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.

Indian Services Entrepreneurs Venturing Into Products: Suresh Shankar and Srikant Sastri, CoFounders of Crayon Data (Part 1)

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

Suresh Shankar is the Founder Director at Crayon Data. Prior to founding Crayon Data he held various positions at IBM, RedPill Solutions, ANN AMRO Bank, Young & Rubicon, and JWT Fulcrum. He was the CEO at RedPill which was sold to IBM in 2009. Srikant Sastri is another serial entrepreneur and seasoned executive who joined the founding team at Crayon Data. He has held varying positions at Team4U, Vivaki, a Growth-For-All before founding Crayon Data.

Sramana: Before we delve into the story of Crayon Data I would like to get a sense of your backgrounds. Suresh, why don’t you go first.

Suresh Shankar: I was born in Chennai and grew up with a proper middle class background. My father was a lawyer and education was everything. My father also encouraged me to play a lot of cricket which was a lot of fun growing up. When I began looking at college choices I took the easy way out. I knew that I wanted to do an MBA eventually, so I figured I should start out with business studies for three years before my MBA instead of five years of engineering school. I ended up going to IIM Calcutta which is where I met Srikant. He ended up taking all of the notes while I skipped class and took all of his notes. >>>

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Getting Customers to Prepay to Start Up, Then Building a $300M Business: RMS CEO Hemant Shah (Part 1)

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

Hemant Shah is the co-founder, president and CEO of RMS, a leader in catastrophic risk modeling. He co-founded RMS in 1989 based on his research work at Stanford University. Twenty years later, RMS is a global leader in developing models for things such as hurricanes, terrorist activity, and earthquakes.

Sramana: Hemant, let’s start by reviewing your background. Where are you from? What is the backdrop to your entrepreneurial journey?

Hemant Shah: I grew up on the Stanford campus. I have been here all my life. I was born in Pennsylvania, where my father was a professor at the University of Pennsylvania. I went to school here at Gunn High in Palo Alto. I then went on to Stanford for my bachelor and masters degrees. I lived in Palo Alto and Menlo Park before I finally moved to San Francisco. Of course, my mother got upset when I moved to San Francisco because it was so far away! While I didn’t go far, that was the first time I had left the ZIP code. >>>

Building a Global Software Company from France: BonitaSoft CEO Miguel Valdés-Faura (Part 1)

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

Miguel Valdés-Faura is the CEO and co-founder of BonitaSoft, a software company with the mission of democratizing the Business Process Management. Miguel founded the Bonita project in 2001, with the vision that BPM would become mainstream in every company’s IT portfolio. Prior to Bonitasoft, Miguel led R&D, pre-sales and support for the BPM division of Bull Information Systems, a major European systems provider. Miguel holds a degree in computer science from the URV and a master’s degree from Nancy and Metz universities.

Sramana: Miguel, let’s start with your story. Where are you from? Where were you raised? What is the story of BonitaSoft?

Miguel Valdés-Faura: I am from Barcelona, Spain. Most of the story behind the company and the open source software that we push at BonitaSoft was initially built in France. Everything started in 2001 when I was moving from Barcelona to northern France. I was just finishing my degree in computer science, and I was working in a research center in Europe that is pretty well respected. I was working with people who were very specialized in building collaboration solutions. >>>

A Successful Corporate Innovation Effort in HealthcareIT: Bruce Johnson, CEO of GHX (Part 1)

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

Bruce Johnson is the CEO and president of GHX, the world’s largest electronic trading exchange for healthcare. Prior to being named CEO in 2007, Johnson served as the company’s chief operating officer, with previous responsibilities at GHX including the leadership of business development, professional services, sales, marketing and corporate communications. Before joining GHX, Johnson spent 12 years at GE Healthcare in a variety of management roles in sales and marketing. Johnson earned a bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Nebraska at Lincoln and his master’s in Business Administration from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.

Sramana: Bruce, let’s start by reviewing your personal background. Where do you come from? What is the genesis of your professional career journey?

Bruce Johnson: I grew up in the Midwest and have a background in electrical engineering. I grew up in Nebraska and graduated from the University of Nebraska. After graduation I joined General Electric where I worked in various sales and marketing roles in the GE Healthcare business. I worked there for 12 years before joining GHX in 2000. That was at the height of the Internet craze and so myself and a handful of other GE employees started the company in 2000. I worked in sales and marketing roles until I became the COO in 2006. In 2007 I was named the CEO. >>>

Building an App Platform Company from the Netherlands: Mendix CEO Derek Roos (Part 1)

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

Derek Roos is the CEO if Mendix, an enterprise app platform company looking to bridge the gap between business and IT, making business application development dramatically easier, faster and collaborative. Derek earned a master of science degree in business administration from Erasmus University, Rotterdam. He is a highly sought speaker at IT conferences and is guest lecturer at several universities. Derek has received the Ernst & Young Emerging Entrepreneur of the Year 2012 Award.

Sramana: Derek, let’s start by reviewing your background. Where do you come from? What are the roots of your entrepreneurial journey?

