1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Pawel Maj, Investment Director at Warsaw Equity Group (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Sometimes when you’re in a fundraising cycle, you may not be quite ready for the investor to write the check, but you build the relationships and show traction. At some point, it will converge potentially if you know what your target is. Pawel is explaining that the target is $50,000 MRR.

If you start the relationship when you’re at the $10,000 point, you have to inch your way up to $50,000 MRR before the investment is going to happen. Investor relationship management is important. If the market is of interest and the team is of interest, sometimes investors just take a little bit of time to see how you’re performing. That is the notion of investor-entrepreneur fit.

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Building a Capital Efficient Healthcare AI Venture to $20M: Deepak Gaddipati, Founder and CTO of VirtuSense (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: How many nursing homes are using the product?

Deepak Gaddipati: We did a lot of trade shows. In 2018, we got connected with Ziegler, which is an investment banker that does underwriting for hospitals and nursing homes. Whenever you want to build a new nursing home or a new hospital, they put out bonds and they raise $50 million, $100 million, or whatever it is.

Thursday, August 25 – 587th 1Mby1M Mentoring Roundtable for Entrepreneurs

Entrepreneurs are invited to the 587th FREE online 1Mby1M Mentoring Roundtable on Thursday, August 25, 2022, at 8 a.m. PDT/11 a.m. EDT/5 p.m. CEST/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 to “attend” to watch, learn, and interact through the online chat.

You can learn more here and REGISTER TO PITCH OR ATTEND HERE. Register and you will receive the recording by email, even if you are unable to attend. Please share with any entrepreneurs in your circle who may be interested. All are welcome!

Video FAQs

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Pawel Maj, Investment Director at Warsaw Equity Group (Part 2)

Pawel Maj: We would like to have about 10 to 15 companies in our portfolio at any given moment. We like to get hands-on since our history comes from the private equity market. For pre-seed or seed, we invest smaller tickets but much in larger number of projects to spread the risk. In our case, we don’t have a large enough team to have a large operation to be able to provide hands-on experience for 50 companies. This is why we prefer to invest at a later stage after the product-market fit.

Sramana Mitra: The reason I’m probing this point is, there are a bunch of things that happen between pre-seed, seed, pre-Series A, and Series A. You have to achieve product-market fit, which means you have to get some customers to say that they’re willing to write a check for this product.

Building a Capital Efficient Healthcare AI Venture to $20M: Deepak Gaddipati, Founder and CTO of VirtuSense (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: When you raised angel financing, did you already have these nursing homes working with you on the pilot?

Deepak Gaddipati: No. First, we developed the product. We looked for the biggest physical therapy conference. There was one conference in Vegas within three days. They had a booth open, so we bought it. We wanted to present at this conference to see if the product sticks. We hustled. On the spot, we sold a couple of systems. We said we were going to deliver within three months.

Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapped with Paycheck to $15M from Tennessee

If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. 

In 2018, GreenPal CEO Gene Caballero shared a fantastic story of a founder duo bootstrapping with a paycheck, growing from $5M to $15M in one year, with a virtual team of freelancers. Your classic 21st century internet business. No outside financing whatsoever!

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of background?

Gene Caballero: I was born in Lima, Peru. My dad’s side of the family are all entrepreneurs. My grandfather had his own propeller business. We made propellers for boats. My dad actually has that business now. I’m the black sheep. I’ve gone into the technology side as opposed to the manufacturing of propellers.

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1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Pawel Maj, Investment Director at Warsaw Equity Group (Part 1)

Pawel Maj, Investment Director, Warsaw Equity Group, discusses post-seed and pre-series A funding in Eastern and Central Europe in the context of his firm’s investment thesis.

Sramana Mitra: Tell us about what’s up in Poland. You are in a semi-warzone. What’s happening with the startup ecosystem?

Pawel Maj: The war is in another country, but we had a huge wave of immigrants coming from Ukraine. We already admitted almost five million immigrants. These are difficult times. It’s great to see the Polish population come together to help the neighbors.

Building a Capital Efficient Healthcare AI Venture to $20M: Deepak Gaddipati, Founder and CTO of VirtuSense (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: What year are we in now?

Deepak Gaddipati: 2012. In 2013, we licensed some of the technologies we developed and started Virtusense. The single objective when I started was to prevent falls. I was very passionate about it. I really wanted to figure out a solution. We didn’t have a solution, but we had a lot of ideas and technology on how to do it.

Sramana Mitra: You didn’t really have an idea of what market you were going after. Are we talking B2C?