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Entrepreneurs – Are You Fundable? at 115th 1M/1M StrategyRoundtable For Entrepreneurs

by Paul Joseph February 10, 2012 Featured

Today’s roundtable had a couple of interesting businesses, but before I get to them, I want to underscore that entrepreneurs MUST gauge fundability before assuming that they can build their businesses by raising money. We’re getting this question constantly: Can 1M/1M help us raise money? This short video addresses that question: Now, let’s get to the entrepreneur pitches. TravelTriangle.com First, Sanchit Gurg from Noida, India, pitched  TravelTriangle.com , a marketplace for travel agencies offering personalized tour packages for travelers seeking such help. The company already has engaged about 75 travel agencies and some 900 customers. They have started transacting, generating multiple bids for each RFP and taking a 5% commission off closed deals. Reviews, ratings and other core marketplace functions are part of the offering. Sanchit and his team of six have validated the concept already. I like the idea a lot, especially because traveling in India and South Asia and South East Asia is still quite complicated. Local knowledge and contacts are key, and the logistics of travel can be very complex. Having personalized, reliable service from a travel agent, along with local guides, etc., are attractive value propositions. The market size, however, is relatively small: 5% of $500M or $25M is the estimated Total Available Market for the foreseeable future. Frankly, that doesn’t bother me, since I tend to like small, niche businesses with good, solid execution, which Sanchit’s company is demonstrating. Clearly, a multi-million dollar, profitable business can be built here, and I plan to be a user of the service. In fact, I’d like to design a trip to visit Bandhavgarh National Forest in Madhya Pradesh to see tigers, as well as visit the Khajuraho Temple, ideally during the famous dance festival that is held there. Maybe one of the travel agents on TravelTriangle can help put this together for me. For the time being, the company is seeing maximum interest from travelers who want to visit Rajasthan, Kerala and Sri Lanka. BabbleTAB Next, Andrew Jaffa from Jacksonville, Florida, pitched  BabbleTAB , a social media marketing service that generates relevant content for the Facebook pages of small businesses like car dealerships, restaurants, retail, etc. Andrew wants to offer a tablet-based console on location that would capture video and images of customers and post them to the businesses’ Facebook pages. The business model is a subscription service with a small fee per loaded image. We brainstormed today about the adoption barriers and whether consumers would take the trouble to be photographed or recorded. Andrew’s preliminary research says that they would if offered the right incentive. In a car dealership, for example, he thinks a $250 discount would be a substantial enough incentive. I am listening to the use cases but would like to see a statistically significant validation exercise done on the idea. We also discussed Andrew’s proposed tiered pricing model, which I felt was too complicated. A simple flat pricing would be more appropriate. Andrew agreed and is planning to change the model. If you want a deeper relationship with me, you are very welcome to  join the 1M/1M premium program . If you have any questions about the program, please, first study the website, especially  What to expect from the 1M/1M premium program  and the  FAQs . If you have additional questions, please email me, and I would be very happy to respond. Please note that I work exclusively with 1M/1M entrepreneurs.

Tagged as: biggest-country, employee, entrepreneurs, guest columnists, guest-columns, password, popular-on-cloudstory-in, profile-details, random-member, social, sramana-mitra

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YCombinator vs. 1M/1M at 114th 1M/1M Strategy RoundtableForEntrepreneurs

