1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Kara Weber of Brilliant Ventures (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: What do you like to invest in?

Kara Weber: We invest in companies transforming the future of commerce. Those companies need to be led by brilliant and diverse leadership teams. When we say transforming the future of commerce, we’re not only talking about brands and consumer products, although we have invested in several. We also invest in companies who are driving the future of commerce from behind the scenes.

A great example would be Happy Returns which is a company that offers services around the entire stack for commerce. Their customers include Everlane and Parachute and other well-known consumer brands who have happily handed off their responsibility for managing returns. They’re not a consumer-facing business, but they are driving commerce. >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Kara Weber of Brilliant 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 Kara Weber was recorded in November 2018.

Kara Weber, Founder and General Partner at Brilliant Ventures, speaks extensively about her commitment to female founders.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s get you acquainted with our audience. Tell us about yourself and a bit about your investing focus. How big is the fund? What kind of investments do you like to make? Let’s get acquainted.

Kara Weber: I founded Brilliant Ventures a couple of years ago after a 20-plus year career as an entrepreneur and operator. I was one of the first >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Ray Chan of K5 Ventures (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: How many companies have you invested in so far?

Ray Chan: Over the last seven years, we have invested in over a hundred companies. Of course, a lot of them disappeared. Some of them are still going on.

Sramana Mitra: Where I’m going with the question is what have you learned from investing in these hundred companies? How long does it take to get to FDA and get to a milestone where you can exit? How many of these hundred have you gone through with that cycle?

Ray Chan: Usually, the milestone cannot go beyond a year or a year and a half. The money we invest is not a lot. We don’t usually look beyond a >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Ray Chan of K5 Ventures (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: You said you have a very big geographical focus? How do you define that geography? How do you constrain that geography?

Ray Chan: We do touch on some investments in Canada. We have maybe 10% of our investment outside of California all the way to Midwest or East Coast. Most of our investments are focused within California. We invest very much into Northern California and Southern California companies.

Sramana Mitra: Could you talk a little bit about some of the highlights of your portfolio? Give us a sense of when you encountered this company, what did they have by way of proof points? Why did you choose to go into these companies? >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Ray Chan of K5 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 Ray Chan was recorded in December 2018.

Ray Chan, Managing Director at K5 Ventures and Tech Coast Angels, shares his views on the segments his firms invest in.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s get introduced. Tell us about yourself a little bit as well as K5 Ventures. What do you like to invest in? What size is the fund?

Ray Chan: This reminds me of the interview we did about nine years ago. We are based in Southern California. I >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Shuly Galili of UpWest Labs (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: As part of UpWest, is there a panel of CISOs who look at your companies?

Shuly Galili: We work with a lot of the industry CISOs locally in Silicon Valley as well as across the US. They’re so entrenched in understanding how to work with both ourselves and other players who have access to a funnel of solutions out of Israel. We do have a lot of relationships in the ecosystem.

We also have companies that are building infrastructure technology not related to cybersecurity in enterprises. We’ve had great opportunities to work with big players to be able to advise and look at founders at the early-stages in order to guide them into what it is that they need to do in order to build a really great solution. >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Shuly Galili of UpWest Labs (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: It sounds like you’re mostly doing B2B. Is that a reasonable point?

Shuly Galili: I would say that most of our companies are B2B. We do have a few companies that are more on the consumer side, and most recently, in the esports domain.

Sramana Mitra: Can you share a little bit about the Israeli startup ecosystem’s philosophy? Is the assumption always that US is the market you’re going after or are you going after other markets as well?

Shuly Galili: European and Asian markets are always interesting and becoming more and more relevant. For a lot of Israeli companies, >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Shuly Galili of UpWest Labs (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Are they coming to you with just the concept? Are they coming to you with some idea about what customers are looking for? What tells you that you want to give $250,000 to these two guys?

Shuly Galili: Founders typically find us through our network. For many of them, they understand that UpWest is the destination for them in order to have this kind of process validation. What we look for are founders with domain expertise. When they build something that is related to networking ,or to healthcare, or to any kind of vertical, they have to have that domain expertise.

It’s important for us that they have some idea of the market, or which vertical they’re going after and maybe have an initial idea and >>>