1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Ben Mathias of Vertex Ventures (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: In terms of deep technology companies, could you share one or two examples from your portfolio or from your radar that are interesting global potential.

Ben Mathias: I’ll talk a little bit about one of the companies I mentioned a few minutes ago, ActiveAI. This is a technology company that is building solutions for conversational banking. They are deployed in several large banks in India, one in Southeast Asia, and also one in North America. The use case here is for people to do their banking through a chat or voice interface. This could be transactional banking. This could be as simple as Q&As. >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Clint Chao of Moment Ventures (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Double-click down for us into the B2B investments that you make. What sectors of B2B are particularly interesting? Where do you have expertise?

Clint Chao: When we say B2B, we’re essentially looking for companies that sell their product or service to other businesses. We’ve created our own investment thesis that we call Reimagine Work. We’re looking for entrepreneurs who are able to bring the efficiencies of IT into other industries that have not, previously, been able to benefit and enable them to create new categories of services or new capabilities that were previously not achievable.

We’re looking for entrepreneurs that have an understanding of specific verticals and industry domains and can take IT and create new >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Ben Mathias of Vertex Ventures (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Do you invest in B2B ventures that would be Indian B2B-facing?

Ben Mathias: We do. Most of our companies started with their initial customer base in India. At the end of the day, the Indian B2B market is limited. You could probably get to a $20 million ARR company if you focused on India, but if you want to get to the $100 million ARR, you need to be focused outside of India as well.

We fund two categories of companies. There are companies that have built solutions for emerging markets. They would typically expand out of India into Southeast Asia and the Middle East. There are companies that have built technology that are applicable in global markets. The quickest path to success there is to be able to start >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Clint Chao of Moment 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 Clint Chao of Moment Ventures was recorded in March 2018.

Clint Chao, Co-Founder and General Partner at Moment Ventures, discusses the vertical niche opportunities in the tech industry.

Sramana Mitra: Tell us a bit about yourself as well as the firm. Let’s get you introduced to our audience and get to know one another.

Clint Chao: Absolutely. I’ve been investing in venture capital since 2005. I had an opportunity to be part of a venture capital firm before starting >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Ben Mathias of Vertex 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 Ben Mathias of Vertex Ventures was recorded in March 2018.

Ben Mathias, Managing Partner at Vertex Ventures, India, discusses the trends and dynamics of the Indian startup ecosystem, including exits. India needs exits at this point, even if they’re relatively small exits.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by introducing you to our audience. Give us some background about yourself and some background about Vertex Ventures. >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Anshu Sharma (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: What did you do in the healthcare space?

Anshu Sharma: In healthcare, I started a company along with other founders. They’re still in stealth mode. People can learn more by googling RobinAI. We are attacking a huge problem in healthcare where doctors spend way too much time interacting with their EHR systems and not with their patients. We have a unique way of attacking that problem. When we come out of stealth, we’ll talk more about it.

Sramana Mitra: But you will be selling to doctors?

Anshu Sharma: Yes, the healthcare providers are the target market. >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Jeremy Schneider and Jonathan Pines of Webb Investment Network (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: Do they listen to your advice?

Jonathan Pines: In some cases, they do. In some cases when someone’s offering money at a high price, it can be very tempting to take it. The other piece that’s important is to be aware of the terms of the round. In some cases, the highest-priced offer may come with other complicated liquidation preferences and things that can have a real impact depending on the future of the company. At the very least, it is important to understand different scenarios that may happen in the future and what will happen to the capital of the company.

Sramana Mitra: One of my observations is that we’re in 2018. Lots of stuff have been built. Nowadays, there aren’t so many >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Anshu Sharma (Part 4)

Anshu Sharma: Every niche of a market is part of a bigger niche. Forget about software and enterprise software, because it may be hard for people to understand what I’m saying. Let’s say someone says, “I want to start building cables. I’m going to start manufacturing cable for electricity.” That’s a very small market. It’s a niche.

That’s how telcom in India started. They literally started out by building cables. Then they started building handsets for the Indian government’s MTNL selling phones. As everybody knows, that’s not a cable company. It’s not even a phone device company. The founders may not know exactly how big the market can be, but if you can’t articulate even one or two paths to a bigger market, that’s a limitation of your vision. It’s not really a >>>