1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Oded Hermoni of Rhodium Venture Partners (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: We are in 2017. Lots of stuff have already been built. Nowadays, there aren’t so many wide open opportunities for doing fundamental things the way Salesforce or Facebook did it. The incumbents are incredibly powerful. They have monopolistic power.

We have a lot of capital in the system right now. If you’re managing a chunk of money, you have to think of an investment thesis of where you can really get returns. One of the observations I’ve had is that if everybody is chasing unicorns, it’s not going to work because there aren’t that many unicorns. Unicorns, by definition, 

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1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With John Dougery of Inventus Capital (Part 5)

John Dougery: I think that the point about SaaS is all about market size, but we have a different view. We have been doing SaaS companies since we started 10 years ago out of India. We’ve always had a thesis that business software companies are going to be very interesting product opportunities. That came out of our own perspective where we don’t have a geographic bias.

We’re going to invest in startups in Silicon Valley. We’re going to invest in startups in India. We do it out of a thesis-based approach and say, “Which one is the best product?” Even business software that is addressing the Indian market ultimately is going to face competition from overseas or they have to go overseas. They have to have a thesis that they can be number one. >>>

4 Investors Discuss Early Stage Startup Investing in Podcasts

In the current early stage investment universe, we have had a lot of change. It used to be simply seed and Series A. Now it’s pre-seed, seed, post-seed, pre-Series A. It’s a very wide spectrum even within early stage investment. To give entrepreneurs the advantage of understanding these changes, I have asked several seed investors to share in specifics how they define early stage and in what part of the continuum they play. Have a listen to these recent 30-minute podcast interviews to learn where your startup might fall within the ever-changing early stage investment world.

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.

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390th 1Mby1M Entrepreneurship Podcast With Yanai Oron, Vertex Ventures

Yanai Oron, General Partner at Vertex Ventures, took us through his firm’s investment focus on deep technology ventures in Israel. The discussion includes an excellent window into how VC firms have different arithmetic depending on their size and structure.

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1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Oded Hermoni of Rhodium Venture Partners (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: What about industry sector? Do you have preferences? Do you have concentrations? Do you have expertise in specific sectors?

Oded Hermoni: We usually invest a lot in media. A couple of months ago, you covered two Israeli companies Outbrain and Tabula. We invested in Outbrain very early on. We also invested in a company called Gizmo, which is a US-based company. One of our latest investments is a company called comedy.com that now has 3.5 billion views per month. Those were our investments in media.

We have some consumer-related companies. We have security companies such HexaTier that was acquired by Huawei. We have >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With John Dougery of Inventus Capital (Part 4)

John Dougery: We had a thesis around services-based businesses in e-commerce for consumers. Financial technologies are a big segment there. We invested in Policybazaar, which is the leading online insurance marketplace by a factor of 10 over its competition now. It was about a factor of five when we first invested.

It’s getting increasing commissions from the insurance providers for selling. We’re the lead investor in FundsIndia, which is the leading online mutual fund marketplace for consumers in India. Again, it provides price discovery, understanding of these products so you can stay away from the products with a high load or an insurance where you cannot be taken advantage of. >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Oded Hermoni of Rhodium Venture Partners (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 Oded Hermoni was recorded in October 2017. 

Oded Hermoni is Managing Partner at Rhodium Venture Partners, and is also co-founder of an Angel group, J-Angels.

Sramana Mitra: Tell us about Rhodium. What is the focus of the firm? How big is the fund? What sized investments do you make?

Oded Hermoni: Rhodium is not the typical fund. It’s an Israeli-US investment arm of a family office. We have only one LP. We >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With John Dougery of Inventus Capital (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Let’s do a couple of case studies of the kinds of companies that you have invested in and had successes with. If you could, for the benefit of our entrepreneurs, walk us through the logic and thought process of the investment thesis when you invested.

John Dougery: I’ll start with companies that are based in Bangalore. It’s a very typical example of how we work. This is an entrepreneur that we started tracking and mentoring because we liked him back in 2006. This was when we were just forming the firm. We didn’t have the capital yet, but we were engaged in the community and we helped him find his seed financing. >>>