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? >>>
Nandini Mansinghka is CEO and Managing Director at Mumbai Angels Network, one of the oldest angel networks in India.
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Sramana Mitra: Would you want to do another case study of companies that you’ve invested in and that you particularly think highly of?
Sumner Douglas: I’ll do one that I got involved in. A couple of years ago, I made the cardinal sin as the Managing Director and left to join one of our portfolio companies called Vutiliti. They create a device that enables you to hack the smart meter in infrastructure In smart cities and in residential areas and see real-time consumption of electricity, water, and natural gas. We can see that in a much more granular functionality back to the power companies or the utility companies as well as the end residence. >>>
Preeti Rathi, Partner at Ignition Partners, discusses the changing dynamics of seed investing.
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Sramana Mitra: On that geography topic, what’s happening from an immigration point of view in Vancouver, Canada given the friction that’s happening now in America around immigration? Are you seeing a big influx of talented engineers that are also entrepreneurs from other places?
Alireza Rahnema: I must say this has vindicated our thesis with 7 Gate in the past couple of years. Even founders, with the background that we had, have been disbarred from going the route of a US immigration. We see a lot of these talented graduates from technical universities in the Middle East looking at Vancouver as an alternative to the States, given the political climate. >>>
Ondrej Bartos, General Partner at Credo Ventures based in Prague, focuses on investing in Central European startups. Their major success story is UiPath in robotics process automation that has raised $265 million at a $3 billion valuation. UiPath has over 2,100 customers and claims to have annual revenues of $150 million. We discuss the Romanian company in some detail.
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Sramana Mitra: Tell me a bit about the geography. You said Salt Lake City. Does that mean that you’re investing only in new test startups? What is your policy?
Sumner Douglas: Definitely not. We definitely do take a lot of surge from Utah. The Utah tech game has grown significantly over the last couple of years. We see a huge amount of deal flow coming out of Salt Lake City and very high quality deals. We look at deals throughout the domestic US and internationally. >>>
Daniel Keiper-Knorr is Founder and General Partner at SpeedInvest, a venture firm based in Vienna. It’s great to see exciting energy and activity in Vienna, one of my favorite cities.
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