1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With William Hsu of Mucker Capital (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 William Hsu of Mucker Capital was recorded in January 2018. 

William Hsu is the Co-founder and Partner at Mucker Capital, a Los Angeles-based fund that invests largely outside Silicon Valley and follows a more fundamentals oriented approach.

Sramana Mitra: Tell us about the fund. How big is the fund? Tell us about your own background. Let’s get to know each other and let’s introduce your to our audience. >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Hussein Kanji of Hoxton Ventures (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: I think the Indian startup ecosystem is much larger than Europe right now.

Hussein Kanji: It is, but when you look at the global unicorns and where they’re coming from, about 50% of them are from the US, about 30% are from China, 4% from India, 1% from Israel, and 15% from Europe. There’s a more thriving community in India of entrepreneurship, but in terms of value creation, I think Europe punches way above its weight. >>>

194th 1Mby1M Entrepreneurship Podcast With Biplab Adhya and Venu Pemmaraju, Wipro Ventures

Biplab Adhya and Venu Pemmaraju, Co-Heads of Wipro Ventures.

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8 Investors Discuss Pre-Seed, Post-Seed, and Series A Financing via the Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum

What is the difference between pre-seed, post-seed and pre-Series A? This is not so simple anymore to understand. For entrepreneurs who are seeking financing for the first time, it’s not easy to understand where they fit in.

There is a lot of competition to get into some of the deals for Series A (and Series B). If you look at the numbers, there are 50,000 to 70,000 seed stage investments a year versus 1,200 to 1,500 Series A investments. Clearly there is a lot of companies in that pool that are not getting to Series A. Only a percentage of those are really the hot companies. The hot companies, by definition, are few and far between, which is why there is such a competition. There are a lot of companies in the middle.

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1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Hussein Kanji of Hoxton Ventures (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: We have a lot of adoption over the years in India. We’ve been very active in the Indian ecosystem. A lot of the early work in India was concept arbitrage from American ideas. That’s still true. There’s a lot of that going on.

There are new ideas coming out that leverage some of the uniqueness of the Indian market as well. I imagine that the same thing is happening in Europe now. That same kind of high-velocity concept arbitrate is happening in Europe as well.

Hussein Kanji: There’s an infamous company called Rocket Internet, which is originally German. Their entire investment thesis >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Hussein Kanji of Hoxton Ventures (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: You mentioned a travel company out of Vienna. Vienna isn’t exactly the hotbed of startups in Europe. What is the genesis of this company and how did this come about?

Hussein Kanji: It’s even more colorful. The two founders of the business are Australian, one of who moved to Vienna and married a local girl. They came from the tour space. If you ever want to go on safari in Africa, the way you’ll do that is you’ll Google “safari in Africa”. Most of the folks who provide tours are few bigger companies. It’s mostly boutique operators and there are hundreds of these doing all kinds of things. Nobody has taken up all that inventory and put it into one centralized database. That’s what they did. >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Hussein Kanji of Hoxton Ventures (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: I’m going to double-click down on some of these different types of businesses that you’ve invested in and ask you a few questions just to understand your thought process. What is it about a delivery company that is so unique? There are delivery companies all over the place right now in every continent and every country. Some of them are scaling well. Why is this particular company so special?

Hussein Kanji: Delivery was one of the early ones. Like I said, when a brand new market gets enabled, tons of companies are usually formed to try and build on that market. There was a company way back in the mid-90’s during the dot-com bubble called Kozmo. Kozmo tried to do delivery services in New York and it didn’t work. Kozmo didn’t work >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Hussein Kanji of Hoxton 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 Hussein Kanji of Hoxton Ventures was recorded in January 2018. 

Hussein Kanji, Partner at Hoxton Ventures, is based in London and the primary focus is on European ventures.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s get you acquainted with our audience. Tell us about your fund. How big is the fund? What sized investments do you like to make? >>>