1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Michael Smerklo, Co-founder and Managing Director at Next Coast Ventures 2021 (Part 1)

Michael Smerklo is Co-founder and Managing Director at Next Coast Ventures. We have a terrific conversation about a range of issues including solo founders and their ill-treatment by VCs. Sramana Mitra: We are going to start today’s session with a conversation with Micheal Smerkio, co-founder and managing partner at Next Coast Ventures. Welcome back to

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1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Alok Nandan, Founder General Partner at First Rays Venture Partners (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Switching the line of questioning, what are you thinking in terms of how you want to play this fund? Are you looking for unicorns? Are you looking for strategic early exits? What is the analysis? Alok Nandan: When we come in as investors, there are two guys in a garage most of the

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1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Alok Nandan, Founder General Partner at First Rays Venture Partners (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Do you want to do another use case like that one? Alok Nandan: Let me give you another one that is public. This is a company called Blitzz.io. There are two founders. One of them is a technical founder. He was in another venture-funded company. He was the Director of Engineering there. The

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1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Alok Nandan, Founder General Partner at First Rays Venture Partners (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: You are looking for a founder that you feel good about. That is your answer. Alok Nandan: Unfortunately, it is subjective because at the seed stage, you don’t have that many metrics to go after. Series A and beyond, you have numbers and data that you can look at. At the seed stage,

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1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Alok Nandan, Founder General Partner at First Rays Venture Partners (Part 1)

Alok Nandan, Founding General Partner, First Rays Venture Partners, discusses the firm’s investment thesis which is very well-defined and focused. Sramana Mitra: Let’s start today’s session with a conversation with Alok Nandan, Founder and General Partner of First Rays Venture Partners. Alok Nandan: Great to be back. Thanks for having me.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Sumant Mandal, Co-Founder and Managing Partner at March Capital (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: You have been around for a long time and so have I. We have come from this era in Silicon Valley where people would not invest in companies that are more than 15 miles away from them. Now, people are investing without meeting people. What is your current thesis around what geography you

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1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Sumant Mandal, Co-Founder and Managing Partner at March Capital (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: What we also see in the Bootstrapping to Exit mode of company building is a lot of acquisition hires. We have sold companies in our portfolio in that mode. These are typically companies with a little bit of angel financing that go straight for an exit. We pulled a company to Qualys, for

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1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Sumant Mandal, Co-Founder and Managing Partner at March Capital (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: The pool of talent has also broadened. Even a little country like Uruguay now has a couple of unicorns. I remember we did a case study a long time ago where there were two founders that met on the internet. One was from Ireland and the other was from Montevideo in Uruguay. When

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