1Mby1M Entrepreneurship Podcast: Recent Episodes
Sramana Mitra
Justin Wexler, General Partner at WndrCo, discusses his firm’s investment thesis.
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Gus Tai is a veteran Venture Capitalist and a close friend. We discuss why the Venture Capital industry needs to shrink in size.
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Yanev Suissa, Managing Partner and Founder at SineWave Ventures, discusses changes in Venture Capital and his firm’s investment thesis.
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Daniel Ibri is Co-founder and Managing Partner at Mindset Ventures. This is an excellent discussion about the changing dynamics of AI and venture capital.
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Mohanjit Jolly, Partner at Iron Pillar, discusses his firm’s growth stage investment thesis.
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Sandeep Sardana, Founder and General Partner at BluePointe Ventures, discusses his firm’s vertical AI investment thesis.
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Ihar Mahaniok is Managing Partner at Geek Ventures. We have an excellent discussion on AI trends and startup opportunities.
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Jean-Philippe ‘JP’ Persico, Cofounder and Managing Partner at shuckerVC, discusses his firm’s investment thesis.
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Marina and Nick Davidovs are Cofounders and Managing Partners at DVC, a firm that backs only repeat founders doing AI startups. We had a terrific conversation on cutting edge issues within the AI ecosystem.
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Vinit Bhansali, Founder and General Partner at Takshil Venture Partners, discusses how his firm is investing in India.
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Alex Benik, Partner / Founder at Encoded Ventures, discusses the fund’s investment thesis. Great discussion on how we each view the disruptions AI is causing on multiple fronts.
VCs investing today have to think about the next 5-7 year window and what changes are likely to come.
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Ray Wu, Managing Partner at Alumni Ventures AI Fund, discusses the fund’s investment thesis.
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Amir Kabir, Founding Partner at Overlook Ventures, discusses his new firm’s investment Thesis around Risk. In addition, we had a great discussion on what younger aspiring entrepreneurs should do: jump into entrepreneurship right away, or learn a domain in a job.
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David Evans, Managing Partner at Sentiero Ventures, discusses his firm’s AI investment thesis.
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Felix Hartmann, Managing Partner at Hartmann Capital, discusses his firm’s investment thesis. This segment triggered an excellent discussion on Human Augmentation.
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Julie Castro Abrams, Managing Partner at How Women Invest, discusses her firm’s investment thesis.
Warren Packard, Partner at AI Fund, discusses his firm’s investment thesis. Instead of founders pitching, the AI Fund operates as a Venture Studio and recruits repeat entrepreneurs with domain knowledge to build ventures based on their ideas.
Lisa Chai, Co-founder and General Partner at Interwoven Ventures, discusses her firm’s investment thesis.
Manu Rekhi, Managing Director at Inventus Capital Partners, discusses his firm’s AI investment thesis.
Piyush Kharbanda, General Partner at Vertex Ventures, discusses his firm’s AI investment thesis.
Mark Phillips, Founder and Managing Partner at 11 Tribes Ventures, discusses a non-Unicorn chasing investment thesis.
Shripati Acharya, Managing Partner at Priven Advisors, discusses his firm’s AI Investment Thesis. We have a very strategic discussion on SaaS, Marketplaces and Agentic AI.
David Hornik, Founding Partner at Lobby Capital, discusses his firm’s AI investment thesis. This is an excellent discussion spanning Agentic AI and Ultralight startups.
Anupam Rastogi, Managing Partner at Emergent Ventures, discusses his firm’s AI investment thesis.
Entrepreneur, Angel Investor, and Board Member Raju Reddy discusses his AI investment thesis.
Gus Tai, Investor, Board Member and Retired General Partner at Trinity Ventures, discusses AI in Healthcare startups. Fascinating, comprehensive discussion with concrete pointers.
Gus Tai, Investor, Board Member and Retired General Partner at Trinity Ventures, discusses ideas and opportunities in Education with an AI-augmented framework.
Mo Islam, Partner at Threshold Ventures. discusses his firm’s AI investment thesis. We had an excellent discussion on AI-enabled drug discovery, AI-enabled medical imaging, etc.
Krishnakumar Natarajan, Co-founder at Mela Ventures, discusses his firm’s AI investment thesis.
Daniel Cohen, General Partner at Viola Ventures, discusses his firm’s AI Investment thesis. If you have been following this series, you know that it has yielded a lot of insights.
Benjamin Narasin, Founder and General Partner at Tenacity Venture Capital, discusses his AI investment point of view.
Venktesh Shukla, Founder and Managing Partner at Monta Vista Capital, discusses why he wants to see Human-in-the-Loop Generative AI startups. We’re hearing this a lot right now.
During this week’s roundtable, we had Gus Tai, Investor, Board Member and Retired General Partner at Trinity Ventures discuss the implications of Human-centric AI, white spaces, comparables and more.
Gaurav Chaturvedi, Partner at Kae Capital, discusses the trends he is seeing in the Indian startup ecosystem.
Ashish Gupta, Partner at Clearvision Ventures, has been in the industry for a long time and has an interesting perspective on AI investing.
Yash Hemaraj is General Partner at BGV, and Founding Partner at Arka Venture Labs. This is a very interesting discussion that goes into the nuances of high velocity Positioning and Go To Market strategies.
Jishnu Bhattacharjee, Managing Partner at Nexus Venture Partners, has been investing in AI startups for over a decade. This is an excellent and insightful discussion about his AI investment thesis.
Sailesh Ramakrishnan, Managing Partner at Rocketship.vc, discusses his AI investment thesis and shares his firm’s use of AI in monitoring investment-worthy startups.
Jukka Alanen, Managing Partner at Rebellion Ventures, discusses his portfolio, investment thesis and related trends.
