1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Vivek Ladsariya of SineWave Ventures (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Can you talk to me a bit about how you view TAM? I’ll give you the context of where I’m coming from in asking this question. We are in April 2018. Lots of stuff have already been built. Nowadays, there aren’t as many wide-open opportunities out there to build these billion-dollar TAM businesses.

Some people only want to invest in $10 billion plus opportunities which are fewer and farther between. I actually see that there are many, many niche opportunities out there. Some of these businesses need to be built for small amounts of capital whether it’s the $200 million TAM opportunities or $600 million TAM opportunities. >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Vivek Ladsariya of SineWave Ventures (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: When did you invest in this company?

Vivek Ladsariya: This was a round that was announced in January. It was completed late last year.

Sramana Mitra: It’s already acquired?

Vivek Ladsariya: That’s correct.

Sramana Mitra: What’s the total amount of funding to exit ratio? How much did you put in and how much was the exit price? >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Vivek Ladsariya of SineWave Ventures (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: What about geography? Do you invest all over the United States or just in the two locations where you are located?

Vivek Ladsariya: We have companies across the US. We are also looking for companies outside the US. We have looked at companies coming out of Israel and Latin America.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s take a few companies from your portfolio and double-click down to understand what you’ve invested in. How do you decide what to invest in? Give us a few examples. Take us through the process of understanding of how you’ve decided to invest in those companies. >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Vivek Ladsariya of SineWave 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 Vivek Ladsariya was recorded in April 2018.

Vivek Ladsariya, Partner at SineWave Ventures, talks about the firm’s investment thesis, as well as trends in the industry.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by introducing our audience to you as well as SineWave. What is your investment focus? How big is the fund? >>>

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 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 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 Tim Guleri of Sierra Ventures (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Double-click for us on the stage question. You like to be the first institutional money in. What do you like to see? Let’s say you are doing a Series A deal. What do you like to see in it in terms of metrics and validation? What are the requirements to qualify for your definition of a Series A? Definitions are varying greatly these days.

Tim Guleri: It’s a very good question and a tough one to answer. I’ll try to frame it for you. If you look at our last fund, almost a third were seed investments. These are anything less than $2 million in initial check. It could be a $500,000 check or a $2 million check. What we call seed and what we look for are the very early companies with a team that is doing very interesting work, and if you give them some initial help and guidance, then we can see a way to a very large company. >>>