1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Giuseppe Donvito, Partner at P101 Ventures (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Firstly, what is the size of your deal flow? How many deals do you see?

Giuseppe Donvito: When we started, we used to do a mix of post-seed and early stage. We used to see a thousand companies per year, out of which, our investment rate was 5% per year. Now that we’ve moved to a more later stage, we see probably 500 deals a year and we do only 1%. In those typical stats, we don’t explore 50% and the other half we do some analysis.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Giuseppe Donvito, Partner at P101 Ventures (Part 1)

Giuseppe Donvito is Partner at P101 Ventures based in Milan. We have a wonderful conversation about Italian startups.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by introducing our audience to you and get acquainted ourselves as well.

Giuseppe Donvito: I’m a Partner at P101. I’ve been in the venture capital and private equity industry for more than 20 years. I have a Masters in Telecommunications Engineering, an MBA, and completed an advanced executive course at Northwestern University at Chicago.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Heather Hiles, Founder and Managing Partner at Imminent Equity (Part 5)

Heather Hiles: The problem with community colleges is, even after you have AA and even after Bachelor, they don’t get themselves hired. They don’t find themselves having industry capabilities. One can earn $100,000 being a Salesforce Administrator. I can teach you in probably four months. You can’t learn that at a community college. You could get an AA degree, but you still don’t have a way to earn a good living.

Sramana Mitra: But that’s my point. You can learn Salesforce Administration through Udemy.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Heather Hiles, Founder and Managing Partner at Imminent Equity (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: One of the reasons why we got attracted to Udemy as a platform to work with is because of the reach and democratization. There is no barrier to entry. Has Udemy made an impact in the startup ecosystem?

Heather Hiles: It has. It has been transformative for people around the world. It’s one of the reasons that I was so thrilled to be asked to join the Board of Directors in 2020. Over my 35 years, I’ve become a bit of an expert in how to upskill people. I had just come from building the first state-wide community college online teaching program of actual competencies and job technical skills to underemployed people in order to upskill them.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Heather Hiles, Founder and Managing Partner at Imminent Equity (Part 3)

Heather Hiles: I spoke to the incoming class at Hass business school. I looked at hundreds of folks there and saw a very small minority of black and brown faces and even a smaller minority of folks who are from this country. I said, “How many of you are planning to go into investing?” Most hands went up. I say, “You’re at a deficit because you will be missing whole groups of opportunities of founders with who you have no interaction with and who will be creating the best solutions in the world.”

At Black Ops, we were able to get many LPs from the likes of Bank of America, JP Morgan, and Andreessen Horowitz. The VCs realized that there are communities of founders that they never encountered. I’m talking to 15 founders a week. We see the best and the brightest in our community and we will invest in them.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Heather Hiles, Founder and Managing Partner at Imminent Equity (Part 2)

Heather Hiles: I wound up working with Bill and Melinda Gates at their foundation and did a lot of investing and learning about the investment process. I realized I love capacity building and investing in them. That’s what led, in part, to being a co-founder of Black Ops Ventures where I was Managing Partner. The investment thesis there was that 100% of the money we’re investing is into black-founded tech companies. That’s being run by my partners very well.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Heather Hiles, Founder and Managing Partner at Imminent Equity (Part 1)

Heather Hiles is the Founder and Managing Partner at Imminent Equity and a pioneering entrepreneur in the Black community. Heather also has deep experience in financing Black entrepreneurs, as well as on the education side to close knowledge gaps at scale.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s get you acquainted with our audience. Tell us about you and the tracks you have traveled to get to where you are today. Tell us about what you’re working on at Imminent. What is your investment focus?

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Anirudh Damani, Managing Partner at Artha Venture Fund (Part 6)

Anirudh Damani: However, India continues to be a very price-conscious market. India is not usually the place where you come to have massive profits. You get massive scale but not massive profits. When you go overseas like Africa or Southeast Asia, there are two parts of the world holding close to two billion plus people that are willing to pay much higher amounts than what you would be charging in India.

There’s a willingness to pay four times more in some cases. That’s the reason why a lot of these platforms are looking at Southeast Asia, Africa, and Europe. They see a massive increase in revenue just by being overseas.