1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Harald Nieder of Redalpine Venture 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 Harald Nieder was recorded in March 2019.

Harald Nieder is a Partner at Redalpine Venture Partners, a European firm primarily focused on Germany and Switzerland.

Sramana Mitra: So tell us about yourself as well as Redalpine. Let’s get you introduced to our audience.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Rahul Chowdhri of Stellaris Venture Partners (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Besides these three categories that you’ve talked about or aligned to these three categories that you talked about, what are you seeing in your deal flow over the last 12 to 18 months? What’s in the pipe in India? I imagine you see several thousand deals a year, right?

Rahul Chowdhri: We see up to 1,400 to 1,500 deals a year. They vary across sectors. We are a sector agnostic fund. We have a very active problem-thesis based approach. So each one of us looks at one or more sectors. Then we go out and look for companies in those sectors.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Rahul Chowdhri of Stellaris Venture Partners (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: This was actually fascinating because we do have a very large Indian following. It’s very interesting to hear about these trends. What’s new? What’s cutting edge? So I’d love to hear more about other interesting ideas in your portfolio.

Rahul Chowdhri: Shop101 is a social commerce application. In the last few years, Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp, and now TikTok have become very popular social media platforms in India. While there is consumer usage, you also have a lot of micro-sellers on these platforms. These include individuals sitting at home or student traders who are using these platforms to sell items.

Building a Virtual Company to $20 Million: Rob Cheng, CEO of PC Pitstop (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: Were you hiring these developers in South Carolina?

Rob Cheng: We used Monster.com. Back then, that was a way to hire people. So I would just look for the best people and for the skill. I would find them wherever I could. As it ends up, a couple of our developers ended up in South Carolina. But that was much more by luck than by design.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Rahul Chowdhri of Stellaris Venture Partners (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Give us a few examples of what you have invested in catering to that next 400 milion users.

Rahul Chowdhri: We invested in a company called VOGO. It is a scooter-sharing business like Lime or Bird. The problem that Lime solves in the US is very different from what VOGO is in India. VOGO is solving the problem of last-mile commute for people who take public transportation like bus, or tuktuk in India.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Rahul Chowdhri of Stellaris Venture 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 Rahul Chowdhri was recorded in March 2019.

Rahul Chowdhri, Investor at Stellaris Venture Partners, shares some fascinating examples of consumer ventures catering to the next 400 million consumers in India.

Building a Virtual Company to $20 Million: Rob Cheng, CEO of PC Pitstop (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: So, just give some metrics of how it took off. What kind of numbers were you doing? How long did it take you to get to a million in revenue for example?

Rob Cheng: In the very beginning, we had no revenue model. Revenue was not important at that point in time. It’s much more about how many users you had and whether that was growing. Revenue didn’t matter at all. So we didn’t have any advertisers.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Matt Holleran of Cloud Apps Capital Partners (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: If you look at your 2018 deal flow, how many deals have you looked at? What are the nuggets you’re seeing that speak somehow to your investment thesis? What are you seeing out there?

Matt Holleran: We make about three or four investments per year and the reason for that is we do a lot of work on the front end. But on the back end, we also take action in areas such as recruiting, partnerships, and feedback.