Rajeev Madhavan, Founder and General Partner at Clear Ventures, discusses how he is investing in AI startups and what he is learning from the market.
Naganand Doraswamy, Managing Partner and Founder at Ideaspring Capital, discusses how he is thinking about investing in AI. There’s a lot of confusion around AI right now. The hype is astronomical. Amidst this noisy environment, we’re trying to bring you some signal, some wisdom.
Ashmeet Sidana, Chief Engineer at Engineering Capital, talks about his AI investment thesis. It’s a wonderful discussion that not only entrepreneurs should listen to, but investors should also listen to calibrate their own investment thesis.
Julien Pham, Founder GP at 3CC | Third Culture Capital, talks about the firm’s focus on HealthTech. Julien is a physician by training. Excellent discussion!
In this talk from 2019, I speak about Man and Superman – the impact of how AI-driven augmentation of the human species will render one part of civilization – MAN – extinct. The other part, the part that becomes enhanced by AI, will thrive. This enhanced Superman will compose music like Beethoven, write poetry like Tagore, make scientific discoveries like Einstein, etc. Do we still consider this AI-enhanced species Mankind? Maybe not. But that’s beside the point. This enhanced organism is the direction in which evolution is taking us. This is the future of Artificial Intelligence. There will be Superman in the not too distant future.
When I gave this talk in 2016, I spoke on the Future of Capitalism. I discussed how mass-scale automation engineered by Artificial Intelligence stands to render human beings useless. With nothing to do. With no mechanism to earn a livelihood. The Economic impact of AI on society was my primary concern. My general conclusion was that we need Universal Basic Income – a form of economic redistribution – to keep society from spinning out of control. This conclusion is now, by and large, an accepted remedy in a world that is about to go through extensive automation. However, it is likely to take a couple of decades to fully infiltrate society. So we’re not quite going to a post-work world immediately.
Julien Pham is Founder and Managing Director at Third Culture Capital (3CC), a firm focused on investing in the healthcare space.
Sergey Jakimov is Co-founder and Partner at LongeVC, a firm focused on the Longevity space. We discuss trends and opportunities in this sector full of whitespace waiting for the entrepreneur’s magic touch.
Kyle Asman is Managing Director at Backswing Ventures, a firm that has a non-Unicorn investment thesis.
Giuseppe Donvito is Partner at P101 Ventures based in Milan. We have a wonderful conversation about Italian startups.
Heather Hiles is Founder and Managing Partner at Imminent Equity, and a pioneering entrepreneur in the Black community. Heather also has deep experience in financing Black entrepreneurs, as well as on the education side to close knowledge gaps at scale.
Anirudh Damani is Managing Partner at Artha Venture Fund. We have a terrific discussion on the Indian Startup Ecosystem and its trends.
Yanev Suissa, Managing Partner and Founder at SineWave Ventures, discusses his firm’s successes as well as investment thesis. Vertical Cloud is one of the key ones with an emphasis on Enterprise Data Platforms.
Dheeraj Pandey, founder of Nutanix and DevRev. The conversation spans a variety of topics and has some brilliant insights on the gaps in the tech industry.
Tae Hea Nahm, Managing Director and Co-founder at Storm Ventures, emphasizes and articulates his firm’s specific interest in investing in vertical cloud startups.
Mohanjit Jolly, Partner at Iron Pillar, and a long-time player in the Indian startup ecosystem discusses Exit options for Indian startups and other topics.
Bhaskar Ghosh, Partner and CTO at 8VC, discusses his firm’s investment thesis, and we have an interesting discussion about the definition of a “good” entrepreneur.
Pawel Maj, Investment Director, Warsaw Equity Group, discusses post-seed and pre-series A funding in Eastern and Central Europe in the context of his firm’s investment thesis.
Anup Jain, Managing Partner at Orios Venture Partners, discusses the Indian startup ecosystem and its trends and nuances.
Cameron Kramlich, General Partner at Angelneers, offers a rare perspective in support of solo entrepreneurs.
Evan Zimmerman, Chairman of Jovono, discusses his fund’s investment philosophy, especially around pre-seed and seed.
Janam Mehta, Partner at Campus Fund and Venture Investments at JSW Ventures, discusses the progress of the Indian startup ecosystem.
Chandrashekar Kupperi is General Partner at Peaceful Progress Fund, an angel fund in India. We have some very interesting discussions on consumer startups in India, especially the ones targeting lower economic strata consumers.
Bill Baumel, Managing Director at Ohio Innovation Fund, is one of the pioneers of the Ohio startup ecosystem.
Steve Eskenazi is an Angel Investor, and we had a number of interesting trend conversations.
Andrus Oks is Founding Partner at Tera Ventures, based in Estonia. We have a great discussion on entrepreneurship in the Baltic and Scandinavian countries in particular.
Anupam Rastogi is General Partner at Emergent Ventures, a firm focused on B-to-B tech investments.
Abinash Saikia, Co-founder of EnCloudEn and former 1Mby1M Premium member, has successfully bootstrapped his venture to an exit and discusses the process in great depth.
Julie Lein, Managing Partner at Urban Innovation Fund, discusses pre-seed and seed funding in companies focused on the betterment of cities.
Krishnakumar Natarajan, Co-founder of Mela Ventures, and former CEO of MindTree, discusses the Indian Venture ecosystem.
Rahul Chandra, Managing Director at Arkam Ventures, is a veteran of the Indian Venture Capital industry. This discussion spans historical context to current Unicorn mania. Great analysis!
Gans Subramanian, Managing Partner at Hourglass Venture Partners, and a former 1Mby1M Premium member who has now formed his own venture fund.
Naganand Doraswamy, Managing Partner and Founder at Ideaspring Capital, adds to our thesis on great investment opportunities within the sub $100 million exit space.
