1Mby1M Udemy Courses with Sramana Mitra: Financing

Raising money to build a startup is a huge challenge. To be able to raise any money at all, you must first understand how investors think. We have developed the following courses catering to entrepreneurs in different stages of their entrepreneurial journey.

Is Your Region Full Of Savvy Entrepreneurs?

By guest author Irina Patterson

Unless you’re based in Silicon Valley, I don’t think so. Many economic development organizations and incubators spend considerable time and money to attract savvy entrepreneurs to their regions.

Sometimes, they manage to get entrepreneurs from another state or even another country to move to one of their regional incubators. But all the while, their local entrepreneurial potential remains an untapped resource.

Who are those unrealized entrepreneurs that exist in great numbers in every region? Well, they come in different flavors.

>>>

Featured Videos

How Not To Sell Equity Too Cheap, Too Soon

By guest author Irina Patterson

At our 1M/1M roundtables, we often hear horror stories of entrepreneurs who have sold 25% of their company to investors in exchange for $15,000.

I always find Sramana jumping off her chair when she works with those entrepreneurs.

>>>

How Do You Connect Deeply To Silicon Valley?

By guest author Irina Patterson

Amidst widespread talk of tech bubbles, it is clear that Silicon Valley is back.

Sramana Mitra, the owner of this blog and founder of the 1M/1M Program for entrepreneurs, has been a Silicon Valley insider for more than 15 years.

She can connect the dots and open many Silicon Valley doors for entrepreneurs through the 1M/1M Program, no matter where they are based, as she did for Gioacchino La Vecchia, a 1M/1M entrepreneur from Italy, when she helped him to secure a channel deal for his company, CrowdEngineering, through a strategic partnership.

The sooner entrepreneurs join 1M/1M and demonstrate readiness by following 1M/1M  methodology, the sooner Silicon Valley introductions will start rolling in for them.

We at 1M/1M are open to partnerships with incubators and any other organizations that support entrepreneurs outside of Silicon Valley.

Note: The 1M/1M team has invested significant resources to engage with and understand the challenges of the incubator industry around the globe. You can sign up for our opt-in mailing list to get this information via email on an ongoing basis.

How Not To Waste Your Money On Useless Things

By guest author Irina Patterson

Entrepreneurs often say to me, “I love 1M/1M. I’d love to join, but I don’t have $1,000.” Then we talk some more and I find out that they spend $15,000 on building their site without validating their idea. Or, they paid someone $2,000 to write their business plan in hope that it will help them to raise money. Now, armed with this business plan for an unproven business idea they are shopping for investors and willing to pay big bucks to anyone who would help them to accomplish this ‘mission impossible’.

Now, let’s imagine that you want to spend only $1,000 at this stage to validate your idea, develop your business strategy and figure out a plan of action. Let’s say you saved it, or borrowed it, or put it on your credit card, whatever. You have budgeted $1,000 and that’s all you have.

I highly recommend to invest this $1,000 into your 1M/1M education before you spend it on any other business expense. Here is why.

Once you join 1M/1M, go straight through 50 hours of the 1M/1M Curriculum.

After that, you’ll see why it wouldn’t be wise to spend $15,000 on building your site, until you fully validate your idea. You’ll learn all about free and almost free tools that will help you to validate your business idea and find your first customers and/or partners. You’d be very glad that you avoided that $15,000 mistake.

At 1M/1M, you also learn the very thought process behind building a business. So, when it will come to writing a business plan, you will be able to do it yourself. Another $2,000 is saved there.

As you build your business at 1M/1M, you don’t have to worry about where your funding will come from. If you focus on validating your idea and executing following its methodology, the support of the 1M/1M network will connect you to funding sources.

Often, with the right idea, your customers will fund your business. All you should be doing is focusing on learning and building.

That’s it. Take that $1,000 and invest it in your 1M/1M education. Start learning. Start building.

It will be some time before you need to put any additional serious money into your business. All you need for now is $1,000 and a few committed hours each day. The sooner you start and the harder your work, the sooner we’ll celebrate your first $1 million in revenue.

Note: If you are considering becoming a 1M/1M premium member and would like to join our mailing list to receive ongoing information, please sign up here:

How To Reduce The Infant Entrepreneur Mortality Rate

By guest author Irina Patterson

Over the past year, we have been talking to various investors – VCs and angels, and incubators and accelerators. What we discovered that the entire startup ecosystem is structured to look for and invest in the less than 1% of the entrepreneurs who are ready and fundable.

For example, Highway 12 Ventures, a $75 million venture fund in Boise, Idaho, gets 500 deals a year. They invest in four. That means that less than 1% of the entrepreneurs who apply succeed in getting financed.

One of the Silicon Valley’s super angels, Mike Maples, told us that he gets 7,000 deals a year and invests in 12 to 15. That’s a 0.21% hit rate. The flip side: a 99.79% rejection rate.

