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? >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Semyon Dukach of One Way Ventures (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Let me ask the question in the context of non-Indian and non-Israeli founders. We also talk to a lot of European investors. One of the things I’m hearing is, there’s a real optimism right now in France. Paris is the story of 2017 as one of the investors based in London quoted recently to me.

What are you seeing? Where are the big pockets of immigrant founders that you are encountering? Cultures have biases. India benefits from the fact that there there’s a very big pool of IT services and offshore companies that have been based in India. There’s a very large trained workforce out of India. A large portion of that is here as well. The bridge has developed over a 20 to 30 year period. >>>

402nd 1Mby1M Entrepreneurship Podcast With Kelly Perdew, Moonshots Capital

Kelly Perdew is Co-founder and Managing General Partner at Moonshots Capital, a firm that has a unique investment thesis of supporting military veterans. Very interesting insights.

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1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Semyon Dukach of One Way Ventures (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: What else can you tell us? Besides founder-related traits, what else can you tell us about that’s interesting about your fund?

Semyon Dukach: It’s a unique fund in that we are specifically targeting immigrants. The value add that’s differentiated is, we’re building a network between these people who have a shared identity. We’re encouraging our immigrant founders to expand their notion of who they are and get away from this binary choice of their ethnic background or their new country.

Instead, give them the power to consider themselves immigrants in general. For instance, a Bulgarian founder in Boston can feel some kinship with an Indian founder in Boston and join the Indian mafia to the extent that it exists. >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Semyon Dukach of One Way 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 Semyon Dukach, One Way Ventures was recorded in January 2018. 

Semyon Dukach is the Managing Partner at One Way Ventures, a firm that is 100% focused on immigrant entrepreneurs.

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

Semyon Dukach: We’re a seed fund based in Boston. We focus on backing great immigrant entrepreneurs. These are founders that have gone through a personal immigration experience and one that was formative to who they are. >>>