Christopher Mirabile is Senior Managing Director at Launchpad Venture Group. We have an awesome conversation about a non-Unicorn chasing investment philosophy.
BV Jagadeesh, Managing Partner at KAAJ Ventures, and a super accomplished serial entrepreneur, discusses funding Bootstrapping with Services ventures.
Deepak Balakrishna, Co-founder CEO of Adya, which was acquired by Qualys. We review his lessons from the trenches, steering a Bootstrapping to Exit transaction.
Eva Yazhari, General Partner at Beyond Capital Ventures, discusses Impact Investing in Africa and India.
Seong Kim, Corporate Strategy & Development for Chegg Inc., discusses exit strategy within EdTech.
Seksom Suriyapa, Partner at Upfront Ventures, and formerly head of Corp Dev at Twitter, SuccessFactors, McAfee and Akamai, discusses exit strategy from the buy-side perspective at length.
Deepak Gupta, Founding Partner at WEH Ventures, discusses his fund’s pre-seed and seed funding strategy for Indian startups.
Dr. Aniruddha Malpani, Founder of Malpani Ventures, is an active angel investor in Indian startups for the past decade. Wonderful conversation.
Sandeep Sardana is Founder and General Partner at BluePointe Ventures. We had a terrific discussion on how we each look for a startup story through financial metrics.
Jukka Aranen, SVP of Strategy and Corporate Development at PagerDuty, discusses Exit Strategy.
Lloyed Lobo, Co-founder and President of Boast.ai, discusses his failures and eventual success building AI startups. Wonderful conversation.
Steven Mitzenmacher, SVP of Corporate Development at Rackspace Technology, discusses the Buy-side thought process on Exit Strategy.
Hamiz Awan, Founder and Partner at Plutus21 Capital, discusses BlockChain infrastructure and platforms.
Bradley Harrison, Founder, Managing Partner at Scout Ventures, discusses how military professionals are engaging in entrepreneurship and an eco-system supporting them. Quite fascinating!
Warren Weiss is Managing Partner at WestWave Capital. We had a terrific discussion on small exits as seen by a seasoned investor.
Jim Xiao, CEO of Mason, is building an AWS or Azure Infrastructure-as-a-Service company for rapid deployment of IOT products and use cases. Startups can also leverage the platform to quickly build IoT products. Fascinating discussion.
Sridhar Iyengar is CEO at Elemental Machines. We observed the movement of system administrators becoming DevOps engineers. Sridhar is leading an effort of moving lab administrators becoming LabOps engineers with the help of cutting-edge technology like IoT.
Alex Armitage, CEO and Founder at Nectarine Credit, discusses a very interesting niche context within which he’s building a wonderful FinTech company. One of the biggest trends in FinTech is digitizing and speeding up the credit application and approval process. Another trend is using proprietary data to bring new financing options to cater to differentRead Full Article »
Itai Sadan is Co-founder and CEO of Duda. I first met Itai back in 2013 and started getting to know his story. It’s a compelling case study of bootstrapping with a paycheck and then raising significant funding to scale over more than a decade.
Geoff Ralston is President of Y Combinator. We had a terrific discussion on what we each are seeing in the startup ecosystem.
Ben Narasin is Founder and General Partner at Tenacity Venture Capital, a new Seed fund.
James Cramer, Founder and Co-CEO at Zimit, shares his journey of bootstrapping using services to $10 million in revenue. Among the biases of the Venture Capital industry that need to be categorically ignored, Bootstrapping Using Services happens to be on the top of the list. This is a fantastic textbook case study.
Tom Coburn, Co-founder CEO at Jebbit, discusses a very important aspect of building a product company: pivots.
Tobias Seidl, Co-founder at STOKR, is building a FinTech company from Luxembourg. Much is happening by way of innovation in fund raising exchanges in the field of FinTech.
Pandio Founders, CEO Gideon Rubin and CTO Josh Odmark, explore AI Connectivity in this discussion.
Nick Mehta, CEO of Gainsight, first spoke with me when Gainsight was very young. Much has happened since. This conversation catches us up on the interim years since 2013. Gainsight recently raised money from Vista Equity at $1.1 Billion valuation.
Rajeev Singh-Morales, Founder and Managing Partner at Alma Mundi Ventures, discusses the Europe – US bridge for tech startups.
San Banerjee, Co-founder of ADDA, talks about her entrepreneurial journey as a bootstrapped entrepreneur tackling heavily funded competitors.
Dharmesh Shah, Founder and CTO of HubSpot, discusses his entrepreneurial journey with candor, humility, and generosity. Wonderful conversation, this is Part II.
Dharmesh Shah, Founder and CTO of HubSpot, discusses his entrepreneurial journey with candor, humility, and generosity. Wonderful conversation, this is Part I.
Kristi Herold, CEO of JAM, built a thriving bootstrapped business over twenty years until Covid hit. Listen to how she is surviving.
Francisco De Sousa Webber, Founder CEO at Cortical.io based in Vienna, Austria, joins us for a terrific conversation on cutting edge NLP.
Oleg Rogynskyy is Founder CEO of People.ai. This is a fantastic discussion on how to cold start an AI company, build it to scale, etc. Also, excellent guidance on white spaces around which to build new AI companies.
Jon Staenberg, Managing Partner at Staenberg Venture Partners, discusses the trends he is seeing and investment thesis he is following.
Gene Caballero is Co-founder of GreenPal, a company that was bootstrapped with a paycheck, and has built a sizable two-sided marketplace.
Karthee Madasamy is Founder and Managing Partner at Mobile Foundation Ventures. We discuss the nuances of Deep Tech investing.
Jana Eggers is CEO of Nara Logics. Most of the Artificial Intelligence recommendation engines are based on clustering algorithms and a limited number of parameters. Nara Logics is pushing the envelope on releasing both constraints, and going to a more granular level of personalization.