by Paul Joseph February 6, 2012 Featured

Today’s roundtable, as usual, was an international affair, with entrepreneurs presenting from different parts of the US, India, Israel, and many other geographies. Before I share what we heard from them today, I want to highlight an important aspect of 1M/1M that is repeatedly underscored in these roundtables: the international, inclusive, democratic nature of the initiative. In fact, one of the best ways we can delineate this phenomenon is by contrasting 1M/1M with YCombinator. This short video explains how the two programs differ: Bottomline: YC, superb incubator, is a program that applies to less than .01% of entrepreneurs, whereas 1M/1M is an inclusive, global program. The businesses we will discuss today will put this distinction in perspective. Hooduku First, Sudhendra Seshachala from Houston, Texas pitched  Hooduku , a professional services business that already has significant revenue from cloud integration work. Hooduku is a 1M/1M premium member and is interested in moving away from pure services toward a product+services model. Sudhi presented the idea of a platform that bridges between Microsoft Azure customers who are also using RackSpace and other Infrastructure-as-a-Service providers for their content management and delivery. He uses a classic and highly successful mode of building products, that of being deeply immersed in customer situations through services projects and using that domain knowledge and relationship to identify opportunities for building products. A major example of such a company is Appirio, which went on to get funded by Sequoia Capital and has since built a strong product-services company in the cloud integration domain. My advice to Sudhi is to not position his company as a ‘platform’ but rather pitch the value proposition as an ‘integration framework’. These subtle wordings make a huge difference in how a company is viewed. Buy Or Boycott Next Doug Lowenthal from Jacksonville, Florida presented  Buy Or Boycott , which he came up with at the recent Startup Weekend program. Buy Or Boycott wants to offer consumers an easy way to avoid buying products that have major issues, be it political or environmental. However, the user experience that Doug described to deliver this was not convincing. He proposes to offer a mobile app with which to scan every product in your grocery store shopping cart. I don’t believe consumers would do this. When we stand on grocery store lines after a long day or week, the last thing we want to do is scan a bunch of products with our mobile phones. NXI Group Then Kaushik Mitra from New Delhi, India, pitched the  NXI Group of Companies , a custom hardware vendor that presented itself as a laptop and tablet company. It took me a bit of time to parse through the details and figure out that NXI is NOT a laptop or tablet vendor competing with HP, Dell and Acer. Rather, it is developing custom hardware for consumers with specific needs. For example, they are in the midst of developing RFID-enabled tablets for the universal ID effort by the Indian government. Kaushik’s company already has $400,000 in revenue, and while the business is not a typical venture-fundable one, I see no reason why the company cannot continue to grow in its niche. Koolaring Last, Edoe Cohen from Tel Aviv, Israel pitched  Koolaring , a SaaS solution for building private alumni networks a la LinkedIn. I have seen numerous startups with this general idea. It makes perfect sense for universities to have their own private alumni networks, and it is only a matter of time before they do. Whether Koolaring will be the winner in that space or not will depend on execution. So you see, I just shared with you four businesses, none of which would suit YCombinator for a variety of reasons outlined in the video. However, 1M/1M is delighted to help any and all of them. If you want a deeper relationship with me, you are very welcome to  join the 1M/1M premium program . If you have any questions about the program, please, first study the website, especially  What to expect from the 1M/1M premium program  and the  FAQs . If you have additional questions, please email me, and I would be very happy to respond. Please note that I work exclusively with 1M/1M entrepreneurs.

Tagged as: facebook, learning, lose-something, online marketing, social-media, sramana-mitra, technology

