categories
HOT TOPICS
- The Accelerator Conundrum
- The Startup Velocity Question
- Platform as a Service
- Man and Superman
- Web 3.0 = (4C + P + VS)
- The Future: End of Capitalism
- Capitalism 2.0
unicorn mania
1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Ben Mathias of Vertex Ventures (Part 5)
Sramana Mitra: We are in 2018. A lot of stuff has already been built. Relative to the amount of capital that is available in the market, there are 700 plus micro-VCs in the market right now. There is a huge number of entrepreneurs who are starting companies. We can’t expect that every single venture out
1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Ben Mathias of Vertex Ventures (Part 4)
Sramana Mitra: When you look at the Indian geography, what is the distribution of deal flow that you’re seeing? Is there a bias towards Bangalore? I know Chennai and Pune have done well. Ben Mathias: It’s pretty scattered. Bangalore, for sure, is the leader in terms of the number of companies. We do see a
1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Ben Mathias of Vertex Ventures (Part 3)
Sramana Mitra: In terms of deep technology companies, could you share one or two examples from your portfolio or from your radar that are interesting global potential. Ben Mathias: I’ll talk a little bit about one of the companies I mentioned a few minutes ago, ActiveAI. This is a technology company that is building solutions
1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Ben Mathias of Vertex Ventures (Part 2)
Sramana Mitra: Do you invest in B2B ventures that would be Indian B2B-facing? Ben Mathias: We do. Most of our companies started with their initial customer base in India. At the end of the day, the Indian B2B market is limited. You could probably get to a $20 million ARR company if you focused on
1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Greg Sands of Costanoa Ventures (Part 5)
Sramana Mitra: I think this whole unicorn mania has been created by the sheer stupidity of the entrepreneurship media. They’re so driven by funding announcements. Every time somebody has a funding announcement, they run up lots of articles about the funding announcement. Entrepreneurs mistakenly believe that funding announcements are good. It’s not necessarily good. If
1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Greg Sands of Costanoa Ventures (Part 4)
Sramana Mitra: A few trends questions. How do you process the current investment climate where capital is moving further and further upstream? How does a seed investor mitigate the Series A gap? Statistically, there has been a lot of micro-VCs in the market. There’re a lot of pre-seed, seed, and pre-Series A investments but the
1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Greg Sands of Costanoa Ventures (Part 3)
Sramana Mitra: What you’re saying is that you are open to doing even pre-seed investments? Greg Sands: Yes. They tend to be in more experienced founders or people that we’ve known for a longer period of time. At ACME and Alation, we’ve invested, effectively a company formation. Sramana Mitra: I think that is the trend.
1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Greg Sands of Costanoa Ventures (Part 2)
Sramana Mitra: Let me ask you a question in what you’re seeing. I’m completely with you and I’ve written extensively on this topic. The opportunity in AI is in applied AI. The unfair advantage is in the hands of people who have really deep domain knowledge in a particular domain where you apply the stack
