1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Jonathan Lewy of Investo (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Can you elaborate on what kinds of businesses you are investing in? Are these B2B or B2C?

Jonathan Lewy: We are agnostic. Initially, we invested in companies that had a global focus where we could help them enter the Latin American market. That was back in 2013. It was a way for us to be able to enter deals that were maybe difficult to enter but we could add value by helping them launch in Latin America. On the sector, we are completely agnostic. We have invested in different kinds of sectors.

Today, I would say we are more focused on bringing huge returns to our investors. It’s not really important if the market is US or Latin America. We’re trying to find the best potential deals to invest in as early as possible and also to bring a lot of value to

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1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Jonathan Lewy of Investo (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 Jonathan Lewy was recorded in November 2017. 

Jonathan Lewy, Managing Partner at Investo, discusses pre-seed investment strategies and the Series A gap.

Sramana Mitra: Tell us about your seed investing activities. Let’s get to know each other.

Jonathan Lewy: I’m a Managing Partner of Investo. Investo is an early-stage fund that invests mainly in the US and in Latin America. We have made 56 investments. 30% of which in Latin America. We’ve tried investing in other parts of the world but our focus is more US and Latin America. >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Julien Nguyen of IT Farm (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: The next question I want to ask you is about unicorn mania. You said you have three. You actually experienced being a seed investor in companies that have gone on to raise very large amounts of money at very large valuations. As a seed investor, you could get buried under later-stage liquidation preferences. How do you protect yourself? What are the dynamics that you see in these kinds of deals?

Julien Nguyen: We do a pro rata every time.

Sramana Mitra: But how much can you do? You’re still a very small fund. If a company is raising a $500 million round, it’s not easy for you to do a pro rata. >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Julien Nguyen of IT Farm (Part 3)

Julien Nguyen: Alzheimer’s certainly is a huge problem. It’s very important for everybody. It’s even more important because drug development to go against Alzheimers has hit a huge wall. All the major drugs have failed so far. One of the key reasons they have failed is they don’t know exactly how the patients are doing while they are taking the drug. They don’t know the progression of the disease. With Darmiyan, they would know if the brain has progressed or stabilized. You can do that before you have any symptom.

Sramana Mitra: Very interesting. I’m going to ask you some trend questions on what’s happening in the industry and how you process those. How do you process the current investment climate where capital is moving further and further upstream? How does a seed investor or an entrepreneur mitigate the Series A gap? >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Julien Nguyen of IT Farm (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: We’ve seen a bunch of unicorns come out of that part of the ecosystem. There’s Veeva and athenahealth on the payment side.

Julien Nguyen: That is just the beginning. There are deeper problems that can be solved. The number two part is using technology to increase the efficacy of current practices. For example, precision medicine is one of them. How do you pick the right cocktail of drugs for a cancer patient depending on their RNA?

This is not about inventing new drugs and finding new molecules. You’re just applying the ones we already have in a better way. Then you see a new area, which is the blue sky thing on aging, which everybody talks about. We feel that the first two areas are really >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Mark Achler of MATH Venture Partners (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: I’m reflecting on what you said in answer to my question. Blockchain is expensive stuff to build. How do you mitigate the need for doing things in a capital-efficient manner and doing Blockchain deals?

Mark Achler: We haven’t done one.

Sramana Mitra: You agree that Blockchain is capital-intensive.

Mark Achler: We are conservative Midwest VCs. I like to build real businesses with real revenue and with real customers. It’s early days for Blockchain. We’re paying close attention. We’re getting as educated as we possibly can. I’m concerned about it. That said, there seem to me some applications of Blockchain that make a lot of sense. >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Julien Nguyen of IT Farm (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 Julien Nguyen was recorded in October 2017. 

Julien Nguyen is General Partner at IT Farm, a seed-stage fund focused on Digital Health. We explore trends in the industry, as well as what IT Farm’s sixth fund likes to invest in.

Sramana Mitra: Tell us about IT Farm. What is the focus of the firm? How big is your fund? What sized investments do you make?

Julien Nguyen: IT Farm is a seed level VC firm. We started in Tokyo and we have an office in Palo Alto. Most, if not all, of our >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Mark Achler of MATH Venture Partners (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: We started observing the social media trend in the 2003 to 2004 timeframe. In 2007 of course, iPhone came about. The Big Data trend really picked up in the late 2000’s as well. We zeroed in on AI in just about a couple of years ago. There’s a lot of machine learning and AI.

Of course, the cyber security thread is running all the way through and will continue to run. Especially with IoT, the vulnerabilities have magnified. There is no escape from a lot of cyber security threats.

Mark Achler: We’re also seeing a lot in Blockchain. There’s an awful lot of conversation right now in all the various aspects of Blockchain. We’re working hard to get our arms around that as well. >>>