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The Other 99% Of Entrepreneurs

by Paul Joseph January 30, 2012 Featured

In my recent piece  Reengineering Capitalism  I highlighted a phenomenon that the global entrepreneurship ecosystem is paying very little attention to: Over 99% of entrepreneurs who seek funding get rejected. Yet, the entire world is focused on the 1% that is “fundable.” The media, when pitched a startup story, is interested in who funded the venture. They seldom ask how much revenue the company has or if it  is profitable. Incubators take pride in how exclusive they are and how many “deals” they “reject.” Angels and VCs, of course, discard most of their “deal flow.” And entrepreneurs? They seem to have confused the definition of entrepreneurship altogether. Entrepreneurship, they mistakenly believe, equals financing! This is wrong. There are numerous stories of successful businesses that have been built without a penny of outside financing. I want to share with you some wisdom from the heroes of the other 99%. They live in a world of entrepreneurs who enjoy their freedom and are not looking to sell their businesses or take them public. You could say these businesses are built-to-enjoy, as opposed to built-to-flip. Needless to say, outside financing, by definition, requires an “exit,” and for most businesses, that means a sale to a larger company. But the entrepreneurs I will introduce you to today are not interested in selling their companies. They just want to continue doing what they are doing: building value. Meet Girish Navani, CEO of eClinicalWorks, a super-successful healthcare IT company based in Boston. He has never taken any funding but has built a $100 million-plus business by delivering value to customers. Girish says, “I don’t foresee leaving the company for at least 10 years. I would like to leave it a private company with no external investors and absolutely no thoughts whatsoever about Wall Street. I am having fun and take great pride in my freedom. There is no reason I would give that up. We are a cash flow positive company. We have recurring revenues and no debt. We have a large customer base that is growing exponentially.” [You can read Girish’s full story  here .] Meet Andrew Fox, CEO of ClubPlanet, a $30 million-plus nightclub ticketing services company that is also 100% founder-owned. Andrew loves nightlife and says, “The business is very successful and has a lot of room for growth. I think that we have a lot of suitors out there who mention really ridiculous numbers at times. This is such a great lifestyle business that I don’t know if I could ever sell it. All of my previous businesses I built to sell, but this time around you might find me right here in thirty years. I hope by then it is $300 million a year. Based on our growth trajectory, we are seeing really good signs of improvement. [You can read more of Andrew’s story  here .] Then there is the oft-cited Sridhar Vembu, who has turned all tables with Zoho, a $100 million-plus SaaS company that competes with Google, Microsoft, and Salesforce.com without a penny in outside capital. I have had numerous conversations with Sridhar over the years, and each time he reinforces the same basic philosophy: “I want to build this without outside capital. I don’t want to sell the company.” [You can learn more about Sridhar’s methods  here .] Each of these entrepreneurs could raise money in a nanosecond given how much success they’ve had. The fact that they don’t gives you an idea about the advantages of the self-financed, organic growth model. No matter how much Wall Street gyrates, these entrepreneurs experience and demonstrate a level of stability and steadiness that is exemplary. Imagine if the American economy had many more such steady private companies that are far removed from the movements of the speculative markets, how much more robust things would be? It really is time that the media starts celebrating more of these kinds of heroes: the other 99%. And for young entrepreneurs, as you evaluate role models to emulate, perhaps it is not a bad idea to also consider some of these lesser-known heroes. They can give you a picture of the  realities of an alternate, deeply satisfying universe. In conclusion, I want to leave you with a 1:49 minute video message. Please listen to it, and stop for a moment to think about your path forward. Is a single-minded focus on fund-raising your only option?

