Roundtable Recap: April 8 – Good Strategy Upfront Will Get You to Fundability

During this week’s roundtable, we had two entrepreneur mentoring segments.

Samphion

First, we had Udit Shah from Gujarat, India, pitch Samphion, a health, fitness and lifestyle focused matching service.

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Roundtable Recap: April 1 – Virtual Companies Becoming Ubiquitous

During this week’s roundtable, we had as our guest Sumant Mandal, Co-founder and Managing Partner at March Capital. Sumant emphasized the impact of Covid on virtual companies and remote teams and discussed his investment thesis.

VXPass

As for our entrepreneur pitch, we had Zachary Weiner from Miami, Florida, pitch VXPass, a digital record service for Covid vaccination and testing.

Resource

Next, we had David Casey from Berkeley, California, pitch Resource, a cryptocurrency based barter marketplace.

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1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Eric Benhamou, Founder and General Partner at Benhamou Global Ventures 2021 (Part 1)

Eric Benhamou is Founder and General Partner at Benhamou Global Ventures.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s focus on where you are in terms of the fund. What fund are you on? What is the size of the fund? What is the fund strategy now?

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1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Daniel Cohen, General Partner at Viola Ventures (Part 1)

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

Daniel Cohen, General partner at Viola Ventures, discusses AI, PaaS, and deep tech investments.

Sramana Mitra: We have known each other for ten years. We have observed the industry for a very long time. We often have guests with whom we’ve had long relationships.

Roundtable Recap: March 25 – Spotlight on Art Market Disruption Ideas

During this week’s roundtable, we had as our guest Cindy Padnos, Founder and Managing Director at Illuminate Ventures. Cindy discussed the impact of Covid on the fund’s portfolio, as well as trends she sees.

ArtandFound.co

As for our entrepreneur pitch, we had Aditya Mehta from Mumbia, India, pitch Art&Found, a digital art marketplace based on NFTs.

You can listen to the recording of this roundtable here:

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1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Ken Elefant, Partner and Co-Founder at Sorenson Ventures 2021 (Part 1)

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

Ken Elefant, Partner and Co-founder at Sorenson Ventures, talks about trends and his investment thesis.

Sramana Mitra: Tell us a bit about your funds. I know you have been working with your fund one and you are in the middle of raising your fund two. Fund one was about $100 million, right?

Best of Bootstrapping: Saatva Co-founder Bootstrapped a $25M E-Commerce Company

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

I have spoken with many VCs who are looking for e-commerce companies that can scale at venture pace, which is hard to achieve. On the other side of the spectrum, however, the bootstrapped e-commerce companies are going gangbusters! Co-founder Ricky Joshi’s Saatva is one such and a terrific company.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start with your personal back story. Where are you from? Where were you born and raised?

Ricky Joshi: I was born in Columbus, Ohio. I went to Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. I was very involved in the entrepreneurial scene there. I actually helped start the Dartmouth Entrepreneurial Network, which is now the flagship entrepreneurial program at Dartmouth. I started my first company at school. I ended up working at a place called IPG, which had 44,000 employees. We were tasked with visual innovation. The first thing I actually did was lead Series C investment round in Facebook. That was a deal I sourced and led. It was a Series C round with $500 million valuation. Obviously, that worked out well. I was able to do a lot of things there.

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Roundtable Recap: March 18 – Business Model Innovation

During this week’s roundtable, we had as our guest Tim Guleri, Managing Director at Sierra Ventures. We had a terrific discussion on Business Model Innovation and Distribution Innovation that Tim believes trumps technology innovation. We went through some excellent examples. Do give this a listen!

You can listen to the recording of this roundtable here:

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

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