1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator AI Investor Forum: Felix Hartmann, Hartmann Capital (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: So, I’m going to give the audience a pointer. Actually, quite a number of years ago, before the pandemic, I wrote a series called “Man and Superman: Human History Bifurcates,” which addresses exactly this. It’s all available on my blog for you to read. My thesis was that people who do not choose to augment are going to be at a disadvantage, and now we are seeing more real manifestations of that.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator AI Investor Forum: Felix Hartmann, Hartmann Capital (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: You know, I read something interesting as you’re talking about this idea of glasses and the augmentation of your experience.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator AI Investor Forum: Felix Hartmann, Hartmann Capital (Part 1)

Felix Hartmann, Managing Partner at Hartmann Capital, discusses his firm’s investment thesis. This segment triggered an excellent discussion on Human Augmentation.

8 Validated Enterprise Software Startup Ideas for the DataStax-1Mby1M Challenge

The DataStax-1Mby1M Fall 2021 Startup Challenge launched on September 9th. Here is the kick-off video with Chet Kapoor, CEO of DataStax, Ed Anuff, Chief Product Officer of DataStax discussing the program with me.

DataStax has significant enterprise customers that are using their Apache Cassandra-based database products to solve real world problems. They are putting these use cases out in the public domain for startups to build companies around. DataStax would be helping the startups on the technical and customer acquisition side, and 1Mby1M would be helping the startups on the positioning, mentoring, and financing side. $10,000 of grant money is also included in this challenge.

Let’s look at some of the use cases. They’re all related to the increasingly digital nature of most businesses. The ever-growing use of IoT is a good example. Verticals that manage many assets need real-time access to data for visibility and decision purposes. Organizations interacting directly with customers need to ensure they are engaged with the right customer, and they have a digital twin of the customer to drive services and experiences. These experiences and services are entirely digital and depend on real-time data access. Finally, organizations drive their intelligence and decisions by understanding and leveraging the increasingly vast amount of data they manage. Here are more details.

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1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Deepen Parikh of Courtside Ventures (Part 5)

Deepen Parikh: We want to plan the infrastructure side. Obviously, 4G in India and the infrastructure that Jio has created is a game changer for a lot of content that is being consumed.

Similarly if you look at something like China, the market is big enough to have direct deals with some of the major sports leagues. Every country, at the end of the day, comes down to the same thing. How do you engage the community aspect? How do you create engagement?

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Deepen Parikh of Courtside Ventures (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: Your talk of the drone racing league reminds me of Harry Potter and the Quidditch game.

Deepen Parikh: That’s right. I would recommend watching it because it actually does.

Sramana Mitra: Is there anything else that you want to add to enlighten us about your sector?

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Deepen Parikh of Courtside Ventures (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Beam is also a subscription business model?

Deepen Parikh: It wasn’t; it was ad-supported. It was very early. It’s different from The Athletic, which was more of subscription model and more consistent revenue where you can see the growth over time. This was a pure-play on technology interactivity, but more importantly, it’s just massive validation from the small community.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Deepen Parikh of Courtside Ventures (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: I have a few questions. As you correctly laid out, a lot of the sports ventures are essentially media and entertainment ventures. It’s basically performance media that monetizes. What is the product for this company that people are subscribing to?

Deepen Parikh: It’s written content. As a sports fan of a team, you’re paying for in-depth access to content. It may not appeal to every single sports fan out there, but it appeals very heavily to anyone who is a hardcore fan.