Tagged as: disclaimer, facebook, forbes-india, microsoft, namrata-shah, paas, pallav-nadhani, partners, popular-on-cloudstory-in, sramana-mitra, story-in-rehan

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Are Media Sites Fundable? At 112th 1M/1M Strategy Roundtable For Entrepreneurs

by Paul Joseph January 20, 2012 Featured

Today’s roundtable brought some core issues up for debate regarding media startups that are focusing largely on Content  and  Community  features and expecting to get funded. So, I would like to take some time to offer a broad overview on the topic and some pointers to entrepreneurs who are making the assumption that you can raise $500,000 for such a venture. Be careful! Empower Lounge Misty Gibbs from Austin, Texas, presented  Empower Lounge , a concept for a website that focuses on offering inspirational content along four major vectors: work, health, play and giving. In addition, the site will offer some level of professional networking. Misty is folding in a national site, Inspiration Lounge, and a local site, AustinWomen, to bring together her current 10,000-strong subscriber base under the Empower Lounge umbrella. I probed quite hard about the specific positioning for the site and brainstormed with her on examples of other sites/organizations with related agendas: Women 2.0, ASTIA, Ladies Who Launch, etc. The first two are non-profits, and Ladies Who Launch is still a fairly small-traffic destination, far from a venture-style, high-growth business. The company that has successfully monetized in the women vertical is Glam Media, but their model is of a Vertical Ad Network. I also pointed out that there is way  too much unmonetized ad inventory online , a challenge that is putting digital publishers through serious heartburns. I have shared my thoughts on this topic over and again on my blog, as well as elsewhere on the Web. We’ve had substantive discussions on the topic with entrepreneurs such as  John Ramey, CEO of iSocket ,  Kenny Rosenblatt, CEO of Arkadium , and  Jay Samit, CEO of SocialVibe , who all attest to the downward pressure on CPM rates and the challenges of low fill-through. In addition, ad networks taking large cuts of ad revenues put further pressure on the publishers. Vikrant Mathur, CEO of  iFood.tv  discusses that at length in the blog post  here . Vikrant is running a bootstrapped publishing company, and is a 1M/1M premium member. In 1M/1M, we happen to have a great deal of experience dealing with such companies and their challenges. I don’t think I got through to Misty, though. She is ‘confident’ that she can raise $500,000 for this website right away. Well, good luck, Misty! I hope you are right. However, for other entrepreneurs who may be listening a bit more seriously to the challenges facing the industry, I would also like you to invest some time and energy in assessing the ‘fundability’ of your project before making assumptions like this. You can use the  1M/1M Self-Assessment  for that purpose. Also,  here is a short video on the issue of fundability , addressing some questions that we hear often from entrepreneurs. The Other 99% In conclusion, I would like to highlight the fact that entrepreneurs really should STOP focusing so much on funding and start worrying more about how to build a sustainable business. Less than 1% of entrepreneurs actually ever get funded. The other 99% who go out to look for financing get rejected. But there is no reason to believe that you cannot succeed even without funding. So, my advice to Misty is to focus on the business fundamentals of how to get to revenues and profits within a realistic time frame. Here is my video message to all entrepreneurs who are focused on raising money and are facing difficulty:  The Other 99% (Entrepreneurs) . Themeefy Also, Titash Neogi from Pune, India, pitched  Themeefy , a publishing platform for self-publishers that helps users create, curate and publish books, magazines, etc. I happen to know a great deal about this business because of my own long involvement in publishing. So, we dialoged about the product marketing issues of what constitutes a complete product in this space. For instance, HTML books are simply not enough and all the traditional formats of e-books need to be supported. Similarly, self-publishing platforms like Amazon’s CreateSpace need to be supported; iPad apps need to be supported. In general, when you come to the market with a solution, it needs to meet the needs of the contemporary customers. The proposed solution is an inadequate one for serious book authors to want to use. It is, however, being used for free by about 5,000 educators, travel book authors, etc., which is a good start. But people using your product for free is one thing, getting them to actually pay is quite another. And that’s where Themeefy will need to develop a product roadmap and business strategy that takes this minimum viable product and builds a sustainable business out of it. I will be happy to help him accomplish that. About Sramana Mitra Sramana Mitra is the founder of the  One Million by One Million  (1M/1M) initiative, an educational, business development and incubation program that aims to help one million entrepreneurs globally to reach $1 million in revenue and beyond. She is a Silicon Valley entrepreneur and strategy consultant. She writes the blog  Sramana Mitra On Strategy  and is author of the  Entrepreneur Journeys  book series and  Vision India 2020 . From 2008 to 2010, Mitra was a columnist for Forbes. As an entrepreneur CEO, she ran three companies: DAIS, Intarka, and Uuma. She has a master’s degree in electrical engineering and computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

