1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Bill Baumel of Ohio Innovation Fund (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: In your experience in the venture capital industry, you must have realized that the bulk of the exits in the industry happen in the $50 million to $60 million price point. Unless you can build businesses capital efficiently, you don’t really make money of those exits.

Bill Baumel: Bingo. We are exactly focused on that. We love the billion-dollar exit. It’s tough to make money in a $10 million to $20 million sale but when you start getting into the $50 million to $100 million range, you start getting nice returns there. Hopefully, a few of them can achieve close to a billion.

Sramana Mitra: I strongly suggest that you take a look at these spotlights on Colorado and Utah. There are two or three >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Bill Baumel of Ohio Innovation Fund (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Do you have preference between B2B or B2C?

Bill Baumel: Twitter and Facebook have shown that you can make a lot of money on B2C. My background is on the B2B side. We do have one B2C technology company that’s in the financial payments area. Most of the other companies are B2B SaaS, cybersecurity, and data science.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s double-click down into your ecosystem. What are the numbers in Ohio? How many startups are operating in Ohio? You can include venture-fundable as well as bootstrapped startups. We are a huge supporter of bootstrapped startups as well. >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Bill Baumel of Ohio Innovation Fund (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 Kara Weber was recorded in November 2018.

Bill Baumel, Managing Director at Ohio Innovation Fund, shares terrific insight into the region’s progress.

Sramana Mitra: Tell us a bit about yourself. Tell us about Ohio Innovation Fund. What is the investment focus? How big is the fund? What sized investments are you making? Let’s get you acquainted with our audience.

Bill Baumel: I grew up in Ohio. I went to Ohio State. I went to its archrival school in Michigan and actually was a venture capitalist in >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Kara Weber of Brilliant Ventures (Part 4)

Kara Weber: I talked about a female-founded company in LA and a female-founded company in New York. We don’t just invest in companies founded by women but 65% of our companies have female founders. Today, I’m going to focus on female-founded businesses.

Riveter is a Seattle-based company with locations in Seattle and Los Angeles. Riveter is a female-forward co-working space and community designed by women for everyone. It’s this incredible new addition for women who are starting businesses, running their own businesses, doing creative work, and running companies. They’ve got three locations in Seattle. They now have two in Los Angeles.

All of those locations have very quickly not only attracted lots of members who do co-working but fantastic events. Jane Fonda has held a couple >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Kara Weber of Brilliant Ventures (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: You said you got involved before anybody else because you met this person long back. You resonated with what they were saying. At what stage did you write the check?

Kara Weber: I wrote the check at the pre-seed stage.

Sramana Mitra: This is one of the exceptions where you did do pre-seed.

Kara Weber: She was a rare exception in a couple of ways. I did pre-seed, but she actually already had paying customers. She was able to invest on her own and get her first customers. >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Kara Weber of Brilliant Ventures (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: What do you like to invest in?

Kara Weber: We invest in companies transforming the future of commerce. Those companies need to be led by brilliant and diverse leadership teams. When we say transforming the future of commerce, we’re not only talking about brands and consumer products, although we have invested in several. We also invest in companies who are driving the future of commerce from behind the scenes.

A great example would be Happy Returns which is a company that offers services around the entire stack for commerce. Their customers include Everlane and Parachute and other well-known consumer brands who have happily handed off their responsibility for managing returns. They’re not a consumer-facing business, but they are driving commerce. >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Kara Weber of Brilliant 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 Kara Weber was recorded in November 2018.

Kara Weber, Founder and General Partner at Brilliant Ventures, speaks extensively about her commitment to female founders.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s get you acquainted with our audience. Tell us about yourself and a bit about your investing focus. How big is the fund? What kind of investments do you like to make? Let’s get acquainted.

Kara Weber: I founded Brilliant Ventures a couple of years ago after a 20-plus year career as an entrepreneur and operator. I was one of the first >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Ray Chan of K5 Ventures (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: How many companies have you invested in so far?

Ray Chan: Over the last seven years, we have invested in over a hundred companies. Of course, a lot of them disappeared. Some of them are still going on.

Sramana Mitra: Where I’m going with the question is what have you learned from investing in these hundred companies? How long does it take to get to FDA and get to a milestone where you can exit? How many of these hundred have you gone through with that cycle?

Ray Chan: Usually, the milestone cannot go beyond a year or a year and a half. The money we invest is not a lot. We don’t usually look beyond a >>>