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.

Om Malik: Pioneering Blogs (Part 1)

Om Malik is a successful writer, reporter and has been entrepreneurial in many ways. He is also one of the pioneers of the blogging phenomena with GigaOm. Om has been a close friend of mine for many years, and was responsible for getting me into blogging. Today, he is one of first bloggers, along with Michael Arrington of Techcrunch and Rafat Ali of Paidcontent to have monetized blogs in a significant way. >>>

Featured Videos

Story of an Entrepreneur-in-Residence, Raj Vaswani (Part 1)

Raj Vaswani is currently the Chief Technology Officer with Silver Spring Networks. Equally as important and interesting for my audience is that he also has completed an Entrepreneur-in-Residence program with Foundation Capital. While I did discuss his overall background, as well as his role in founding Silver Spring Networks, Raj also provided some good insights into the Entrepreneur-in-Residence programs, also know as EIR. >>>

Social Entrepreneur: Harish Hande (Part 1)

Dr. Harish Hande is the co-founder of Selco, a rural sustainable energy company which has over 80,000 installations and 25 retail sales and service centers all over Karnataka, a state in Southern India. Among its many accomplishments, Selco has created India’s first rural solar financing program using regional banks. I recently talked with Harish about the development of Selco and his journey as a remarkably committed social entrepreneur. >>>

Defying Google: Adify CEO, Russ Fradin (Part 1)

I have written about Adify recently in Adify Challenges AdSense. In this series, I have a long conversation with Russ Fradin, an online advertising industry veteran, and currently the CEO of Adify, an innovator in the Online Ad Network space. Presumably, they will help a lot of media companies and upstarts build vertical ad networks, and offer an alternative to the Google-Yahoo duopoly. Adify has just raised $20 Million. >>>

Leadership Profile: Tom Werner (Part 1)

Thomas H. Werner has served as the CEO and as a member of the board of directors of SunPower since 2003. SunPower Corporation (Nasdaq: SPWR) designs, manufactures and markets high-performance solar electric technology worldwide. SunPower’s high-efficiency solar cells and modules generate up to 50 percent more power per unit area than conventional solar technologies and have a uniquely attractive, all-black appearance. Tom has a varied background including VP and GM positions with 3Com. Currently he also serves as a board member of Exar Corp, Three-Five Systems, and Silicon Light Machines. I recently interviewed Tom about SunPower. >>>

Leadership Profile: Sass Somekh (Part 1)

Dr. Sass Somekh recently took the time to share with me insights gathered during his phenomenal career. After some initial work with Bell Labs and Intel, he spent 23 years with Applied Materials prior to becoming the President of Novellus. At Applied, he perfected a process of enabling innovation to coexist in a large company environment. And today, upon his retirement from Novellus, Sass is engaged in leading his social entrepreneurship cause: reducing US dependence on foreign oil. In this series, we explore the various chapters of his illustrious career. >>>

TheFind: LifeStyle Shopping (Part 1)

A few weeks back, Siva Kumar came by for a chat. Over a cup of tea, we brainstormed about the state of Shopping on the internet, and Siva shared with me the details of his new startup, TheFind. Over the next few segments, we will discuss the company in detail. Siva is a seasoned entrepreneur, so I encourage readers to watch how he explains his business, and learn from it. >>>

Expertise Location (Part 1)

I wrote a piece back in January called IBM’s Entry Into Social Networking, where I discussed the potential for applying web 2.0 techniques on the enterprise. Subsequently, I have written extensively about Enterprise 3.0 and the Extended Enterprise trends. A company from England had contacted me after reading the IBM piece. This company, Trampoline Systems, is the subject of our discussion today. It dovetails the recent eProject discussion, as yet another essential element of the online collaboration suite, one of my key interest areas for Enterprise 3.0. My conversation partner here is Charles Armstrong, CEO of Trampoline. >>>

Serial Entrepreneur: Taher Elgamal (Part 1)

Dr. Taher Elgamal is a tremendously successful and talented cryptographer turned entrepreneur. He is the designer of the ElGamal signature scheme which has served as the basis for the Digitial Signature Algorithm. He holds a doctorate degree in Computer Science from Stanford University. I had the pleasure of talking with Taher, discussing not only his background and past ventures, but what he is doing now and where he thinks the security market is at, and where it is likely to go.

SM: Taher, I would like to begin the interview by going back to your roots. You come from a background with a completely different cultural context where I imagine you were not exposed to entrepreneurial activities as we know it here in Silicon Valley. If you could connect some dots for us and tell us how you moved onto the path you are on today, that would be great. TE: Interesting question. I grew up in Cairo, obviously, and Cairo is an old civilization. Where I grew up was an interesting family collection because families in Egypt are collections of a lot of different things. It is true that one would not think of starting companies when you were 15 years old when you were growing up in Cairo, although nowadays that has changed. Back then, you tried to find the biggest government position you could. >>>

Leadership Profile: Maggie Wilderotter (Part 1)

Maggie Wilderotter is the current CEO of Citizen Communications (CZN). Citizen is an industry leader in rural telecommunication services with 2006 revenues of $2B. It offers ILEC services under the Frontier name in the United States. I was introduced to Maggie as one of the most impressive women executives. [Bio]

SM: Let’s start with your background. Where do you come from, and what aspects of your youth do you think gave you the foundation for such an incredible career? MW: I grew up in New Jersey; I am one of four sisters. My father was an executive with AT&T in the Bell system throughout his career. My mom was a stay at home mom until we were in High School, then she became one of the top real estate agents in the state of New Jersey. I had a great childhood. As a family we were brought up, all four of us, to be very focused on education; I was taught that if you earned a college degree you then had freedom and flexibility to actually do whatever you wanted in life. My parents instilled discipline in us at a very early age. We were taught that hard work pays off, with a focus on “if you deliver your personal best, the world is your oyster”. I have had great success in my career which I really believe is based on a childhood where there were no limits placed on what I could accomplish. >>>