1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator AI Investor Forum: Alex Benik, Encoded Ventures (Part 1)

Alex Benik, Partner/Founder at Encoded Ventures, discusses the fund’s investment thesis. Great discussion on how we each view the disruptions AI is causing on multiple fronts. VCs investing today have to think about the next 5-7 year window and what changes are likely to come.

Start With Customers Not Investors

For our Seed Capital series of podcasts, I’ve interviewed hundreds of investors, especially micro-VCs and angels who play an important role in the early-stage game. The toughest round of funding an entrepreneur will seek to raise is Pre-seed. How do you increase your odds? Pre-seed has the lowest probability of success. Over 99% of the

Read Full Article »

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Anirudh Suri of India Internet Fund (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: What about unicorn mania? I know India went completely crazy with unicorn mania for a while. Are you seeing a slowdown in unicorn mania? As a seed investor, how do you prevent yourselves from getting buried under later-stage liquidation preferences? What practices are you deploying to prevent such unappetizing outcomes? Anirudh Suri: Unicorn

Read Full Article »

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Anirudh Suri of India Internet Fund (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: I have a question that I want to double-click on. One of the big differences in the Indian market that doesn’t exist in the US market is this abundant supply of cheap labor. Are you seeing business models and business ideas that creatively take advantage of that phenomenon to offer value to customers?

Read Full Article »

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Anirudh Suri of India Internet Fund (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: It sounds like the original business model probably had a low TAM. Turning it into a financial institution opens up a much bigger TAM, right? Anirudh Suri: The initial focus in the Indian market is on affordable housing institutions and micro-financing institutions. Very quickly, they realized that just providing them credit scores was

Read Full Article »

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Anirudh Suri of India Internet Fund (Part 1)

Responding to a popular request, we are now sharing transcripts of our investor podcast interviews in this new series. The following interview with Anirudh Suri was recorded in December 2017.  Anirudh Suri, Founding Partner at India Internet Fund, talks about the funding trends in the Indian startup market. Sramana Mitra: Help us introduce you to our audience.

Read Full Article »

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Vinny Lingham of NewTown Partners (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: What about strategic? What role do you see Naspers playing? Naspers has played a big role in exits in India. What is their position in Africa? Vinny Lingham: Naspers is a really good investment house. They’re really good at later stage and not early stage. Sramana Mitra: They’re good at exits.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Vinny Lingham of NewTown Partners (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Have you invested in any of these ICO-based or token-based ventures? Vinny Lingham: Yes, I’m going to do another one called Augmentors. It’s a gaming product. They have a really good token called Databits, which they’ve spun out. It’s basically an augmented reality game. It’s pretty fascinating. Sramana Mitra: What is your estimate

Read Full Article »