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Spotlight On IIT Kharagpur, India At 111th 1m/1m StrategyRoundtableFor Entrepreneurs

by Paul Joseph January 15, 2012 Featured

Today’s roundtable was jointly organized by the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur (IIT KGP) and the 1M/1M program as part of the former’s  Global Entrepreneurship Summit  organized by the student-run e-cell. For the uninitiated, IIT KGP is considered one of the top technology schools in India, and it is located in the Eastern part of the country, not far from the city of Kolkata. I have visited IIT KGP many times over the years, and each time I see a marked improvement in the energy and momentum at the campus on entrepreneurship. My 1997 recruitment visit met with tepid response, with the student body largely interested in multinational placements at the time. But a subsequent visit in January 2009 saw a massive change: the students were excited about entrepreneurship. Today’s roundtable was yet another step forward: the students have started producing interesting, viable business ideas, and some are even validating them successfully. It gives me great satisfaction to observe this evolution, and play a small role in shepherding these young entrepreneurs along. Before I start discussing the businesses, I’d like to highlight the role the National Entrepreneurship Network (NEN) has played in developing the e-cells at 470 different schools and colleges in India. NEN is part of the Wadhwani Foundation’s efforts at entrepreneurship development, and it is great to see how pervasive their success has been. I spoke to Ajay Kela, the CEO of Wadhwani Foundation recently, and got a feel for the breadth of their investment. The challenge ahead for NEN and the academic institutions in India is to now take the massive interest and enthusiasm that has been generated, and harness it to produce a large number of successful companies. Today, at IIT KGP, we caught a glimpse of some of the budding heroes of 21 st  century India. mobHUB First, Piyush Bagaria from IIT KGP pitched mobHUB, a learning management solution with extensive simulation and visualization capability that he proposes to sell to science and technology educational institutions to empower faculty to produce rich media content. Piyush has got some early encouragement from a couple of schools in Calcutta, and while he needs to expand the scope of his validation process, there are some interesting nuggets in his core idea. Optimum Mobility Services Next Lakshman Pasala from IIT KGP presented Optimum Mobility Services, a fleet routing and optimization solution for cab companies, their current validation segment, followed by logistics companies operating trucks, etc. Two cab companies have already validated the idea, and OMS is on their way to signing up more cab companies in India as beta customers. Clearly, the solution offers some concrete value, and conceivably, OMS can look at the global market later on in their evolution. The notion of Indian companies bringing software technology to the Western market at dramatically lower price-points is one that I have highlighted on many prior occasions. BUYHatke Then Gaurav Dahake from IIT KGP pitched  BUYHatke , a penny auction site that is considering three primary segments with a consumer-to-consumer e-commerce business model: net-savvy housewives, IT and BPO professionals, and college students with Internet access. My feedback was that the company needs to enter the market in a business-to-consumer mode because the logistics infrastructure in India is not at a point where a c-to-c business can thrive. A B-to-C business, on the other hand, can use Flipkart’s logistics infrastructure, and have a better shot at success. My other feedback was to focus on one of the three segments, because everything else – from customer acquisition, to merchandising, to PR, to SEO would work better if the segmentation is tighter. Univect Education Solutions Next Parth Pachoir and Udayan Pandey from IIT KGP presented Univect Education Solutions, a social network for parents, teachers, and students in second and third tier Indian cities, to support online expert networks, mentoring programs, knowledge sharing, etc. The team is short of Computer Science expertise, and is looking for a co-founder to add to their pack. I like their focus on second and third tier Indian cities, and they have already started pilots in Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh. TransTag Then Nishant Koul from IIT KGP pitched TransTag, a RFID solution to help check car-theft in India. Well, Nishant’s idea, to achieve success, would need the cities to install RFID readers at every street-corner. This is impossible to consider as realistic in the near term. Nishant would turn grey by his mid twenties if he hangs his hat on this idea, so I discouraged him to pursue it. Instead, he should turn his talents elsewhere. I very much enjoyed getting a peek into IIT KGP’s entrepreneurship action tonight, and look forward to working with other campuses – both in India, as well as in the US, Europe, Asia, and Latin America – on similar programs. If you want a deeper relationship with me, you are very welcome to  join the 1M/1M premium program . If you have any questions about the program, please, first study the website, especially  What to expect from the 1M/1M premium program  and the  FAQs . If you have additional questions, please email me, and I would be very happy to respond. Please note that I work exclusively with 1M/1M entrepreneurs. I also invite you to join the  1M/1M mailing list  for the ease and convenience of getting updates. This way we can stay in touch, and it will help you to decide if 1M/1M is a program for you. About Sramana Mitra Sramana Mitra is the founder of the  One Million by One Million  (1M/1M) initiative, an educational, business development and incubation program that aims to help one million entrepreneurs globally to reach $1 million in revenue and beyond. She is a Silicon Valley entrepreneur and strategy consultant. She writes the blog  Sramana Mitra On Strategy  and is author of the  Entrepreneur Journeys  book series and  Vision India 2020 . From 2008 to 2010, Mitra was a columnist for Forbes. As an entrepreneur CEO, she ran three companies: DAIS, Intarka, and Uuma. She has a master’s degree in electrical engineering and computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  

Tagged as: iit kharagpur, sramana-mitra

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Rural ERP, SmartERP and Patient-Help – An ERP Galore at 110th 1M/1M Strategy Roundtable For Entrepreneurs

