Responding to a popular request, we are now sharing transcripts of our investor podcast interviews in this new series. The following interview with Mark Selcow was recorded in March 2019.
Mark Selcow, General Partner at Costanoa Ventures, talks about the firm’s primarily B2B investment thesis and strong penchant for investing in companies that have grown outside the Bay Area.
Sramana Mitra: We had Greg Sands of Costanoa a few months ago. We’re going to continue the conversation today with Mark. Let me just recap a little bit of the vital statistics of the fund that we’re talking about here.
>>>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.
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Michael Smerklo, Co-founder and Managing Director at Next Coast Ventures, talks about some of the ventures his firm has invested in and the philosophy in general.
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Sramana Mitra: In the other two parts of the portfolio where things are coming by referral, is there anything specific that’s interesting that you would like to discuss?
Harald Nieder: What’s interesting there is that there are a lot of different factors between the networks. If you look at our fund investors, that’s actually quite a broad range of people. We like to have entrepreneurs in there. We like to keep that entrepreneurial spirit throughout our whole structure.
>>>Sramana Mitra: Can you double-click down within the geography? How do you go about finding these teams?
Harald Nieder: You have to have a lot of tools available if you have a certain topic that you’re looking after. If you already know what you’re looking after, it’s relatively easy to go out with the databases that are around, with our own database, with our network that we have in that area.
>>>Sramana Mitra: B2B versus B2C, what’s your comfort zone?
Harald Nierde: We’re, in general, open. We don’t have a focus on either. So, we invest in both. If you look at the portfolio, we have both cases in there. We actually do like to have a mix in there.
>>>Harald Nieder: The other thing that’s important is obviously, the network, in particular for the early-stage investing. Network is very important. Keep in mind that in geography, we’ve been active more than 15 years, which means that we’ve had a lot of time to build our network.
For example, we’ve been connected in Berlin long before Berlin has become the hub that it is now. When you go to other countries or where we want to focus elsewhere, we really need to build our network there first.
>>>In case you missed it, you can listen to the recording here: