Sramana Mitra: How are people thinking about this unicorn versus non-unicorn versus niches? How is the Canadian investment in general thinking about this? Alireza Rahnema: I’ve work about this when it comes to different scene between startup the ecosystem. I’ve spent half of my time here and half of my time down San Francisco. When
Sramana Mitra: Let’s do another company. Alireza Rahnema: Another company that has a very interesting background is Spocket. Spocket is one of the top three service providers on the Shopify platform. They help e-commerce retailers acquire products to sell and help find the right products based on desires and the location. The backbone is what
Sramana Mitra: Would it be fair to say that you’re comfortable with pre-seed investment? Alireza Rahnema: Absolutely! Over 50% of those are pre-seeds. So far, a significant portion stay. Almost 90% have gone on to a seed and we have invested on as they grow up. Sramana Mitra: Talk about the types of companies that
Sramana Mitra: Would you want to do another case study of companies that you’ve invested in and that you particularly think highly of? Sumner Douglas: I’ll do one that I got involved in. A couple of years ago, I made the cardinal sin as the Managing Director and left to join one of our portfolio
Sramana Mitra: On that geography topic, what’s happening from an immigration point of view in Vancouver, Canada given the friction that’s happening now in America around immigration? Are you seeing a big influx of talented engineers that are also entrepreneurs from other places? Alireza Rahnema: I must say this has vindicated our thesis with 7
Responding to a popular request, we are now sharing transcripts of our investor podcast interviews in this new series. The following interview with Alireza Rahnema was recorded in January 2019. Alireza Rahnema, Principal and General Partner at 7 Gate Ventures, talks about the Vancouver startup ecosystem and his firm’s investment thesis. Sramana Mitra: Let’s start
Alireza Rahnema, Principal and General Partner at 7 Gate Ventures, talks about the Vancouver startup eco-system and his firm’s investment thesis.