1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Amos Ben-Meir at Sand Hill Angels (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: Can you talk about the highlights of your portfolio?

Amos Ben-Meir: I’ve done a number of exits that range from small to reasonable. There are two companies that are worth more than a billion. One is JUUL, which is an electronic cigarette company. There are people who are not fond of that type of investment because it’s in the cigarette space but it is electronic cigarette. It’s healthier than the traditional tobacco cigarettes. That’s been a good one for me and the group.

Another one, which I made outside the group, is a company which is a solar company that is using solar energy to generate steam for enhanced oil recovery in the oil and gas industry. They’ve got a huge facility that they’ve built for PDO in Oman. They recently got a big >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Christina Brodbeck of Rivet Ventures (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: This is a slightly different line of questioning. You explicitly mentioned that you are looking for companies that are looking to sell to the female demographics or purchase cycles that are influenced by the female demographics, however, your fund invests in both male and female founders. Can you comment on whether you believe there is a significant bias against female entrepreneurs in the industry?

Christina Brodbeck: I don’t know if it’s an intentional bias, but I do think the result is that it often is more difficult for female founders to raise money. The number of women investing partners is somewhere between 4% and 8%, which is pretty low. Oftentimes, >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Amos Ben-Meir at Sand Hill Angels (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: When you’re looking at enterprise deals, what are you comfortable with in terms of validation level? Are you looking for paying customers? Product ready but with no customers? >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Gary Little of Canvas Ventures (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: What do you think of unicorn mania? Are you chasing unicorns? What’s your analysis of the desire for unicorns?

Gary Little: We don’t chase unicorns. You start with things that look like mules and we try to grow them to a unicorn. When we select companies, we try to find companies that have the opportunity to be billion-dollar companies. We don’t chase companies that are already at the multi-hundred million valuation.

Sramana Mitra: The real question in that is what kind of TAM is interesting for you? Given where we are in the history of the startup industry, there are billion-dollar opportunities, but there are also many opportunities that are >>>

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. >>>