1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Max Brickman, Founder at Heartland Ventures (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Let’s do some examples of companies that you have invested in especially where you have brought them to your customers very early on.

Max Brickman: One would be Workstream. We are one of the early investors in their seed round. It targets the HR space – hiring hourly employees. We loved Desmond the founder. We wanted to introduce him to our network and see if other people agreed.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Max Brickman, Founder at Heartland Ventures (Part 1)

Max Brickman, Founder at Heartland Ventures, talks about his firm’s investment thesis.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start with a little bit of introduction about your background.

Max Brickman: I’m from Wisconsin. I started in the entrepreneurial space early on. I bought my first property in northern Wisconsin when I was 14. It was money from a landscaping company that I had.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Sergey Jakimov, Co-Founder and Partner at LongeVC (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: There is the opportunity for gene editing before a baby is born. Then there is the opportunity for gene editing later in life.

Sergey Jakimov: There is a huge ethical component. If you leave that aside, what makes total sense is identifying potential life-threatening diseases or disabilities with DNA-driven factors for unborn babies and introducing these changes early on so that the new person gets to live a normal life. That’s totally fine by me.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Sergey Jakimov, Co-Founder and Partner at LongeVC (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Are you looking for something in this DNA testing and sequencing area that you haven’t found yet?

Sergey Jakimov: I would be looking for a merge between DNA sequencing capacity and actionable insights based on that. I would be looking at the comprehensive model where the company offers you DNA sequencing and a comprehensive report with some supplement-based insights or potential diagnostic-based insight or non-prescription interventions to mitigate risks.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Sergey Jakimov, Co-Founder and Partner at LongeVC (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Let’s switch gears to another category. Pick another category where there is a heavy computer science element.

Sergey Jakimov: Another interesting one is digital health. If we’re talking longevity, it’s of course aging clocks and all sorts of consumer-facing risk calculators. That’s another very interesting angle of how we taught algorithms to work with clinical data or user-reported data as well as how we made it consumer-facing and consumer-digestible.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Sergey Jakimov, Co-Founder and Partner at LongeVC (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: I want to double-click down on a bunch of areas that are broadly relevant to digital health. What you said about applying AI to drug discovery is of interest. Any kind of quantified health measures is also of interest.

The intersection of computer science and biology is where our audience would find the most useful insight. What is the state of the union and where are you playing? What are some of the case studies in your portfolio?

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Sergey Jakimov, Co-Founder and Partner at LongeVC (Part 1)

Sergey Jakimov is Co-founder and Partner at LongeVC, a firm focused on the Longevity space. We discuss trends and opportunities in this sector full of whitespaces waiting for the entrepreneur’s magic touch.

Sramana Mitra: Give us a little bit of an introduction about your background as well as about LongeVC.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Kyle Asman, Managing Director at Backswing Ventures (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Talk about the case studies of the two companies that you sold.

Kyle Asman: One of them was in real estate technology. It was a highly-profitable company with high revenue. They were pretty quick to exit. They needed some investment to grow some things and get to the next level. The other one was a secondary sale. That went from little in revenue and grew it well into the eight figures.