The sad story is that there are way too many non-fundable businesses floating around in each community. Those businesses contribute significantly to what we call high infant entrepreneur mortality rate.

Our 1M/1M Program is designed to help those early stage at-risk-businesses to become strong and sustainable by using thoughtful bootstrapping. And for those ideas that are simply bad business ideas, 1M/1M guides entrepreneurs on how to develop better ones.

We believe that the global economic system will perform significantly better if we can help those 99% of entrepreneurs who are non-fundable for one reason or another. 1M/1M Program is designed to empower entrepreneurs regardless of their potential to attract investment.

If you are working with early-stage entrepreneurs, you can use 1M/1M Program to reduce your local infant entrepreneur mortality rate.

Here is how: 1M/1M supplies the methodology, the curriculum, the connections. Your organization provides your local entrepreneurs with community support. We see this as a powerful synergy of combining resources, without wasteful duplication.

We see it as an example of truly democratic, distributed capitalism 2.0.

Note: The 1M/1M team has invested significant resources to engage with and understand the challenges of the Incubator industry around the globe. You can sign up for our opt-in mailing list to get this information via email on an ongoing basis.

The Myth About Seed Funding

By guest author Irina Patterson

We, at 1M/1M, have invested significant resources to dispel the myth about seed funding. We engaged with and interviewed some very successful entrepreneurs who bootstrapped multimillion dollar businesses without outside funding.

Here are just a few examples: Zoho [CEO Sridhar Vembu], RightNow [CEO Greg Gianforte], eClinicalWorks [CEO Girish Navani] ClubPlanet [CEO Andrew Fox] and Finisar [CEO Jerry Rawls].

These entrepreneurs kept building their technology and technology-enabled services businesses and kept validating, until they closed their first key customers. Then, some did take outside money and scaled their business into multimillion dollar companies.

But some of them never took outside money and still own 100% of their multimillion dollar ventures.

1M/1M supports bootstrapping. As long as an entrepreneurs have a place to live, money for food and serious work ethics, we can teach them how to build a multimillion dollar company, block by block. We don’t recommend they waste time looking for seed funding too soon. When they’re ready, we can advise them to do so, but not too early, not too soon.

Note: If you are considering becoming a 1M/1M premium member and would like to join our mailing list to receive ongoing information, please sign up here:

MBA vs. 1M/1M, Let’s Do The Math

By guest author Irina Patterson

I recently read a book by Philip Delves Broughton called Ahead of the Curve – Two Years at Harvard Business School.

The book is about Philip’s firsthand experience at HBS during 2004-2006. The book is so sarcastic that, reportedly, it made Harvard very unhappy.

I enjoyed the book, but it also made me wonder if getting an MBA is worth the investment.

Philip left a job as a Paris correspondent for The Daily Telegraph (UK) to get his Harvard MBA in 2004. At the time he had a wife and a small son and his second son was born while he was at HBS. His school-related debt for the two years at HBS amounted to over $170,000.

When he graduated, Philip couldn’t get a job related to business. He writes for The Financial Times now. So, he went from being a writer to being … a writer. I am not sure that is what he had in mind when he applied to HBS.

In the book, among other things, Philip tells a story how he and his buddy started a media business while at HBS, how it didn’t go anywhere, and how the HBS entrepreneurship professor wasn’t of much help.

I don’t know if Philip still pursues entrepreneurship. If he does, I think he could appreciate our 1M/1M Premium Program.

After all, one year in 1M/1M  costs $1,000. One year at HBS cost Philip $85,000.

Note: If you are considering becoming a 1M/1M premium member and would like to join our mailing list to receive ongoing information, please sign up here:

How Do You Scale Mentoring?

By guest author Irina Patterson

To date, on this blog, we have interviewed more than 30 incubator managers and more than 40 angel investors, and all of them are looking for solutions to scalable and effective mentoring resources.

Most mentors are active or retired entrepreneurs, senior executives, and incubator managers themselves. Most seek not only emotional satisfaction from mentoring but also a return on their time (and often money) investment.

If you are a senior executive, your time is worth anywhere from $500 an hour and up. Mentors spend anywhere from two to 100 hours a year with each entrepreneur. So, they invest anywhere from $1,000 to $50,000 in each entrepreneur in terms of time.

Now, consider an alternative. The 1M/1M Premium Curriculum covers all the core groundwork on bootstrapping, positioning, market sizing, customer validation, financing, customer acquisition, team building, and so on. In addition, we have electives that are specific to industry segments like Web 3.0 and e-commerce, cloud computing, healthcare IT, online education, mobile and social apps, gaming, outsourcing, and more.

At 1M/1M, we ask each entrepreneur to spend at least 50 to 60 hours digesting the curriculum so that by the time they engage with a local, live mentor, they have already mastered the basics.

Once entrepreneurs know the basics, local mentors could do higher caliber coaching. This way, everyone stands to get greater return on their time (and money).

By everyone, we mean the entrepreneurs and their local mentors, the incubators and regional economic development organizations and, of course, the local and global communities at large.

