Is Entrepreneurship Only About The Exit?
Sramana Mitra
Founder and CEO of One Million by the One Million (1Mby1M) Global Virtual Accelerator
During this week’s roundtable, Christian Blume, CEO and co-founder of Cleverbridge was our guest from Germany, offering an European perspective to the question: “Is entrepreneurship only about the exit?” A very interesting discussion.
The Social Coin
As for the pitches, first up, Ivan Caballero from Barcelona, Spain, pitched The Social Coin, a CSR application that helps enterprises engage employees through their social work engagements. Ivan has built a very nice business with major enterprise customers and is at $250k in revenue. Excellent execution thus far.
Relatas
Next, Sudip Dutta from Chile pitched Relatas, a social media interaction tracking platform for Sales people. Sudip needs to tighten his business strategy and get to customer validation and revenue models ASAP.
Prelude
Then Howard Esbin from Vancouver, Canada, pitched Prelude, an employee engagement game that he is trying to sell through ~20 resellers. Howard also needs to get down to the customer-revenue fundamentals ASAP.
Arch
Last up, Hishamm Badawy from Toronto, Canada, pitched Arch, a design collaboration concept that has way too many competitors. Hishamm’s differentiation strategy is to give the software for free, which, in my book, is a no go.
You can listen to the recording of this roundtable here:
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InvestCatapult Co-Founder and COO | Solutions Focused Therapeutic Coach and Counsellor | Overcoming Financial Worries & Stress | Building a new way for the 92% to build a confident & secure financial future
9yEntrepreneurship exists to meet many ends. We often confuse entrepreneurship with "high growth" entrepreneurial business, which is but a subset. Many entrepreneurs follow a lifestyle or a salary replacement model. Sometimes the actual road followed may not be the originally intended road. I recall back in 2001 advising a fintech dot.com business who always thought the exit would be IPO and struggled when his business turned into something quite different. He got bought in a trade sale and stayed with the MNC and never exited from his original business idea, though he became substantially wealthier. In Mainland Europe, Asia, and the Middle East family businesses take more prominence than the U.S. and UK. Within today's cohort of entrepreneurs in those regions we will undoubtedly see, with time, the emergence of new family businesses with ambition to reach many generations. Exit is not the only choice and I hope we see the emergence of new financial technologies that allow these family business entrepreneurs access external growth funding without having to compromise long term value and vision.
Business Development, Product Development and Go To Market Strategy Consultant
9yNope .. its about passion.. rules of capital markets change it to "Exit" .. a self defeating proposition.
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9yKhgn109
Tech Leader | Internet Pioneer in Brazil | Ex Co-Founder @ hpG (exited) and STI Internet (exited) | Growth & Exit Strategist | M&A | Startups | Mentor | Advisor | Nexialist | Polymath | SDG
9yNot at all. Not having an exit strategy is a perfectly plausible scenario for those that can afford to not have one.