1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Alok Nandan, Founder General Partner at First Rays Venture Partners (Part 1)

Alok Nandan, Founding General Partner, First Rays Venture Partners, discusses the firm’s investment thesis which is very well-defined and focused.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start today’s session with a conversation with Alok Nandan, Founder and General Partner of First Rays Venture Partners.

Alok Nandan: Great to be back. Thanks for having me.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Sumant Mandal, Co-Founder and Managing Partner at March Capital (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: You have been around for a long time and so have I. We have come from this era in Silicon Valley where people would not invest in companies that are more than 15 miles away from them. Now, people are investing without meeting people. What is your current thesis around what geography you are comfortable investing in?  

Sumant Mandal: We, as a firm, never have been of the mindset that if I live in Southern California, then I want to be a Southern Californian investor. I was with one of my investors yesterday. I’ve lived in the Los Angeles – Santa Monica area for 20 years. I have been investing for 20 years, but I have only invested in two companies in LA.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Sumant Mandal, Co-Founder and Managing Partner at March Capital (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: What we also see in the Bootstrapping to Exit mode of company building is a lot of acquisition hires. We have sold companies in our portfolio in that mode. These are typically companies with a little bit of angel financing that go straight for an exit. We pulled a company to Qualys, for example, in this mode.

That is all about talent. Whether they are going to stick with the same product strategy or not, what they are looking for is the team. That happens a lot in the business. 

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Sumant Mandal, Co-Founder and Managing Partner at March Capital (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: The pool of talent has also broadened. Even a little country like Uruguay now has a couple of unicorns. I remember we did a case study a long time ago where there were two founders that met on the internet. One was from Ireland and the other was from Montevideo in Uruguay.

When I saw this unicorn from Uruguay, I was like, “Wow. A little country has come up in the process.” Estonia, of course, is churning out unicorn after unicorn and has become a startup nation. There are some interesting talent sourcing and team architecture changes that are happening in the world right now in how companies are being built.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Sumant Mandal, Co-Founder and Managing Partner at March Capital (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Are you saying that you are willing to write a $5 million check on a concept if those criteria are there?

Sumant Mandal: Yes. 

Sramana Mitra: That is unusual these days, because people want the pre-seed and the seed guys to finance the company to significant traction before they are willing to write $5 million to $10 million checks. 

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Sumant Mandal, Co-Founder and Managing Partner at March Capital (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: As you know, we have run 1M1M as a global virtual company right from the beginning, so nothing changed in our workflow. We don’t do anything in person.

Sumant Mandal: If you have kids at home, they are very keen for you to go back to the office, especially teenagers.

Sramana Mitra: Yes, I see work-from-home workers have a hard time with small children in particular. Let’s catch up a little bit with the situation in March Capital. What size fund are you right now? What size checks are you writing? What is the focus of your investment thesis?

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Sumant Mandal, Co-Founder and Managing Partner at March Capital (Part 1)

If you have been bootstrapping and think you are ready for investors, you need to learn how investors think. First, please study our free Bootstrapping course and Investor Introductions page. Then start looking for entrepreneur – investor fit. Today I introduce you to Sumant Mandal.

Sumant Mandal, Co-founder and Managing Partner at March Capital, emphasizes the impact of Covid on virtual companies and remote teams and discusses his investment thesis.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s catch up. Let’s also catch our audience up on how you are living the pandemic. What is happening with your fund and portfolio companies? What are you seeing? 

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Cindy Padnos, Founder and Managing Director at Illuminate Ventures 2021 (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: One of the areas that I am watching closely is Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS). I don’t know if you read some of my writing but I have been writing about this for about a year or more. I have had lots of conversations with lots of companies that are either already doing PaaS strategy or trying to PaaS strategy.

This is the classic Salesforce model where they started with a SaaS CRM application and then opened up their platform for developers to build applications around which led to the creation of the app exchange marketplace to sell through. This is a model that is being replicated by several players. Atlassian has done a nice job of it.