1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Sumant Mandal, Co-Founder and Managing Partner at March Capital (Part 1)

If you have been bootstrapping and think you are ready for investors, you need to learn how investors think. First, please study our free Bootstrapping course and Investor Introductions page. Then start looking for entrepreneur – investor fit. Today I introduce you to Sumant Mandal.

Sumant Mandal, Co-founder and Managing Partner at March Capital, emphasizes the impact of Covid on virtual companies and remote teams and discusses his investment thesis.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s catch up. Let’s also catch our audience up on how you are living the pandemic. What is happening with your fund and portfolio companies? What are you seeing? 

Sumant Mandal: We have all become Zoom and Webex experts. That is one of the takeaways this year. We have more meetings every day than we’ve ever had before because everyone is available when you need and want them. That is the good thing. The bad thing is that every day looks like the last day or the next day. There’s not much change going on. Now that we have started to get the vaccine, hopefully, we will start to come back to the world that we were used to. Otherwise, things are good. The world of technology is really booming. 

Sramana Mitra: What has been your portfolio’s experience with the pandemic?

Sumant Mandal: It has been interesting. The first two or three months, people were confused and worried about what was going to happen, so there was a pullback from spending. People were trying to figure out how to keep their lights on. When I talk about people, I’m talking about large enterprises and customers for our companies.

About three to six months into this new world of working from home, people realized that their needs for what we do – which is cloud-based SaaS technologies – is now a must-have. Quite a few of our companies saw their business pick up really well. I’d say Q4 was exceptional last year.

Q1 continues to show that people need these new types of cloud-based values to keep their business going. It’s not every business. Work-from-home technologies, collaboration technologies, video conferencing, and cyber security companies did well. Cyber security did especially well. Companies that were doing transformation projects and automation projects for making workflows more intelligent had some challenges.

People were focused on making sure that their lights were on so that they could continue to serve their customers. They are not necessarily trying to save 5% of their operating cost and stuff like that. Front office which is sales, marketing, and customer support more important than the back office. That is the way I think about what has been my understanding of how people have spent money or adopted new technologies over the last year. 

Sramana Mitra: Yes, I can imagine transformation. There is enough transformation happening so they are not looking to transform more. 

Sumant Mandal: I think that would normalize. Over the next 12 months, we will see. There is one thing that is not going to change though. In our office, we would say, “No, you need to be in the office to work.” That concept has been challenged. Will people go back to the office? Will people be back and work with each other?

Yes, human beings are social and they need to be with each other especially when you are trying to create something new. You want to be with other people to be able to brainstorm, but it’s okay to work from home as well. That concept is definitely here to stay.

This segment is part 1 in the series : 1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Sumant Mandal, Co-Founder and Managing Partner at March Capital
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