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. 

Crowdfunding Startups: Opportunities and Bottlenecks

There has been a bit of action for a while now in the crowdfunding world, and certain startups have been able to get themselves off the ground using the Kickstarter / Indiegogo style sites. By and large, these types of financings have gone to companies that are building physical products, digital games, etc. Fundings have also happened for some causes, films, books and art projects that are typically not businesses. Equity crowdfunding has been signed into law in the US through the JOBS Act, but it awaits the SECs directives on the precise rules governing the system. In Europe, it is legal and already in practice. Hopefully, other parts of the world will also start seeing the infrastructure develop shortly.

For our domain of focus, the primary concern is financing digital startups: technology and technology-enabled services. Typically, these are difficult to assess, high-risk companies, and amateur investors from the “crowd” are unlikely to be able to perform adequate due diligence to have a sophisticated investment thesis.

However, there is one category of investors who will have an excellent vantage point from which to assess new ventures.
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How To Fund a ‘Fat Startup’

These days, we focus a lot more on lean startups than startups that require capital to get going. The entire industry has moved away from the ‘fat’ startup category. Investors expect that you will have your product launched, customer acquisition model fleshed out fully, and a team in place before Series A.

However, infrastructure software, hardware, networking, chips – they need capital. Even in cloud software, to build complex technology like personalization and analytics requires some investment.

While in the 1M/1M program, we steer people mostly along lean startup paths, I have pondered and investigated the question: How do people fund the ‘fat startups’ these days?
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Roundtable Recap: February 27 – Confidentiality is Overrated

We had a packed session during this week’s roundtable.

Avaz
First up, we had Ajit Narayanan, a 1M/1M premium member from Chennai, India, pitching Avaz, an autism app for children. Ajit is chalking out his marketing strategy now that he is in the process of wrapping up his funding round.

World Biotechnology
Then, Eugene Disnescu from New York City, pitched World Biotechnology that targets Ethanol producers as its first set of customers. Eugene expressed his concerns about their IP being stolen by potential customers who may also be strategic investors. Well, my take on most of these situations is that confidentiality is overrated. If it’s that easy to steal IP, perhaps there’s no point in doing the business. Most entrepreneurs who get too concerned about protecting IP end up not getting very far with their businesses.
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The Dark Reality of Entrepreneurship

There’s a really good story on Inc. on the dark realities of entrepreneurship. Not the rah rah, everything is so wonderful kind, but the brutal emotional truth: The Psychological Price of Entrepreneurship. Read it.

Successful entrepreneurs achieve hero status in our culture. We idolize the Mark Zuckerbergs and the Elon Musks. And we celebrate the blazingly fast growth of the Inc. 500 companies. But many of those entrepreneurs, like Smith, harbor secret demons: Before they made it big, they struggled through moments of near-debilitating anxiety and despair–times when it seemed everything might crumble.

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Not All Student Entrepreneurs Drop Out

Today’s generation of students has a high exposure to the Internet, smartphones, social and many other technologies from a very young age. It is not uncommon to see college students tinkering with technology, starting digital startups, and making millions (and occasionally even billions). Some drop out of school to build their business, but not all. Some stay on in school to get the best of both worlds.

Today, we are going to look at some such student entrepreneurs that we have worked with.

Jeff Nobbs is the founder and CEO of Extrabux, a highly regarded shopping rewards site monetized via affiliate commissions on online transactions. He co-founded Extrabux as a student at the University of Southern California in 2006. He and his co-founder, Noah Auerhahn, who lived in the same dormitory, worked on the project while they were still at school. Two years later in their junior year, they submitted Extrabux to the USC business plan competition, where it won first place and received $25,000, its first stamp of credibility. That helped them build a team and raise close to a million dollars over the next year. They are now on a run rate of over $10 million and their revenue in 2012 was about $5 million. Read more about how Jeff made Extrabux a success in my interview with him.
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Trend Spotting: Entrepreneurship Inside Corporations

There is a real trend developing right now of corporations becoming crucibles of innovation and entrepreneurship in a systematic way. In this post, I will discuss four specific sub-categories of this trend that we’re seeing, and for all practical purposes, participating in.

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Funding Rejection Statistics Of Key Players

You’ve often heard me say that over 99% of the entrepreneurs who seek financing are rejected. This post offers a set of rejection statistics culled from credible sources on some of the key players:

YCombinator: 97.15%

YCombinator started as a summer programme and the roots still show, with courses running for three months, about the length of an academic summer break. Teams all join at the same time, in batches. Applicants are rigorously screened and the best invited for interview. For the latest batch 74 (including six not-for-profits) were selected from a field of more than 2,600. Those lucky few get paid between $14,000 and $20,000 to attend. In return they have to hand over about 7% of their firm’s equity. [Source: The Economist]

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Who Are The Top VCs in Silicon Valley Today?

I have been having this discussion with a few people whose analysis of the venture capital industry I respect. The exercise is not just to assess who are the top investors, but more, to assess where the industry is going, and where the next generation of venture scale companies are going to come from. In this post, I will provide a framework for the discussion. Please weigh in with your thoughts.

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The Future of Education: 10 Trends To Watch

It is that time of the year when we tend to pause and reflect. What have we achieved this year? What are the highlights of culture, business, technology, and trends that we have observed around us?

For me, the most exciting and positive movement at present is in the domain of technology impacting education. And it is an impact that is coming from many different directions.

Let’s explore them in further detail.

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Mentoring Startups: 10 Lessons We Have Learned

These days, everyone seems to be a startup mentor. Whether they have ever done a startup or not, whether they have ever raised money or not, they are ready to advise entrepreneurs.

I want to share with you some things we have learned in running the 1M/1M program for three years. Some background and metrics:

• On January 9th, 2014, 1M/1M will be hosting our 200th free online mentoring roundtable.
• We started experimenting with this format of mentoring way back in the fall of 2008. At the time, 1M/1M did not exist, not even in our heads. It wasn’t until my January 2010 New Year Resolution that the concept was born.
• The 1M/1M premium program was launched at the end of 2010. It took us about one year to figure out how to do what we were hoping to do: help entrepreneurs at scale.
• Almost 20,000 people have participated at our free roundtables. At least 1000 have pitched.
• Recordings are made publicly available at our YouTube channel.
• We use the same format in our private roundtables for the premium members, although those recordings are not available except to the members. We’ve done private sessions every week for the last three years.
• We have been able to develop and enrich a curriculum that entrepreneurs use in web self-service mode over the last 3 years. These curriculums, increasingly, are able to address questions from the entrepreneurs without the need for interactive sessions. As such, when we do get into interactive discussions, they are on more sophisticated issues. The basics can be handled by the curriculum.
• Obviously, the feedback is good, or else, we wouldn’t be able to continue with such a consistent, long-running effort.

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