Be Careful Who You Take Startup Advice From

Everybody is a startup mentor these days. On LinkedIn, startup advice is cheap and abundant. It can also be very BAD.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Michael Smerklo of Next Coast Ventures (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: The geographies that you’ve mentioned, we have quite a bit of experience in some of them. Utah is really booming. Utah has taken that bootstrapping ethos to the ultimate levels of success. They have seen company after company bootstrap to success. Utah really stands out. Michael Smerklo: We think this is a major

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1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Michael Smerklo of Next Coast Ventures (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Very interesting. I would definitely like to learn more about EverlyWell. I’ve seen a company like this – Iris Wellness, which dealt with the issue of the physicians not wanting to process. None of the physicians were equipped to deal with it. I’m very curious about how she is handling the interface with

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1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Michael Smerklo of Next Coast Ventures (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Talk about some examples of what you have really invested in and more about the ones that are conviction investment. Michael Smerklo: I’ll give you one example. I’m on the Board of a company called EverlyWell in Austin, Texas. This was an idea that we were looking at. This is disrupting the lab

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1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Michael Smerklo of Next Coast Ventures (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: What is the current fund size? $50 million is a small fund size to do $5 million to $10 million checks. Michael Smerklo: We ended up being way oversubscribed for fund one. We ended up being just under $90 million for fund one. It was twice larger than we expected.  Sramana Mitra: To

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1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Michael Smerklo of Next Coast Ventures (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 Michael Smerklo was recorded in April 2019. Michael Smerklo, Co-Founder and Managing Director at Next Coast Ventures, talks about some of the ventures his firm has invested in and the philosophy in

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1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Taylor Greene of Collaborative Fund (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: The next question I have for you is a slightly broader question. Are you looking for unicorns? Taylor Greene: I think the short answer is yes. I’m always looking for unicorns. Historically, when you look at the math of venture capital, you need a unicorn in a fund in order to be a

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1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Daniel Ibri of Mindset Ventures (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: What is the scale of the consumer internet population right now in Brazil? Daniel Ibri: We have passed the mark of more than a smartphone per person. That shows you that a huge number of the population is connected. We have very good broadband in most of the country. A lot of people

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