1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Ben Narasin, Founder and General Partner at Tenacity Venture Capital (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: What is your investment thesis? Tell me a bit more about what you like to invest in? What problems in the world do you have your eye on? What segment do you specifically like? Is e-commerce still an interest?

Ben Narasin: I make a very proactive effort to meet every VC in the top firms. An investor has just joined one of the best firms in the world and I took him out to lunch. He told me a story of what he had done. He has created a mobile advertising platform that sold for a little shy of a billion dollars. I said, “I have two really great mobile ad companies you should meet.” He said, “You got to have a lot of naivete to invest in mobile advertising.”

541st Roundtable Recording with Bradley Harrison, Scout Ventures

In case you missed it, you can listen to the recording here:

542nd Roundtable Recording with Warren Weiss, WestWave Capital

In case you missed it, you can listen to the recording of this roundtable here:

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Ben Narasin, Founder and General Partner at Tenacity Venture Capital (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Today, the industry is segmented in to pre-seed, seed, post-seed, pre-Series A, early Series A. Where are you positioning yourself?

Ben Narasin: I’m happy with anything before the Series A. My focus has always been finding entrepreneurs that I believe are venture-scalable and helping them raise their first venture round. I got over 327 VCs in my eight years as a seed investor. In that eight-year period, between 63% and 71% startups I seeded went on to raise follow-on rounds. Typically, Series A. Those rounds often came from the introductions I made.

Roundtable Recap: August 19 – A Discussion on Small Exits

During this week’s roundtable, we had as our guest Warren Weiss, Managing Partner at WestWave Capital and former General Partner at Foundation Capital. We had a terrific discussion on small exits as seen by a seasoned investor.

You can listen to the recording of this roundtable here:

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1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Ben Narasin, Founder and General Partner at Tenacity Venture Capital (Part 1)

Ben Narasin is Founder and General Partner at Tenacity Venture Capital, a new Seed fund.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by having you introduce yourself a little bit to our audience – both your personal background and the genesis of Tenacity.

Roundtable Recap: August 12 – Spotlight on Veteran Entrepreneurship

During this week’s roundtable, we had as our guest Bradley Harrison, Founder, Managing Partner at Scout Ventures, for a terrific discussion on how military professionals are engaging in entrepreneurship and an eco-system supporting them. Quite fascinating!

atexto

As for our entrepreneur pitch, we had Esteban Gorupicz from Palo Alto, California, pitch atexto, an AI speech recognition technology for improving the accuracy of speech applications.

You can listen to the recording of this roundtable here:

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1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Rajeev Singh-Morales, Founder and Managing Partner at Alma Mundi Ventures (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: When it comes to some of the patient monitoring stuff, which is a very active category, all applications of information technology, especially the AI algorithm in drug discovery, how do you view the role of FDA or an equivalent regulatory body?

Rajeev Singh-Morales: I’ll be very candid. I’m not an expert on FDA or the equivalent in Europe. We are working with a company that has developed a technology for the diagnosis of sleep apnea. In today’s world if you’re told by your primary care physician that you might have sleep apnea, you have to go to a clinic.