Roundtable Recap: January 14 – Entrepreneurs from Smaller Cities

If you haven’t already, please study my free Bootstrapping course. 

During this week’s roundtable, we had as our guest Mark Achler, Managing Director at MATH Venture Partners. The discussion focused on B-to-B selling as a key factor in startup success.

Makerspad.ai

As for entrepreneur pitches, up first we had Pavan Gourisetty from Campbell, California, pitching Makerspad.ai, an e-commerce analytics venture.

E-Panipuri Cart

Next, Harish Neotia from Ranchi, India, pitched E-Panipuri Cart, a machine for auto-dispensing the famous Indian street food, Panipuri.

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514th Roundtable Recording on January 7, 2021: With Venktesh Shukla, Monta Vista Capital

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

Roundtable Recap: January 7 – Lean Startups vs. Fat Startups

During this week’s roundtable, we had as our guest Venktesh Shukla, General Partner at Monta Vista Capital. I have known Venk for more than 20 years, and we discussed both industry trends and his fund strategy.

Amelia

As for entrepreneur pitches, up first we had Holger Ippach from Los Altos, California, a drone based logistics solution venture.

Share

Next, Jack Jia from Vancouver, Canada, pitched the Share app, a social media app for connecting neighbors.

You can listen to the recording of this roundtable here:

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1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Semyon Dukach, Managing Partner at One Way Ventures (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: If a team is strong, are you okay with investing before pre-product? 

Semyon Dukach: It takes more than a strong team. In my view, the team for this company was clearly the best in the world. There was no way that a team with more money could be stronger than this one. It was not a question of being strong; it was a question of being number one. In most of our investments, the product, revenue, and the customers are already there. 

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Semyon Dukach, Managing Partner at One Way Ventures (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: How close is your activity portfolio within the MIT community? 

Semyon Dukach: We have quite a bit of stuff around MIT. I’ve been physically in Boston ever since I went to MIT 30 years ago. We have a lot of stuff with Harvard and other universities as well. I think that is one of our areas of focus – IT startups with defensible tech.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Semyon Dukach, Managing Partner at One Way Ventures (Part 1)

Semyon Dukach is Managing Partner at One Way Ventures, a VC fund focused on immigrant founders.

Sramana Mitra: We are going to have a conversation with Semyon Dukach, the Managing Partner at One Way Ventures. Let’s introduce our audience to yourself as well as to One Way Ventures. 

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Roman Kikta, Managing Partner at Mobility Ventures (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Solutions looking for problems are much harder to get through to scale. I think it’s much better to start by solving a problem and then working out how you are going to market first before building something.

That is what we practice here at 1M1M – the need to understand what market you are going after and how you are going to position. It sounds like you are from Finland originally? 

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Roman Kikta, Managing Partner at Mobility Ventures (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: A lot of entrepreneurs look for product-market fit. We also want investor-entrepreneur fit. It needs to happen for a deal to happen. The reason that I’m asking you all these questions about stage, geography, and styles of companies is that they are relevant to getting an investor-entrepreneur fit.

There is also this unfair advantage. If you can, as an entrepreneur, connect with an investor who also has an unfair advantage in the domain that you are working on, that is a multiplier.