1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Mike Edelhart of Social Starts and Joyance Partners (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Since you’re talking about personal health as the current focus and we are in this immense public health crisis, what is your analysis? How do you process the current environment?

Mike Edelhart: At the highest level, we’re geeks. We’re data people, which means we can’t look back in history and know exactly what’s going to happen here. All we can do is look at what we can see.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Mike Edelhart of Social Starts and Joyance Partners (Part 3)

Mike Edelhart: The second is science and technology. We’re deep science oriented. The ideas we hear from the entrepreneur on day one won’t be the ideas by which the company actually succeeds. It’s all delineated by change and unexpected circumstances.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Mike Edelhart of Social Starts and Joyance Partners (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Social Starts and Joyance Partners are two separate funds. What are the fund sizes?

Mike Edelhart: We are about $70 million all in. We will be more than doubling in size. We are investing out of Social Starts fund four which is just under $20 million. Social Starts is about $50 million all-in across the funds.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Mike Edelhart of Social Starts and Joyance Partners (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 Mike Edelhart was recorded in August 2020.

Mike Edelhart, Managing Partner at Social Starts and Joyance Partners, shares some fascinating developments from their portfolio, especially a healthcare startup that is thriving in the COVID-era.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Sonali Vijayavargiya of Augment Ventures (Part 4)

Sonali Vijayavargiya: I think the engine has started. People are engaging. There is an increasing awareness of teams and solutions that are coming out of different regions other than just the Bay Area or New York. People are willing to get on a plane and meet with these teams.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Julianne Zimmerman of Reinventure Capital (Part 5)

Julianne Zimmerman: At the conference, I was approached by several women. The conversation we had is a conversation I have with far too many founders from MIT and many other alma maters.

I have formed a really spectacular team around me. I have customer demand. I have contracts that are waiting to be filled. I have significant inbound interest from customers, but I cannot get a meeting. When I get a meeting with a venture capital partner, the questions I get are about my children or husband.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Sonali Vijayavargiya of Augment Ventures (Part 3)

Sonali Vijayavargiya: Another example that I would share with you is a company called Flume. It’s in the water space. This came out of Cal Poly. This was brought to our attention by one of our champions and co-investors from the Bay Area. It’s a very elegant solution for leak detection and water management.

I’m sure a lot of people have spent time trying to understand water and how we are not fully valuing the cost of water. I tried to play in that space for a long time but hadn’t found the right solution to get behind.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Julianne Zimmerman of Reinventure Capital (Part 4)

Julianne Zimmerman: The company did eventually have mainstream well-known investors. It took us a long time to get there. Also, that company was one of innumerable companies that were killed off in the extinction event that occurred when the markets imploded in 2007.

I had an amazing experience of being at the forefront and accomplishing something incredible with my colleagues, but the ultimate success was outside our control. That was an excellent learning experience.