Women Entrepreneurs Win by Bootstrapping First

Is there bias against women entrepreneurs in the tech industry? Maybe, maybe not. I don’t believe it would hinder you if you stick to the Bootstrap First, Raise Money Later strategy.

The media promotes funding as the holy grail.

The VCs want you to believe that Entrepreneurship = Funding.

No. It isn’t.

Entrepreneurship = Customers + Revenues + Profits.

>>>

Featured Videos

Best of Bootstrapping: Couple Bootstrapped to $10 Million

Love and startups go hand in hand for AdCellerant Co-founders Brock Berry and Shelby Carlson, who are helping media companies generate seven-figure revenue streams. Here is our conversation from 2017.

Sramana Mitra: Whoever wants to start, let’s start at the very beginning of your personal journey. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of background?

Brock Berry: Thanks for having us. I’m the Founder and CEO of AdCellerant. I’m from Indiana where I grew up and spent the first 23 years of my life before I was compelled to move to Colorado where the weather is a little friendlier and there were a few more work opportunities.

>>>

Meta Pours Funds into AI Capacity Build-out

Meta’s (Nasdaq: META) recently announced quarterly results that outpaced market expectations. But despite the better-than-expected performance, its stock fell 9% in the after-hours trading session. The analysts were not pleased with the one time $15.9 billion tax charge that the company incurred.

Video FAQs

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator AI Investor Forum: Mohanjit Jolly, Partner at Iron Pillar (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Let’s do a couple of case studies of what you have invested in. In that, please also talk about the sectors you’re interested in or business models, and where you have invested — sectors that work in your model.

Georgia’s Startup Accelerator Ecosystem: Where Georgia Excels & Where 1Mby1M Fills Critical Gaps

The Accelerator Conundrum is a multipart series that challenges the prevailing wisdom of the tech startup ecosystem that entrepreneurs should Blitzscale out of the gate. Written by Sramana Mitra, the Founder and CEO of One Million by One Million (1Mby1M), the world’s first global virtual accelerator, it emphatically argues that a better strategy is to Bootstrap First, Raise Money Later, focus on customers, revenues and profits. 1Mby1M’s mission is to help a Million entrepreneurs reach a million dollars in annual revenue and beyond. Sramana’s Digital Mind AI Mentor virtually mentors entrepreneurs around the world in 57 languages. Try it out!

Georgia’s startup ecosystem is solidifying. Some of its strongest assets:

• Government commitment via GITA: incentives, grants, favourable regulatory frameworks. Georgia is creating startup-friendly legal and tax regimes. 
• Growing infrastructure: tech parks, maker spaces, co-working, educational bootcamps, university-led pre-accelerators.
• International linkage: accelerators like 500 Global, programs that include international mentors; increasing exposure.
• Accessibility of early funding in the form of grants; matching grants; innovation support starting even in regions, not only in Tbilisi.

Be Careful Who You Take Startup Advice From

Everybody is a startup mentor these days.

On LinkedIn, advice is cheap and abundant.

It can also be very BAD.

>>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator AI Investor Forum: Mohanjit Jolly, Partner at Iron Pillar (Part 1)

Mohanjit Jolly, Partner at Iron Pillar, discusses his firm’s growth stage investment thesis.

Colors: Curtains in the Wind I

I’m publishing this series on LinkedIn called Colors to explore a topic that I care deeply about: the Renaissance Mind. I am just as passionate about entrepreneurship, technology, and business, as I am about art and culture. In this series, I will typically publish a piece of art – one of my paintings – and I request you to spend a minute or two deeply meditating on it. I urge you to watch your feelings, thoughts, reactions to the piece, and write what comes to you, what thoughts it triggers, in the dialog area. Let us see what stimulation this interaction yields. For today – Curtains in the Wind I

Curtains in the Wind I | Sramana Mitra, 2019 | Watercolor, Ink, Pastel | 18 x 24, On Paper