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. 

A Startup Idea for European Entrepreneurs to Create Jobs for European Engineers

Europe is going through tremendous challenges, recently exacerbated by the Brexit mess. I spend a fair bit of time in Europe on a regular basis, and every time I am there, I feel anguished by the malaise that envelops so much of the continent.

In theory, Europeans know that they have to get on the entrepreneurship bandwagon, and certain cities have successfully jumpstarted thriving eco-systems. Berlin is doing a nice job, and London was, until it opened this new can of worms.
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Future of Artificial Intelligence: Brexit, Trump and Other Calamities

On Friday, June 24, 2016, the world watched in horror as Britain voted to commit economic suicide as a nation.

On November 8, 2016, America will vote. Will it also commit economic and political suicide?

Increasing inequality is building up great stress in the world economic system. The disenfranchised masses are expressing their anger, including in irrational ways such as the Brexit vote.

The trends are worrisome.
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What is Jeff Bezos Doing with The Washington Post?

A few days back, I read an extensive analysis of the Washington Post under Jeff Bezos titled The Bezos Effect: How Amazon’s Founder Is Reinventing The Washington Post – and What Lessons It Might Hold for the Beleaguered Newspaper Business.
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Entrepreneurs: Beware of the Twilight Zone of VC-Funded Startups

The MIT Technology Review just published an article titled Why Startups Are Struggling where it looks for answers to the question:

Even amid the venture capital boom of the past few years, entrepreneurs are finding it harder to build big, enduring companies. What does this mean for the future of innovation?

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Capitalism in the Age of Free Riders

LinkedIn’s recent sale to Microsoft is yet another case in point that freemium business models are a struggle to scale. LinkedIn offers excellent value to its users. Still, few are willing to pay for that value. Thus, the company faces a slowing growth curve, resulting in the decision to sell.

The truth is, on the Internet, everyone wants everything for free. Especially consumers.

And so, almost all media / content related business models are facing a wall.
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10 Small-scale Startup Ideas

In our work with entrepreneurs, it is evident that many of you are looking for small-scale startup ideas to start developing that can grow to robust $1M+ businesses.

Some of you wish to do these as side businesses, while holding onto your jobs.

Some of you just want to build a solid lifestyle business and enjoy running it.

Some of you want to get started in a bootstrapping with a paycheck mode, and then quit your day jobs.
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Future of Work: Utopia or Dystopia?

There’s a lot of discussion in every media outlet right now about the impact of Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Robotics, and over-automation. The Economist has an article titled Basically Flawed, Rethinking the Welfare State:

WORK is one of society’s most important institutions. It is the main mechanism through which spending power is allocated. It provides people with meaning, structure and identity. Yet work is a less generous, and less certain, provider of these benefits than it once was. Since 2000 economic growth across the rich world has failed to generate decent pay increases for most workers. Now there is growing fear of a more fundamental threat to the world of work: the possibility that new technologies, from machine learning to driverless cars, will cause havoc to employment.

There are two schools of thought on the subject, though.
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A Startup Idea for Marketing Unique Travel Experiences

I just returned from a two-week trip to Italy. A large part of this trip was in Sicily and the last few days were with friends in Tuscany.

We had some unique experiences that made me think of some additional travel related startup ideas beyond the last two that I published earlier, Build Me This Travel Planning App, Please! and Build Me This Travelogue App, Please!
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Startup Idea to Leverage Good Technology Writers

As I was writing the previous post, A Startup Idea To Leverage Good Writers, it occurred to me that explaining complicated technology products is a skill in great demand. The affiliate business model I proposed for e-commerce would apply just as well to, for instance, SaaS products, Cyber Security products, and many other technology products and services.

Now, I am thinking of writers becoming affiliates of a specific genre of technology products. >>>

Corporate Innovation Management: Organizational Challenges

Continuing with our discussion on corporate innovation methodology, in this piece, I want to highlight a couple of key organizational challenges: (1) How do ideas flow into execution, (2) Where are the push backs?

Let me call out another specific point from my previous article, Corporate Innovation Management – A Methodology Discussion, that addresses the first issue.

In my interview with Jim Euchner for the Research-Technology Management journal, I said:

JE: Are these same people, if it’s a go, charged with trying to make it work?

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