ReadWriteStart

Today's roundtable had a couple of interesting businesses, but before I get to them, I want to underscore that entrepreneurs MUST gauge fundability before assuming that they can build their businesses by raising money.

TravelTriangle.com

First, Sanchit Gurg from Noida, India, pitched TravelTriangle.com, a marketplace for travel agencies offering personalized tour packages for travelers seeking such help. The company already has engaged about 75 travel agencies and some 900 customers. They have started transacting, generating multiple bids for each RFP and taking a commission off closed deals. Reviews, ratings and other core marketplace functions are part of the offering. Sanchit and his team of six have validated the concept already.

Today's roundtable, as usual, was an international affair, with entrepreneurs presenting from different parts of the US, India, Israel, and many other geographies. Before I share what we heard from them today, I want to highlight an important aspect of 1M/1M that is repeatedly underscored in these roundtables: the international, inclusive, democratic nature of the initiative.

In fact, one of the best ways we can delineate this phenomenon is by contrasting 1M/1M with YCombinator. (Video after the jump.)

Tonight in downtown St. Louis the second group of companies to be funded by Capital Innovators will be announced. These will receive $50k in seed funding, free office space and credits toward other useful services as part of their acceleration program. We wrote about their innovative program last fall.

Some of the first companies have launched products or services or are in the process of getting there, according to their entrepreneurs. Most have felt the program worthwhile and given them a jumpstart on their operations.

In my recent piece Reengineering Capitalism I highlighted a phenomenon that the global entrepreneurship ecosystem is paying very little attention to: Over 99% of entrepreneurs who seek funding get rejected. Yet, the entire world is focused on the 1% that is "fundable."

The media, when pitched a startup story, is interested in who funded the venture. They seldom ask how much revenue the company has or if it is profitable.

"We can gamble in Vegas. We can donate on Kiva or Kickstarter. But it's illegal to purchase $100 of stock in a job-creating business? That makes no sense."

That is the tagline to a new project called WeFunder from three TechStars Boston alum who are trying to garner support for the "Democratizing Access to Capital Act" (S.1791) that would allow entrepreneurs to crowdfund startups. Launched yesterday with the hopes of getting $100,000 from 100 pledges, the guys behind WeFunder have already seen near $3 million in promised funds from more than a 1000 supporters if the Senate passes the bill.

Just about every weekend someplace on the planet a peculiar series of meetups is happening called Startup Weekend. The idea is to bring together a group of people, many of whom have never set eyes on each other before, to form new ventures, many of which are tech-related. So far the model seems to be working: each weekend on average has produced two or three companies. According to the master website, more than 5,000 startups have been created since the process began, and some 2,000 just in the last year alone. We last wrote about the process last April and here is more information about the process and the role that the Kauffman Foundation has played.

Today's roundtable was co-hosted with the Jacksonville Startup Weekend. For the uninitiated, Startup Weekends are 54-hour events where entrepreneurs come together to pitch ideas, form teams, and learn best practices.

This past weekend, the Jacksonville entrepreneurship community hosted their own version of this exciting program. 150 people came together, and 17 businesses were formed. An additional 50 were on the wait-list, an evidence of the energy and enthusiasm that is bubbling in Florida right now. MJ Charmani, founder of iStart Jax, a business accelerator, and one of the key organizers of the event, introduced today's session with additional reports on last weekend's event.

The kind folks at Intuit have posted this infographic on their blog this week that describes what a limited liability corporation is and how it stacks up to other kinds of corporate entities. It couldn't come at a better time for my family, as my wife is considering expanding her own business and wants to investigate her options. LLCs are great if you want to limit the amount of bookkeeping you have to do and if you don't mind paying self-employment taxes. A better choice for larger businesses is an S Corporation (which is what I have used over the past several decades) which has more books to keep but also more flexibility when it comes to how your income is taxed too.

There comes a time in the life of any startup where the founders look at each other, let out a sigh of relief and say, "we're going to make it." Startup founders and their first employees work countless hours making sure the product is functioning, helping clients and customers and responding to mini-catastrophes that crop up all over the place like wild fires during the Santa Ana winds.

The founders of Boston-based startup Promoboxx must be breathing that sigh of relief. Promoboxx has landed a deal with Chevy to power its Super Bowl commercials from local dealers. Yes, that Super Bowl. The one where Madonna is playing the halftime show this year. How did a little startup out of TechStars Boston make it to the biggest stage in the world?

Today's roundtable brought some core issues up for debate regarding media startups that are focusing largely on Content and Community features and expecting to get funded. So, I would like to take some time to offer a broad overview on the topic and some pointers to entrepreneurs who are making the assumption that you can raise $500,000 for such a venture. Be careful!

Empower Lounge

Misty Gibbs from Austin, Texas, presented Empower Lounge, a concept for a website that focuses on offering inspirational content along four major vectors: work, health, play and giving. In addition, the site will offer some level of professional networking. Misty is folding in a national site, Inspiration Lounge, and a local site, AustinWomen, to bring together her current 10,000-strong subscriber base under the Empower Lounge umbrella.