1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Mohit Gulati of ITI Growth Ventures (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: So your hypothesis is that a lot of these surplus IT workers with different levels of IT expertise will get absorbed by, at least a portion of them, the startup ecosystem – the technology startup ecosystem.

Mohit Gulati: I would refrain from using the word will get. I would use the word should get if they are open and willing to be absorbed. An older person typically carries a lot of baggage about his expectations in life. When you work with younger people, you need to come with a clean slate. Only when you have a clean slate do you grow. >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Tod Francis of Shasta Ventures (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: One of the things that I’d like to point out is we work with people at a very early stage. It’s not always viable to start with your own product. This is where the parallel with the department retail business comes in. If you look at the P&L’s of department stores like Macy’s or Bloomingdale’s, they sell other people’s brands. Then in the basics category, they sell their own brand. I have been in this business, so I know this inside out. This is how a lot of people start – acquiring customers and then building their own brand.

In the Internet, there’s a company that’s doing a good job at this. That’s Nasty Gal. They started as an eBay seller. She was selling sassy vintage clothing. She started doing that on eBay. Now, she’s doing her own brand.

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1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Warren Weiss of Foundation Capital (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: It sounds like one of the strategies your firm is following is analyzing a macro trend and making multiple bets on that industry.

Warren Weiss: We’re trying to go deep in certain areas. We see this is a decade of the CMOs and so CMOs will spend more time to automate a business. We hear a lot about Big Data. It’s really about big results, not Big Data and so things like marketing technologies and financial services are two spaces that we’re primarily interested in diving very deep on. >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Mohit Gulati of ITI Growth Ventures (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: But there are two or three different trends that need to be parsed within that one. Is there is a job loss phenomenon that is going to happen in the white-collar because of the IT industry, which is one of the biggest growth drivers in India for a while now. As the IT services model is coming to a head, where does that labor pool go? I wonder if that labor pool could be absorbed within the SMB sector, which would give a huge boost to the SMB sector. >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Tod Francis of Shasta 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 Tod Francis was recorded in September 2014.

Tod Francis, Managing Director at Shasta Ventures, starts with a discussion on the history of retail, all the way from shoe stores, to departmental stores, and back to specialty retail. This is followed by a similar overview of the history of e-commerce ranging from Amazon’s strategy to how specialty retail is translating into niche e-commerce, and how Tod is looking at investments in the category.

Sramana Mitra: I think the best question to start out with would be what do you see has happened to the e-commerce business since the 90’s? >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Warren Weiss of Foundation Capital (Part 1)

If you haven’t already, please study our free Bootstrapping course and the Investor Introductions page.

Responding to a popular request, we are now sharing transcripts of our investor podcast interviews in this new series. The following interview with Warren Weiss was recorded in April 2017. 

Warren Weiss, General Partner at Foundation Capital, has a long track record in the Silicon Valley venture capital industry. He shares areas that he and Foundation are excited about as opportunities for building future Unicorns.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start with your overview and synthesis of what you feel right now about the industry, about ventures, and about how to build these unicorn companies. What have you learned? What have you seen? What are you thinking about opportunities for future unicorns? >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Mohit Gulati of ITI Growth Ventures (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Let’s do a couple of things. I’d like to understand what you have invested in that is interesting and reflective of how you think. Then we’ll also talk about the trends that you see in your deal flow. Let’s first start with your portfolio.

Mohit Gulati: A lot of people don’t have multiple ideologies with regards to investing. I have a simple ideology. We’re a country of 1.46 billion. I see us facing a massive job loss crisis in the coming years, so my core philosophy and ideology of investing has been job creation. >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Ken Elefant of Sorenson Ventures (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: How do you parse the Series A gap that has come about in the market? There’re a lot of early stage, pre Series A investments. In fact, there’s a tremendous segmentation that has started to take place in the pre-series A space right now. There is the friends and family round, but then there are funds that are focused on pre-series A such as pre-seeds, seed, post-seed, pre-series A . 

There are micro VCs that  are picking certain areas of the pre-series A phase, but then the number of companies that actually get funded in Series A remains relatively constant in the 1,200 to 1,500 range, whereas in the pre-series A, there are 70,000 investments a year. How do you analyze that? >>>