Scott Sandell, General Partner at NEA, is one of NEA’s star investors. He has been named to the Forbes Midas list every year since 2007, and has been involved with eight Unicorn companies including Salesforce.com, Workday, Webex, Tableau, and others. Scott discusses, specifically, Webex and Tableau in quite a bit of depth. In both companies,Read Full Article »
Bryce Roberts, Managing Director, O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures (OATV), and Founder, Indie.vc, discusses the issues with the venture capital financing model, and explored alternatives.
Shane Neman is Founder of EZ Texting, JoonBug.com, and Principal at Neman Ventures. Shane has bootstrapped two companies as a solo entrepreneur, found successful exits for both, and is now an investor. Needless to say, he has no bias against solopreneurs.
Tod Francis, Managing Director at Shasta Ventures, starts with a discussion on the history of retail, all the way from shoe stores, to departmental stores, and back to specialty retail. This is followed by a similar overview of the history of e-commerce ranging from Amazon’s strategy to how specialty retail is translating into niche e-commerce,Read Full Article »
Alok Nandan, Founding General Partner, First Rays Venture Partners, discusses the firm’s investment thesis which is very well defined and focused.
Michael Smerklo is Co-founder and Managing Director at Next Coast Ventures. We have a terrific conversation about a range of issues including solo founders and their ill treatment by VCs.
Sumant Mandal, Co-founder and Managing Partner at March Capital, emphasizes the impact of Covid on virtual companies and remote teams and discusses his investment thesis.
Laurel Touby, Managing Director of Supernode Ventures, talks about pre-seed investing in Latin America.
Cindy Padnos, Founder and Managing Director at Illuminate Ventures, discusses the impact of Covid on the fund’s portfolio, as well as trends she sees.
Tim Guleri is Managing Director at Sierra Ventures. We have a terrific discussion on Business Model Innovation and Distribution Innovation that Tim believes trumps technology innovation. We go through some excellent examples. Do give this a listen!
John Frankel is Partner at ff Venture Capital. We had an extensive discussion about Covid’s impact on the startup ecosystem, the changes we notice, so forth.
Rajeev Madhavan is Founder and General Partner at Clear Ventures, a firm focused on seed-stage deep tech investing.
Daniel Cohen, General Partner at Viola Ventures, discusses AI, PaaS and Deeptech investments.
Ken Elefant, Partner and Co-founder at Sorenson Ventures, talks about trends and his investment thesis.
Padmaja Ruparel is Co-founder, Indian Angel Network and Founding Partner, IAN Fund. The Indian startup eco-system has grown tremendously, and IAN has contributed heavily in that evolution.
Mark Achler, MATH Venture Partners, focuses on B-to-B selling as a key factor in startup success.
Venktesh Shukla is General Partner at Monta Vista Capital. I have known Venk for more than 20 years, and we discussed both industry trends and his fund strategy.
Karthik Manimozhi is CEO at RentMoola, delves into a powerful opportunity for FinTech to make a difference for those facing eviction by their landlord.
Sasha Mirchandani is Founder and Managing Director, Kae Capital, an early stage fund focused on India. I’ve known Sasha for over a decade, and we discuss the evolution of the Indian startup industry at length.
Fabrice Grinda, Founding Partner at FJ Labs, discusses his firm’s investment thesis around marketplaces.
Vishesh Rajaram, Managing Partner, Speciale Invest, discusses his fund’s investment thesis.
Wasim Khaled, CEO Co-founder at Blackbird.ai, delves into how fake news and misinformation are playing havoc with modern society.
George Anderson, CEO of Ninth Wave, offers another case study for our very popular Bootstrapping Using Services track.
Jeff Grobaski, CEO of Epic River, talks about an important piece of innovation that has the potential to relieve the financial pain of many consumers who suffer under the weight of high health insurance deductibles.
Ashmeet Sidana, Chief Engineer at Engineering Capital, is the founder of a small venture firm that we have a great deal of respect for, and a personal friend. This is a wonderful conversation.
Semyon Dukach is Managing Partner at One Way Ventures, an immigrant founder focused VC fund.
Roman Kikta is Managing Partner and Founder at Mobility Ventures. Roman discusses his firm’s investment thesis.
Sramana Mitra, Founder of One Million by One Million, reflects on the 500th 1Mby1M Roundtable as a celebration of normalcy. You can listen to the entire 500th Roundtable recording on 1Mby1M.com.
David Barrett, Founder and CEO of Expensify, has a terrific back and forth with me on a wide-ranging set of topics, including FinTech. Very, very interesting conversation.
Roberto Milk is CEO and Co-founder of NOVICA, a high-impact artisan marketplace. This is a terrific conversation about NOVICA’s work with artisans around the world.
Shripriya Mahesh, Founding Partner at Spero Ventures, talks about mission-driven investing.
Mike Edelhart, Managing Partner at Social Starts and Joyance Partners, shares some fascinating developments from their portfolio, especially a healthcare startup that is thriving in the Covid-era.
Julianne Zimmerman is Managing Director at Reinventure Capital, a firm focused on minority founders.
Sonali Vijayavargiya, Founder and Managing Partner at Augment Ventures, discusses her firm’s investment approach, including early exits.
Dan Roselli is Founder and Managing Partner at CFV Ventures, a North Carolina firm focused on FinTech and InsureTech.
Raoul Maier is Founder and Managing Partner at Eudemian Ventures, a fund focused on post-seed investment in North America.
Deborah Quazzo is Managing Partner at GSV Ventures, a fund focused on Online Education ventures. This is a very good discussion on patterns of success and failure in the sector, and what investors are gravitating towards.
Vincent Diallo is Managing Partner at Interlace Ventures, a fund focused on retail tech.