by Paul Joseph January 6, 2012 Featured

At today’s roundtable, we had an unusual amount of discussion on ERP startups. Given that ERP is such a mature market, the fact that all this startup activity is going on in ERP is a bit puzzling to me. Rural ERP Surjith Singh from Chennai, India, pitched  Rural ERP , a business that intends to focus on supplying rural Indian small and micro businesses with local language ERP systems. While there are 30 million small and micro businesses in rural India, according to Surjith, and only 5% of those know English, there are substantial barriers to selling technology to these companies, including the fact that computer knowledge and Internet connections are both quite low in this segment. Hence, building a local language (Tamil, Hindi, Bengali, Punjabi, Marathi, Gujrati) ERP SaaS business will be an uphill task. The company, however, has a small ERP product plus customization services business which currently generates $36k a year, on track to do $50k this year. The 20 customers for this business are urban businesses in Tamil Nadu, and one of them had some local language needs coupled with the regular English ERP functions. The strategy for scaling this business needs to be completely rethought. Building a rural ERP company is going to be an uphill task, and I am not convinced that Surjith should follow that route. SmartERP Next Sudhendra Seshachala from Houston, Texas and Bangalore, India, presented  SmartERP , catering to the domain-specific needs of textile companies inIndia. Sudhi also has a professional services business that generates $200-250k a year, and is currently financing his forays into ERP. The textile ERP business is in validation stage with a couple of paying beta customers, and Sudhi needs a strategy to scale both. My assessment is that the textile industry inIndiais also extremely backward, so the business model that would work for that sector is more a managed services kind of solution as opposed to a regular software or SaaS model. Patient-Help Then Adarsh Patil, also from Bangalore, India, pitched  Patient-Help  which is toying with two different, albeit related ideas: (a) a doctor-patient marketplace forIndia (and potentially other markets where the insurance industry is less mature than theU.S. orEurope), and (b) a marketplace for medical tourism. The latter is what he has started implementing, and it has a business model of generating leads via PPC advertising, followed by selling those leads to hospitals and medical service providers. Adarsh has a crucial decision ahead of him: which of the two businesses is he going to pursue? If you want a deeper relationship with me, you are very welcome to  join the 1M/1M premium program . If you have any questions about the program, please, first study the website, especially  What to expect from the 1M/1M premium program  and the  FAQs . If you have additional questions, please email me, and I would be very happy to respond. Please note that I work exclusively with 1M/1M entrepreneurs. I also invite you to join the  1M/1M mailing list  for the ease and convenience of getting updates. This way we can stay in touch, and it will help you to decide if 1M/1M is a program for you. About Sramana Mitra Sramana Mitra is the founder of the  One Million by One Million  (1M/1M) initiative, an educational, business development and incubation program that aims to help one million entrepreneurs globally to reach $1 million in revenue and beyond. She is a Silicon Valley entrepreneur and strategy consultant. She writes the blog  Sramana Mitra On Strategy  and is author of the  Entrepreneur Journeys  book series and  Vision India 2020 . From 2008 to 2010, Mitra was a columnist for Forbes. As an entrepreneur CEO, she ran three companies: DAIS, Intarka, and Uuma. She has a master’s degree in electrical engineering and computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Tagged as: 1m/1m, cloud, cloud entrepreneurs, erp, patient-help, rural erp, smarterp, sramana-mitra

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Business Schools And Early Stage Entrepreneurship – 105th 1M/1M Strategy Roundtable for Entrepreneurs