Derek Roos: I am originally from the Netherlands. I was studying at the business school in Rotterdam when I came up with the idea of Mendix. I founded the company in the Netherlands with the idea of helping our customers dramatically cut down the development time of new business applications. >>>

A Serial Entrepreneur’s Journey: Zscaler CEO Jay Chaudhry (Part 1)

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

Jay Chaudhry is the founder and CEO of Zscaler, an enterprise cloud security company. He is an innovator and trendsetter who has founded and funded several successful companies, including Zscaler, AirDefense, CipherTrust, CoreHarbor, Air2Web, and SecureIT. Chaudhry’s 25 years of sales, marketing and engineering experience also includes leadership roles at leading companies such as IBM, NCR and Unisys.

Sramana: Jay, let’s get started with an overview of your background. Where do you come from? Where do your entrepreneurial roots come from?

Jay Chaudhry: I have the biggest contrast with where I came from and where I am at. I have seen the Stone Age and I have seen the rocket age in the span of 40 years. I come from a tiny village at the foothills of the Himalayas. There were 800 people in the village where I grew up. Every so often I look back, and I can’t believe the transition that I have been through. We had a village well, no electricity, and we had to self-sustain as a community. We grew out own cotton and made our own clothes. It was a good, simple life. The best thing I learned from that is hard work and honesty. Life is tough, and you have to work very hard. >>>

Bootstrapping Using Services: Krish Kupathil, CEO, AgreeYa Mobility (Part 1)

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

Krish Kupathil is the founder and CEO of AgreeYa Mobility, an enterprise mobility and mobile system integration company. AgreeYa Mobility provides solutions for collaboration and communication products for mobile platforms, and has a flagship product lknown as Onvelop. Prior to AgreeYa Mobility, Krish was the vice presiden at Azingo, another company in the mobility space that was purchased by Motorola. Prior to Azingo he worked at FSMLabs.

Sramana: Krish, let’s start with your personal story. Where are you from? What is the story to your personal journey?

Krish Kupathil: I was born and brought up in Delhi, India. I did my schooling and college in India. I started dabbling in software in 1987 and did some initial work in India. I got into software related businesses surrounding finance. I did some work out of Europe and Singapore before landing in the U.S. ten years ago. I was involved in a few startups in earlier years as well. >>>

Incubating a Fat Startup at Greylock: Ash Ashutosh, CEO of Actifio (Part 1)

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

Ash Ashutosh is the CEO of Actifio, a company which provides advanced data storage products. He brings more than 25 years of storage industry and entrepreneurship experience to his role of CEO at Actifio. Ashutosh is a recognized leader and architect in the storage industry where he has spearheaded several major industry initiatives, including iSCSI and storage virtualization, and he has led the authoring of numerous storage industry standards. Ashutosh was most recently a partner with Greylock Partners, where he focused on making investments in enterprise IT companies. Prior to Greylock, he was vice president and chief technologist for HP Storage.

Ashutosh founded and led AppIQ, a market leader of Storage Resource Management (SRM) solutions, which was acquired by HP in 2005. He was also the founder of Serano Systems, a Fibre Channel controller solutions provider, acquired by Vitesse Semiconductor in 1999. Prior to Serano, Ashutosh was senior vice president at StorageNetworks, the industry’s first storage service provider. He previously worked as an architect and engineer at LSI and Intergraph.

Sramana: Ash, let’s start with the beginning of your story. What is the back story to your entrepreneurial journey? Where were you born and where did you grow up?

Ash Ashutosh: I was born and raised in Hyderabad, India. I came to the U.S. to pursue my masters and PhD in computer science. I got half way through my PhD when someone came and gave me a job to go build a new RISC processor. This was in the early days of RISC processors, in 1988 and 1989. I have been a systems person for a long time. I was involved with the early development of building systems and the storage used on those systems. >>>

First-Time Entrepreneur at 37: Okta CEO Todd McKinnon (Part 1)

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

Todd McKinnon is the CEO and co-founder of Okta, an enterprise grade identity management service, built from the ground up in the cloud and delivered with a focus on customer success. Okta enables IT management of access across any application, person or device. Whether the people are employees, partners, or customers, or the applications are in the cloud, on-premises or on a mobile device, Okta helps people become more productive and IT more secure.

Sramana Mitra: Todd, let’s start at the beginning of your story. Where are you from? What is the story to Okta?

Todd McKinnon: I am from California. I was born in Southern California but I grew up in the Bay Area. I always tell people that I am super lucky that the career I chose to go into happened to be the hotbed of the area where I grew up. All these smart people are born all over the world and have to move here, and for some reason my parents decided to move here in the 1970s, so I was raised in it. I am extremely lucky. >>>

Breaking the Norm: Maxine Manafy, CEO of Bunndle (Part 1)

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

Maxine Manafy is the founder and CEO of Bunndle, an app distribution network. Prior to founding Bunndle she held various sales and executive positions with companies such as Viximo, Mochi Media, Yahoo, KLA-Tencor and Intel. She is a graduate of San Jose State University and Stanford.

Sramana: Maxine, where does your story begin? Where are you from?

Maxine Manafy: I was born here in the Bay Area, in San Francisco. I was raised in East Oakland. Both my parents are immigrants and entrepreneurs as well. My father is from Iran and my mother is from Samoa. My father built his own furniture business, so he had a furniture factory. My mother worked in the family business, and we all were raised around that environment. My interest in starting my own company has always been there. >>>