John Frankel is Partner at ff Venture Capital. We had an extensive discussion about Covid’s impact on the startup ecosystem, the changes we notice, so forth. Sramana Mitra: Let’s catch up. How has the pandemic year been? What are you doing these days?
Rajeev Madhavan: You have IoT devices like headphones where you do not need to replace the batteries. First, it untethers the device from all the electrical connections that you need. Second, it gives you the ability and the freedom of not being tied to a bunch of battery replacements that you have to go through.
If you haven’t already, please study our free Bootstrapping course and the Investor Introductions page. Rajeev Madhavan is Founder and General Partner at Clear Ventures, a firm focused on seed-stage deep tech investing. Sramana Mitra: We are going to start today’s session with a conversation with Rajeeev Madhavan, the founder and general partner of Clear Ventures. I have known
Sramana Mitra: In the first one that you talked about where you are doing transcription, what vertical applications are you going after? Daniel Cohen: Most of their revenue comes out of the education industry. These are online courses that need to be transcribed. That market has been growing so fast because of COVID. Everything is
Sramana Mitra: I am going to start double-clicking down on your AI investments. Vertical AI is something that we have seen a lot. I have one specific question that I want to stick around with you for a bit. You may have read my PaaS article. For those of you who are listening and who
Sramana Mitra: How big is Viola’s current fund? Daniel Cohen: We have a few funds at Viola. We have a venture fund and a growth fund. Overall, we manage $3 billion, which is a big number for Israel for sure. I focus my time on the venture’s early-stage side. The early-stage side is about $1
Sramana Mitra: Is there anything else that you want to highlight from your experience or portfolio before we move to the entrepreneur pitches? Sasha Mirchandani: What we’ve learned over the years is that large markets are critical. A lot of times, we go after really good entrepreneurs, but the reality is going after a very
Sramana Mitra: What are the highlights of your portfolio currently? If you have exited some, you can talk about those as well. Sasha Mirchandani: Before I co-founded Kae capital, we’ve done several investments which were very successful like Myntra. We did a company where I am still a shareholder. I was the first investor in