1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Sunil Bhargava of Tandem Capital (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 Sunil Bhargava was recorded in October 2017. 

Sunil Bhargava, Founder and Managing Partner, Tandem Capital, helped us explore the difference of post-seed versus pre-Series A financing.

Sramana Mitra: Tell us about Tandem. What is the focus of the firm? How big is the fund? What size investments are you making?

Sunil Bhargava: We are currently investing out of our third fund. It’s a $100 million fund. Our first check is usually $1 million >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Stewart Alsop of Alsop Louie Partners (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: The point I’m going to make to your point is that I don’t think unreasonable entrepreneurs means stupid entrepreneurs. I think I’m a pretty unreasonable entrepreneur. What we are doing with One Million by One Million is a pretty unreasonable concept, but I’m not stupid.

Stewart Alsop: I don’t know if you’ve heard me talk about it before. I have a few things that I’ve been plugging for almost 30 years, >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Stewart Alsop of Alsop Louie Partners (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Talk to me a little bit about what you see as the early stage investment game. It has become very tricky. How does a small fund or even angel investors compete with the mega funds that put in $100 million in Series D with 3x liquidation preference. How do you prevent being washed out?

Stewart Alsop: It is a tricky business. It requires understanding of how to run a venture fund. You have to be very careful that you don’t get ahead of yourself in terms of investing. We can look at a company and go, “That’s cool.” That business is going to take $50 million to $100 million to really build out and we won’t really know until the later stages of that $50 million to $100 million whether this team will turn it into a successful company. >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Stewart Alsop of Alsop Louie Partners (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: In the domain of self-driving cars, are there things that you have identified as opportunities where startups can play and perhaps venture-scale opportunities within that realm?

Stewart Alsop: We’re the lead investor of Twitch, which was purchased by Amazon about a year and a half ago. I’ve written checks to two of the founders who then started new companies. One of them started a company called Cruise Automation. Cruise Automation went down its path as a venture-backed startup developing autonomous driving capabilities originally as an add-on to existing cars.

I brought them in because I thought that what they were doing is pretty interesting. My partner thought I was crazy for >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Stewart Alsop of Alsop Louie Partners (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 Stewart Alsop was recorded in May 2016. 

Stewart Alsop, Partner at Alsop Louie Partners, has been a VC for 20 years, and before that, a journalist for another 20 years in the technology industry. This conversation is wide-ranging, spanning autonomous vehicles, unreasonable entrepreneurs, etc.

Sramana Mitra: You’ve been in the business for 20 plus years and you’ve covered technology as a journalist 20 years before that. I’ve been in the business for 20 years. >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Swati Chaturvedi of Propel(x) Ventures (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Tell us about the types of ideas your investors are looking for.

Swati Chaturvedi: There is a big trend of combining hardware with software. Robotics is another trend. What is specific to Propel(x) is, we do need some specific innovation.

Sramana Mitra: When it comes to IT and specific innovation, there are niche opportunities that are not as easily open right now given where we are in the history of technology. Let’s say there’s a particular sector of cloud computing. >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Swati Chaturvedi of Propel(x) Ventures (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: How about some examples of companies that you have funded within the IT sector?

Swati Chaturvedi: One company was including a software in chips sent to OEMs like the Samsungs of the world. The idea there is it is an Internet of Things application. Those chips track every connected device in the home. The idea there is can you understand why those devices are failing. Is it because of the device itself or is it because of Internet failures? That was helpful.

Another company that we’re doing in information technology is focused on gesture recognition. The goal is that they >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Swati Chaturvedi of Propel(x) 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 Swati Chaturvedi was recorded in August 2017. 

Swati Chaturvedi is Co-founder and CEO at Propel(x), an online platform where entrepreneurs are connected to angels. Swati and I discussed some of the key trends of the seed financing eco-system as viewed from Propel(x).

Sramana Mitra: Tell us about Propel(x).

Swati Chaturvedi: Propel(x) is an investment marketplace where we connect startups with accredited investors. Our goal is >>>