1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Warren Weiss of Foundation Capital (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: At the same time, the cash is tight. How do you put one foot before the other? I saw that in your portfolio, there are some SaaS companies that are related to enterprise HR. What’s the thinking behind that?

Warren Weiss: One is a company called SilkRoad Technology. It’s a mini-Workday for small businesses with as little as 50 people that don’t have access to a full talent management system with a system of records and performance compensation management. It’s simple and easy to use. >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Mohit Gulati of ITI Growth Ventures (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: That actually gives me a segue into my other question. India stupidly fell into the unicorn mania as Silicon Valley did in that period. All this unicorn-chasing valuation and this kind of mania around being an entrepreneur took off.

My original thought was India is a more conservative country. People are frugal. People don’t have this crazy, excess-driven mindset and we’re going to develop a little bit slower. We’re going to develop more sustainably. But boom! In 2014, all that changed. It went exactly the same kind of unproductive destructive way that it went here. >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Warren Weiss of Foundation Capital (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra:  I hear a theme in what you’ve described – creative ways of playing the gaps or issues in the financial services market. I want to ask you for your thoughts on the small business financing market. I know OnDeck, to some extent, plays in that market for a particular category of companies. Lending Club even borders on a little bit of that market although it’s primarily consumer lending. >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Mohit Gulati of ITI Growth Ventures (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: So your hypothesis is that a lot of these surplus IT workers with different levels of IT expertise will get absorbed by, at least a portion of them, the startup ecosystem – the technology startup ecosystem.

Mohit Gulati: I would refrain from using the word will get. I would use the word should get if they are open and willing to be absorbed. An older person typically carries a lot of baggage about his expectations in life. When you work with younger people, you need to come with a clean slate. Only when you have a clean slate do you grow. >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Warren Weiss of Foundation Capital (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: It sounds like one of the strategies your firm is following is analyzing a macro trend and making multiple bets on that industry.

Warren Weiss: We’re trying to go deep in certain areas. We see this is a decade of the CMOs and so CMOs will spend more time to automate a business. We hear a lot about Big Data. It’s really about big results, not Big Data and so things like marketing technologies and financial services are two spaces that we’re primarily interested in diving very deep on. >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Mohit Gulati of ITI Growth Ventures (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: But there are two or three different trends that need to be parsed within that one. Is there is a job loss phenomenon that is going to happen in the white-collar because of the IT industry, which is one of the biggest growth drivers in India for a while now. As the IT services model is coming to a head, where does that labor pool go? I wonder if that labor pool could be absorbed within the SMB sector, which would give a huge boost to the SMB sector. >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Warren Weiss of Foundation Capital (Part 1)

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Responding to a popular request, we are now sharing transcripts of our investor podcast interviews in this new series. The following interview with Warren Weiss was recorded in April 2017. 

Warren Weiss, General Partner at Foundation Capital, has a long track record in the Silicon Valley venture capital industry. He shares areas that he and Foundation are excited about as opportunities for building future Unicorns.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start with your overview and synthesis of what you feel right now about the industry, about ventures, and about how to build these unicorn companies. What have you learned? What have you seen? What are you thinking about opportunities for future unicorns? >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Mohit Gulati of ITI Growth Ventures (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Let’s do a couple of things. I’d like to understand what you have invested in that is interesting and reflective of how you think. Then we’ll also talk about the trends that you see in your deal flow. Let’s first start with your portfolio.

Mohit Gulati: A lot of people don’t have multiple ideologies with regards to investing. I have a simple ideology. We’re a country of 1.46 billion. I see us facing a massive job loss crisis in the coming years, so my core philosophy and ideology of investing has been job creation. >>>