Pamela York is Founder and CEO, Atasi Ventures, with a special focus on women entrepreneurs in healthcare.
Christian Czernich is Founder and CEO at Round2 Capital Partners, a firm that is experimenting with an alternative financing model.
Tony Olivito, Partner at Comeback Capital, discusses his firm’s Midwest focused investment thesis.
Parthib Srivathsan, Co-founder and Head of Platform at Companyon Ventures, discusses his firm’s investment thesis.
Dr. Bhramar Mukherjee, Professor of Biostatistics, Epidemiology and Public Health at the University of Michigan, discusses the timeline of the pandemic to help our entrepreneurs understand how to plan ahead.
How Long Do Entrepreneurs Need to Plan For? Dr. Bhramar Mukherjee, Professor of Biostatistics, Epidemiology and Public Health at the University of Michigan, discusses the timeline of the pandemic to help our entrepreneurs understand how to plan ahead.
Nick Adams is Managing Partner and Co-founder at Differential Ventures, an enterprise focused firm. We discuss counter-cyclical ventures in this Covid-19 world.
Garrett Goldberg, Partner at Bee Partners, discusses his firm’s enterprise focused investment thesis, including some unique insights on SaaS-powered vertical marketplaces.
Joshua Posamentier is Co-founder and Managing Partner at Congruent Ventures, a firm focused on sustainability oriented technology ventures.
Ritesh Agarwal is Co-founder and Managing Director at CerraCap Ventures, a deep tech focused early stage firm.
Darshana Zaveri, Managing Partner at Catalyst Health Ventures, discusses the firm’s medical device focused investment thesis, including the nuances of epidemiologic diagnostic that are currently immensely relevant. The Catalyst investment team also includes Managing Partner Josh Phillips and Principal Neil Swami.
Shruti Gandhi is General Partner and Founding Engineer, Array Ventures, a fund focused on deep tech, enterprise-facing ventures.
Elly Truesdell is Partner at Almanac Insights, a fund focused on food related investments. We have a fascinating conversation.
Matt Carbonara, Managing Director at Citi Ventures, discusses the fund’s activities and focus.
Deepak Jeevankumar, Managing Director at Dell Technologies Capital, discusses his fund’s focus and preferences.
Osayi Igharo, Managing Partner at Ripple VC, discusses startups and venture capital in Africa.
Karthee Madasamy is Founder and Managing Partner at Mobile Foundation Ventures. He discusses issues related to startups selling deeptech to enterprises.
Jishnu Bhattacharjee is Managing Director at Nexus Venture Partners, a fundamentals – focused firm that aligns with the 1Mby1M philosophy. Jishnu takes us through several examples of how the firm is thinking about investing in startups. Excellent conversation.
Arijit Sengupta is Founder and CEO at Aible. Previously, Arijit founded another AI startup, BeyondCore, which was acquired by Salesforce.com. This is an excellent discussion, and I urge you to check it out.
Kevin Groome, Founder at Pica9, discusses his journey of building a capital efficient company with just friends and family financing.
Francisco Jardim is Founding Partner at SP Ventures, a Brazilian firm focused on AgTech in Latin America. We learned a lot about what’s happening in the sector and the region.
Anand Rajaraman, Founding Partner at rocketship.vc, was an early investor in Facebook. Among other things, we discuss how the quality of startups from India has been improving.
Guillermo Gaspart, Founder and CEO of ByHours.com in Barcelona, shares his wonderful journey of building a unique online travel company. We had an interesting discussion on the issue of how much funding is too much.
Alok Nandan, General Partner at Emergent Ventures (USA), discusses explainable AI in the context of his fund’s investment focus.
Rodrigo Baer, Partner at Redpoint eventures, Brazil, provides a very interesting overview of his firm and what’s happening in the Brazilian ecosystem.
Ryan Chan, CEO and Founder at UpKeep Maintenance Management, bootstrapped with a paycheck and subsequently, went through YCombinator, followed by raising $13 Million.
Sean Dawes, Co-founder at Modded Euros, discusses the state of the union in niche e-commerce startups in the shadow of Amazon’s dominance.
Rahul Chandra, Managing Director at Unitary Helion Ventures, provides an excellent overview of the opportunity around India’s next 400 million consumers.
Doug Atkin, Managing Partner at Communitas Capital Partners, has extensive experience in FinTech and this conversation explores the nuances of that sector.
Alain le Loux is General Partner at Cottonwood Technology Fund. The firm invests in hardcore technology startups in Northern Europe and the South West of United States.
Luis Gutierrez Roy, Managing General Partner of Telegraph Hill Capital, discusses his firms’ investment thesis. The fund provides Spanish Limited Partners access to investment opportunities in the US and Europe.
Nnamdi Okike is Co-founder and Managing Partner at 645 Ventures. We have an excellent conversation about trends and his firm’s investment thesis.
Francis Simisim is Partner at Original Pitch Venture Capital based in the Philippines. We had a very good discussion on how that ecosystem is developing.
Deepen Parikh is Partner at Courtside Ventures, a firm focused on investing in sports related ventures. He provides a fascinating window into a little discussed sector.
Hernan Fernandez is Managing Partner at Angel Ventures Mexico, a firm that invests in Mexico, Chile, Peru and Colombia. This is an excellent discussion on trends in Latin America.
Eghosa Omoigui is Managing Partner at EchoVC Partners, a firm focused on the African market. This is a fascinating discussion about African startups and venture capital.
Jose Deustua, Managing Director at UTEC Ventures, talks about Peru’s entrepreneurial ecosystem.
Vikas Choudhury is Managing Partner at Pivot Ventures, and President at Reliance Jio. He is one of the earliest Angel investors in India, and invested in early successes like InMobi and Myntra. We discuss the evolution of the Indian startup and venture capital industry.
