1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Alireza Rahnema of 7 Gate Ventures (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: How are people thinking about this unicorn versus non-unicorn versus niches? How is the Canadian investment in general thinking about this?

Alireza Rahnema: I’ve work about this when it comes to different scene between startup the ecosystem. I’ve spent half of my time here and half of my time down San Francisco. When it comes to talent, there’s no shortage of talent in Canada with its very strong education system and extremely strong technical focus. >>>

Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrap First and Raise Money Later

I wrote a book called Billion Dollar Unicorns a few years back. Writing this book took me through the extensive process of talking to entrepreneurs who have built tech companies with valuations above a billion dollars. While there is a tremendous amount of serendipity involved in any extraordinary success story, one recurring theme comes up in these case studies. I am particularly excited to share this nugget because it applies broadly to all classes of entrepreneurial ventures.

Bootstrap first, raise money later.

That’s what Fred Luddy did when he founded ServiceNow back in 2005. Leveraging his domain knowledge and expertise in IT ServiceDesk software, he rapidly acquired 12 customers before raising funding. Initially, he started charging $25 per seat and the 12 customers paid up. He raised $2.5 million in venture capital WITH 12 customers, and ample validation.

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1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Alireza Rahnema of 7 Gate Ventures (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Let’s do another company.

Alireza Rahnema: Another company that has a very interesting background is Spocket. Spocket is one of the top three service providers on the Shopify platform. They help e-commerce retailers acquire products to sell and help find the right products based on desires and the location. The backbone is what makes it interesting for us.

The founder is of Iranian descent. He was attending medical school when he started dabbling in drop shipping. A few months on, he created the first version of Spocket which we tracked. He came to us on hearing about 7 Gate. He was invited to attend a Tech Stars program while working at Spocket. >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Alireza Rahnema of 7 Gate Ventures (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Would it be fair to say that you’re comfortable with pre-seed investment?

Alireza Rahnema: Absolutely! Over 50% of those are pre-seeds. So far, a significant portion stay. Almost 90% have gone on to a seed and we have invested on as they grow up.

Sramana Mitra: Talk about the types of companies that you like to invest in – B2B, B2C, hybrid? What’s your comfort zone? >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Sumner Douglas of BoomStartup (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Would you want to do another case study of companies that you’ve invested in and that you particularly think highly of?

Sumner Douglas: I’ll do one that I got involved in. A couple of years ago, I made the cardinal sin as the Managing Director and left to join one of our portfolio companies called Vutiliti. They create a device that enables you to hack the smart meter in infrastructure In smart cities and in residential areas and see real-time consumption of electricity, water, and natural gas. We can see that in a much more granular functionality back to the power companies or the utility companies as well as the end residence. >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Alireza Rahnema of 7 Gate Ventures (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: On that geography topic, what’s happening from an immigration point of view in Vancouver, Canada given the friction that’s happening now in America around immigration? Are you seeing a big influx of talented engineers that are also entrepreneurs from other places?

Alireza Rahnema: I must say this has vindicated our thesis with 7 Gate in the past couple of years. Even founders, with the background that we had, have been disbarred from going the route of a US immigration. We see a lot of these talented graduates from technical universities in the Middle East looking at Vancouver as an alternative to the States, given the political climate. >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Sumner Douglas of BoomStartup (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Tell me a bit about the geography. You said Salt Lake City. Does that mean that you’re investing only in new test startups? What is your policy?

Sumner Douglas: Definitely not. We definitely do take a lot of surge from Utah. The Utah tech game has grown significantly over the last couple of years. We see a huge amount of deal flow coming out of Salt Lake City and very high quality deals. We look at deals throughout the domestic US and internationally. >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Alireza Rahnema of 7 Gate 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 Alireza Rahnema was recorded in January 2019.

Alireza Rahnema, Principal and General Partner at 7 Gate Ventures, talks about the Vancouver startup ecosystem and his firm’s investment thesis.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by getting you acquainted with our audience. Tell us about you. Tell us about 7 Gate Ventures. What kind of investment strategy are you following? >>>