During today’s roundtable, we had a couple of formal slide presentations, and a number of shorter dialogues.
Direct Dialect
First, Thelson Richardson from Miami, Florida, pitched Direct Dialect, a language teaching application. Thelson started off by saying that he wants to build 700 products that covers English to Spanish, Dutch to French and every other permutation under the sun.
I spent the allotted time explaining to Thelson, this is not how companies are built. He needs to build ONE product and figure out how to bring it to market at the face of serious competition from players like Rosetta Stone and Pimsleur.
Thelson, also, has the same misconception about funding as we see often from many other entrepreneurs: he thinks he can raise money based on a half-baked concept. Forget about half-baked concept, concept financing is not even viable these days for fully baked concepts.
Perkmart
Later, Aknath Mishra from India, pitched Perkmart, a network of retail stores in rural India that, instead of being stocked with merchandise, would have a computer display with an operator who helps customers order goods online.
What’s missing from Aknath’s analysis is what those products would be. Naturally, it would not be products that the local kirana store carries. There needs to be differentiation and scarcity for villagers to want to try a new, unfamiliar method.
You can find 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 a.m. PST on:
-Thursday, January 23, Register Here.
-Thursday, January 30, 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.