1Mby1M Incubation Radar – Profiling Questions

This is only for companies with > $10k but < $1M in annual revenue. Please email completed questionnaire to Customer Support: customersupport@1mby1m.com

1. Give a brief summary of the company, your product, and what your product does.

2. CEO’s personal background. Where did (s)he get the idea for the current venture? What is his/her domain experience in the segment?

3. Any particular reason that led up to this venture? Other founders worth mentioning?

4. What was the market landscape like when you founded the company? Competition? Competitive positioning? Tell us about your market’s dynamics and why you stand a chance of making something innovative happen. Please be sure to name specific competitors; we cannot publish without this.

5. Describe the value proposition, including differentiation from the rest of the market.

6. How big is the market? How do you calculate total addressable market (TAM)? What is the business model? Be as specific as possible. We prefer bottom-up TAM versus top-down TAM for our analysis and dislike broad swathes. Investors also prefer the same. If you have doubts about Market Sizing, please study the curriculum module on the topic.

7. What are the top target segments? Be precise and granular.

8. How did you penetrate the market and get early traction? In other words, what was your beachhead?

9. What stage are you at now? Revenue? Profitability? Please provide some appropriate numbers we can include. Also, discussions on go-to-market strategy, customer acquisition methods and cost structures always add further credibility, if you can furnish those. What is the current MRR for cloud companies?

10. Some detailed information on traffic? Customers? Users? Advertisers? Any other metrics you track and are willing to share? We need some anchor statistics to do an Incubation Radar post. If you are unwilling to share any metrics, then we cannot generate sufficient impact with this coverage. We also need validation points like customer names/sizes, if you are selling to the enterprise, or are involved in OEM business models.

11. What is your pricing model, and how much does your product cost? If pricing is determined separately for each customer, please give an average range.

12. How did you finance the different phases of the company? Seed? Angel? VC? Corporate? Please list each round individually with dates, investors and amounts for each round. We love bootstrapping businesses, by the way. If you have been doing so, feel free to describe stories of your bloody battles. And if you have used nifty financing strategies like receivables financing or factoring, do share.

13. What financing stage are you at right now? Will you be raising more money? When? Who is your ideal investor? (And yes, we consider non-equity investors as well.)

14. Describe some of your team-building experiences. Is your management team complete now? What is special about your management team? Human and anecdotal stories give us maximum ammunition to bring you alive in our coverage.

15. What is your growth strategy?

16. What are your thoughts about exit? Please don’t provide canned answers. And also, you don’t have to have an exit strategy. We are very supportive of businesses that like to build cash flow and offer healthy dividends to their owners/investors.