Cristobal Perdomo is Co-founder and General Partner at Jaguar Ventures, a venture fund that invests in Latin America.
Shripati Acharya is Managing Partner at Priven Advisors, advising Prime Venture Partners, a firm focused on core technology ventures in India. Unlike most VCs, Prime does do concept-stage investments.
Michael Smerklo, Co-founder and Managing Director at Next Coast Ventures, talks about some of the ventures his firm has invested in and the philosophy in general.
Taylor Greene, Managing Director at Collaborative Fund, shares his firm’s investment thesis.
Endiya Partners’ founding team - Managing Director Sateesh Andra, Managing Director Dr. Ramesh Byrapaneni and Director Abhishek Srivastava - talk about their Seed and Pre-Series A VC fund focused on India.
Daniel Ibri, Co-founder and Managing Partner at Mindset Ventures, talks about his firm’s investment thesis in enabling US and Israeli companies to enter Brazil.
Bill Bice, Partner at Verge Fund, discusses New Mexico’s startup ecosystem and his fund’s activities in that region.
Sarbvir Singh, Managing Partner at WaterBridge Ventures, talks about the firm’s India-focused investment thesis.
Hemant Mohapatra, Partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners, India, talks about some of the large, open opportunities in the Indian market that are of interest to him.
Shalini Prakash, Venture Partner at 500 Startups, India, talks about the opportunities in the Indian market.
Sumant Mandal is Managing Director at March Capital Partners, a firm that invests largely in enterprise facing businesses with deep technical differentiation.
David Lambert, Managing Director at Right Side Capital Management, a firm that invests small chunks of capital in capital efficient ventures. The firm is very much in line with the Bootstrapping to Exit philosophy we’ve been discussing.
Mark Selcow, General Partner at Costanoa Ventures, talks about the firm’s primarily B-to-B investment thesis and strong penchant for investing in companies that have grown up outside the Bay Area.
Harald Nieder, Partner at Redalpine Venture Partners, an European firm primarily focused on Germany and Switzerland.
Arihant Patni is Managing Director at Ideaspring Capital, a fund focused on enterprise companies born in India and selling to the global market.
Rahul Chowdhri, Investor at Stellaris Venture Partners, shares some fascinating examples of consumer ventures catering to the next 400 million consumers in India.
Rebecca Kaden, General Partner at Union Square Ventures, discusses her firm’s capital efficient investment thesis and debates the pros and cons of blitzscaling.
Matt Holleran, General Partner at Cloud Apps Capital Partners, talks about his firm’s investment thesis in what he calls classic Series A. His is one of the rare firms that invest at the concept stage.
Swapna Gupta, Senior Investment Manager at Qualcomm Ventures, explains the firm’s investment strategy.
Yash Hemaraj, Founding Partner at Arka Venture Labs and Partner at Benhamou Global Ventures (BGV), discusses Arka's recent partnership with 1Mby1M to accelerate Indian B-to-B SaaS companies.
Nandini Mansinghka is CEO and Managing Director at Mumbai Angels Network, one of the oldest angel networks in India.
Preeti Rathi, Partner at Ignition Partners, discusses the changing dynamics of seed investing.
Ondrej Bartos, General Partner at Credo Ventures based in Prague, focuses on investing in Central European startups. Their major success story is UiPath in robotics process automation.
Daniel Keiper-Knorr is Founder and General Partner at SpeedInvest, a venture firm based in Vienna. It’s great to see exciting energy and activity in Vienna, one of my favorite cities.
Frank Malek is General Partner at Impacteo, an impact investment fund that invests in companies in the US and in Europe. This includes companies in digital health, climate change, fintech, etc.
Navid Alipour, Co-founder and Managing Partner at Analytics Ventures, talks about their AI-focused venture studio in San Diego.
Sumner Douglas is Managing Director and Venture Partner at BoomStartup, a Utah-based accelerator that offers pre-seed funding.
Alireza Rahnema, Principal and General Partner at 7 Gate Ventures, talks about the Vancouver startup eco-system and his firm’s investment thesis.
Susan Stone, Founder and Managing Partner at Sierra Wasatch Capital, discusses their investment thesis around Media Technology.
Jason Cahill is Managing Partner at McCune Capital, a NY-based firm. He talks about the pros and cons of chasing Unicorns, as well as his firm’s investment philosophy.
George Spencer, Senior Managing Director at Seyen Capital, invests in SaaS companies, mostly in the Midwest, from a small fund out of Chicago. The interview contains an excellent discussion on ideal levels of capitalization for good exit prices.
Sara Sutton, Founder and CEO at FlexJobs, explains her platform and its ability to connect job seekers looking for flexible work schedules with employers. We explore how the 1Mby1M community could use some of this for scaling companies with virtual teams.
Krishna Srinivasan is Founding General Partner at LiveOak Venture Partners, a firm focused on investing in Texas. Great conversation!
Nihal Mehta, Founding General Partner at ENIAC Ventures, provides a great set of insights into his definition of a full stack founding team. Either a set of co-founders who cover all the requisite skill-sets, or a solo founder who is a full-stack person – both configurations can work. Listen to the discussion for more color on the topic.
Evangelos Simoudis, Founder and Managing Director at Synapse Partners, takes us on a deep dive into AI investing.
Spencer Crawley is Co-founder of Firstminute Capital, based in London and focused on European startups.
Kara Weber, Founder General Partner at Brilliant Ventures, speaks extensively about her commitment to female founders.
Bill Baumel, Managing Director at Ohio Innovation Fund, shares terrific insight into the region’s progress.
Ray Chan, Managing Director at K5 Ventures and Tech Coast Angels, shares his views on the segments his firms invest in.
Shuly Galili, Founding Partner, UpWest Labs, talks to us about pre-seed and seed investments in the Israel – Silicon Valley corridor.