by Paul Joseph November 18, 2011 Featured

Recap of the 17 November 2011 roundtable by Sramana Mitra I have written about this before on my Forbes column, but want to raise the question again:  Are Business Schools Setting Up Entrepreneurs To Fail?  The question has, over time, resulted in  huge discussions , some defensive, some self-aware and some even solution oriented. Nonetheless, in the last couple of years, the flow of first-time entrepreneurs who come out with the misconception that Entrepreneurship = Financing has not abated. Folks, please understand a simple point: Business schools, when they teach you entrepreneurship, teach you about financing. Most business schools don’t have much insight into what goes on in the pre-validation and validation stages of the business and fail to underscore a simple fact: you do not get financing unless you validate your business first. Validation also means positioning your business in a crowded market, finding the gap and establishing your differentiated, defensible market position. At 1M/1M, we have squarely focused on this simple gap that has been left open by most business schools. And we have decided to address the gap at $1,000 a year rather than the $85,000 a year that HBS would cost you. Even after you have your $85,000 a year MBA, it is very likely that you do not have the basics that would help a first-time entrepreneur navigate the turbulent waters of entrepreneurship. To plug that gap, 1M/1M is a perfect solution. [Read:  MBA vs. 1M/1M: Let’s Do The Math ] At today’s roundtable we had three promising entrepreneurs who have been doing considerable work, but they have fundamental gaps in their understanding of what it takes to build a business, the options and constraints in front of them, and some of the flaws in their assumptions. SPOTS Online First, Jose Briones from Dallas, Texas, pitched SPOTS Online – a QuickBooks add-on product for companies that have to manage complex supply chains but are not quite ready to take on the expense and complexity of an ERP roll out like NetSuite. In addition, the customers best served by the SPOTS solution are those who do not keep inventory, but rather have to manage multiple suppliers after an order comes in. The solution looks compelling, and Jose clearly understands the pain of his target segment. However, his TAM assessment seems overly optimistic to me. Jose had a number of questions on financing, and a good portion of the answer will lie in an accurate and defensible TAM analysis. In addition, I had the feeling that the product is being scoped out without input from a critical mass of customers. Jose’s go-to-market strategy seems to follow a sequence-error that we often rectify in the 1M/1M methodology: build product first and then start talking to customers. No, Jose, you need to build your market while building your product – in parallel, not sequentially. Eventbin.com Then Jay Dias from Barrington, Illinois, presented  Eventbin.com , a site where she plans to bring together discounts and coupons from numerous vendors, all targeted towards moms. Jay’s age band is 18-45. [Well, I hope 18-22 year olds are focusing on college, rather than being moms!] Anyway, the discount and deals universe is incredibly crowded, and I did not see any competitive analysis or positioning from Jay. It would be very difficult to rise above the noise of this market and get any traction at all without an extremely precise positioning. Jay does not have that yet. DiaSof Next Badrinarayanan V S, from Chennai, India, pitched  DiaSof , a software-based solution for disease management of diabetes patients in India. Apparently, India has 50 million diabetic and another 40 million pre-diabetic patients. Badri’s solution is an email and SMS-based reminder service for them to take the tests and medications at the right time. Badri presented the business as a consumer solution, with a go-to-market strategy where pharmacies sell pre-paid subscriptions. I don’t think that strategy would fly at all. However, Badri has a pilot going with a diabetes hospital with 100,000 patients. The hospital has already purchased subscriptions for 1,000 patients and plans to roll it out to the entire patient population in short order. There are another 30 such hospitals focused on diabetes, and those seem to me like ideal candidates for the service. Over the next twelve months, if Badri can bring these and other hospitals in as customers, that is a far more compelling go-to-market strategy, in my opinion. From there on, word of mouth would take effect, and consumers can buy subscriptions directly. You can listen to the recording of the roundtable  here . As always, I would very much like to hear about your business, so let me invite you to come and pitch at one of our free 1M/1M public roundtables. We will be holding future roundtables at 8:00 a.m. PST on the following dates: Thursday, December 1,  Register Here. Thursday, December 8,  Register Here. Thursday, December 15,  Register Here. Thursday, December 22,  Register Here. If you want a deeper relationship with me, you are very welcome to join the 1M/1M premium program. If you have any questions about the program, please, first study the website, especially  What to expect from the 1M/1M premium program  and the FAQs. If you have additional questions, please email me, and I would be very happy to respond.   About Sramana Mitra Sramana Mitra is the founder of the One Million by One Million (1M/1M) initiative, an educational, business development and incubation program that aims to help one million entrepreneurs globally to reach $1 million in revenue and beyond. She is a Silicon Valley entrepreneur and strategy consultant. She writes the blog  Sramana Mitra On Strategy  and is author of the Entrepreneur Journeys book series and Vision India 2020. From 2008 to 2010, Mitra was a columnist for Forbes. As an entrepreneur CEO, she ran three companies: DAIS, Intarka, and Uuma. She has a master’s degree in electrical engineering and computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.   You may also like to read: 1M/1M Strategy Roundtable For Entrepreneurs: Do Your Homework First 1M/1M Strategy Roundtable For Entrepreneurs: How Do You Bootstrap Freemium Ventures? 1M/1M Strategy Roundtable For Entrepreneurs: FromPolandtoArgentina

Tagged as: 1m/1m, business ideas/plan, resources, sramana-mitra

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1M/1M Strategy Roundtable For Entrepreneurs: FromPolandtoArgentina

