During this week’s roundtable, once again, we had an international group of entrepreneurs presenting from Buenos Aires, Argentina; Warsaw, Poland; Geneva, Switzerland; Sherbrooke, Canada; Oakland, California; and Austin, 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 100th 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.
