1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Elly Truesdell of Almanac Insights (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Are you familiar with ButcherBox?

Elly Truesdell: Yes.

Sramana Mitra: I did a story with the entrepreneur. What struck me was that one of the things he faces when talking to investors is that it is a perishable product. How do you view this? Lots of food companies are selling perishable products.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Ritesh Agarwal of CerraCap Ventures (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Switching gears a bit, tell us a bit of a few companies you’ve invested in. Maybe start with the two that are turning into unicorns. Tell us where you encountered them and how you encountered them. What state were they in? What did you see in those companies that told you that this is going to go?

I’m trying to get at your thought process in thinking through investment opportunities. 

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Elly Truesdell of Almanac Insights (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: You come from the traditional retail background. How does e-commerce play into this? What are the trends? How are you playing into those trends?

Elly Truesdell: We try to stay very aware of food being such a traditional system. There is an operational piece that’s still somewhat old school and traditional. There is some real need and attention being paid to where we can modernize this and can put tech behind better distribution, better logistics to get people food faster, safer, and fresher.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Ritesh Agarwal of CerraCap Ventures (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: I’m going to ask you for a couple of more specific points on that. You have a CIO panel. Do you also have a CISO panel that you check with when you do cyber security investments?

Ritesh Agarwal: Primarily CIO. If the CIO feels that he needs to get his extended team involved, they’d refer to their ecosystem or their folks.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Elly Truesdell of Almanac Insights (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: In your industry, how do you see geography playing out? I take it you invest mostly in American companies. 

Elly Truesdell: Primarily American companies. We have recently made our first investment in a Canadian company. We are open to and will look at companies abroad. Where we really like to make sure we’re positioning ourselves is to add value.

If we’re being pitched by a European or South American company that is strictly doing business in those countries, we don’t necessarily bring much value. We want to make sure that there’s a reason for us to invest. 

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Ritesh Agarwal of CerraCap 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 Ritesh Agarwal was recorded in April 2020.

Ritesh Agarwal is Co-Founder and Managing Director at CerraCap Ventures, a deep tech-focused early stage firm.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Elly Truesdell of Almanac Insights (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 Elly Truesdell was recorded in March 2020.

Elly Truesdell is Partner at Almanac Insights, a fund focused on food-related investments. We have a fascinating conversation.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Darshana Zaveri of Catalyst Health Ventures (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Given that you are in a sector that is very relevant to what we are going through right now, what do you see is going to happen? There is a furious effort to come up with all kinds of testing devices with coronavirus and testing for antibodies of who has already gotten it. All these are medical device problems.

There is, of course, the vaccine side, but there is a big medical device issue that is developing. How do you process what’s happening?