1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Mohit Gulati of ITI Growth Ventures (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: That’s not a common practice in the US by the way. That is a practice that is more unique to India. Because of the proliferation of micro-VCs , people are starting to think. The other side of the equation of this unicorn mania is that the larger funds are doing very large series C’s and series D’s.

Now the concept of seed-stage, preeseed funds exiting into series C or series D is happening more or at least, coming to the surface. In India, it’s been happening for a while. >>>

382nd 1Mby1M Entrepreneurship Podcast With Bruce Cleveland, Wildcat Venture Partners

Bruce Cleveland, Founding Partner at Wildcat Venture Partners, is one of the early employees at Oracle, as well as a co-founder of Siebel Systems. He is working on a book on The Traction Gap framework that his firm uses in its venture capital practice.

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1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Tod Francis of Shasta Ventures (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Not all of e-commerce has the mobile characteristic. For example, if I want to do fashion shopping, I am absolutely not interested in doing it on my mobile. I want it on my cinema display. I want to have as much information as possible. >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Warren Weiss of Foundation Capital (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: At the same time, the cash is tight. How do you put one foot before the other? I saw that in your portfolio, there are some SaaS companies that are related to enterprise HR. What’s the thinking behind that?

Warren Weiss: One is a company called SilkRoad Technology. It’s a mini-Workday for small businesses with as little as 50 people that don’t have access to a full talent management system with a system of records and performance compensation management. It’s simple and easy to use. >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Mohit Gulati of ITI Growth Ventures (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: That actually gives me a segue into my other question. India stupidly fell into the unicorn mania as Silicon Valley did in that period. All this unicorn-chasing valuation and this kind of mania around being an entrepreneur took off.

My original thought was India is a more conservative country. People are frugal. People don’t have this crazy, excess-driven mindset and we’re going to develop a little bit slower. We’re going to develop more sustainably. But boom! In 2014, all that changed. It went exactly the same kind of unproductive destructive way that it went here. >>>

226th 1Mby1M Entrepreneurship Podcast With Andrew Cain McClary, KdT Ventures

Andrew Cain McClary, Founder and Managing Partner at KdT Ventures, is a physician-turned VC. The focus of his investment is biology and related fields.

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1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Tod Francis of Shasta Ventures (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Where in the grand spectrum of possibilities, in which markets, which segments do you see venture-scale brand opportunities in?

Tod Francis: I hate to dodge this question, but I think it’s actually hard to sit here and say this category and not that category because it’s about how the entrepreneur sees the execution and how they provide great value to the customer.

I’ll give you an example. >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Warren Weiss of Foundation Capital (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra:  I hear a theme in what you’ve described – creative ways of playing the gaps or issues in the financial services market. I want to ask you for your thoughts on the small business financing market. I know OnDeck, to some extent, plays in that market for a particular category of companies. Lending Club even borders on a little bit of that market although it’s primarily consumer lending. >>>