1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Cristobal Perdomo of Jaguar 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 Cristobal Perdomo was recorded in May 2019.

Cristobal Perdomo is Co-Founder and General Partner at Jaguar Ventures, a venture fund that invests in Latin America.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s get to know you. Tell us about yourself as well as Jaguar Ventures. What do you like to invest in? What sized funds are you working with?

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Shripati Acharya of Prime Venture Partners (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: You’re based in Bangalore?

Shripati Acharya: That’s correct.

Sramana Mitra: Do all the companies need to be in Bangalore?

Shripati Acharya: Most of our companies are in Bangalore. We do have companies in Delhi. There is more effort to do that. We have to make that extra effort.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Shripati Acharya of Prime Venture Partners (Part 2)

Shripati Acharya: The reason we say we’re the first institutional check is that we are fairly comfortable in ambiguity in the company. This dovetails into your second question, which is what we are looking for.

We are looking for a thesis from the entrepreneur – a conviction of what they’re trying to build, which exhibits 10x insight. By 10x insight, it could be 10x in terms of the value proposition. It could be 10x in terms of how the product is going to get distributed out to the consumers and customers.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Shripati Acharya of Prime Venture Partners (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 Shripati Acharya was recorded in April 2019.

Shripati Acharya is Managing Partner at Priven Advisors, advising Prime Venture Partners, a firm focused on core technology ventures in India. Unlike most VCs, Prime does do concept-stage investments.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s get acquainted. Let’s get our audience introduced to you as well as to Prime.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Sarbvir Singh of WaterBridge Ventures (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: I was just talking about trends in various kinds of lending businesses. If you look at QuickBooks financing, it’s Intuit’s product. They’re lending to small businesses that use QuickBooks online.

The dataset they’re using to evaluate is QuickBooks data. That’s a proprietary dataset that nobody else has access to. It’s an unfair advantage that Intuit has.

That was my question. What is the dataset that gives you that unfair advantage in that case?

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Michael Smerklo of Next Coast Ventures (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: The geographies that you’ve mentioned, we have quite a bit of experience in some of them. Utah is really booming. Utah has taken that bootstrapping ethos to the ultimate levels of success. They have seen company after company bootstrap to success. Utah really stands out.

Michael Smerklo: We think this is a major trend. This is a long-term trend. I just came back from Silicon Valley. There’s no place like it in the world. At the end of the day, there’s cost of living and ability to attract talent.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Sarbvir Singh of WaterBridge Ventures (Part 5)

Sarbvir Singh: We believe that just focusing on size and hungry businesses is not always the right solution. We want to rightsize our fund. There is also the reality of running a fund and there is a cost to it. You have to get both sides right.

There are different solutions that people can arrive at depending on their perspective. We believe in s right-sized fund that is focused on early-stage. Focus on what you know. The other thing is unlike some other early-stage funds, we don’t follow a spray-and-pray kind of approach.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Michael Smerklo of Next Coast Ventures (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Very interesting. I would definitely like to learn more about EverlyWell. I’ve seen a company like this – Iris Wellness, which dealt with the issue of the physicians not wanting to process. None of the physicians were equipped to deal with it.

I’m very curious about how she is handling the interface with the physicians. Eventually, this has to plug into the physicians.