Want to start a venture of your own?

Find a niche. Start solo and run lean.

Capital efficient ventures remain the best way to build healthy, robust businesses for a large number of entrepreneurs.

Sure, there are exceptions like Facebook, Google, and Amazon that are built differently.

But those are low probability scenarios. And raising money for fat startups has become very difficult.

And don’t believe the myth that solo entrepreneurs do not succeed.

Can you succeed as a solo entrepreneur?

Yes. Without a doubt.

You ALWAYS start alone.

And in these days of virtual companies, you can get lots of help as a solopreneur and get very far in your quest for product-market fit, validation, even traction. You can even bootstrap with a paycheck.

Can a solopreneur raise funding?

You don’t need a full executive team for seed funding.

However, solo entrepreneurs typically have difficulty in raising seed funding.

Investors prefer at least one co-founder.

If you are a solo founder bootstrapping, you should put all your energy into getting to product-market fit, and getting to paying customers. Not on trying to artificially fill a co-founder position.

The way to mitigate this is by bootstrapping your startup to traction, where you have paying customers and a clear path to high velocity customer acquisition as a solo founder. If those metrics are in place, you can raise money without a co-founder.

Listen to several successful founders tell you how they began as solopreneurs, bootstrapped, built virtual companies, raised funding, built Unicorns.

The 1Mby1M courses are all heavily based on interview-based case studies on Innovation, Business Models, Go To Market Strategies, Validation Principles, and various other nuances of an entrepreneur's journey. We offer extensive opportunities for entrepreneurs to learn the lessons from the trenches from successful entrepreneurs who have done it before.

Use this course as a starting point in your acceleration journey with the 1Mby1M global virtual accelerator. Supplement it with the Weekly Free Mentoring Roundtables (Office Hours) on the 1Mby1M website. You can bring your issues and questions, and Sramana will answer.

You can also ask questions in the Q&A section of this course, and Sramana will answer.

The 1Mby1M Methodology is based on case studies. In this course, Sramana Mitra shares the tribal knowledge of tech entrepreneurs by giving students the rare seat at the table with the entrepreneurs, investors and thought leaders who provide the most instructive perspectives on how to build a thriving business. Through these conversations, students gain access to case studies exploring the alleys of entrepreneurship. Sramana’s synthesis of key learnings and incisive analysis add great depth to each discussion.

This course is a Pre-1Mby1M Accelerator course.