534th Roundtable Recording on June 10, 2021: With Jon Staenberg, Staenberg Venture Partners

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

Roundtable Recap: June 10 – More on Two-sided Marketplaces

During this week’s roundtable, we had as our guest Jon Staenberg, Managing Partner at Staenberg Venture Partners. We discussed the trends he is seeing and investment thesis he is following.

Foodoop

As for our entrepreneur pitch, we had Chandra Subramanian from Helsinki, Finland, pitch Foodoop, a two-sided marketplace for home cooks to offer their services to consumers.

You can listen to the recording of this roundtable here:

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532nd Roundtable Recording on May 27, 2021: With Karthee Madasamy, MFV Ventures

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

Best of Bootstrapping: What Traditional VCs are Looking for with Scott Sandell, NEA

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 Scott Sandell.

Scott Sandell, General Partner at NEA, is one of NEA’s star investors. He has been named to the Forbes Midas list every year since 2007, and has been involved with eight Unicorn companies including Salesforce.com, Workday, Webex, Tableau, and others. During our conversation in 2015, Scott discusses, specifically, Webex and Tableau in quite a bit of depth. In both companies, the scrappy, capital-efficient management of those businesses were striking!

Among Silicon Valley’s venture firms, NEA holds a special place in my own entrepreneurial journey, being the first VC firm that I successfully raised funding from. Oddly, at that time in the late nineties, the fact that my company was doing product development in India was considered unacceptable. Of course, all that changed in due course, and today India is firmly established on the startup map, as are China, Europe, and many other nations. NEA was an early adopter of the global entrepreneurship trend, and has offices in India and China. They also invest elsewhere in the world, where they don’t have offices. You can listen to the podcast interview here and the entire roundtable program here:

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250th 1Mby1M Entrepreneurship Podcast With Scott Sandell, NEA

Scott Sandell, General Partner at NEA, is one of NEA’s star investors. He has been named to the Forbes Midas list every year since 2007, and has been involved with eight Unicorn companies including Salesforce.com, Workday, Webex, Tableau, and others. Scott discusses, specifically, Webex and Tableau in quite a bit of depth. In both companies, the scrappy, capital-efficient management of those businesses were striking!

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Roundtable Recap: May 27 – Discussion on Deep Tech Investing

During this week’s roundtable, we had as our guest Karthee Madasamy, Founder and Managing Partner, Mobile Foundation Ventures. We discussed the nuances of Deep Tech investing.

VEGG

As for our entrepreneur pitch, we had 1Mby1M Premium member Akshar Vastarpara from Gujarat, India, pitching VEGG, a smart home solution.

You can listen to the recording of this roundtable here:

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1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Michael Smerklo, Co-founder and Managing Director at Next Coast Ventures 2021 (Part 6)

Michael Smerklo: I am passionate about encouraging people. The start of my book is called Mr. Monkey. He was the voice in my head that said, “You will never be successful. You won’t do it.” The book is about trying to give aspiring entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs the mental tools to take that first step.

If you read the media they could think, “I don’t have an idea that is as big as Facebook.” That is nonsense. Take the step and begin the journey and to build to your point, build a business with five or no employees. Whatever it is, you can change your life and others. You don’t have to get caught up in the media craze. I love that you are carrying this flag.  

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Michael Smerklo, Co-founder and Managing Director at Next Coast Ventures 2021 (Part 5)

Michael Smerklo: Don’t let the idea that your idea isn’t big enough prevent you from get going. See where it goes. I am in line with what you said, and I am so passionate about it. Even though my day job is as a venture capitalist, I say to entrepreneurs all the time that if they can avoid working with people like me and get your business going and bootstrap it and own a bigger chunk of it, do that. That is 90% of all the businesses of the world. 

Sramana Mitra: Yes, and VCs look to go $0 to $100 million in revenue in 5 to 7 years. That is hyper-growth. Hypergrowth is not a natural state of business.