1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Ken Elefant, Partner and Co-Founder at Sorenson Ventures 2021 (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Basically, the company can access each enterprise on their different levels of vulnerability and then present that as an opening part of the sales cycle.

Ken Elefant: They have invented this space called Attack Servers Management. They could go into an enterprise and quickly bring up an analysis that shows the vulnerabilities.

Best of Bootstrapping: Looking at Terms with Heidi Roizen of Threshold Ventures

If you haven’t already, please study our free Bootstrapping course and the Investor Introductions page.

Heidi Roizen, Partner at Threshold Ventures, discusses her important article, “How to Build a Unicorn From Scratch – and Walk Away with Nothing,” and imparts crucial lessons to entrepreneurs on how to look at terms in a venture financing situation.

Sramana Mitra: We have been living in world of unicorn mania. We have tried to put some perspective on this issue. There are good sides to the unicorn mania. There are bad sides to the unicorn mania. Let’s start with one particular piece that you wrote, which I thought was very well-analyzed. The piece was titled How to Build a Unicorn From Scratch – and Walk Away with Nothing.

Heidi Roizen: I’ve been doing this for a long time, and I’ve seen cycles come and go. There are two things every entrepreneur should be aware of that they really aren’t aware of. One is, not everything goes well all the time. If you’re an entrepreneur, you fully believe that everything is going to go great for you. The reality is, that is almost never the case. The second thing is, our economy moves in cycles. The macroeconomic conditions will affect your ability to raise money and prosper.

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1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Ken Elefant, Partner and Co-Founder at Sorenson Ventures 2021 (Part 1)

If you haven’t already, please study our free Bootstrapping course and the Investor Introductions page.

Ken Elefant, Partner and Co-founder at Sorenson Ventures, talks about trends and his investment thesis.

Sramana Mitra: Tell us a bit about your funds. I know you have been working with your fund one and you are in the middle of raising your fund two. Fund one was about $100 million, right?

523rd Roundtable Recording on March 18, 2021: With Tim Guleri, Sierra Ventures

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

Roundtable Recap: March 18 – Business Model Innovation

During this week’s roundtable, we had as our guest Tim Guleri, Managing Director at Sierra Ventures. We had a terrific discussion on Business Model Innovation and Distribution Innovation that Tim believes trumps technology innovation. We went through some excellent examples. Do give this a listen!

You can listen to the recording of this roundtable here:

If you haven’t already, please study our free Bootstrapping course and the Investor Introductions page.

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Best of Bootstrapping: Discussing the Evolution of the Indian Startup Industry with Sasha Mirchandani, Kae Capital

If you haven’t already, please study our free Bootstrapping course and the Investor Introductions page.

Sasha Mirchandani is Founder and Managing Director of Kae Capital, an early stage fund focused on India. I’ve known Sasha for over a decade, and we discuss the evolution of the Indian startup industry at length. You can listen to the podcast interview here and the roundtable recording here:

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522nd Roundtable Recording on March 11, 2021: With Laurel Touby, Supernode Ventures

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

Best of Bootstrapping: Discussing Seed Rounds with Bruce Cleveland, Wildcat Venture Partners

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 Bruce Cleveland.

Bruce Cleveland, Founding Partner at Wildcat Venture Partners, is one of the early employees at Oracle, as well as a co-founder of Siebel Systems. His book, The Traction Gap, shares the framework that his firm uses in its venture capital practice. You can listen to a podcast of our conversation here and watch the roundtable video below:

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