Note: The 1M/1M team has invested significant resources to engage with and understand the challenges of the Incubator industry around the globe. You can sign up for our opt-in mailing list to get this information via email on an ongoing basis.

How Much Is An Entrepreneur’s Time Worth?

By guest author Irina Patterson

Ms. Sramana Mitra, the owner of this blog and founder of 1M/1M, interviewed hundreds of successful technology entrepreneurs, many of whom are her good friends.

All of them built successful multi-million dollar technology companies by trial and error. Many made mistakes that easily cost them a few million dollars in lengthy experiments. Many of them lost a few years here and there because of lack of knowledge or experience.

The 1M/1M Premium Program has been built on what has been learned from those multi-million dollar mistakes.

We strongly believe that if entrepreneurs follow the 1M/1M methodology, they will avoid such costly mistakes and save themselves a few years and a few million dollars.

Note: If you are considering becoming a 1M/1M premium member and would like to join our mailing list to receive ongoing information, please sign up here:

Does Your Region Experience Brain Drain Of Technology Entrepreneurs?

By guest author Irina Patterson

For the past three decades, serious technology entrepreneurs have come to Silicon Valley to seek help with their early-stage businesses. Ms. Sramana Mitra, the owner of this blog, founded the One Million by One Million program (1M/1M) so that they wouldn’t  need to come to Silicon Valley.

1M/1M is a global initiative that aims to nurture a million entrepreneurs worldwide reach a million dollars each in annual revenue and beyond by 2020, thereby creating a trillion dollars in global GDP and ten million jobs.

1M/1M supplements regional economic development resources with Silicon Valley’s expertise, methodology, and connections.

The 1M/1M platform allows entrepreneurs worldwide to stay home and get the same quality of help and connections that is available to those entrepreneurs based in Silicon Valley.

Being part of 1M/1M, entrepreneurs worldwide don’t have to spend money on relocation. They can even keep their day job until they are ready to work on their own business full time. When they succeed, they will contribute to their local economy, not Silicon Valley’s.

If you would like to learn more about the program, please join us at the next 1M/1M Strategy Roundtable any Thursday. Everyone is welcome.

Note: The 1M/1M team has invested significant resources to engage with and understand the challenges of the Incubator industry around the globe. You can sign up for our opt-in mailing list to get this information via email on an ongoing basis.

Business Incubator Series: Dave Knox, The Brandery, Cincinnati, Ohio (Part 1)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

I am talking to Dave Knox, one of the co-founders of the Brandery, which is a mentorship-driven 12-week business accelerator based in Cincinnati, Ohio. Founded in 2010, they are part of TechStars Network, have similar format, and offer early stage entrepreneurs $20,000 in financing. They particularly focus on startups where design, branding, and marketing can be a serious competitive advantage. >>>

Business Incubator Series: Micah Kotch, NYC ACRE At NYU-Poly, New York (Part 1)

By guest author Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

I am talking to Micah Kotch, who serves as director of operations for NYC ACRE at NYU-Poly (the New York City Accelerator for a Clean and Renewable Economy). NYC ACRE is seeded by a four-year, $1.5 million grant from the NYSERDA (New York State Energy Research and Development Authority).

NYC ACRE was created in partnership with the  New York City Economic Development Corporation, the New York City Investment Fund, Columbia University, Pratt Institute, and NYU.

NYC ACRE is a subset of the NYU-Poly Varick Street Incubator, which Micah also helps to run. >>>

Business Incubator Series: Fred Hoch And Terry Howerton, TechNexus, Chicago, Illinois (Part 1)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

I am talking to the co-founders and managing partners of TechNexus Fred Hoch and Terry Howerton. TechNexus was originally developed by private investment and community support in Chicago in partnership with the Illinois Technology Association (ITA) to serve as a “clubhouse” for the local tech community, and it evolved into co-working space and incubator for Chicagoan entrepreneurs. >>>

Business Incubator Series: Diane Dimeff, eSpace: The Center for Space Entrepreneurship, Boulder, Colorado (Part 1)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Vandana Upadhyay

I am talking to Diane Dimeff, who is the executive director of eSpace: The Center for Space Entrepreneurship in Boulder, Colorado.

The center’s mission is threefold: 1) to help aerospace entrepreneurs to start new companies, 2) to develops commercial applications from the innovative technologies created within these companies, and 3) by collaborating with industry, government, and academia to provide career opportunities for high school, community college, and university graduates. >>>

Business Incubator Series: John Richards, BoomStartup, Provo, Utah (Part 1)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

I am talking to John Richards, co-founder and co-managing partner at BoomStartup, which is a mentorship-driven accelerator in Provo, Utah.

Irina: Hi, John. Where are you originally from?

John: I grew up in the Seattle area. Actually, I was born in Pennsylvania, and then my parents moved back to Seattle. I grew up in Seattle and had a long career in Seattle until I moved to Utah for the teaching position. >>>