1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Rodrigo Baer of Redpoint 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 Rodrigo Baer was recorded in September 2019.

Rodrigo Baer, Partner at Redpoint Ventures, Brazil, provides a very interesting overview of his firm and what’s happening in the Brazilian ecosystem.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Doug Atkin of Communitas Capital Partners (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: You said you’ve invested in 10 companies from this vehicle. Could you talk about some examples? Specifically, talk about in what stage did you encounter them and what was it about what they had that called you to make the investment. I’m trying to understand how you evaluate investments.

Doug Atkin: Let me give you a couple of examples – one late stage and one very early stage. Because we’ve been in the business for so long, we’re inundated with deal flows.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Doug Atkin of Communitas Capital Partners (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: B2B need less money, I think.

Doug Atkin: It all depends. If you’re building a business like an analytics package which you’re selling to the big banks, you need a decent amount of money to build something of industrial quality. A lot of these things take a bit more money.

Sramana Mitra: The comment I would make is that customer acquisition in B2C is hard to do in a lean way, which is what has drawn so much capital to the B2C side of the business.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Doug Atkin of Communitas Capital 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 Doug Atkin was recorded in July 2019.

Doug Atkin, Managing Partner at Communitas Capital Partners, has extensive experience in FinTech and this conversation explores the nuances of that sector.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Rahul Chandra of Unitary Helion Ventures (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Do you want to talk about a couple of companies that you’ve invested in that you are particularly excited about? What are they doing? What value proposition are they providing? What are they experiencing in penetrating the market?

Rahul Chandra: We are saving some of the new names from Unitary for a formal announcement. I’ll cover some of them without the names. Of course, the Helion portfolio that I’m managing is also doing well.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Rahul Chandra of Unitary Helion Ventures (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Geographically, are we talking about non-major metros now?

Rahul Chandra: We are talking about the next 50 towns and cities. Especially if you travel there, you see the change happening. There is certainly a need to change the mindset of a VC while thinking about customers in these parts.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Rahul Chandra of Unitary Helion Ventures (Part 2)

Rahul Chandra: Our thesis, of course, changed in 2011 but it was multi-faceted. We were investing more similarly to a Silicon Valley fund which is consumer enterprise and consumer internet specifically. These are fairly broad terms.

Since you know both sides very well, you know that the depth you can get to in a particular vertical in terms of the disruptions that are happening and the range of companies that you could get to invest in in the Valley is far deeper.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Rahul Chandra of Unitary Helion 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 Rahul Chandra was recorded on July 2019.

Rahul Chandra, Managing Director at Unitary Helion Ventures, provides an excellent overview of the opportunity around India’s next 400 million consumers.

Sramana Mitra: Tell us about yourself and about Unitary Helion. What are you investing in? What is the investment thesis?