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.

Competing with Giants: Colin Earl, CEO of Agiloft (Part 1)

Colin’s company has to compete with Salesforce.com, ServiceNow, and Apttus with a bootstrapped business. Read on to learn how he does so.

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?

Colin Earl: I was born in London and raised to be an engineer. I graduated from Imperial College. I came to Silicon Valley three years later. >>>

Featured Videos

Building a New Niche Brand from New Hampshire: Yogibo CEO Eyal Levy (Part 1)

We’ve been covering new niche brands that have successfully been built either purely with e-commerce or with an online-offline combination. Yogibo is a bean bags company that has scaled nicely in its niche.

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?

Eyal Levy: I was born and raised in one of the suburbs of Tel Aviv. I was raised in a family of entrepreneurs. My father was an entrepreneur. He founded a plastic company. My maternal grandfather was also an entrepreneur. He had a toy factory. Since I was ten years old, I was helping out. I would spend half of the summer vacation >>>

Bootstrapping an Online Mattress Brand to $168 Million: Ricky Joshi and Ron Rudzin, Co-Founders of Saatva Mattress (Part 1)

Ron and Ricky have built a luxury mattress brand online. Learn how.

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?

Ricky Joshi: I’m from Columbus, Ohio and went to Dartmouth for undergraduate. I went on to get my MBA from Columbia. I dabbled in various entrepreneurial activities and worked in the agency world as an Internet guru in IPG. My big claim to fame was sourcing and leading our investment into Facebook in 2006. I managed a $10 million business development deal there. I ended up creating my own agency and becoming a co-founder of Saatva. >>>

A Pilot’s Heroic Journey: Jonny Nicol, CEO of Stratajet (Part 1)

Jonny is a pilot. He literally flew around to build Stratajet through many storms. Read his fascinating story!

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?

Jonny Nicol: I was born in England near London. I went to state school. When I was a kid, I decided that I wanted to be a fighter pilot. I dedicated my life to that. I did three operations when I was in the military. I ended up coming back to the UK when I was about 26 years old. I decided I had enough of the military. I was in touch with a friend who had an idea for a staffing agency. The idea was that this industry that had always functioned with filing cabinets can >>>

From Solo Entrepreneur to $65 Million in Revenue: Brazilian Entrepreneur Daniel Scandian, CEO of MadeiraMadeira (Part 1)

Daniel had fully validated his business to significant revenue before going to investors. The result is spectacular! Read on…

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?

Daniel Scandian: I’m from Rio de Janeiro. I started my career a little bit different from other entrepreneurs. I was 14 years old when I started with Go Carting. My dream was to be a Formula One driver. I won the Formula 3 South America in 2001. That’s why I started late because I could get sponsors to go to GP2. I then came >>>

Building Multiple Bootstrapped Education Software Companies: Lane Rankin, CEO of Illuminate Education (Part 1)

Lane was first a teacher, then a school and school district administrator. His background is not of a typical tech entrepreneur. However, his deep domain knowledge and relationships in the education field have propelled him to become a very successful EdTech entrepreneur. Great story!

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

Lane Rankin: I’m currently in California. I was born in Seattle, Washington. I have a Bachelors degree in Applied Mathematics and went on to get a Masters in Leadership. I started my first company back in 1999. >>>

Learning From Mistakes: Roy Peleg, CEO of FirstImpression.io (Part 1)

FirstImpression is Roy’s fourth startup. The prior ones had all failed, and Roy candidly discusses how and why they failed. There is much to learn from failures and mistakes, possibly even more than from successes.

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

Roy Peleg: I was born in a city north of Tel Aviv. When I was 12, my parents separated. When I was 16, I left high school and started my entrepreneur journey. At the age of 18, I joined the army. After getting out of the army, I started a career as an IT manager. >>>

Scaling an Energy Management Venture: Martin Manniche, CEO of Greenwave Systems (Part 1)

Martin is a serial entrepreneur with nine startups under his belt. This story traces his journey from Copenhagen to California with a focus on his latest venture Greenwave that has already scaled to over $50 million in revenue.

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?

Martin Manniche: I was born in Copenhagen, Denmark, and I moved to the US 11 years ago. I’ve been leading companies as a CEO. I’ve also been >>>

Building a FinTech Company in Brazil: Sergio Furio, CEO of BankFacil (Part 1)

Companies are starting to scale in Latin America. In this story, we bring you a FinTech company’s journey from its bootstrapped beginnings to validation, venture financing, and scaling.

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

Sergio Furio: I’m Spanish. I graduated in 2000 in Business Administration. I spent five years in Deutsche Bank doing investment banking.

Sramana Mitra: In Spain? >>>

Bootstrapping Using Services from Russia: Ruslan Fazlyev, CEO of Ecwid (Part 1)

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

We’ve discussed Bootstrapping Using Services extensively over the years. Ruslan used eLance (not Upwork) to source service projects, then built, first a platform+services business that scaled to over $10 million in revenue. Then he spun off a pure play e-commerce platform business that now has over a million merchants using it. Revenue is over $5 million.

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?

Ruslan Fazlyev: I was born in a very little town in Russia. I grew up in Ulyanovsk, which is a city on the Russian river Volga. The city that you grew up in interests you more than the place of birth.What’s interesting about that place is it’s the place where Lenin was born – the guy who founded USSR. Because it’s >>>