1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Utsav Somani of AngelList India (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: What direction does the deal flow? Is it the VC’s who are coming to AngelList, or AngelList is chasing these deals?

Utsav Somani: We are the largest tech-enabled cloud platform in the world. We are more of a product company than a service company. Our product are the syndicate products. You go do the work of finding allocations. We’ve seen large institutions bringing their own set of backers but just to clean up the cap table, they pool to one entity. Then we see operator angels. These are people who can’t write large checks. We’ve seen so many personas.

Sramana Mitra: Which of these personas are dominant in India? >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Utsav Somani of AngelList India (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: I’m going to double-click down on a bunch of points you made. You said the angel networks like Mumbai Angels work like glorified VC funds versus AngelList. Elaborate and contrast the fee structures.

Utsav Somani: Everyone is structured in a different way. They help different people. The offline angel networks are places where people like to meet companies and see them pitch in person. They take a longer decision cycle. At AngelList syndicates, we enable people to write lower check sizes, but we pool capital and people make faster decisions. Every coin has two sides.

Sramana Mitra: What about the fee structure though? >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Utsav Somani of AngelList India (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 Utsav Somani was recorded in May 2018.

Utsav Somani, Angel Investor at AngelList India, talks about the newly launched AngelList India.

Sramana Mitra: Tell us about the investing focus of AngelList in India. How are you operating? How is it structured? How is it different from the mother ship? >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Deb Kemper of Golden Seeds (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: Let me ask you something much more blatant. When people look at young women entrepreneurs, there is this question about how this person manages children and family. What is your current investigation is reporting?

Deb Kemper: They’re doing it. No one ever asks their male peers these questions.

Sramana Mitra: Definitely not. Are they asking this question because there’s a lot of sensitivity around this right now?

Deb Kemper: It is latent. In our group, we have 80% women, most of whom have successful careers. I do have entrepreneurs who >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Deb Kemper of Golden Seeds (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: I am completely in agreement with you. I really think that there should be a large pool of investors that are not unicorn hunters but who operate within the equity investing framework that we use in our ecosystem and may have successful investments. We need more of those. It’s unfortunate to see this mania. It makes me feel that we’re going to see lots of unnecessary failures where some of this money could have been channeled better.

Deb Kemper: It’s also a function of fund economics. If you have a $30 million fund and you get a $60 million exit, you’ve paid back your fund. If I have a billion dollar fund, I need a billion dollar plus exit to return.

Sramana Mitra: That is a different business. That’s almost private equity. If you have a billion dollar fund, you have >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Deb Kemper of Golden Seeds (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: What stage did you get involved in either of these companies?

Deb Kemper: For both of them, Golden Seeds was in their initial seed financing round. On one, I was on the seed. On another, I got in a little bit later. I didn’t invest the first time it came around.

Sramana Mitra: Did your micro-VC also invest in these companies?

Deb Kemper: It did in one of them.

Sramana Mitra: I’m listening to you about the second company where you already got an exit within 18 months >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Deb Kemper of Golden Seeds (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: What is the earliest stage at which they would go in? Would people go in with no product and just a concept?

Deb Kemper: People would go in before validated product market fit. It’s between the concept and having that. At least a beta. We rarely go in on an alpha stage. We like to see people figuring out a way to do that initial build out. We’d come in at the beta where there’s clear testing you’re trying to do.

There’s clear stage-gating of what’s going to happen and things that will be learned from that. It’s also very different. We’re sector-agnostic. Since we’re focused on the gender diversity question, we try not to limit too much on the technology and sectors that we look >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Deb Kemper of Golden Seeds (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 Deb Kemper was recorded in May 2018.

Deb Kemper is Managing Director and Chair of the Boston Forum at Golden Seeds, an Angel Group and Micro VC focused exclusively on women entrepreneurs.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by introducing our audience to yourself as well as to the investment thesis and focus of Golden Seeds.

Deb Kemper: I am what’s called an angel investor and that is what Golden Seeds is. Golden Seeds is a hybrid angel network and >>>