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. 

Why I Cook, and Suggest You Do Too

Recently, The Atlantic did an interesting story: Why Are Millennials So Obsessed With Food? It asks the question, why do people post so many food pictures on Facebook and Instagram, for instance.

“[Eve] Turow’s theory is that in a digital-first era, many people latch onto food as something that engages all of the senses and brings people together in physical space.”

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Feminist Father vs. Chauvinist Father

We hear a lot of complaints about sexism and chauvinism in 21st-century Silicon Valley. I want to share some stories from India in the mid-20th century. It may sound prehistoric, but it wasn’t that long ago.

I was born into an old family in Calcutta, India. We were a traditional extended family with about 25 family members and another 25 servants living in one family home. My father is the youngest of six siblings — three brothers and three sisters. His father, my grandfather, was a good man, a noble patriarch, well-meaning, trying to do the right thing.

The right thing, however, in his worldview, did not include treating his sons and daughters equally.
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Future of Education: Three Conversations

There is a lot going on in the educational technology market. In our effort to bring you continued insights in that market, we would like to bring to your attention three recent roundtable discussions:

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Leadership and Brilliance Are Not the Same

When LinkedIn suggested “How I Lead” as the topic for this month’s Influencer series, I had to pause to consider how my thinking has evolved on the subject. How did I lead earlier in my career? How do I lead today? What has changed? What has remained constant? How do I synthesize what has worked particularly well?

I have founded and run four companies since 1994. In each case, I had a mission for value creation that was big, bold, important, clear, and I always made sure the mission was communicated to everyone on my team and to the external world with utmost authenticity.

When I started DAIS in 1994, my mission was to jumpstart a technology industry in Calcutta, using my MIT Computer Science background to plug my birthplace into the global startup eco-system. My team of ~50 understood that mission well. I also got the media to root for us, inspiring them with that vision. This helped us tremendously in recruiting talent at a time when “startup” and “Calcutta” were incongruous concepts.
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Is Technology Dehumanizing Society?

In my recent trend piece, From Second Silicon Valley Gold Rush to Angel Investment Bubble, These Are the Tech Trends to Watch, I concluded with the following thought:

The Dehumanization of Society: Technology has created tremendous opportunities for the world to shrink through communication, collaboration, and cloud-based productivity tools. But it has created immense opportunities for wasting time. On Facebook. On Twitter. On stupid games. Human beings are losing their ability to communicate in person. To smile at each other. To converse. To enjoy a meal together without looking at their smartphones. To look into each other’s eyes. To touch. To honor food that someone else has cooked with love and care. To be present in the moment without interruption. This is a tremendous loss that cannot be quantified.

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When Should You Move To Silicon Valley?

The question continues to come up often in our work with global entrepreneurs, so further to my earlier Harvard Business Review piece, I will add more color to it. First, here’s a recap from the HBR piece:

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Develop a Point of View, Write Regularly

Last year, I wrote If I Were 22: I Was Fired From My Own Company. If you haven’t read that piece, I suggest you do.

For this year’s graduating class, I have a suggestion.
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Looking Forward to the Real Silicon Valley

I am one of those people who doesn’t like bubbles. Right now, we’re experiencing a bubble in Silicon Valley with funny money driving weird, unproductive behavior.

Some people want this party to go on.

I don’t.

Francisco Dao has written a poorly analyzed post on VentureBeat titled What will happen to Silicon Valley when demographics strangle the global economy:

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The Funny Money Unicorn Business

For those who follow my writings on Billion Dollar Unicorns, you know that I am not a fan of ‘Valuation Without Revenue‘ Unicorns. The mindless inflow of capital into companies with dubious monetization ability irritates me. This week, some important coverage has emerged on the games VCs are playing to achieve Unicorn status for their portfolio companies. The most important, must-read piece on the subject is from Heidi Roizen, Operating Partner at DFJ: How to Build a Unicorn From Scratch – and Walk Away with Nothing.

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How To Dramatically Slash The Cost Of College Education

The exorbitant cost of higher education is a recurrent topic of conversation, concern, and discontent these days. Against that backdrop, an announcement from edX and Arizona State University caught my attention last week. ASU and edX announced a program called Global Freshman Academy:

The Global Freshman Academy (GFA) will give learners anywhere in the world the opportunity to earn freshman-level university credit after successfully completing a series of digital immersion courses hosted on edX, designed and taught by leading scholars from ASU. By allowing students to learn, explore and complete courses before applying or paying for credit, the Global Freshman Academy reimagines the freshman year and reduces academic and monetary stress while opening a new path to a college degree for many students.

The program differs from other digital immersion undergraduate programs in the following ways:

• Course Credit for Open Online Courses – By completing the full series of eight Global Freshman Academy courses, students earn full college credit for freshman year; students will also be able to opt for taking individual courses for credit if they prefer
• Cost Effective – Freshman year credit earned through GFA is a fraction of the cost students typically pay
• Learning Before Payment – Students may decide to take a course for credit at the beginning or after coursework has been completed – reducing financial risk while opening a pathway for exploration and preparation for qualified students who may not otherwise seek a degree.
• Unlimited Reach – Because of the open course format, learning takes place while scaling completely – there are no limits to how many learners can take the courses online
• Innovative Admissions Option – GFA’s approach is different from the traditional admissions process of other credit-bearing courses, eliminating such barriers to entry as standardized tests and transcripts that are part of the traditional application process.
• Track Record of Success – This partnership brings together a globally recognized online educational platform founded by Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a university whose innovative online degree programs boast an 89 percent retention rate.

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