1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Deb Kemper of Golden Seeds (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 Deb Kemper was recorded in May 2018.

Deb Kemper is Managing Director and Chair of the Boston Forum at Golden Seeds, an Angel Group and Micro VC focused exclusively on women entrepreneurs.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by introducing our audience to yourself as well as to the investment thesis and focus of Golden Seeds.

Deb Kemper: I am what’s called an angel investor and that is what Golden Seeds is. Golden Seeds is a hybrid angel network and >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With SC Moatti of Mighty Capital (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Why do you want minnows on the cap table?

SC Moatti: Sometimes, you need them because they will help you early on. They will help you get started.

Sramana Mitra: Then they don’t fall in the minnow category. If they’re passive investors, you don’t want them but if they add value, they’re not passive investors.

SC Moatti: You have a good point here, but sometimes to get things started, you will need to have some of those on your cap table. You may not want them, just like you may not want to do the grind every day, but then there is reality. You need to make some >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Suresh Shanmugham of Saama Capital (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: The story that needs to come together for the ecosystem to get the next level of boost is that there are a lot of acquisitions happening. Even here, the vast majority of exits are M&A exits. It’s not IPOs. IPOs happen but not that many. The strategic acquisition story just needs to come together for everything to flow. It’s good. It’s a massive journey for the last 10 years.

I started working on the Indian ecosystem and trying to shepherd or promote the Indian ecosystem back in 2005 through my blog. We started One Million by One Million in 2010. India has always been one of our biggest geographies. It has been a really interesting journey. Our roundtables are continuously full of Indian entrepreneurs. More and more, everybody is generating revenues. That’s the first step. If you can generate revenues, a lot of other things can be worked out. >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With SC Moatti of Mighty Capital (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Is this the traditional way that you get involved in a company? Do you have people in your community who go out and raise funding and bring you into the cap table? Or are VCs also bringing you into the cap table?

SC Moatti: In the example of Amplitude, we were brought in by the entrepreneur. About half the time, that’s how we get into deals. Entrepreneurs who see the value of Products That Count tend to come to us because they know what we can deliver. That’s about half of our investment. The other half of our investment is the investors of those entrepreneurs who see the value and then come to us and invite us to be part of their syndicate. >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Suresh Shanmugham of Saama Capital (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Your primary business is in the small investment area. You have a $100 million fund and you’re doing Series A and pre-Series A. What is your current e-commerce strategy in terms of early-stage investments?

Suresh Shanmugham: From our standpoint, we are certainly open to looking at e-commerce opportunities. I don’t think there is much of an opportunity in horizontal plays. That game is over. There are opportunities in vertical categories that we will continue to look at. I don’t think we have a particular sector.

Our only remaining e-commerce investment is a company called BlueStone, which is in jewelry. We were a Series A investor there. That company continues to grow and develop. The market size for something like that is fairly huge. >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With SC Moatti of Mighty Capital (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: How does this audience stay engaged with you? You have this other platform that is adjacent to your fund activities. Is that a community? Is that a newsletter?

SC Moatti: If you go to our website, you’ll see that we have a number of online programs with videos, podcasts, and blog articles. Our website gets several hundreds of thousands of unique visitors every month. We have a number of offline programs in the major tech hubs. Every month in every city that we are present, we get anywhere from 100 to 300 people who get together to learn from a C-level person, to network, and to talk about what it takes to build a great product.

Sramana Mitra: I understand the model. Let’s do some case studies. Tell us about your portfolio. What have you >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Suresh Shanmugham of Saama Capital (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: That company has gone in a different direction since then. Why don’t you talk about what you see in that situation? That would give us a good segue into a trend discussion on Indian e-commerce, especially given the shifts that are happening there. What is your current analysis of the Indian e-commerce market?

Suresh Shanmugham: It’s been three years since we exited Snapdeal. We had a great opportunity to provide returns to our investors. The company had performed very well ahead of what we had underwritten to. The market really getting frothy on the e-commerce front with the type of funding activity and the valuations being discussed. Several folks were interested in our position. >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With SC Moatti of Mighty Capital (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 SC Moatti was recorded in May 2018.

SC Moatti, Managing Partner at Mighty Capital, discusses Whales, Dolphins, and more. A wonderful conversation full of wisdom and pragmatism.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by introducing our audience to yourself as well as talk a little bit about Mighty Capital. How big is the fund? What kind of investments do you like to make? What check sizes do you like to write? >>>