New to Likelii? According to founder Radhika Dutt, all you have to do is a few easy steps: "Just answer a few simple questions about your taste, such as how you drink your tea or coffee, what fruits you like, etc. The Likelii engine learns about your tastes and gives you recommendations for wines you're most Likelii to love. You can keep a queue of wines you want to try and rate wines you've tried. And the more wines you rate, the better your recommendations get. It's your simple, fun tool to explore the wine world. We have free shipping for orders over $100. And with each order you get a unique, handcrafted wine charm that matches your wine or the occasion." 

"There's so much good-quality, low-priced wine coming out of Spain," says Likelii.com founder Radhika Dutt. "They're practically coming up with new wine appellations every day there. Look for the regions Castilla La Mancha, Jumilla, Toro, Navarra, Rias Baixas, Rueda, Bierzo. Anywhere in Argentina, like Mendoza. I really groove on wines made in Patagonia. Yeah, THAT Patagonia that inspired fleece jackets. It's cold, and they've been making wine there for at least 90 years, before fleece was even invented. So not only is it a good wine, it's a good story. In Italy, look to the south, especially Abruzzi, Puglia, and Sicily. Not only do you get unique local grapes you've never heard of, but you can tell your friends that in Sicily, so many of their vineyards are located on the side of a volcano, even. So it's another cool story. I'm also going to sneak France in there through the Languedoc region, in the south. There are a lot of big-time Bordeaux winemakers setting up shop there to do wines, so you're getting that kind of quality from a lower-rent district."

"For a few hundred dollars of my own hard-earned money, I love Penfolds Grange and Vega Sicilia," says Likelii.com founder Radhika Dutt. "Both are wines that makes you feel like your DNA is recombining in new and better ways after drinking them. They're both a total experience of 'I get it. I finally understand why some wines are worth several hundred dollars.' If it's someone else's budget, settle for nothing less than vintage Champagne or vintage Sauternes like Chateau d'Yquem." 

"I think the wine public would be a better place if everyone read Kevin Zraly's 'Windows on the World' wine course," says Likelii.com founder Radhika Dutt. "It really is the closest thing you can get to an easy-to-understand, non-snobby sommelier-esque education without working a restaurant floor and lugging 40-pound cases of wine all night. Locally, City Wine Tours is a fun way to grab a few friends and get your learning on in your favorite neighborhood too."

"In terms of qualities, I'd say the ability to build an amazing team and dogged persistence," says Likelii.com founder Radhika Dutt. "Find people who are complementary to your skill set, whom you can learn from every day and who aren't negative. One criterion that I now use to decide whether or not to bring someone on the team is I ask myself if at the end of meeting I had more or less energy than before the meeting. I've found this to work extremely well. It doesn't mean that everyone has to have drunk the same Kool-Aid and agrees with you — in fact I think a health dose of skepticism is crucial. But startups are a high-energy environment, and you're working closely with your team — so even when someone has the right skill set, if you feel drained after a meeting with them, it's not a sustainable team. And once you've built a world-class team, entrepreneurship is all about dogged persistence to go make it happen!"

"The most important tip: you have to sow in the fall and reap in the spring because nothing in fundraising happens over summer!" says Likelii.com founder Radhika Dutt. "On a more serious note, the most important things for fundraising are networking, resilience, and persistence. You talk to many (many, many) investors. You hear many points of view; you have to sort through the feedback you hear to decide what's good advice and bad, and have the persistence to do this many times over! But above all I think it's important to build genuine relationships along the way — it makes fundraising a more rewarding experience if you're building these relationships."