1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Guy Resheff of Grove Ventures (Part 1)

Responding to a popular request, we are now sharing transcripts of our investor podcast interviews in this new series. The following interview with Guy Resheff, Grove Ventures was recorded in December 2017. He is no longer with the firm. 

Guy Resheff, Partner at Grove Ventures, focuses the spotlight on Israel.

Sramana Mitra: Tell us about your investing focus. How big is the fund? What size investments do you make?

Guy Resheff: Grove Ventures is an early stage VC focusing on deep technology companies. Anytime you see a very tough technical problem involving deep science, that’s what we are all about. Our fund size is $110 million. We invest in seed and A >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Jake Seid of Stone Bridge Ventures (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: I’m surprised that you haven’t talked about selling when these very high level of investments start coming into a company. Sometimes it’s not just companies that are not just doing well. Sometimes if a company is a hot company, the trend has been to raise huge amounts of money.

There are risks raising that kind of money because valuations can get way ahead of themselves. Then in the follow-on round, you start running into down rounds and liquidation preferences. That’s where the seed investors get screwed. One of the ways a lot of seed investors protect themselves is when that kind of dynamic sets in, they sell and do not remain. >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Jake Seid of Stone Bridge Ventures (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Your point about the fund sizes being larger and mitigating the later stage pro rata opportunity is well taken. I’m going to elaborate on my question. There is a lot of competition to get into some of the deals for Series A and Series B.

If you look at the numbers, there are 50,000 to 70,000 seed stage investments a year versus 1,200 to 1,500 Series A investments. Clearly there’re a lot of companies in that pool that are not getting to Series A. Only a percentage of those are really these hot companies. The hot companies, by definition, are few and far between, which is why there is such a competition. All that is anomalies. There’re a lot of companies in the middle. >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Jake Seid of Stone Bridge Ventures (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: What about geography? What’s your preference?

Jake Seid: Proactively, I’m focused on Silicon Valley and outside of Silicon Valley opportunistically.

Sramana Mitra: Talk about your current portfolio. What are the highlights? What have you invested in? How do you decide what you have chosen to invest in?

Jake Seid: We look at great teams, big markets, and differentiated technologies. Taking that at a >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Jake Seid of Stone Bridge Ventures (Part 1)

Responding to a popular request, we are now sharing transcripts of our investor podcast interviews in this new series. The following interview with Jake Seid of Stone Bridge Ventures was recorded in November 2017. 

Jake Seid, Managing Director, Stone Bridge Ventures, talks about trends, AngelList Syndicates, ICOs and more.

Sramana Mitra: Tell us about Stone Bridge Ventures. What is the focus of the firm? How big is the fund? What size investments do you like to make?

Jake Seid: This is a vehicle that I formed after my time as President of Ten-X. When I moved to the advisory board, I saw a >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Jonathan Lewy of Investo (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: I’m asking a question where the entrepreneurs, by definition of the type of opportunity, would not be raising money from the big funds. In this case, the opportunity is not to act as a seeder. The opportunity is to fund some entrepreneurs and then exit straight away.

Jonathan Lewy: I guess that depends on the fund.

Sramana Mitra: That’s what I’m asking. Is this part of your strategy or do you only act as seeders into the larger funds? >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Jonathan Lewy of Investo (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: How do you parse unicorn mania? As a pre-seed investor, you could get buried under later-stage liquidation preferences. Even with your special investment vehicle, you could get buried under later-stage liquidation preferences. How do you protect yourself?

Jonathan Lewy: We know the risk. We believe in the relationship we’ve built with the founders. I know it’s not always in the hands of founders. That depends on the term sheet. We hope to invest in the right people that would end up doing the right thing.

Sramana Mitra: As it stands, some of the funds of your size are looking at these opportunities very carefully. They don’t really go beyond Series B. When a Series B is being raised, they take their multiples and just sell out to the Series B investors. That mitigates the risk there. >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Jonathan Lewy of Investo (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Let me try to parse what you are saying. In some cases, you go after Latin American companies where you can add value by introducing them into your Silicon Valley network. That is one of your value propositions to Latin American companies in the pre-seed stage. That’s one sector. You just provided an example of that.

You also invest in pure Silicon Valley companies where you provide Latin American networks in case they want to get into Latin America. That is another differentiated value proposition where you’re offering pre-seed financing and a Latin American network. These are two differentiated strategies in your investment that I have picked up so far. It seems like you also have a third kind of focus which is to find random good companies where you want to be pre-seed investors.

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