1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Christina Brodbeck of Rivet Ventures (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: My observation having talked to lots of investors at this point on this topic is that the answers tend to vary significantly. There’s a class of investors who are only interested in billion-dollar plus TAMs. Then there’s a body of investors coming together now who are doing smaller funds like yourself who are very pragmatic and understand that most of the exits happen in the $50 million to $60 million point.

To make good money off a $50 million exit, you have to do it capital efficiently and make sure that there is a ceiling to how much money you raise to be able to make sure that everybody has a healthy exit in that scenario. That’s a different class of investors. It’s interesting how every venture market is also segmenting big time. >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Amos Ben-Meir at Sand Hill Angels (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: What about your other syndicate group? Does it have the same kind of structure?

Amos Ben-Meir: OurCrowd is actually a venture firm. It was formed around 2013 by an experienced venture capitalist by the name of Jonathan Medved. They basically raised a fund of their own. They vet deals like a normal venture firm would. They built this investor platform where they take part of the allocation they get in a deal and make it available to their credit and investor network.

Their credit and investor network is global. There’re probably around 20,000 people. 50% of their investments are in Israeli >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Christina Brodbeck of Rivet Ventures (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Give us a flavor of what these companies are and how that aligns with your investment thesis. Help us understand your thought process in what about those companies have compelled you to invest.

Christina Brodbeck: I can go through four companies in our portfolio that we invested in. I’ll give you a little background on them and why we decided to invest. One of them is called Dote. It’s a shopping mall on your phone. Pretty much, every store that you would see at a physical shopping mall, you can shop in this mobile app.

What I really like about them and, partially, why we decided to invest is that the founders are very solid. They used to work at a gaming company. They really know how to increase user engagement. That was one of the reasons we invested in them. Another >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Amos Ben-Meir at Sand Hill Angels (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Let me try to ask you some questions that would help us understand how to work with you for our entrepreneurs. Let’s double-click down on Sand Hill Angels. Could you please explain to our audience how Sand Hill Angels work? What would be the procedure for us to work with you?

Let’s say you’re interested in a company, how would we go about it? What size of investments should we think about doing with the Sand Hill Angels group? Let’s build on that and we’ll come to your other methods of investment. >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Christina Brodbeck of Rivet 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 Christina Brodbeck of Rivet Ventures was recorded in March 2018.

Christina Brodbeck, Founding Partner at Rivet Ventures, talks about the firm’s investment thesis of funding companies that target the female demographic in its purchase decision cycle. Very interesting and under-served market.

Sramana Mitra: Why don’t we start by having you introduce yourself a little bit and what your background is? Then we’ll dive into Rivet Ventures. >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Amos Ben-Meir at Sand Hill Angels (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 Amos Ben-Meir of Sand Hill Angels was recorded in February 2018.

Amos Ben-Meir, Investor and Board Director at Sand Hill Angels, is a veteran angel investor. You will hear lots of details on working with a prominent angel group, as well as other types of syndicates.

Sramana Mitra: I think what we should start with is having you introduce yourself a little bit to our audience your history with startup investing. You’ve been around for a long time. What does the industry look like from your >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Gary Little of Canvas 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 Gary Little of Canvas Ventures was recorded in March 2018.

Gary Little, Co-founder at Canvas Ventures, discusses the various types of venture capital and the evolution of the industry into a rather segmented current eco-system. For an entrepreneur trying to raise money, all this is extremely complicated, but essential to understand, or else, you will find yourself trying to fit a round peg into a square hole.

Sramana Mitra: I think what would be great for our audience is to hear about a bit of your backstory before Canvas >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Rami Elkhatib of Acero Capital (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: How do you process unicorn mania? Are you chasing unicorns?

Rami Elkhatib: No, not really. Our entry point is either the Series A or Series B. In a Series B scenario, we come in and lead a Series B only if there is a situation where a company has awesome technology but is pivoting or changing its geography. We’re coming in at early-stage valuations. For us, unicorn-type valuations are something that don’t really affect us in terms of our entry into our investment. If any of our companies grow to a point where somebody wants to invest at a unicorn valuation, we’ll welcome that opportunity.

Sramana Mitra: Part of the problem that we see in the unicorn trend is that a lot of companies are getting artificially bloated >>>