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The 1Mby1M Self-Assessment

Here is a quick self-assessment that can help you identify the gaps in your business-building process. These are also the questions investors will ask you during your pitch, and what you need to ask yourselves. To improve your probability of success, please be sure to answer these strategic planning questions convincingly. To validate a business idea, as well, these are the questions that need compelling answers.

Please also note that if you’re joining 1Mby1M to be introduced to investors [See: Investor Introductions], we will help you answer these questions before sending you to investors.

1. Validation: Have you validated your business with customers?

2. Positioning: Are you able to articulate the precise positioning of your solution?

3. Monetization: Free is NOT a business model. How do you monetize?

4. TAM: How big is your market opportunity? This determines your financing and go-to-market strategy in a significant way.

5. Bootstrapping: Have you done enough bootstrapping before approaching investors? Is your company fundable, or is it one that needs to be bootstrapped all the way? [See: Bootstrapping Course

6. Financing: Over 99% of the entrepreneurs who go out to raise money get rejected. Are you planning to raise money? Do you understand what it takes to raise money, what investors are looking for? Is your company fundable? Do you know how to assess what is fundable and what is not? Are you getting rejected by investors? Do you need to move to Silicon Valley? Do you know what is the current valuation range for your company? Can you enhance the valuation? What are the levers? What are your different types of financing options and what are the mechanics of those?

7. Customer Acquisition: What is your customer acquisition strategy, cost, conversion rate, channels, channel costs?

8. Team: How do you balance between your need to keep costs down and getting things done, as well as presenting a reasonably complete team to potential investors, in case you are soliciting financing?

9. Web, Mobile and Social Businesses: Do you have a differentiated strategy? The market is extremely crowded, but there are trends and gaps. Do you understand what they are?

The 1Mby1M Premium program includes access to 1Mby1M curriculum modules covering each of these topics that will help you to quickly learn the methodology to answer all these questions.

1Mby1M Basic is a great starting point to bridge your knowledge gaps in entrepreneurship methodology. While 1Mby1M Basic does not include access to the private roundtables or various introductions, it offers monthly access to the 1Mby1M curriculum.

Checkout Sramana Mitra’s courses for entrepreneurs on Udemy, which are frequently discounted.

Thousands upon thousands of entrepreneurs have approached us for help with their funding at a stage where their chances of getting funding is ZERO. Our humble advice to all entrepreneurs: please learn to assess your own probability of getting funded. Watching this 2 minutes 53 second video would be a very good start if you need a crash course in fundability.