Sramana Mitra: Can you talk about what those bottlenecks are that can be tackled with IT? When you say AgTech, I take it that you are talking about information technology as it applies to agriculture? Francisco Jardim: When we say AgTech, we mean the entire agribusiness value chain, which represents approximately 22% to 24% of
Responding to a popular request, we are now sharing transcripts of our investor podcast interviews in this new series. The following interview with Francisco Jardim was recorded in November 2019. Francisco Jardim is Founding Partner at SP Ventures, a Brazilian firm focused on AgTech in Latin America. We learned a lot about what’s happening in
Sramana Mitra: One question that arises from this discussion that I would like to explore is, how do you view long sales cycle enterprise deals? It sounds like the kind of technology that you like the most are these deep technologies catering to large enterprise customers where there is typically a long sales cycle. If
Sramana Mitra: What sized checks do you write? Karthee Madasamy: Right now, we write between $1 million and $3 million. We may go up to $4 million. We keep about one-to-one reserve for follow-on. We can lead a round. For larger Series A’s, we follow. Sramana Mitra: If it’s a $1 million check, you can
Responding to a popular request, we are now sharing transcripts of our investor podcast interviews in this new series. The following interview with Karthee Madasamy was recorded in December 2019. Karthee Madasamy is Founder and Managing Partner at Mobile Foundation Ventures. He discusses issues related to startups selling deep tech to enterprises.
Sramana Mitra: When they started Observe.ai and when you wrote your first check, they did not have yet a product? Alok Nandan: They were building something else when they met us. Over the course of the next six months, they iterated and pivoted and eventually arrived at this idea. Initially, we wrote them a small
Sramana Mitra: FinTech is a segment where there aren’t a lot of humans in the loop. One of the great benefits that AI is delivering within FinTech is pre-approved loans within 30 seconds. Alok Nandan: You’re absolutely right. If it falls within a certain range, then it will automatically get approved. Humans may only get
Sramana Mitra: How do you define seed in your world view? I’m sure you’re watching this trend out there. The seed has fragmented. It’s pre-seed, seed, post-seed, pre-Series A, small Series A, large Series A. Where in that continuum have you positioned yourself? Alok Nandan: You’re absolutely right. There’s a lot of noise around what