701st 1Mby1M Roundtable Recording

In case you missed it, you can listen to the recording of this roundtable here:

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Roundtable Recap: September 4 – AI Investment Thesis with Ihar Mahaniok, Geek Ventures

During this week’s roundtable, we had as our guest Ihar Mahaniok, Managing Partner at Geek Ventures. We had an excellent discussion on AI trends and startup opportunities.

AvQuint Innovations

As for pitches, first up we had Shantanu Sonawane from Pune, India, pitch AvQuint Innovations, a hardware product for automatically covering cars.

Jaovi-Go

Then we had Bruno Ferrini from Lima, Peru, try to pitch Jaovi-Go in Spanish. Unfortunately, we don’t do the roundtable discussions in Spanish or any other language except English.

Good news, however: If English is not your primary language, my feedback is available in 40 languages using our Digital Mind AI Mentor. You can “talk” to and ask questions about your strategy, your options, your idea, and anything else that is top of mind and needs discussion. The AI Mentor is private, 1-on-1, available 24/7. You can work with it on your schedule in English, Spanish, French, Hindi, and a host of other regional languages.

Hidden Gems

Next we had Karthik Venkatachalam from Mountain House, California, pitch Hidden Gems, a proposed AI Companion product for Indian languages.

You can listen to the recording of this roundtable here:

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1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator AI Investor Forum: Vinit Bhansali, Takshil Venture Partners (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: Interesting. I’m sure you hear this in AI conversations in particular. This conversation today hasn’t been as AI-heavy as usual, but in those discussions, domain knowledge comes up a lot.

People who can extract real value from enterprise AI and workflow are those with deep domain knowledge. They understand what’s happening and where they can add value by working through those processes.

Video FAQs

701st 1Mby1M Roundtable for Entrepreneurs Starting in 30 Minutes

Today’s 701st FREE online 1Mby1M Roundtable for Entrepreneurs is starting in 30 minutes, on Thursday, September 4, at 8 a.m. PDT / 11 a.m. EDT / 5 p.m. CEST / 8:30 p.m. India IST. CLICK HERE to join. PASSWORD: startup  All are welcome!

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator AI Investor Forum: Vinit Bhansali, Takshil Venture Partners (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: The venture equation, which a lot of entrepreneurs struggle to grasp, is you have to go from zero to a hundred million dollars in five to seven years once you’ve entered the venture timeline. If you’re not doing that, then it’s hard to make the fund equations work.

There are some small funds that are doing Bootstrapping to Exit or Seedstrapping to Exit kind of deals. That’s a slightly different investment thesis, but they still need to find high-velocity companies to be able to exit them. Velocity is critical—without it, exits don’t really happen.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator AI Investor Forum: Vinit Bhansali, Takshil Venture Partners (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: This is interesting. I’ve tracked a company that pioneered selling diamonds online—Blue Nile. You must be familiar with them. The entrepreneur came from the diamond industry; his family had roots there. He had a key insight: in the U.S., diamonds are primarily purchased by men for engagement rings.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator AI Investor Forum: Vinit Bhansali, Takshil Venture Partners (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Let’s do a few case studies of what you have invested in. As you’re describing those stories, tell us a bit about how you found these companies or how they found you, and what did you see in those companies that made you want to write those checks?

Building Long-Term Viable Companies

9. Does 1Mby1M support founders trying to build long-term, viable companies even if they become non-VC attractive?