Sramana Mitra
212th 1M/1M Roundtable: Series A Pitch Needs Clarity On Hard Numbers
By Guest Post at April 26, 2014 | 9:13 am | 0 Comment
212th 1M/1M Roundtable: Series A Pitch Needs Clarity On Hard Numbers During this week’s roundtable we listened to four presentations. The first two entrepreneurs are a part of the Startup Palm Beach meetup, the others are from our general community. Krowde First up, Daniel Gudema from Boca Raton, Florida, pitched Krowde, a mobile social network for small more...
209th 1M/1M Roundtable For Entrepreneurs: Spotlight on Penn Students
By Guest Post at March 24, 2014 | 10:19 am | 0 Comment
209th 1M/1M Roundtable For Entrepreneurs: Spotlight on Penn Students During this week’s roundtable, we collaborated with the University of Pennsylvania to support their student entrepreneurship drive. All four presenters today are semi finalists of the PennVention competition. AWARE First up, John Bergantino from Philadelphia, PA, pitched AWARE, a very more...
In The Wake of WhatsApp
By Guest Post at February 24, 2014 | 8:10 am | 0 Comment
The day started with the WhatsApp acquisition by Facebook hanging over entrepreneurs. Everyone is a bit stunned at the price, so it certainly was a topic of discussion at the roundtable. During this week’s roundtable, we saw some really nice businesses, at least a couple of them seem perfectly viable to me. Fish Harmony First up, Nancy Coughlin comes to us more...
204th 1M/1M Roundtable For Entrepreneurs: First Time, From Barbados
By Guest Post at February 8, 2014 | 8:36 am | 0 Comment
204th 1M/1M Roundtable For Entrepreneurs: First Time, From Barbados You know how much I love seeing entrepreneurs from exotic places at these roundtables. During this week’s roundtable, we had one from Barbados. Approyo First, Chris Carter from Wisconsin pitched Approyo, a Big Data solutions provider in the SAP HANA eco-system. Chris is a member of our more...
197th 1M/1M Roundtable For Entrepreneurs: Seed India Book Launch
By Guest Post at December 6, 2013 | 10:39 am | 0 Comment
197th 1M/1M Roundtable For Entrepreneurs: Seed India Book Launch During today’s roundtable, we launched the book Seed India: How To Navigate The Seed Capital Gap In India. The Indian seed eco-system, after improving somewhat for a few years, is stalling, if not regressing, currently. This book is a realistic, pragmatic look at the options entrepreneurs have in more...
196th 1M/1M Roundtable For Entrepreneurs: Do Your Competitive Analysis
By admin at November 16, 2013 | 11:10 am | 0 Comment
196th 1M/1M Roundtable For Entrepreneurs: Do Your Competitive Analysis During today’s roundtable, we had a wide variety of businesses. Positive Axis First up, Hary Kalra from Santa Clara, California, pitched Positive Axis, a recruitment concept whereby he wants to build relationships with some candidates and represent them with employers. The closest more...
192nd 1M/1M Roundtable For Entrepreneurs: Serious Entrepreneurs Have Resilience
By Guest Post at October 18, 2013 | 8:14 am | 0 Comment
192nd 1M/1M Roundtable For Entrepreneurs: Serious Entrepreneurs Have Resilience Today’s roundtable had several entrepreneurs who seem like serious folks with the resilience to see their visions through to fruition. HappyWeddings First up, Janaki Pendyala from Hyderabad, India, pitched HappyWeddings, a portal for wedding organizers to connect with vendors like more...
191st 1M/1M Roundtable For Entrepreneurs: Try To Minimize Capital Risk
By Guest Post at October 11, 2013 | 8:22 am | 0 Comment
191st 1M/1M Roundtable For Entrepreneurs: Try To Minimize Capital Risk Today’s roundtable had its usual share of entrepreneurs dreaming about raising capital on concepts without validation. Sometimes, I wonder, when, if ever, we’re going to get this epidemic under control! MoYoTv First up, Dollie Darko, from Greenwich, CT, pitched MoYoTv – a television more...
190th 1M/1M Roundtable For Entrepreneurs: Devil Lies In The Details
By Guest Post at October 5, 2013 | 8:57 am | 0 Comment
190th 1M/1M Roundtable For Entrepreneurs: Devil Lies In The Details Today’s roundtable had some interesting entrepreneurs from around the world. EventsTiger First up, Nizamudheen Valliyattu, from Chennai, India, pitched EventsTiger, an ‘event community’ where organizers promote events, participants network, etc. My main issue with the idea is that it more...
189th 1M/1M Roundtable For Entrepreneurs: Launch Of A New Book
By Guest Post at September 28, 2013 | 8:22 am | 0 Comment
189th 1M/1M Roundtable For Entrepreneurs: Launch Of A New Book We launched a new book at today’s roundtable with a short reading from one of the chapters. The book, The Other 99% (Entrepreneurs): Fortune In The Middle Of The Pyramid, is a collection of essays introducing my current thinking on why over 99% of the entrepreneurs who seek financing get rejected. It is more...
