1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Kanwaljit Singh of Fireside Ventures (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: The other piece of this equation is let’s say you can invest quarter of a million to $2 million per company on funding. What does the rest of the ecosystem look like around you to build brand companies? What are they looking for in terms of proof points to want to come and play with you in deals like these?

Kanwaljit Singh: That’s a great question. That was one of the motivators for us when we started the fund. There really doesn’t exist a very diverse ecosystem in India for supporting these kinds of plays. What we have been able to do in a short span of time is start the process of building this ecosystem.

Interestingly, one emerging investor group that we work very closely with is Indian family offices. Like I mentioned, the investors in >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Kanwaljit Singh of Fireside 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 Kanwaljit Singh was recorded in May 2018.

Kanwaljit Singh is Founder of Fireside Ventures, a fund focused on building consumer brands in India. This is an excellent conversation about the nascent opportunity that, I expect, will be a major, worldwide phenomenon in the coming years.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by introducing our audience to you as well as to your fund. Tell us a bit about your investing focus. How big is the fund? What kind of investments do you like to make? >>>

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 SC Moatti of Mighty Capital (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: You are preaching to the choir. It’s exactly our philosophy. We have a very clear philosophy of bootstrapping first and raising money later. We don’t take any equity. We are the largest virtual accelerator and we don’t take equity because I don’t believe you should be taking equity as an incubator or accelerator.

If you are an accelerator fund like YCombinator, they do have great ecosystems. That’s different. The vast majority of accelerators actually don’t add much value. They take away a lot of equity. Exactly the scenario that you described happens.

Our preference and our advice is not to raise too much money, do not try to go through these drib drab financing. >>>

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 SC Moatti of Mighty Capital (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: The corollary of our previous saying is that VCs love to come to the rescue of victory. That is also a very popular saying in our community.

SC Moatti: It’s a very interesting point that you mentioned. What you’re saying is the traditional VC industry has whales and minnows. Some people are here just for the show. Some people are coming in and taking over victory. I would say that I tend to agree. The traditional industry has its faults.

The reason I talk about the dolphins is that this is something that we are trying to change. There are all the dolphins out there who are >>>