Will 1Mby1M help me become truly investor-ready, not just pitch-ready?
Yes, 1Mby1M helps entrepreneurs become investor-ready, and not just “pitch-ready.”
Here’s how:
>>>Sramana Mitra: I’m sure you are seeing that category of entrepreneurs in the geographies that you’re catering to. That is a true statement. They’re benefiting from the fact that the ultralight startup trend is really taking off right now because of AI.
>>>Sramana Mitra: So, tell me a little bit about fund two. What are you expecting to see? I’m sure you have some sort of a pipeline and deal flow that’s already built up as you are starting to divest your second fund. What is happening in the geographies you are interested in? Tell us more about what’s happening in the tech enabled services work.
>>>Sramana Mitra: What size checks do you write?
Mark Phillips: Out of fund two, we’re writing a $1-$1.5 million check into to portfolio companies over the course of the next two to three years.
>>>Sramana Mitra: I have another example. It’s the example of Damien Hirst. He’s a very famous British artist. He jumped on the NFT bandwagon. He said he’s going to create a large number of artworks that are connected to NFTs. These are not digital artworks to begin with. These are physical artworks that have an NFT tie-in. That requires a different infrastructure. Have you seen this developing?
Hamiz Awan: NFTs are just a concept or a platform for people to innovate. Some people are going to say, “We’re going to have a physical item represented by an NFT.” Some are seeing them as experiences. Mike Tyson sold a weekend with him for $300,000. He would train you. That’s what he sold.
>>>Sramana Mitra: I want to probe that point a little bit. We have done a lot of two-sided marketplaces. We see two-sided marketplaces all the time. We have lots of case studies. We have curriculum material on it.
As you rightly said, it’s much more difficult to go from zero to 10,000 than to go from 10,000 to a million when the network effect starts to kick in gear. That’s not just true in Blockchain; it’s true in two-sided marketplaces in general. To go from zero to 10,000, what are people doing that you have seen is working?
>>>Sramana Mitra: Now explain the structure in one of these cases where you’re investing as Plutus21.
Hamiz Awan: In Uniswap’s example, there’s a governance token for the protocol called the Uni. How does a company that doesn’t have a CEO make decisions? It’s actually the community that makes the decisions. They vote on that using their token. Their token gives them a voting right. That is the asset that we invest in. Investing in that asset gives us voting rights today. We believe that, in the future, it will give us a piece of their cash flows or some connection to their cash flows. Today it’s really a governance token. It gives a voting right.
>>>Hamiz Awan: One example is the Ethereum network. It’s essentially a plug-and-play Blockchain solution. If you want to build a Blockchain startup, you don’t have to go and build a Blockchain yourself. You can just plugin to the Ethereum network that already has the infrastructure, security, and incentives figured out. You are just using it like you’re using the internet to build Facebook.
In order for anybody to use the Ethereum network, they have to pay a certain fee to process their transaction. That fee has to be paid, and it’s the second largest digital asset in the world.
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