1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Keith Bank, Founder CEO at KB Partners (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Let’s talk about some of the digital businesses in sports tech. 

Keith Bank: One that I’m particularly proud of and where we’ve got a lot of activity right now is Phenix. This came to me in a very unusual way. My son was in the commercial real estate business. One day he said, “I like what I’m doing and I’m doing well, but I think I want to go to work for an early-stage tech company.” He did and he found this company.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Keith Bank, Founder CEO at KB Partners (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: I’m going to get to talking about specific trends and specific companies in a moment. I just want to clarify one thing which is the stage issue. Give us a sense of what is your definition of seed.

What do you like to see by way of validation before you’re willing to write a check? What sized checks do you write as your first check?

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Keith Bank, Founder CEO at KB Partners (Part 1)

Keith Bank is Founder CEO at KB Partners, a venture firm focused on sports technology.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Semyon Dukach, Managing Partner at One Way Ventures (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: If a team is strong, are you okay with investing before pre-product? 

Semyon Dukach: It takes more than a strong team. In my view, the team for this company was clearly the best in the world. There was no way that a team with more money could be stronger than this one. It was not a question of being strong; it was a question of being number one. In most of our investments, the product, revenue, and the customers are already there. 

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Semyon Dukach, Managing Partner at One Way Ventures (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: How close is your activity portfolio within the MIT community? 

Semyon Dukach: We have quite a bit of stuff around MIT. I’ve been physically in Boston ever since I went to MIT 30 years ago. We have a lot of stuff with Harvard and other universities as well. I think that is one of our areas of focus – IT startups with defensible tech.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Semyon Dukach, Managing Partner at One Way Ventures (Part 1)

Semyon Dukach is Managing Partner at One Way Ventures, a VC fund focused on immigrant founders.

Sramana Mitra: We are going to have a conversation with Semyon Dukach, the Managing Partner at One Way Ventures. Let’s introduce our audience to yourself as well as to One Way Ventures. 

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Roman Kikta, Managing Partner at Mobility Ventures (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Solutions looking for problems are much harder to get through to scale. I think it’s much better to start by solving a problem and then working out how you are going to market first before building something.

That is what we practice here at 1M1M – the need to understand what market you are going after and how you are going to position. It sounds like you are from Finland originally? 

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Roman Kikta, Managing Partner at Mobility Ventures (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: A lot of entrepreneurs look for product-market fit. We also want investor-entrepreneur fit. It needs to happen for a deal to happen. The reason that I’m asking you all these questions about stage, geography, and styles of companies is that they are relevant to getting an investor-entrepreneur fit.

There is also this unfair advantage. If you can, as an entrepreneur, connect with an investor who also has an unfair advantage in the domain that you are working on, that is a multiplier.