1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Mark Achler of MATH Venture Partners 2021 (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Let’s talk about trends. What are you investing in? You can use examples and case studies. What are you seeing? What would you like to see? What trends are you seeing that you would like to invest in more?

Mark Achler: In preparation for this interview, I was thinking about this question and I’m approaching this in a slightly different way.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Suman Talukdar, Founder and Managing Partner at AiSprouts.VC (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: I love this kind of multicultural perspective. As you know, we are a global accelerator, so we work with entrepreneurs all around the world. When you started talking about AiSprouts, you said that you wanted some product validation.

Talk to us about what you mean by that. In that context, you also said that you developed some thesis on what makes a breakout company. Talk about what that thesis is and how you see the beginning of that in an early validation process. 

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Mark Achler of MATH Venture Partners 2021 (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 Mark Achler of MATH Venture Partners was recorded in January 2021.

Mark Achler, MATH Venture Partners, focuses on B2B selling as a key factor in startup success.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Suman Talukdar, Founder and Managing Partner at AiSprouts.VC (Part 1)

Suman Talukdar is Founder and Managing Partner at AiSprouts.VC.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Venktesh Shukla, General Partner at Monta Vista Capital (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: Talk a little bit about the unicorns in your portfolio.

Venktesh Shukla: Let’s talk about three different categories I mentioned that we invest in. We have a unicorn or soon-to-be unicorns in all those three things. We are invested in a cloud infrastructure company called Aviatrix.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Venktesh Shukla, General Partner at Monta Vista Capital (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: My next question is something that we touched upon a little bit when we spoke some time ago. In the fund strategy, one of the things we’re seeing is that there is a class of funds that is still focused on finding unicorns.

They are looking for the very large billion-dollar opportunities, but there are thousands of micro-VCs out there right now that are working in the mode where they will do the early stage and early exit at a sub-$50 million range. Some of them are doing it in two to three years and then selling their stakes into the latter rounds.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Venktesh Shukla, General Partner at Monta Vista Capital (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: If you were to look back on the 30 companies that you invested in, which ones are concept-stage ventures that you have invested in without anything already built?

Venktesh Shukla: Practically every one of them. 

Sramana Mitra: Very interesting. That’s actually unique. I’m going to give you some feedback on what’s happening in the venture world. There’s a lot of money available for companies that are doing some level of validation work and ideally generating some level of traction.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Venktesh Shukla, General Partner at Monta Vista Capital (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: I am very intellectually curious. I feel very humbled with how little I know about all these segments that we are working with. At the same time, there are methodology elements that we have come up with in doing this for such a long time that apply to a lot of different scenarios.

Let’s say you’re doing B2B selling to small businesses, there’s a playbook for that. If you’re selling to enterprises, there’s a playbook for that. If you’re doing B2C transactions, there’s a playbook for that.