1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Karthee Madasamy, Founder and Managing Partner at Mobile Foundation Ventures (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: We have been doing 1Mby1M for over a decade and with our experience, technical founders can be taught the business side. I would say that the biggest achievement of 1Mby1M is teaching technical founders this accelerated mini-MBA that gives them all the pieces that they need to put things into perspective at least for that early stage.

In a deep tech deal, you are going to spend quite a bit of time just building the product and talking to customers to figure out what products you are doing. You don’t gain anything by bringing in a salesperson at that point. It is a founder-led sales process at that point. 

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Karthee Madasamy, Founder and Managing Partner at Mobile Foundation Ventures (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Let’s double-click down on deep tech and seed investing in 2021. What check sizes are you writing and what does a team need to have in place for you to be willing to write that first check?

Karthee Madasamy: We invest between Seed and Series A. A lot of our stuff is with Series A. We selectively do seed, post-seed, or pre-Series A. Our check sizes range from $500,000 to $3 million. Our seed is probably $1 million to $2 million, but we’ve also done $3 million and $500,000. 

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Karthee Madasamy, Founder and Managing Partner at Mobile Foundation Ventures (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Your portfolio is almost entirely enterprise-focused companies, right? You do B2B enterprise businesses?

Karthee Madasamy: That is correct. 

Sramana Mitra: Let me underscore what you are saying. When we started getting into this COVID mode of doing business, the buyers were not used to buying technology just based on a Zoom meeting. This is true unless it is a small deal size telesales-oriented sales flow.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Karthee Madasamy, Founder and Managing Partner at Mobile Foundation Ventures (Part 1)

Karthee Madasamy is the Founder and Managing Partner at Mobile Foundation Ventures. We discuss the nuances of Deep Tech investing.

Sramana Mitra: Karthee has been here before. We are going to catch up and level set on how COVID has been and how the ecosystem around us is evolving. Welcome back. It’s great to see you. 

Karthee Madasamy: It’s great to see you too. Thank you. 

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Jon Staenberg, Managing Partner at Staenberg Venture Partners (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Would you write the term sheet? Would you lead?

Jon Staenberg: I used to a lot. At this point, I am not. To help in a situation, I would rather see a focused institutional firm. For me, pricing is not the signal that I want to give to the market. I would like to find the furthest focus on that particular category, startup, or stage to price it so that people can get behind that where I can say, “Okay, they have done deep due diligence. They are going to be really involved. Let’s see what the market bears are saying.”

I don’t have good stats to back this up, but valuations have been all over the map. Compared to when I was pricing rounds, I still get a little heartache over valuations. I was asked to price recently and I thought that I was way too high. I said that I was going to invest, I liked the people a lot. It ended up rebounding amazingly and the price was higher. 

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Jon Staenberg, Managing Partner at Staenberg Venture Partners (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: What are those areas of personal interest to you currently?

Jon Staenberg: Gaming is one of these massive categories. If you are not in it or if you are not a participant, then you don’t know how large and exciting it is. My generation doesn’t get that this is changing the world in so many ways.

I invested in a company called Manticore. It’s a Stanford guy that I got to know. I saw his passion. I got to know him over time. I had no idea about the gaming industry, because I am not a gamer. I love sports. I am a ticket stub collector and the whole NFT thing is interesting to me.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Jon Staenberg, Managing Partner at Staenberg Venture Partners (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra:  What is your current strategy going forward? Humanity has never changed in such space as you pointed out earlier. As we are seeing everywhere in all dimensions of life, this has been a real change enforcer. How do you parse that and what is your investment thesis going forward? What are you looking to invest in and what would be the strategy?

Jon Staenberg: I was extremely active during the last year personally as an angel. I also have changed my own personal strategy around a few ways to invest. What do I mean by that? I have said this for a while now. At the highest level, it used to be the case that technology was rolling out in a serial linear fashion.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Jon Staenberg, Managing Partner at Staenberg Venture Partners 2021 (Part 1)

Jon Staenberg, Managing Partner at Staenberg Venture Partners, discusses the trends he is seeing and the investment thesis he is following.

Sramana Mitra:  How have you been? How has COVID been? Has everything been okay?

Jon Staenberg: I was just talking about that this morning. I feel very lucky. I traveled a lot during COVID. I got a lot of business done. I have to say that I feel very fortunate. Now, it seems like airports are busy. People are traveling and they are eager to get out. In fact, I hold investor and founder dinners in San Francisco and Seattle. I get a lot of unsolicited reminders that we should get going with those.