Miriam Rivera, Partner at Ulu Ventures, a firm committed to diversity as its core investment philosophy.
Brock Pierce, Co-Founder of Blockchain Capital, discusses his worldview of the Blockchain investment opportunity. Brock is one of the pioneers of investing in Blockchain companies.
Kerry Rupp, Partner at True Wealth Ventures, discusses their women-focused investment thesis.
Milos Sochor is Managing Partner at Y Soft Ventures, a firm in the Czech Republic. Fascinating conversation about how a small region is gradually becoming a powerhouse of innovation and entrepreneurship.
Paroon Chadha is Co-founder and CEO at Passageways, a company that has been bootstrapped from Indiana to $10 million ARR and has recently raised funding. Textbook case study of our mantra: Bootstrap first, raise money later.
Slava Rubin, Founder of Indiegogo.com. Slava walked us through the trends on his crowdfunding platform.
Dafina Toncheva, Partner at US Venture Partners, is an expert in Cyber Security. We discussed a variety of topics including the shifting of Series A metrics to $2M-$3M ARR for SaaS companies.
John Stewart, CEO at MapAnything, discusses how he has bootstrapped his company using the “Bootstrapping Using Services on Salesforce.com” blueprint.
Devdutt Yellurkar, General Partner at CRV, who discussed his investment principles. It was an excellent discussion!
Gero Decker is Co-founder and CEO at Signavio, an enterprise software company that has successfully scaled to $20 million in ARR from Europe. They have also made a successful entry into the US market and raised financing from a US venture firm.
Alexander Ross, Founder at Illuminate Financial, talks about his firm’s FinTech investment thesis.
Waikit Lau, investor and serial entrepreneur, has a refreshingly open attitude towards investing in very early stage companies. Wonderful conversation.
Kelly Perdew is Co-founder and Managing General Partner at Moonshots Capital, a firm that has a unique investment thesis of supporting military veterans. Very interesting insights.
Anita Sands, Board Director at Symantec and ServiceNow, talks about corporate innovation as it pertains to large enterprises experiencing disruptive change, as well as some experiencing hyper growth. Anita has perspective on both, and generously shares her thoughts.
Ravi Mohan is Managing Director at Shasta Ventures, a firm that has invested in three SaaS Unicorns. Ravi discussed these investments: Apptio, Anaplan, and Zuora.
Abhishek Rungta, Founder and CEO of Kolkata, India based Indus Net Technologies, related his story of moving his company from a commodity web development services venture to an IP-based, differentiated technology provider in the Banking and Financial services sector.
Avik Pal, Founder and CEO of CliniOps, relates his story of getting to $1 million in bootstrapped revenue with a clinical trials management software.
Heidi Jannenga, Co-founder and President of WebPT, discusses how they raised $1 million WITH $1 million in revenue already booked, and then turned that $1 million into $17 million in revenue.
Vikrant Mathur, Co-founder of Future Today, discusses his 10+ years journey of building a profitable bootstrapped business to over $10 million in revenue.
Steve Beck, Managing Partner at Serra Ventures, discusses his firm’s non-Unicorn investment thesis. Refreshing to hear.
Suresh Shanmugham, Managing Partner at Saama Capital, talks about the Indian venture capital eco-system, trends, exits, and his firm’s investment strategy.
SC Moatti, Managing Partner at Mighty Capital, discusses Whales, Dolphins and more. A wonderful conversation full of wisdom and pragmatism.
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.
Kanwaljit Singh is Founder of Fireside Ventures, a fund focused on building consumer brands in India. This is an excellent conversation about the nascent opportunity that, I expect, will be a major, worldwide phenomenon in the coming years.
Utsav Somani, Angel Investor at AngelList India, talks about the newly launched AngelList India.
Paolo Juvara is Group Vice President, Oracle Applications Lab. Oracle has been a partner of 1Mby1M since 2013 and has built its internal innovation program on the 1Mby1M Incubator-in-a-Box platform. In this session, Paolo and I discuss the secrets of the success of the program. A unique window into corporate innovation thought leadership.
Curtis Feeny, Managing Director at Silicon Valley Data Capital, talks about his firm’s investment thesis around Big Data and Machine Learning.
Vivek Ladsariya, Partner at SineWave Ventures, talks about the firm’s investment thesis, as well as trends in the industry.
Paul Daugherty is CTO and Chief Innovation Officer at Accenture, which is deeply entrenched in innovation as technology moves at breakneck pace, and their clients all need to stay apace. Learn how Paul and his organization structure continuous innovation.
Tim Guleri, Managing Director at Sierra Ventures, discusses at length his firm’s investment thesis, unique relationships with CIOs, and some of the industry trends he sees.
Patricia Nakache, General Partner at Trinity Ventures, discusses the firm’s investment thesis and some issues encountered by women in technology.
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.
Clint Chao, Co-founder and General Partner at Moment Ventures, discusses the vertical niche opportunities in the tech industry.
Jeremy Schneider and Jonathan Pines, both Directors at the Webb Investment Network, discuss their firm’s investment thesis.
Ben Mathias, Managing Partner at Vertex Ventures, India, discusses the trends and dynamics of the Indian startup eco-system, including exits. India needs exits at this point, even if they’re relatively small exits.
Anshu Sharma is an active angel investor who invests in Silicon Valley and India. Anshu has deep experience in the enterprise software space, and a thoughtful, sophisticated perspective. He is one of the early investors in Nutanix, which currently has a market cap of over $8.5 billion in the public market.
Ashwini Anburajan, Founding Partner of 22X Fund, a tokenized fund that is investing across 30 portfolio companies. It’s a very interesting experiment and you will enjoy listening to some cutting edge FinTech thought leadership.
Dennis Joyce, Investor and Member of Alliance of Angels, talks about the largest Angel group in the Pacific Northwest.
