1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Tim Guleri of Sierra Ventures (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: Last question, are you chasing unicorns?

Tim Guleri: No. That is something that I’m not a huge fan of. Ultimately, unicorn is an easy term for way late stage investors to say, “I’m going to invest in this company for this valuation.” I feel that that does a disservice to so much of the value creation that happens underneath that top of the pyramid. If you look at the classic and best returns that venture capital has posted, it doesn’t come from these unicorns that are few and far between. A lot of the outcomes happen in billion dollar and south outcomes. These are companies that have fundamentally strong businesses that are >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Patricia Nakache of Trinity Ventures (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: One comment I want to highlight is the big difference I see on how the issue is being recorded or reported right now is people are actually naming names. That was not at all common earlier on. It makes a huge difference.

Patricia Nakache: That’s right. Even recently with the Ellen Pao trial, there were names listed there. There didn’t seem to be any repercussions. >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Nilanjana Bhowmik of Converge (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Talk about the stage that you want to invest in. How do you define Series A? Here in Silicon Valley, what we are seeing is a fragmentation and segmentation of the seed to Series A ecosystem. My second company was funded by NEA as well. At that time, NEA was okay with doing these very early stage deals. They no longer are, because they’re so big. Your point about capital moving further and further upstream is very true.

However, in Silicon Valley, there is a lot of new capital that has come in. A lot of micro-VCs have come into the ecosystem. There is a ton of companies that are doing seed, post seed, pre-Series A, and small Series A. Even the larger funds are going into these $7 million to $10 million Series A. There is a class of funds that is coming in to fill the gap and investing the $1 million to $5 million Series A gap that was created. >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Tim Guleri of Sierra Ventures (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: You have already cited some of your highlights. Can you talk about other companies that were really interesting companies out of your portfolio that are really emblematic of how invest?

Tim Guleri: I talked about the three buckets. I’ll give you examples in all three. The first one is next generation infrastructure. These are drones and next-generation cellphones. All these next generation physical infrastructure devices have very unique needs for software which runs inside of them.

I gave you an example of Ben’s practice. That’s easier to introduce because I just say, “Look at your cellphone. The motion sensor for that was Ben’s >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Patricia Nakache of Trinity Ventures (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: In terms of segment besides real estate tech, what else do you particularly like to invest in? Is healthcare It one of your sectors?

Patricia Nakache: Broadly, I spend a lot of my time in the consumer space. That can be anything from marketplaces to e-commerce or online services. In the marketplace arena, we’re an investor in Turo which is a peer-to-peer car rental marketplace. I’m an investor in Thread Up. It’s a marketplace for used clothing.

In the marketplace arena, I was also investor in Care.com. Another investment theme is she economy which is recognizing the important role of >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Nilanjana Bhowmik of Converge (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 Nilanjana Bhowmik was recorded in March 2018.

Nilanjana Bhowmik, Co-Founder and General Partner at Converge, a new fund started after serving as the long-time General Partner at Longworth Capital. Their focus is B-to-B tech on the East Coast.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s get to know you and your venture capital associations. What is your background. Let’s help our audience of entrepreneurs get to know you. >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Tim Guleri of Sierra Ventures (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: In a lot of cases, businesses that are selling into the enterprise have the structure of a big deal. When you have larger ASPs, often, it is easier to build companies for less money because the cash flows differently.

Tim Guleri: When I was a CEO, I used to say to my sales guys and my company in general that revenues are really good deodorants. I don’t care what shape or size you bring me revenue in. I really encourage my portfolio companies saying that venture capital is interesting just to stabilize your business, but you can’t depend on that. You have to ultimately get revenues from customers. That’s what it’s all about.

Sramana Mitra: What about geography? You started by saying that you’re on the Board of a company that is an Indian-market >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Patricia Nakache of Trinity Ventures (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: In terms of stage, you said you do seed, Series A, and Series B, your sweet spot being Series A. What is your definition of Series A? What do you like to see if you’re ready to do a Series A investment? What do you like to see in the project?

Patricia Nakache: Ideally, we would want to see some product-market fit. It might just be an initial target market. The product roadmap might leave room for a lot of evolution. We, at least, want to see some initial product-market fit. There’s this rule of thumb that to get Series A funding, you need to be a million dollars in ARR. It is true that that could be meaningful for us, but that’s a bit of a blunt instrument. We do take things like quality >>>