1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Navid Alipour of Analytics Ventures (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: What constitutes the profile of a founder that you would want to found a company with?

Navid Alipour: If it’s not a corporate founder, whether it’s a very large public insurance company or a private advertising company, it’s usually going to be a scientist, academician, or entrepreneur. They have a certain domain of expertise but they can’t take the risk of quitting their job. They have a husband or wife, a mortgage, two kids, or they’re an entrepreneur busy doing something, and they say, “When I’m done with this, I’m going to do this other idea.” >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Navid Alipour of Analytics Ventures (Part 2)

Navid Alipour: Our LP’s said “We want you to start other companies that are applying artificial intelligence, machine learning, and deep learning to clean structure data.” By applying this AI, you can make a prediction or you can detect something that doesn’t belong.

By doing one of those things, you’re going to increase revenues, decrease costs by bringing operational efficiencies. Or in the healthcare sense, you are not just saving money in bringing efficiencies, but you’re also prolonging life and saving lives as well. In breast cancer example, if detected earlier, the odds of survival are significantly higher. That’s where we’re proud. >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Navid Alipour of Analytics Ventures (Part 1)

Responding to popular request, we are now sharing transcripts of our investor podcast interviews in this new series. The following interview with Navid Alipour was recorded in January 2019.

Navid Alipour, Co-Founder and Managing Partner at Analytics Ventures, talks about their AI-focused venture studio in San Diego.

Sramana Mitra: Tell us about Analytics Ventures and yourself. What are you looking at?  What is your investment thesis? Let’s get acquainted.

Navid Alipour: We are based here in San Diego, California. I like to describe Analytics Ventures as a three-legged platform. One leg is our fund, which is a dedicated fund. The mandate from our investors is to invest in companies that we co-found with other scientists for academic entrepreneurs or other public or private corporations under the venture studio model. >>>

431st Roundtable Recording on February 14, 2019: With Yash Hemaraj, Arka Venture Labs and BGV

In case you missed it, you can listen to the recording of this roundtable here:

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Alireza Rahnema of 7 Gate Ventures (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: How are people thinking about this unicorn versus non-unicorn versus niches? How is the Canadian investment in general thinking about this?

Alireza Rahnema: I’ve work about this when it comes to different scene between startup the ecosystem. I’ve spent half of my time here and half of my time down San Francisco. When it comes to talent, there’s no shortage of talent in Canada with its very strong education system and extremely strong technical focus. >>>

Roundtable Recap: February 14 – A Discussion on the Indian B-to-B SaaS Opportunity with Yash Hemeraj of Arka Labs

During this week’s roundtable, we had as our guest Yash Hemaraj, Founding Partner at Arka Venture Labs and Partner at Benhamou Global Ventures (BGV). Arka has recently partnered with 1Mby1M to accelerate Indian B-to-B SaaS companies.

SnapSupport
We then had Madhu Augustine, a 1Mby1M Premium member from the San Francisco Bay Area, pitch SnapSupport, a revenue generating B-to-B SaaS company.

You can listen to the recording of this roundtable here:

>>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Alireza Rahnema of 7 Gate Ventures (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Let’s do another company.

Alireza Rahnema: Another company that has a very interesting background is Spocket. Spocket is one of the top three service providers on the Shopify platform. They help e-commerce retailers acquire products to sell and help find the right products based on desires and the location. The backbone is what makes it interesting for us.

The founder is of Iranian descent. He was attending medical school when he started dabbling in drop shipping. A few months on, he created the first version of Spocket which we tracked. He came to us on hearing about 7 Gate. He was invited to attend a Tech Stars program while working at Spocket. >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Alireza Rahnema of 7 Gate Ventures (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Would it be fair to say that you’re comfortable with pre-seed investment?

Alireza Rahnema: Absolutely! Over 50% of those are pre-seeds. So far, a significant portion stay. Almost 90% have gone on to a seed and we have invested on as they grow up.

Sramana Mitra: Talk about the types of companies that you like to invest in – B2B, B2C, hybrid? What’s your comfort zone? >>>