1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With George Spencer of Seyen Capital (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 George Spencer was recorded in January 2019.

George invests in SaaS companies mostly in the Midwest from a small fund out of Chicago. The interview contains an excellent discussion on ideal levels of capitalization for good exit prices. >>>

428th Roundtable Recording on January 16, 2019: With Ondrej Bartos, Credo Ventures

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

Roundtable Recap: January 16 – Spotlight on Entrepreneurship in Central Europe

During this week’s roundtable, we had as our guest Ondrej Bartos, General Partner at Credo Ventures based in Prague, focused 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.

WellWrap
As for the pitches, first up, we had Abi Kariguiddaiah, a 1Mby1M Premium member from Danville, California, pitch WellWrap.

SharesInside
Next, we had Dave Hannam from Zurich, Switzerland, pitch SharesInside, a company that is currently at a $1M ARR level.

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427th Roundtable Recording on January 10, 2019: With Daniel Keiper-Knorr, SpeedInvest

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

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Spencer Crawley of Firstminute Capital (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: In a nutshell, you are still looking at unicorn exits as the preferred investment thesis.

Spencer Crawley: Correct.

Sramana Mitra: It is the conventional wisdom of venture capital.

Spencer Crawley: We debated it at length. It’s not something that we took as gospel from day one. It’s a more organic process of building a business and scaling. In a way, it’s a very VC question in terms of when you’re meeting a seed-stage company to have a meaningful internal debate if this is a billion dollar exit or not. It’s a little bit academic. The amount of unknowns are so significant. >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Spencer Crawley of Firstminute Capital (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: What are some of the highlights of your portfolio? Tell us about what stage and what condition you encountered when you chose to invest in them. What is it about them that caused you to place the bet?

Spencer Crawley: I have to think through my head about which ones are public and which are not. I mentioned the gaming business in Berlin. It’s a business called Klang. We invested in the A round at the beginning of this year. Elliot, a colleague of mine, sourced that business by trailing through a list of 2,000 names that flushed the conference in Helsinki. He met them there and started to open a dialogue with them. They’re building an MMO.

The business was founded a couple of years ago but its timing had become really interesting. When we met them, they had success with their initial >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Spencer Crawley of Firstminute Capital (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: We just announced a partnership with EIT Health. They are going to be accelerating 115 companies with us. The first 15 have been named.

Spencer Crawley: How did that come about? That seems really impressive and exciting.

Sramana Mitra: We have very deep connections in Europe. I am married to a European. My husband, Dominique Trempont, was Steve Jobs’ right hand at Next. He’s on the Board of one of your British media conglomerates DMGT.

Spencer Crawley: I’m on the fourth floor of Northcliffe House. >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Spencer Crawley of Firstminute Capital (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Let’s talk about your definition of seed. What do you like to invest in stage-wise? I’ll pre-qualify that question by giving you some context. At least in Silicon Valley, seed has fragmented into pre-seed, seed, post-seed, pre-Series A, small Series A, and then the traditional Series A. How does it look like from your point of view and the European landscape?

Spencer Crawley: This week, I’ve heard seed two, mango seed, seed extensions. The semantics have gotten imaginative. I think for us, we set up the fund to be deliberately opportunistic. By that I mean we invest in the best founders anywhere, whilst having and holding deep thesis across a number of areas. We really wanted to be able to be agile and back founders wherever we see them. >>>