Venture Capital in Slow Growth Markets: India, EdTech, Cleantech

There are a number of relatively slow growth markets in which we do a lot of business: India and EdTech are two examples. These are also two markets that I am passionate about, and have covered prodigiously for a long time. In a way, these markets, and many others that have similar characteristics, share very similar trajectories vis-a-vis entrepreneurship, venture capital, and exits. Another market in which 1M/1M doesn’t have much presence, but I have invested in, is Cleantech. The story is somewhat similar there as well. Let’s take a look at these slow-growth markets, and how they will emerge over the upcoming years.

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Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Koolspan CEO Gregg Smith (Part 1)

Does government spying freak you out? Read how Koolspan can secure your mobile device.

Sramana Mitra: Gregg, let’s start with an introduction to Koolspan. What is Koolspan? How did Koolspan come about and what are you doing?

Gregg Smith: Koolspan has been around since 2003 and I took over the business in the fourth quarter of 2011. Koolspan is focused on providing high level of security to connected devices such as smartphones, laptops, or tablets. We provide a series of applications to ensure that our enterprise and government customers and even consumers can have secure communication through the connected-device ecosystem in a safe and efficient manner.

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How To Fund A ‘Fat’ Startup

These days, we focus a lot more on lean startups than startups that require capital to get going. The entire industry has moved away from the ‘fat’ startup category. However, infrastructure software, hardware, networking, chips – they need capital. Even in cloud software, to build complex technology like personalization and analytics requires some investment.

How do people fund those?

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Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Tidemark CEO Christian Gheorghe (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: Again, I’m going to ask you to lift yourself out of Tidemark and take a blank sheet of paper in your head. You are a serial entrepreneur and you have started many companies. You have a good understanding of how to look at your industry and find right spaces or gaps in the market. What are some of these gaps that you have identified where you would point entrepreneurs to look into now? I often see opportunities and I am a serial entrepreneur as well. I can see opportunities that other people could work on. What are some of the other opportunities that are on your radar?

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Building Fat Startups: Nasuni CEO Andres Rodriguez (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: I just have one last set of questions before we retire. You are one of the few entrepreneurs I have interviewed who has roots in Latin America. We see entrepreneurial activity in the technology industry from Indian and Chinese entrepreneurs. Why has Latin America been slow on developing in the technology industry?

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Funding Rejection Statistics Of Key Players

You’ve often heard me say that over 99% of the entrepreneurs who seek financing are rejected. This post offers a set of rejection statistics culled from credible sources on some of the key players:

YCombinator: 97.15%

YCombinator started as a summer programme and the roots still show, with courses running for three months, about the length of an academic summer break. Teams all join at the same time, in batches. Applicants are rigorously screened and the best invited for interview. For the latest batch 74 (including six not-for-profits) were selected from a field of more than 2,600. Those lucky few get paid between $14,000 and $20,000 to attend. In return they have to hand over about 7% of their firm’s equity. [Source: The Economist]

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Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Tidemark CEO Christian Gheorghe (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: That positions the company in terms of competitive landscape. Now I’m going to ask you to extract yourself out of Tidemark and look at the industry as a whole. What’s happening in the cloud and analytics industry? What are the big trends that you are tracking and actually doing something interesting with? Where do you see the opportunities in that space? What are unsolved problems that you are detecting based on your vantage point?

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Building Fat Startups: Nasuni CEO Andres Rodriguez (Part 6)

Andres Rodriguez: I’ll tell you the short answer. For young entrepreneurs today, they can do it but they have to have technical people in the team that have lots of equity in the company. The one thing that an investor wants to see is the proof point that you have a concept. This is for the kind of company that you were just telling me about where what you’re trying to prove is a concept. It’s really about getting traction or users. I don’t think it has changed as long as you can get a technical team that can work. A group of two or three engineers can build a lot of value to prove a concept in six months. An investor will fund that. That is the way to do it with no track record.

Sramana Mitra: You’re right. That’s a very interesting observation. You can build if it’s a group of highly-skilled engineers who are willing to work for equity and do not cost a lot of cash. You can get to a certain level of validation working with customers and build technology. That is a scenario that can be funded. What I’m saying is, that’s not a concept financing, that is a business financing.

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