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HOT TOPICS
- The Accelerator Conundrum
- The Startup Velocity Question
- Platform as a Service
- Man and Superman
- Web 3.0 = (4C + P + VS)
- The Future: End of Capitalism
- Capitalism 2.0
Funding for a Business
1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Elizabeth Yin of Hustle Fund (Part 3)
Sramana Mitra: When you are writing a $25,000 check for these companies, is that a convertible note or an equity investment? What terms do you apply?
Elizabeth Yin: If we are the first ones to the table, we will do that on a safe. If we are not the first ones on the table and there is already a round in place, we will look at the terms at hand. Sometimes this would be an equity round, equity note, or the safe.
>>>1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Elizabeth Yin of Hustle Fund (Part 2)
Sramana Mitra: You are saying that you focus on customer acquisition more than technology. You are worried about how quickly a company can get into revenue and what its customer acquisition strategy is.
Can you elaborate on that? What are some nuggets that you are learning from the market of effective customer acquisition strategy?
>>>1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Elizabeth Yin of Hustle Fund (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 Elizabeth Yin of Hustle Fund was recorded in October 2020.
Elizabeth Yin is General Partner at Hustle Fund, a pre-seed investment firm.
>>>1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Suman Talukdar, Founder and Managing Partner at AiSprouts.VC (Part 5)
Sramana Mitra: For the entrepreneurs who are listening, you cannot fit a square peg in a round hole. Just like when you were looking for the product-market fit, you are going to have to find an investor entrepreneur fit.
An investor who is looking for one type of exit is not going to invest in the other style. You have to bang against the wall if you are going after investors who are not interested in your style of investment opportunity. Keep that in mind.
>>>1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Mark Achler of MATH Venture Partners 2021 (Part 4)
Sramana Mitra: Is the fund strategy chasing unicorns? Are all your companies looking to become unicorns?
Mark Achler: No, I’m from Chicago. We are from the Midwest. I like to roll my sleeves and build real companies solving real problems. If they turn into a unicorn, then that’s great. The odds of that happening is slim. We are not building our portfolio predicated upon the expectation that every company turns into a unicorn.
>>>1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Suman Talukdar, Founder and Managing Partner at AiSprouts.VC (Part 4)
Sramana Mitra: You have a relatively small fund at the moment. What are your thoughts about chasing unicorns versus chasing the 2x to 5x companies?
Suman Talukdar: I’m relatively new on the investing side, but I have had experience working with venture-backed companies. All the work and effort pays off when things work. When they work, they tend to work amazingly well.
>>>1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Mark Achler of MATH Venture Partners 2021 (Part 3)
Sramana Mitra: If you look at the public market, the tech stocks have done well. Their earnings have been good. It’s not like they are missing a lot of their numbers. Many are overshooting their numbers. It’s striking how well people have adjusted to buying technology without human interaction in person even in large sales.
Mark Achler: It’s interesting to see how that happens. One of the things that I’m working on is business continuity. There are a couple of concepts here.
>>>1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Suman Talukdar, Founder and Managing Partner at AiSprouts.VC (Part 3)
Sramana Mitra: Let’s dig down to AI and your thesis around AI a little bit. We do a series called Thought Leaders in Artificial Intelligence. It’s a popular series. We have been doing it for a long time. We bring entrepreneurs as well as people in large companies to talk about what they are doing and seeing.
We have a comprehensive thesis on AI. Here are some of the nuggets of what I have observed. I want to hear what you have to say on these conclusions that I have arrived at.
>>>