1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Alexander Ross of Illuminate Financial (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 Alexander Ross was recorded in July 2018.

Alexander Ross, Founder at Illuminate Financial, talks about his firm’s FinTech investment thesis.

Sramana Mitra: Tell us a little bit about your fund and your investing focus. Let’s get to know one another. Let’s introduce you to our audience.

Alexander Ross: Our fund is called Illuminate Financial. We are a financial market technology-focused venture capital fund. We saw a space in >>>

413th 1Mby1M Entrepreneurship Podcast With Spencer Crawley, Firstminute Capital

Spencer Crawley is Co-founder of Firstminute Capital, based in London and focused on European startups.

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1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Dafina Toncheva of US Venture Partners (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 Dafina Toncheva was recorded in August 2018.

Dafina Toncheva, Partner at US Venture Partners, is an expert in Cyber Security. We discussed a variety of topics including the shifting of Series A metrics to $2M – $3M ARR for SaaS companies.

Sramana Mitra: Tell us a bit about yourself as well as US Venture Partners. Where is the investment focus today? I know USVP has a long history of being in all different corners of the technology industry. >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Waikit Lau (Part 4)

Waikit Lau: My advice is whether you’re a tech guy or business guy, find your soulmate in some place in business. If you are a business guy, find your counterpart on the tech side. If you’re a tech guy, find your counterpart in business. To me, you just need one other co-founder. This is where your past experience comes into play. Who have you worked well with that you can rely on? That’s really important.

There are two reasons why startups don’t make it. Number one is, they run out of money. Number two, is the founders give up. A lot of times, the root cause of founders giving up is that the founders just don’t get along. That’s really important. You’re going to spend more time with your co-founder than your spouse. It’s non-deterministic. Invest time in going out and networking. Meet people. Spend a few months working with people who excite you and see how that pans out. It’s important to test things out. >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Waikit Lau (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: What was the stage at which you got involved?

Waikit Lau: In this case, I was the third or the fourth check. I was very early. There was no lead. They had raised a little bit of angel money. I just said, “I like you guys so much. I like your team and technology. I will help you find a lead. I’ll write my check now.” For them, it’s very early.

Sramana Mitra: What’s very inspiring listening to you for this community is that we constantly see investors who are all wanting to come in after there is validation. When you’re developing complex technology, especially making some very serious technological breakthroughs, it’s not so easy to check all those boxes before going out to raise financing. You need financing to get to those checkpoints. >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Brock Pierce of Blockchain Capital (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: In the last example, you have talked about protocol and security in the context of the developed market and one of your hotshot investments. What about the application side of the developed market? What kind of new FinTech applications are coming about that you’ve invested in that are interesting because of Blockchain?

Brock Pierce: I’ll talk briefly a bit about a company called Ripple, which is our largest investment in our second fund. That one investment was enough to make any fund successful. Ripple does a bunch of things. When banks send money from a bank to another bank, it runs on T+3. When banks send money to each other, they usually have what’s called a three-day settlement. It takes three days for the money to move from one bank to another. >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Waikit Lau (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Let’s talk a little bit about how you operate. If you put in $25,000 to $50,000, do you operate with a syndicate that would bring in the rest? Do you lead a syndicate? Do you follow into a syndicate?

Waikit Lau: It depends on what the entrepreneur wants and needs. They may say, “I’ve got no connections. I’m new to this, but I’ve got something really interesting.” I essentially help them either put together a syndicate where I run the syndicate or I introduce them to potential lead investors that I think would gel with them personality-wise. In a lot of cases, entrepreneurs already have their syndicates set or they have a lead investor. In which case, I’m just a follower. I’ll just write a check for myself.

In the cases where I have led or co-led, it runs the gamut. I have an AngelList syndicate where I’ve done deals where I run a few hundred thousand

>>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Brock Pierce of Blockchain Capital (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: What about infrastructure in the developing world?

Brock Pierce: Access to capital is one of the main challenges that governments have around the world. They have to use their balance sheets to basically sign guarantees. With those guarantees, there are people who will lend to the groups that are building the infrastructure on behalf of these nations. Infra tech is a new fund that’s forming right now. It’s in the business of providing infrastructure by using new means of accessing capital.

Capital formation is changing greatly right now. That is due to Blockchain enabling peer-to-peer financing both at the micro-level as well as the >>>