403rd 1Mby1M Entrepreneurship Podcast With Kerry Rupp, True Wealth Ventures

Kerry Rupp, Partner at True Wealth Ventures, discusses their women-focused investment thesis.

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1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Deb Kemper of Golden Seeds (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: I am completely in agreement with you. I really think that there should be a large pool of investors that are not unicorn hunters but who operate within the equity investing framework that we use in our ecosystem and may have successful investments. We need more of those. It’s unfortunate to see this mania. It makes me feel that we’re going to see lots of unnecessary failures where some of this money could have been channeled better.

Deb Kemper: It’s also a function of fund economics. If you have a $30 million fund and you get a $60 million exit, you’ve paid back your fund. If I have a billion dollar fund, I need a billion dollar plus exit to return.

Sramana Mitra: That is a different business. That’s almost private equity. If you have a billion dollar fund, you have >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Deb Kemper of Golden Seeds (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: What stage did you get involved in either of these companies?

Deb Kemper: For both of them, Golden Seeds was in their initial seed financing round. On one, I was on the seed. On another, I got in a little bit later. I didn’t invest the first time it came around.

Sramana Mitra: Did your micro-VC also invest in these companies?

Deb Kemper: It did in one of them.

Sramana Mitra: I’m listening to you about the second company where you already got an exit within 18 months >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With SC Moatti of Mighty Capital (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: You are preaching to the choir. It’s exactly our philosophy. We have a very clear philosophy of bootstrapping first and raising money later. We don’t take any equity. We are the largest virtual accelerator and we don’t take equity because I don’t believe you should be taking equity as an incubator or accelerator.

If you are an accelerator fund like YCombinator, they do have great ecosystems. That’s different. The vast majority of accelerators actually don’t add much value. They take away a lot of equity. Exactly the scenario that you described happens.

Our preference and our advice is not to raise too much money, do not try to go through these drib drab financing. >>>

417th Roundtable Recording On October 4, 2018: With Miriam Rivera, Ulu Ventures

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

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Deb Kemper of Golden Seeds (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: What is the earliest stage at which they would go in? Would people go in with no product and just a concept?

Deb Kemper: People would go in before validated product market fit. It’s between the concept and having that. At least a beta. We rarely go in on an alpha stage. We like to see people figuring out a way to do that initial build out. We’d come in at the beta where there’s clear testing you’re trying to do.

There’s clear stage-gating of what’s going to happen and things that will be learned from that. It’s also very different. We’re sector-agnostic. Since we’re focused on the gender diversity question, we try not to limit too much on the technology and sectors that we look >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With SC Moatti of Mighty Capital (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: The corollary of our previous saying is that VCs love to come to the rescue of victory. That is also a very popular saying in our community.

SC Moatti: It’s a very interesting point that you mentioned. What you’re saying is the traditional VC industry has whales and minnows. Some people are here just for the show. Some people are coming in and taking over victory. I would say that I tend to agree. The traditional industry has its faults.

The reason I talk about the dolphins is that this is something that we are trying to change. There are all the dolphins out there who are >>>

Roundtable Recap: October 4 – Diversity in Focus

During this week’s roundtable, we had as a guest Miriam Rivera, Partner at Ulu Ventures, a firm committed to diversity as its core investment philosophy.

undivide
As for the pitches, first up, we had Mohan Perera from Melbourne, Australia, pitching undivide, a compliance management software for blue collar workforces.

The Fractal Entrepreneurship Foundation
Then Radha Eswar from Bangalore, India, pitched The Fractal Entrepreneurship Foundation, a network of bottom-of-the-pyramid franchises focused on generating livelihoods in a systematic way. Very interesting.

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