1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Milos Sochor of Y Soft 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 Milos Sochor was recorded in September 2018.

Milos Sochor is Managing Partner at Y Soft Ventures, a firm in the Czech Republic. Fascinating conversation about how a small region is gradually becoming a powerhouse of innovation and entrepreneurship.

Sramana Mitra: Tell us a little bit about Y Soft. How big is the fund? Tell us about your investing focus. What kind of investments do you make? Let’s get you introduced to our audience. >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Ravi Mohan of Shasta Ventures (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Could you take us through a bit of the thinking for your portfolio strategy in B2C? Both trends that you’re seeing as well as where your bets are.

Ravi Mohan: Every new communications platform yields huge new B2C companies. With the internet, you ended up with Facebook. Mobile hasn’t quite gotten there yet. I guess you did have WhatsApp and Instagram. We do look there, but it’s hard to understand which ones will kick off and which ones won’t.

Although they’re very good areas for entrepreneurs to build businesses, we tend to be more conservative around backing those types of businesses, >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Ravi Mohan of Shasta Ventures (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: We focus a lot on that product-market fit process. Our guidance to our entrepreneurs most of the time is to figure out that product-market fit before going out to raise money. The vast majority of the market is in that mode right now. That’s just an aside.

In B2B, do you have sweet spots? Are there specific things that you are noticing or liking in what you’re seeing? If you look at your last 18 months of deal flow, what kind of trends are you seeing? What trends do you think are going to be the genesis of major venture-funded companies? >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Ravi Mohan of Shasta Ventures (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Just to complete that configuration question, because of our activities being global, we see companies everywhere. We see companies all over the United States. We companies in Europe. Many of them have aspirations of coming to Silicon Valley and set up their go-to market operation.

Maybe they do validation elsewhere, but they go beyond the validation phase in Silicon Valley. Is that something you’re seeing? I’m sure you’re seeing India but are you also seeing Silicon Valley go-to market but backend in other parts of the United States?

Ravi Mohan: Very much so. I do think that the business of creating technology startups that disrupt the status quo is a global business. You can >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Ravi Mohan of Shasta 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 Ravi Mohan was recorded in June 2018.

Ravi Mohan is Managing Director at Shasta Ventures, a firm that has invested in three SaaS Unicorns. Ravi discusses these investments: Apptio, Anaplan, and Zuora.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by introducing our audience to you and to Shasta. Tell us a bit about your background. As we are sitting in 2018, what is Shasta’s investment focus? >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Ankit Jain of Gradient Ventures (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: It’s fascinating, isn’t it? It’s a really exciting field. Are you chasing unicorns?

Ankit Jain: Given that we’re investing $1 million to $10 million, we’re looking at a lot of companies that we hope will show their true market potential. We hope some of them get to that stage. We strongly believe many of them will get there.

Sramana Mitra: AI, as you said, is applicable to every domain. If you understand the tools of AI, you can apply it in creative ways to solve problems in every single vertical. Not all of these are billion-dollar TAM opportunities. Some of them are specialized. How do you parse these opportunities? >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Ankit Jain of Gradient Ventures (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: In the case of Algorithmia, what kinds of use cases are they? It sounds like it’s a horizontal platform that could be applied to all sorts of use cases. You said it’s a Fortune 500 target market. What kinds of use cases are they going after?

Ankit Jain: The simplest way to describe Algorithmia is in the context of a company that has hundreds of algorithm developers. There’s a lot of companies that are doing this, especially in banking and finance where different people are trying out different models. That institutional knowledge doesn’t get shared across a company.

Often, in companies that have internal code-sharing infrastructure, everyone publishes their code on GitHub. Let’s say you and I work at >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Ankit Jain of Gradient Ventures (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: I was talking to a friend at a party last weekend. He’s very experienced and successful serial entrepreneur. He has invested in an AI company that is doing very well. But this question of hiring AI talent is very serious right now. Let me ask you the geography question. What is your footprint? Where do you like to invest?

Ankit Jain: Before we get to that, let’s go back to the recruiting point because I think it’s a very important point. Valley folklore and reality has been that the best companies are built with the best people. If it’s okay with you, we can spend a couple of minutes on the recruiting aspect. >>>