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.

From Developer to Entrepreneur with $20M in Bootstrapped Revenue: Julien Salinas, CEO of NLP Cloud (Part 1)

Numerous developers around the world are turning into successful entrepreneurs. Julien provides a textbook case study of a brilliant journey that is a highly repeatable blueprint to follow.

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?

Featured Videos

Thought Leaders in Financial Technology: Sankaet Pathak, CEO of Synapse (Part 1)

Sankaet is building interesting infrastructure products for FinTech. Lots of insights, also, on open opportunities within the field for new entrepreneurs to latch onto.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by introducing our audience to yourself as well as to Synapse.

Sankaet Pathak: I’m the Founder and CEO of Synapse. If you haven’t heard of Synapse, we are what’s considered a Banking-as-a-Service provider based in San Francisco.

Bootstrapping Using Services from The Netherlands to a $300M+ Exit: Quintiq and ActiVote Founder Victor Allis (Part 1)

Victor bootstrapped Quintiq to $30M, raised funding, and then sold the company for over $300M. ActiVote is his second startup, currently self-funded.

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

Bootstrapping a RegTech Venture to $20M: PerformLine CEO Alex Baydin (Part 1)

RegTech is emerging to become a category of its own with numerous risk and compliance issues getting addressed by technology solutions. Alex has bootstrapped a wonderful business and is now doing a private equity-driven roll-up within the space.

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?

Female Entrepreneur Scaling a PropTech Venture with Over $40M in Funding: PunchListUSA CEO Min Alexander (Part 1)

Min tells a wonderful story of building a scaling a PropTech company with significant funding at a $100M+ valuation.

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?

Building a High-Growth Startup From Brazil: Revelo CEO Lachlan de Crespigny (Part 1)

Lachlan has built a wonderful company from Brazil that has emerged as a pandemic beneficiary.
Read on for the nuances of his journey.

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?

Twin Brothers Building a FinTech Venture: Stephen Roche and Gabino Roche, CoFounders of Saphyre (Part 1)

Gabino and Stephen have built a wonderful FinTech company and tell their story with wonderful flair and candor.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s go to the very beginning of your journey. Where were you from? Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of background? You are twin brothers. I think this is my first case study of a twin-brother entrepreneur.

Bootstrapping a FinTech Startup by Piggybacking with Services: Quavo Co-Founder David Chmielewski (Part 1)

Dave transitioned from a developer to an entrepreneur by leveraging his solid domain knowledge in a particular area of FinTech: dispute resolution for credit card transactions. He and his co-founders effectively used bootstrapping using services and piggybacked on the Pega Systems platform. Read on to learn more about his journey.

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?

A Journey into Personalized Luxury Fashion: Editorialist YX CEO Rafael Ortiz (Part 1)

As you know, I have a passion for personalized luxury fashion and ventured into that market early on in 1999 when the market wasn’t quite ready for it yet. Rafael is building a wonderful luxury fashion venture with unique personalization details.

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?

Building a Global Hardcore Financial Technology Company from Brazil: Ricardo Josua, CEO of Pismo (Part 1)

We don’t hear of hardcore B-to-B technology ventures coming out of Latin America very often.
Ricardo is building one that caters to banks and financial institutions, has raised over $100M in financing, has over $25M in revenue, and has major Latin American banks as customers.

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?