186th 1M/1M Roundtable For Entrepreneurs: Mentoring Networks Do Not Work
By Guest Post at September 7, 2013 | 8:23 am | 0 Comment
186th 1M/1M Roundtable For Entrepreneurs: Mentoring Networks Do Not Work Today’s roundtable had the concluding portion of the presentations from Pakistan that I talked about last week. Smart SurgiSol First, Syed Hassan from Islamabad, Pakistan, pitched Smart SurgiSol, a training solution for surgeons looking to learn how to perform laparoscopic surgery and more...
185th 1M/1M Roundtable For Entrepreneurs
By Guest Post at August 30, 2013 | 10:41 am | 0 Comment
185th 1M/1M Roundtable For Entrepreneurs Today’s roundtable gave us a unique opportunity to peek into Pakistan’s entrepreneurial eco-system. Due to the efforts of Sennen Desouza with the Institute for Business Administration (IBA), we got to interact with entrepreneurs from Pakistan, and some of them will be pitching at the next roundtable session as well. If you more...
184th 1M/1M Roundtable For Entrepreneurs: All Indian Affair
By Guest Post at August 23, 2013 | 10:16 am | 0 Comment
184th 1M/1M Roundtable For Entrepreneurs: All Indian Affair Today’s roundtable was an all Indian affair. Avaz First, Ajit Narayanan from Chennai, India, a 1M/1M premium member, pitched Avaz. Actually, Avaz is his first revenue-generating product – an iPad app for autistic children. Today’s discussion was about the company’s strategy around various more...
183rd 1M/1M Roundtable For Entrepreneurs: Equity Financing From Customers
By Guest Post at July 26, 2013 | 8:16 am | 0 Comment
183rd 1M/1M Roundtable For Entrepreneurs: Equity Financing From Customers Today’s roundtable started with an interesting discussion on equity financing from customers. B2Be First, Balaji Abbabatulla from London, England, a 1M/1M premium member, pitched B2Be. The company is working with accounting firms in London to validate its concept of a mobile invoicing more...
178th 1M/1M Roundtable For Entrepreneurs: Sharpen Your Concepts Before You Commit
By Guest Post at June 14, 2013 | 8:01 am | 0 Comment
178th 1M/1M Roundtable For Entrepreneurs: Sharpen Your Concepts Before You Commit Today’s roundtable had a higher percentage of concept-stage entrepreneurs than usual. Query First up was Salil Agrawal from Bangalore, India, pitching Query, a Q&A forum concept, supposedly for solving problems. Now the Q&A market is cluttered as hell, and I see absolutely no more...
175th 1M/1M Roundtable For Entrepreneurs: Turning Dreams Into Cash
By Guest Post at May 24, 2013 | 10:17 am | 0 Comment
175th 1M/1M Roundtable For Entrepreneurs: Turning Dreams Into Cash Today’s 175th roundtable concluded with a wonderful comment from Dwight Harrison: “When running a business it is good to spend time with people who have converted dreams into cash.” I love the way the idea of turning dreams into cash summarizes entrepreneurship, and it perfectly summarizes our more...
173rd 1M/1M Roundtable For Entrepreneurs: Promising Portfolio From India
By Guest Post at May 11, 2013 | 8:54 am | 0 Comment
173rd 1M/1M Roundtable For Entrepreneurs: Promising Portfolio From India Today’s roundtable comprised entirely of Indian entrepreneurs. Avaz First, Ajit Narayanan from Chennai, India, pitched Avaz, an iPad app for autistic children. Ajit is a 1M/1M premium member, and has been working with us on his strategy to not only increase the revenues from his products more...
172nd 1M/1M Roundtable For Entrepreneurs: Tech Recruitment in Bulgaria; Custom Fashion in India; Incubator-in-a-Box
By Guest Post at May 4, 2013 | 9:09 am | 0 Comment
172nd 1M/1M Roundtable For Entrepreneurs: Tech Recruitment in Bulgaria; Custom Fashion in India; Incubator-in-a-Box Today’s roundtable had an interesting group of talented people working on a diverse set of businesses. Before we go there, however, I must bring to your attention our newly launched Incubator-in-a-Box. To enable everyone in any part of the world more...
171st 1M/1M Roundtable For Entrepreneurs: IT For Cleantech IN, Cleantech OUT
By Guest Post at April 26, 2013 | 8:12 am | 0 Comment
171st 1M/1M Roundtable For Entrepreneurs: IT For Cleantech IN, Cleantech OUT Today’s roundtable had a couple of California businesses and an Indian company pitching. Before I get to them, let me remind you about the Rackspace Cloud – 1M/1M Startup Challenge. Open to cloud-based startups only, this challenge begins with an application process. Five cloud more...
169th 1M/1M Roundtable For Entrepreneurs: India’s Startup Industry Has A Major Gap – Product Marketing
By Guest Post at April 13, 2013 | 8:35 am | 0 Comment
169th 1M/1M Roundtable For Entrepreneurs: India’s Startup Industry Has A Major Gap – Product Marketing Today’s roundtable focused on India again, and we worked on five startups from various parts of the country. As discussed before, Indian entrepreneurs are trying to make the journey from services and products, and on that road, the biggest roadblock I observe more...