by Paul Joseph September 30, 2011 Featured

Recap of the 29 September 2011 roundtable by Sramana Mitra   During this week’s roundtable, once again, we had an international group of entrepreneurs presenting fromBuenos Aires,Argentina;Warsaw,Poland;Geneva,Switzerland;Sherbrooke,Canada;Oakland,California; andAustin,Texas. In addition, we had attendees from many other parts of the world. Let’s dive in and see what they each are working on.   Rockify First up, Joel Korpi from Austin, Texas, pitched Rockify, a platform for transforming video content into multiple device friendly formats, process payments and help content producers distribute and monetize content more widely. Joel has one anchor customer right now and has validated his assumptions based on that case study. He also has raised one round of seed funding and is ready for another.   Home Swappers Club Then Marie-Janine Saris from Buenos Aires, Argentina, discussed Home Swappers Club, a concept inspired by Airbnb, where people who love to travel swap their homes using the site as a trusted place to meet other validated home owners and renters. It’s a decent concept, and we discussed nuances of how the logic will flow. It is, however, too early for financing.   Resmesh   Next, Ashwin Bhambri from Warsaw, Poland, pitched Resmesh, a concept that aims to create ‘profiles’ for people. As a market entry strategy, Ashwin proposed taking LinkedIn customers and setting up personal profiles for them, an idea that did not sound convincing to me at all. Recruiters are using LinkedIn actively, and they like it. I don’t see any reason why they would go to a different site.   my3P.com   Roi Patterson from Sherbrooke, Canada, presented my3P.com, a motherhood and apple pie concept for solving the world’s problems – from teaching teens how to build lawn mowing businesses to teaching government agencies how to do economic development to teaching businesses how to perform better to being a feeder to incubators. This would be a top contender for one of the least thought through businesses we have seen at 1M/1M.   StyleShop247.com   Last up, Ashesh Patel from Oakland, California, pitched StyleShop247.com, a Flipkart of fashion for Indian consumers, so to speak, whereby the site would be selling foreign fashion brands to Indian consumers. The concept is good with lots of precedence in the Western markets; however, the company needs to show some level of validation that Indian consumers are ready to buy relatively expensive merchandise online. Ashesh also rattled out a very long list of categories of merchandise, including, apparel and shoes, accessories, beauty products, etc. I would focus on one category as Zappos did.   You can listen to the recording of today’s roundtable here. As always, I would very much like to hear about your business, so let me invite you to come and pitch at one of our free 1M/1M public roundtables. We will be holding future roundtables at 8:00 a.m. PDT on the following dates:   Thursday, September 29,  Register Here .   Thursday, October 13,  Register Here .   Thursday, October 20,  Register Here .   Thursday, October 27,  Register Here .   We will be holding our 100 th  roundtable on Thursday, October 6th. To celebrate the occasion, the 1M/1M initiative is inviting a dozen 1M/1M premium members from all over the world to step in front of the camera to share their entrepreneur journeys — their ups and downs and next steps — as inspiration for other startup entrepreneurs. They will also share how they are using the 1M/1M program in that journey. You can register to attend here.   If you want a deeper relationship with me, you are very welcome to join the 1M/1M premium program. If you have any questions about the program, please, first study the website, especially What to expect from the 1M/1M premium program and the FAQs. If you have additional questions, please email me, and I would be very happy to respond. Please note, that I work exclusively with 1M/1M entrepreneurs.   I also invite you to join the 1M/1M mailing list for the ease and convenience of getting updates. This way we can stay in touch and it will help you to decide if 1M/1M is a program for you.   About Sramana Mitra Sramana Mitra is the founder of the One Million by One Million (1M/1M) initiative, an educational, business development and incubation program that aims to help one million entrepreneurs globally to reach $1 million in revenue and beyond. She is a Silicon Valley entrepreneur and strategy consultant. She writes the blog Sramana Mitra On Strategy and is author of the Entrepreneur Journeys book series and Vision India 2020. From 2008 to 2010, Mitra was a columnist for Forbes. As an entrepreneur CEO, she ran three companies: DAIS, Intarka, and Uuma. She has a master’s degree in electrical engineering and computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. You may also like to read: 1M/1M Strategy Roundtable For Entrepreneurs: How To Use Twitter For Lead Generation 1M/1M Strategy Roundtable For Entrepreneurs: How Do You Bootstrap Freemium Ventures? 1M/1M Strategy Roundtable For Entrepreneurs: Continued International Participation

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1M/1M Strategy Roundtable For Entrepreneurs: Investors And Incubators Need To Look At Pre-Incubation

by Paul Joseph July 29, 2011 Featured

Recap of the 28 July 2011 Roundtable by Sramana Mitra This week, I’ve had several meetings with venture funds, incubators, corporate accelerators and other significant players in the startup eco-system. One theme seems to come up over and again, especially from geographies outside Silicon Valley: lack of a reliable pipeline of deals. On July 1, 2006, commenting on the Indian startup scenario, I… (Visit Yourstory.in for full news, other content, and much more!)

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1M/1M Strategy Roundtable For Entrepreneurs: Investors And Incubators Need To Look At Pre-Incubation

by Paul Joseph July 29, 2011 Featured

Recap of the 28 July 2011 Roundtable by Sramana Mitra This week, I’ve had several meetings with venture funds, incubators, corporate accelerators and other significant players in the startup eco-system. One theme seems to come up over and again, especially from geographies outside Silicon Valley: lack of a reliable pipeline of deals. On July 1, 2006, commenting on the Indian startup scenario, I… (Visit Yourstory.in for full news, other content, and much more!)

Tagged as: content, indian, other-content, sramana, sramana-mitra, startup, week, yourstory-in

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