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 – companies, angels, VCs, governments, schools and entrepreneurship development organizations – to easily, rapidly, and affordably launch an incubator, the One Million by One Million (1M/1M) global virtual incubator has announced the 1M/1M Incubator-in-a-Box. This program has grown out of 1M/1M’s extensive work with various partners interested in expanding their footprints in entrepreneurship and innovation eco-systems around the world.
Once an organization decides how many entrepreneurs they would like to incubate and from where, 1M/1M will run contests and help the partner organization recruit appropriate entrepreneurs to bring into their custom portfolio. 1M/1M will provide the base-level incubation to the chosen entrepreneurs through the 1M/1M Premium Program. This includes online curriculum, mentoring and strategy consulting, introductions to customers, channel partners, investors, and access to the 1M/1M media and social media channels. 1M/1M will also screen the best performers from the incubation portfolio for the partner organization to invest further resources in, after a few months of incubation.
The 1M/1M Incubator-in-a-Box costs $1000 per entrepreneur per year. 1M/1M does not take any equity, making us the most entrepreneur- and investor- friendly incubator program on the planet (most incubators take 5-10% equity). The ROI we deliver is equivalent to $375k + 5-10% Equity per entrepreneur.
Now, to the presentations.
PoolTalent
First, Victor Alexiev from Sofia, Bulgaria, pitched PoolTalent. Victor is a 1M/1M premium member, and I recently wrote a story about him in my Small Business Trends[/i] column called Business in Bulgaria: One Entrepreneur’s Journey. PoolTalent is a cloud platform to help employers engage with software developers, build relationships, gauge cultural and aspiration fit, and make better hiring decisions.
Victor and his cofounders are bootstrapping PoolTalent with resources from his consulting services business, and hence have resource allocation challenges. We discussed some of those today. In addition, Victor is also doing a customer research project to understand what would engage his target software developer constituency better. This research is crucial to determine the functionality of the portal’s next version that will be built.
So currently, Victor, like many of his fellow-entrepreneurs, has significant juggling to do across those priorities, while continuing to bring the bacon home through services projects.
As you might appreciate, Bulgaria is not exactly a place where investors are falling all over themselves to fund Victor’s business. Hence, bootstrapping with services is his only real option for now.
RutamSoft
Next, Anant Mithsagar from Bartlett, Illinois, pitched RutamSoft, which he aims to position as a software company addressing the needs of the process automation industry. In particular, Anant has learnt that business owners in this industry are facing the difficulty of not being able to create proposals and quotations efficiently. Further down the line, they are also not able to track the profitability of the projects.
The industry, however, is fragmented, and Anant needs to come up with accurate TAM models, segmentation, and positioning to be able to create a go-to-market strategy that is likely to succeed without sucking his resources dry.
inventVALLEY
Then, Omprakash Sonie from Pune, India, pitched inventVALLEY, a casual gaming business that currently has a chess game in the app store. Om is trying to determine what is the right direction for his company – is it to build a gaming studio, or is it to build an enterprise software services company that offers gamification related solutions.
Faaya
Last up, Mridang Lodha from Gurgaon, India, pitched Faaya, a custom clothing e-commerce venture for the fashion conscious. I happen to be a connoisseur of custom clothing, and have four tailors in Calcutta whom I work with, and who tailor custom clothing for me. So it was a very interesting discussion about the direction and challenges of building such a business. Not surprisingly, scaling logistics are humongous, and Mridang will need to keep in check his tendency to want to boil the ocean and start with something bite-sized that can be effectively brought to market without major operational blunders.
You can listen to the recording of today’s roundtable [here-insert link].
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 a.m. PDT on:
Thursday, May 9, 173rd 1M/1M Roundtable, Register Here.
Thursday, May 16, 174th 1M/1M Roundtable, Register Here.
Thursday, May 23, 175th 1M/1M Roundtable, Register Here.
Thursday, May 30, 176th 1M/1M Roundtable, 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. 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.
Sramana Mitra is the founder of the One Million by One Million (1M/1M) initiative, a virtual 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. Sramana has a master’s degree in electrical engineering and computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.