1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Yanev Suissa of SineWave Ventures (Part 3)

Yanev Suissa: Obviously, we are financial investors and we do financial analysis. When I invest and decide on a company, what I’m looking at is not a ratio analysis of their past stock performance. I’m looking at the team, the market, their product, and their technology differentiation. It’s a much more on-the-ground advisory active type of investing. >>>

Thought Leaders in Financial Technology: Gina Taylor Cotter, SVP & GM, Global Commercial Financing, American Express (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: The data you draw off is limited to just your ecosystem.

Gina Taylor Cotter: That’s correct. If you want to talk about the merchant financing product that has been in the market since 2011, we do have an application process where were gather some of that additional information. The reason being that we will provide loans up to $2 million. We want to secure more information to validate the optimal loan amount that we should provide that business to help them do what they need to do.

In small business loans, we’re solving a very specific need. We want to be able to provide simple access to low dollar loans because we’ve identified in our research that businesses have a need for that. The process is too cumbersome with the bank >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Vinny Lingham of NewTown Partners (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: What about strategic? What role do you see Naspers playing? Naspers has played a big role in exits in India. What is their position in Africa?

Vinny Lingham: Naspers is a really good investment house. They’re really good at later stage and not early stage.

Sramana Mitra: They’re good at exits. >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Yanev Suissa of SineWave Ventures (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Which is why I’m probing you on this topic.

Yanev Suissa: My experience with NEA is that they are a great investor at the seed stage. There’s typically a partner or a principal level person who sponsors the seed stage deal. That partner or principal-level person will still be active. >>>

Thought Leaders in Financial Technology: Gina Taylor Cotter, SVP & GM, Global Commercial Financing, American Express (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Let’s double-click again one more layer into that. I’m going to give you a proxy of what we learned from our coverage of Kabbage and OnDeck. I would like to hear you describe the heuristics based on which you are evaluating these loans.

In the case of OnDeck or Kabbage, in the segment of e-commerce transactions for example, they would look for a certain number of transactions and a certain number of months of being in business. These are some of the heuristics that they use to approve a loan. What are the heuristics that you use to evaluate your loan applicants? >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Yanev Suissa of SineWave 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 Yanev Suissa was recorded in October 2017.

Yanev Suissa is General Partner at SineWave Ventures out of Washington DC and Silicon Valley. The firm invests alongside some major firms like Andreessen Horowitz and NEA. Yanev talks about how they invest, and also the trends he sees.

Sramana Mitra: So tell us about SineWave Ventures. What is the focus of your firm? How big is the fund? What size investments do you make? >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Vinny Lingham of NewTown Partners (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Have you invested in any of these ICO-based or token-based ventures?

Vinny Lingham: Yes, I’m going to do another one called Augmentors. It’s a gaming product. They have a really good token called Databits, which they’ve spun out. It’s basically an augmented reality game. It’s pretty fascinating.

Sramana Mitra: What is your estimate of the capital requirements of token-based ventures like that? I’ve been talking to a few people who are looking at that. One of the issues for that, as early stage investors, is this 

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Thought Leaders in Financial Technology: Gina Taylor Cotter, SVP & GM, Global Commercial Financing, American Express (Part 1)

Innovations in Financial Technology are flowing from the startup world into the large companies. This excellent conversation gives us a window into how Amex is bringing some of these innovations into their offerings.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by introducing our audience to yourself as well as American Express’ activity in the financial technology area.

Gina Taylor Cotter: I work in American Express in the division that focuses on serving businesses with commercial payments. I dedicate my time to helping businesses be successful in building solutions that provide them access to capital, which is very important for small businesses. >>>