418th Roundtable Recording on October 11, 2018: With Shuly Galili, UpWest Labs

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

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Kanwaljit Singh of Fireside Ventures (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: In this case study, how many customers were they able to reach in an internet-only mode?

Kanwaljit Singh: I think it’s in the thousands. You can build very interesting businesses, especially in the Indian context if you can reach a core community of consumers. We believe that the lifetime value of the consumer is far more important than just reaching a certain number of consumers. A hundred thousand consumers who are buying our products on a regular basis has the potential. We’ve seen interesting milestones since there aren’t so many brands in India that have grown to $15 million to $20 million size.

Sramana Mitra: How much capital do you need in this model? What is your assessment of how much capital is >>>

Roundtable Recap: October 11 – Global Startup Acceleration Networks are Growing

During this week’s roundtable, we had as a guest Shuly Galili, Founding Partner, UpWest Labs, who talked to us about pre-seed and seed investments in the Israel – Silicon Valley corridor.

Sensfix
As for pitching, we had Balaji Renukumar from Palo Alto, California, pitching Sensfix, an IOT-based venture addressing the repair and maintenance of street lights and other infrastructure assets. Very cool company, and a great example of how various eco-systems are collaborating to produce new startups. This one has been accelerated in India and in Amsterdam, before showing up in Palo Alto.

We also discussed our new partnership with EIT Health to accelerate over 100 European Startups. More on this coming soon.

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1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Kanwaljit Singh of Fireside Ventures (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Let’s do a few case studies of your portfolio. We can do three or four of these. Take us through the evolution of these companies. When did they come to you? What did they have? What brought your confidence and what happened as they evolved?

Kanwaljit Singh: Let me a take an example of a company called Mama Earth, which targets the baby and the mom. The company is about two years old. It was founded by a couple when they realized that there was not a good choice of products they could use on their child across various personal care requirements. They decided to start this company for not just themselves but for millions of parents who are looking for safer products for their child. >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Kanwaljit Singh of Fireside Ventures (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: The other piece of this equation is let’s say you can invest quarter of a million to $2 million per company on funding. What does the rest of the ecosystem look like around you to build brand companies? What are they looking for in terms of proof points to want to come and play with you in deals like these?

Kanwaljit Singh: That’s a great question. That was one of the motivators for us when we started the fund. There really doesn’t exist a very diverse ecosystem in India for supporting these kinds of plays. What we have been able to do in a short span of time is start the process of building this ecosystem.

Interestingly, one emerging investor group that we work very closely with is Indian family offices. Like I mentioned, the investors in >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Kanwaljit Singh of Fireside 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 Kanwaljit Singh was recorded in May 2018.

Kanwaljit Singh is Founder of Fireside Ventures, a fund focused on building consumer brands in India. This is an excellent conversation about the nascent opportunity that, I expect, will be a major, worldwide phenomenon in the coming years.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by introducing our audience to you as well as to your fund. Tell us a bit about your investing focus. How big is the fund? What kind of investments do you like to make? >>>

417th 1Mby1M Entrepreneurship Podcast With Miriam Rivera, Ulu Ventures

Miriam Rivera, Partner at Ulu Ventures, a firm committed to diversity as its core investment philosophy.

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1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Deb Kemper of Golden Seeds (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: Let me ask you something much more blatant. When people look at young women entrepreneurs, there is this question about how this person manages children and family. What is your current investigation is reporting?

Deb Kemper: They’re doing it. No one ever asks their male peers these questions.

Sramana Mitra: Definitely not. Are they asking this question because there’s a lot of sensitivity around this right now?

Deb Kemper: It is latent. In our group, we have 80% women, most of whom have successful careers. I do have entrepreneurs who >>>