Sramana Mitra: How do you parse unicorn mania? Mackey Craven: By unicorn mania, do you mean the number of companies that have billion-dollar plus valuations that are still private? Sramana Mitra: A lot of things. There’s unicorn mania in that there’s so much capital. There is a rush to fund these later stage companies and
Sramana Mitra: Unicorn mania started to rationalize a little bit in 2016. This year, it has stabilized. But there is still a huge amount of late stage capital out there. Traditional VCs have raised very large funds. As a seed investor, you could get buried under later stage liquidation preferences if valuations run up like
Sramana Mitra: There’s another dynamic, which is a lot of these seed stage investors who are working in the very early stages are exiting into those kinds of mega rounds that come in Series B and C. That is a very healthy trend because I think these two segments are different. It could take a
Sramana Mitra: I’m going to ask you a few trend questions. How do you process the current investment climate where capital is moving further and further upstream? How does a seed investor mitigate the Series A gap? The number of seed investments that are happening have gone up but the Series A number has stayed
Sramana Mitra: You’ve been investing for a while. Let’s look at your 2017 deal flow. Give us some flavor of what trends you are seeing. How many deals do you see in a year? How many do you invest in? What are the highlights of the trends in that deal flow? Let’s just focus on
For entrepreneurs interested to meet and chat with Sramana Mitra in person, please join us for our weekly and informal group meetups. If you are living in the San Francisco Bay Area or are just in town for a visit, we hope you will add these meetups to your calendar and join us. Pre-registration is required,
Entrepreneurs are invited to the 403rd FREE online 1Mby1M mentoring roundtable on Thursday, June 21, 2018, at 8 a.m. PDT/11 a.m. EDT/8:30 p.m. India IST. If you are a serious entrepreneur, register to “pitch” and sell your business idea. You’ll receive straightforward feedback, advice on next steps, and answers to any of your questions. Others can register
In case you missed it, you can listen to the recording here: