1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Robert Weber of Great North Labs (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: A couple of questions emerge from what you have said. I’ll ask them in sequence. What is the current dynamics of companies building out of Minnesota?

You talked about Zencoder which started in Minnesota. Did they move to Silicon Valley or did they continue to operate from Wisconsin? 

Robert Weber: Initially, Zencoder maintained their operations here, but they were under some pressure to relocate to the Bay area and they did that. In the case of Field Nation, it had grown quite a bit more than Zencoder ever did.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Robert Weber of Great North Labs (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: What is the situation in the Minneapolis area for the kind of companies that you are looking for? What is the scale of the deal flow? How active are the entrepreneurs?

Robert Weber: I would imagine that Twin Cities is like many cities in the world. They have a corporate mindset. We have the largest amount of Fortune 500 companies per capita in the US.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Robert Weber of Great North Labs (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 Robert Weber was recorded in September 2020.

Robert Weber is Managing Partner at Great North Labs located in Minneapolis.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Shripriya Mahesh at Spero Ventures (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: We have a series that we do on our blog called Death by Overfunding. We have case studies after case studies of companies that had no business going out of business but went out of business for absolutely the wrong reasons.

One of my saddest case studies is this eBay seller who did phenomenally well. They raised a lot of money and started doing stuff that did not scale and stick. They went out of business and that company was so well put together to begin with. It hardly needed any money. It did fine as a bootstrapped company.  

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Shripriya Mahesh, Founding Partner at Spero Ventures (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Do you want to do another one? 

Shripriya Mahesh: One of our most recent investments is a company called Mati. They allow identity verification. Filip is the founder. He has been an immigrant for a long part of his life. He grew up in Europe. When he was a child, he wandered off to the UK and told his parents that he wasn’t coming back because he wanted to study. He moved to the US and came to college here in the US.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Shripriya Mahesh, Founding Partner at Spero Ventures (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: You want to give another example?

Shripriya Mahesh: Sure. Another example is a company called Core, which is a meditation company. We invested in Core at their seed round. They hadn’t launched as well, so it was based on a pre-product market fit.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Shripriya Mahesh, Founding Partner at Spero Ventures (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Let’s talk about some of the companies that you have invested in. In particular, as you describe their stories, talk about when they came to you or when you found them, what was it about them that convinced you to write these checks?

Shripriya Mahesh: Venture, as you know, is about exceptions. I’m going to talk about mission-driven companies as well as companies that have fallen outside of those bounds. I’ll start with Skillshare. At the time when we met them four years ago, they raised what would now be called a series

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Shripriya Mahesh, Founding Partner at Spero 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 Shripriya Mahesh was recorded in August 2020.

Shripriya Mahesh, Founding Partner at Spero Ventures, talks about mission-driven investing.

Sramana Mitra: Tell us a little about your background as well as Spero Ventures.