1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Max Brickman, Founder at Heartland Ventures (Part 1)

Max Brickman, Founder at Heartland Ventures, talks about his firm’s investment thesis. Sramana Mitra: Let’s start with a little bit of introduction about your background. Max Brickman: I’m from Wisconsin. I started in the entrepreneurial space early on. I bought my first property in northern Wisconsin when I was 14. It was money from a

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1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Kyle Asman, Managing Director at Backswing Ventures (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Talk about the case studies of the two companies that you sold. Kyle Asman: One of them was in real estate technology. It was a highly-profitable company with high revenue. They were pretty quick to exit. They needed some investment to grow some things and get to the next level. The other one

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1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Kyle Asman, Managing Director at Backswing Ventures (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: That’s after they have come to you and decided that they want to work with you. These are two different, slightly off-center entities – a company that is already doing a million dollars in revenue that is profitability focused and is interested in a relatively early exit. Those are the characteristics of the

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1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Kyle Asman, Managing Director at Backswing Ventures (Part 1)

Kyle Asman is Managing Director at Backswing Ventures, a firm that has a non-Unicorn investment thesis. Sramana Mitra: Let’s get acquainted. Tell us about your background and also about Backswing Ventures.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Bhaskar Ghosh, Partner and CTO at 8VC (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: I have a rather different point of view about the definition of good. One Million by One Million has a philosophy that is completely counter to this VC-obsessed philosophy of Silicon Valley. The world has today imported the Valley’s VC obsession. I don’t like it at all. As far as I’m concerned, a

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1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Bhaskar Ghosh, Partner and CTO at 8VC (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: There is a Series A gap. There are investors that are doing pre-Series A, but it’s a smaller pool. The Series A investors want to see a lot in place before they’re willing to write a check. How do you see this? This is not specific to your firm. I’m asking you generally

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1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Bhaskar Ghosh, Partner and CTO at 8VC (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Talk a little bit about this company that you invested in from the Freshworks ecosystem. Is it built on the Freshworks stack? Bhaskar Ghosh: The founders are second-time founders. Their first company, Rocketlane, was acquired by Freshworks. I just want to call something out. We are huge fans of the entrepreneur ecosystem coming

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1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Bhaskar Ghosh, Partner and CTO at 8VC (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Let’s focus on the pre-seed and seed first. Are you investing in concepts? Are you looking for a certain amount of proof point? What is the sweet spot? Bhaskar Ghosh: If you look at founders, products, and market, we focus heavily on the founder and on the market size. We are not looking

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