665th 1Mby1M Roundtable Recording

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

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Roundtable Recap: December 12 – AI in Education Investment Thesis with Investor Gus Tai

During this week’s roundtable, we had Gus Tai, Investor, Board Member and Retired General Partner at Trinity Ventures discuss ideas and opportunities in Education with an AI-augmented framework.

HiringKit

As for our entrepreneur pitch, Naveen Chandupatla from Atlanta, Georgia, pitched HiringKit, a resume-screening product.

You can listen to the recording of this roundtable here:

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1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator AI Investor Forum: With Krishnakumar Natarajan, Co-Founder of Mela Ventures (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Yes, definitely. I also want to ask you about your current strategy of investing in AI companies. It sounds like this is a team that you really liked; and you invested in that team and the concept. How often do you do that? Do you invest in concepts much?

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1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator AI Investor Forum: With Krishnakumar Natarajan, Co-Founder of Mela Ventures (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: So, tell me, what AI companies have you invested in? Let’s do a few case studies and as you are describing them, talk about why you have invested in those companies.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator AI Investor Forum: With Krishnakumar Natarajan, Co-Founder of Mela Ventures (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Very good. Just as ChatGPT broke into the mainstream consciousness and really put AI at the center of discussions, The first wave of startups that came out of that euphoria are mainly wrappers. To your point, wrappers don’t have a deep moat in terms of being an AI centric company that is really going to be able to take advantage of AI and build significant defensive advantage to in enterprise applications.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator AI Investor Forum: With Krishnakumar Natarajan, Co-Founder of Mela Ventures (Part 1)

Krishnakumar Natarajan, Co-founder at Mela Ventures, discusses his firm’s AI investment thesis.

Three Co-founders Bootstrapped with a Paycheck, Now at Over $50M Revenue: Ganesh Shankar, CEO and Co-Founder of Responsive (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: All right. Well, it’s an amazingly great story, I think, and there’s a lot to learn from it. I’m really looking forward to publishing the story. So, congratulations. Great job. Really great job with execution, and I take it you’re basically operating with direct sales, right?

Ganesh Shankar: Correct. It is operating with direct sales.

One thing I didn’t cover is how important it is for startups or sales-driven organizations to celebrate early achievements. In the initial days, we understood the philosophy of a few key principles very well.

Three Co-founders Bootstrapped with a Paycheck, Now at Over $50M Revenue: Ganesh Shankar, CEO and Co-Founder of Responsive (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: This is something we reinforce all the time in 1Mby1M. Do not chase investors, chase customers. If you get customers, investors will chase you.