1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Alok Nandan, Founder General Partner at First Rays Venture Partners (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Switching the line of questioning, what are you thinking in terms of how you want to play this fund? Are you looking for unicorns? Are you looking for strategic early exits? What is the analysis?

Alok Nandan: When we come in as investors, there are two guys in a garage most of the time. It is hard to predict if any of these startups will become a unicorn. We can’t base our strategy on companies becoming unicorns. Given our fund size and the number of bets we make, even if they get acquired for $100 million or so, that is a good return for us.

Best of Bootstrapping: Discussing Alternatives to Traditional Venture Capital with Bryce Roberts, Indie.vc

If you have been bootstrapping and think you are ready for investors, you need to learn how investors think. First, please study our free Bootstrapping course and Investor Introductions page. Then start looking for entrepreneur – investor fit. Today I introduce you to Bryce Roberts.

Bryce Roberts, Co-founder and Managing Director, O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures (OATV), and Founder, Indie.vc, discusses the issues with the venture capital financing model, and explored alternatives. You can listen to the podcast interview here and the entire roundtable program here:

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316th 1Mby1M Entrepreneurship Podcast With Bryce Roberts, OATV, Indie.vc

Bryce Roberts, Managing Director, O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures (OATV), and Founder, Indie.vc, discusses the issues with the venture capital financing model, and explored alternatives.

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1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Alok Nandan, Founder General Partner at First Rays Venture Partners (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Do you want to do another use case like that one?

Alok Nandan: Let me give you another one that is public. This is a company called Blitzz.io. There are two founders. One of them is a technical founder. He was in another venture-funded company. He was the Director of Engineering there. The CEO was also in another venture-funded company that went public then she was in SAP’s accelerator program.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Alok Nandan, Founder General Partner at First Rays Venture Partners (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: You are looking for a founder that you feel good about. That is your answer.

Alok Nandan: Unfortunately, it is subjective because at the seed stage, you don’t have that many metrics to go after. Series A and beyond, you have numbers and data that you can look at. At the seed stage, you don’t have numbers. A lot of times, it is a qualitative bet and less quantitative. The qualitative bets are around the domain expertise, ability to execute and go after hard problems. Some of that is demonstrated by our past experience.

530th 1Mby1M Entrepreneurship Podcast with Shane Neman, Neman Ventures

Shane Neman is Founder of EZ Texting, JoonBug.com, and Principal at Neman Ventures. Shane has bootstrapped two companies as a solo entrepreneur, found successful exits for both, and is now an investor. Needless to say, he has no bias against solopreneurs.

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Roundtable Recap: May 13 – A Solo Entrepreneur Case Study

During this week’s roundtable, we had as our guest Shane Neman, Founder of EZ Texting and JoonBug.com, Principal at Neman Ventures. Shane has bootstrapped two companies as a solo entrepreneur, found successful exits for both, and is now an investor. Needless to say, he has no bias against solo entrepreneurs.

You can listen to the recording of this roundtable here:

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Best of Bootstrapping: E-commerce and Investing with Tod Francis, Shasta Ventures

If you have been bootstrapping and think you are ready for investors, you need to learn how investors think. First, please study our free Bootstrapping course and Investor Introductions page. Then start looking for entrepreneur – investor fit. Today I introduce you to Tod Francis.

Tod Francis, Managing Director at Shasta Ventures, starts with a discussion on the history of retail, all the way from shoe stores, to departmental stores, and back to specialty retail. This is followed by a similar overview of the history of e-commerce ranging from Amazon’s strategy to how specialty retail is translating into niche e-commerce, and how Tod is looking at investments in the category. You can listen to the podcast interview here and the entire roundtable program here:

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