlasses CEO David Menning Bootstrapped to $50 Million

David has bootstrapped a global e-commerce venture from Hong Kong. Splendid execution!

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of background?

David Menning: I grew up in Sydney. I’ve been educated in Australia. In my later years, I studied at universities overseas both in Canada and Japan for a little while. It was this time when I was abroad spending time in different countries that I was exposed to different business models, cultures, and people.

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Bootstrapping From a Small Town in Denmark to $12 Million: Sebastian Petersen, CEO of TrendHim (Part 1)

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

What a wonderful story of an ecommerce company bootstrapping to $12 million from a small town called Horsens in Denmark. All 60 employees work out of Horsens currently.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of background?

Sebastian Petersen: I’m from Denmark. I would say I had a pretty ordinary background. Both my parents were working in the public sector. I’ve always had an entrepreneurial spirit together with one of my best buddies growing up. We were always together.

Taking a Capital Efficient Company Public and Beyond: Medidata CEO Tarek Sherif (Part 1)

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

We’ve covered Medidata in TLHIT before. This time, we look at the entrepreneurial journey of this wonderful company.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of the journey. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of background?

Tarek Sherif: What you’d hear in my journey is a great example of the American dream. I was born in Cairo, Egypt. My mother is German and my father is Egyptian. He was a criminologist.

Capital Efficient Entrepreneurship: Bongo CEO Josh Kamrath (Part 1)

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

Bongo has turned a ~$1M investment into $6M+ in annual revenue with a compelling growth projection in the next couple of years.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born and raised? What kind of background? 

Josh Kamrath: I was born in Phoenix, Arizona. I lived there until I was 12. Then my family moved to Colorado, which I consider my home. I grew up there and went to college at Colorado State University where I met my wife Josie. She’s from California. I graduated a year ahead of her.

Best of Bootstrapping: How Passageways CEO Paroon Chadha Bootstrapped from Indiana

Paroon has bootstrapped Passageways from Indiana and wants to help other Indiana entrepreneurs succeed.

Along the way, he has pivoted from licensed software to cloud software, and made other strategic decisions that helped his company become more successful.

Read on to learn more on his moves.

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Scaling a Robust Enterprise Software Company from Chicago: FourKites CEO Matthew Elenjickal (Part 1)

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

This is a terrific case study of smart execution on a complex domain by an entrepreneurial team. Read on !

Sramana Mitra: Let’s go back to the very beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born and raised? What kind of background?

Matthew Elenjickal: I was born in the south of India in a state called Kerala. I did my undergrad in Chennai and then moved here to Chicago for grad school. I went to Northwestern and took Industrial Engineering and Management Science. It’s a two-year program.

Bootstrapping a Niche E-Commerce Company: Modded Euros CEO Sean Dawes (Part 1)

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

This conversation is a comprehensive discussion on how to bootstrap a niche e-commerce venture with a lean team and effective use of inventory financing.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of background?

Sean Dawes: I was born and raised in Philadelphia. I haven’t gone too far away from my hometown as my company is based out of West Chester, Pennsylvania, which is 20 or 30 minutes outside of Philadelphia.