categories
HOT TOPICS
- The Accelerator Conundrum
- The Startup Velocity Question
- Platform as a Service
- Man and Superman
- Web 3.0 = (4C + P + VS)
- The Future: End of Capitalism
- Capitalism 2.0
1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Cem Sertoglu of Earlybird Venture Capital (Part 3)
Sramana Mitra: I know you read some of my writings. I’m a huge proponent of bootstrapped entrepreneurship. Having worked in this ecosystem for all these years, I’ve observed the development of different ecosystems in different parts of the world. Bootstrapping happens to be one of the really important ways that ecosystems come up. You get
1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Ashmeet Sidana of Engineering Capital (Part 6)
Sramana Mitra: As a VC, how do you figure these things out? These are not easy to figure out. Ashmeet Sidana: It comes from good judgement. Good judgement comes from bad experiences. You have to try things. As you can see over here, I have no shortage of gray hair. Some of these have come
1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Cindy Padnos of Illuminate Ventures (Part 5)
Sramana Mitra: One of my observations is lots of stuff have already been built. Nowadays, there aren’t so many wide open opportunities, especially in B2B that you can consistently build billion-dollar companies. There are many niche opportunities. Some of these businesses need to be built for very small amounts of capital – $1 million to
1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Cem Sertoglu of Earlybird Venture Capital (Part 2)
Sramana Mitra: What do you see? Is it B2B or B2C? Where is the sweet spot of your entrepreneurs? Cem Sertoglu: We have two very distinct strategies that we focus on. The first is what we call local champions. These are focused on large markets. We would probably back these companies only in markets like
1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Ashmeet Sidana of Engineering Capital (Part 5)
Sramana Mitra: This company is selling to enterprises? Ashmeet Sidana: Menlo Security is focused primarily on large enterprises. If you’re a bank or financial services enterprise, that is our target market. You have to be very careful what you do and yet you have tens of thousands of employees who have to be able to
1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Cindy Padnos of Illuminate Ventures (Part 4)
Cindy Padnos: We structure our seed investment with, at most, three other co-investors, but typically have one co-investor. We think it’s really important to be investing with like-minded investors. It’s also a bit dangerous to have a very large fund writing a small check into your seed round. It’s a significant signaling risk if that fund
1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Cem Sertoglu of Earlybird Venture Capital (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 Cem Sertoglu, Earlybird Venture Capital was recorded in October 2017. Cem Sertoglu is Partner at Earlybird Venture Capital, based in Turkey. Cem brings the spotlight on Turkey and the Eastern and Central European startup
1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Ashmeet Sidana of Engineering Capital (Part 4)
Ashmeet Sidana: There’s great wisdom in what you’re saying. It is not just something that entrepreneurs should think about doing. You are required to say no to money on the path to success. Every company that is successful, at some point, says no to large amounts of money along the way. Here’s the way I