Yanai Oron, General Partner at Vertex Ventures, took us through his firm’s investment focus on deep technology ventures in Israel. The discussion includes an excellent window into how VC firms have different arithmetic depending on their size and structure.
Steven Aldrich, Chief Product Officer, GoDaddy, delves deep into the nuances of how a sophisticated product organization thinks about new products through customer-driven innovation, internal innovation, as well as external eco-system driven innovation.
Rob Schultz, Managing Partner at Serra Ventures, discusses catering to startups in under-served geographies. His point of view aligns with what we’ve heard from some other investors.
Yipeng Zhao, Managing Partner at Embark Ventures, talks about the firm’s investment thesis, as well as broader industry trends and what should and should not be funded.
Christina Brodbeck, Founding Partner at Rivet Ventures, talks about the firm’s investment thesis of funding companies that target the female demographic in its purchase decision cycle. Very interesting and under-served market.
Gary Little, Co-founder at Canvas Ventures, discusses the various types of venture capital and the evolution of the industry into a rather segmented current eco-system. For an entrepreneur trying to raise money, all this is extremely complicated, but essential to understand, or else, you will find yourself trying to fit a round peg into a square hole.
Mark Hasebroock is Founder at Dundee Venture Capital, based in Omaha, Nebraska. The firm invests in the Midwest, likes small, capital-efficient deals and are open to early exits.
Alan Chiu is Partner at XSeed, a seed-focused venture fund based in Silicon Valley. Alan talks about the level of risk his firm is willing to take and under what circumstances.
Amos Ben-Meir, Investor & Board Director at Sand Hill Angels, is a veteran angel investor. You will hear lots of details on working with a prominent angel group, as well as other types of syndicates.
Nate Redmond, Managing Partner at Alpha Edison, a VC who has put trust-driven ventures at the center of his investment thesis. It’s a very interesting conversation for both entrepreneurs and investors to listen to.
Rami Elkhatib, General Partner at Acero Capital, talks about his investments in companies that require a longer development cycle. As you know, 1Mby1M often uses Bootstrapping with Services as a core methodology to scale companies to fundability. Rami actually loves to invest in such businesses, listen on.
Rajul Garg, Head of Investments at Leo Capital, discusses the Indian startup eco-system and his fund’s investment focus.
Daniel Cohen, General Partner, Viola Ventures, discusses the Israeli startup market and his firm’s focus within that segment.
Nitin Rai, Managing Director at Elevate Capital, made a compelling case for investing in niche businesses with the upfront goal of scoring early exits. Excellent discussion!
Corey Schmid is General Partner at Seven Peaks Ventures, a firm with a focus on the Pacific Northwest.
Tim Wilson, Partner at Artiman Ventures, has been in the venture business for a long time, and refreshingly has the skill and the confidence to do very complex technology deals that are relatively early.
Greg Borchardt is Co-founder and Managing Partner at Caerus Ventures, a firm that has a focus on connected hardware. It’s an interesting and differentiated investment thesis that is worth listening to, especially for IoT entrepreneurs.
Gaurav Jain is Managing Partner at Afore Capital, a firm focused on pre-seed investments. This is an excellent conversation for entrepreneurs looking for insights into pre-seed.
Andrew Romans is General Partner of Rubicon Venture Capital. Our discussion includes an interesting segment on ICOs.
Rajeev Madhavan, Founder and General Partner at Clear Ventures, was first a highly successful serial entrepreneur, and brings to the VC game an entrepreneur’s view of the world. Rajeev highlighted the Series A gap in a big way.
John Deschner, Chief Innovation Officer\Managing Director at TBWA\Chiat\Day discusses the Corporate Innovation strategy of his advertising agency.
Maxwell Wessel, General Manager of SAP.IO, talks about SAP’s Corporate Incubation strategy.
Brij Bhasin, Principal and India Investment Lead at Redbright Partners, which is a Japanese Venture Capital firm, discusses their India strategy. The conversation encompasses broader trends in the Indian startup market.
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.
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.
Ira Weiss, General Partner at Hyde Park Venture Partners based in Chicago, talks about venture activity in the MidWest.
William Hsu, Co-founder and Partner at Mucker Capital, a Los Angeles based fund that invests largely outside Silicon Valley and follows a more fundamentals oriented approach.
Mackey Craven, Partner at OpenView Venture Partners, discusses what Series A VCs are looking for in the realm of software investments. We talk at length about the Series A gap from the perspective of a fund that focuses on Series A and beyond.
Semyon Dukach, Managing Partner at One Way Ventures, a firm that is 100% focused on immigrant entrepreneurs.
Hussein Kanji, Partner at Hoxton Ventures, is based in London and the primary focus is on European ventures.
Laurel Touby, Managing Partner at Supernode Ventures, and a former entrepreneur and avid angel investor, has now launched her new institutional pre-seed fund.
John Frankel, Partner at ff Venture Capital, discusses the firm’s investment thesis as well as key trends in the industry.
Mohit Gulati, Founder and CIO of Altius Ventures, which recently changed their name to ITI Growth Ventures, discusses the Indian startup eco-system.
Alastair Mitchell, Partner at EQT Ventures, talks about the European Startup Funding trends.
Ken Elefant, Managing Director at Sorenson Capital, discusses at length the investment thesis of his firm.
Raj Singh, Founder and Executive Director at Singh Ventures, offers a window into his firm’s investment thesis.
Greg Sands, Founder and Managing Director at Costanoa Ventures shares his investment focus.
Anirudh Suri, Founding Partner at India Internet Fund, about the funding trends in the Indian startup market.
Vinny Lingham, Co-founder and CEO, Civic.com, and Managing Partner of Newtown Partners, discusses his investment thesis in B-to-C seed ventures. We also discuss the role ICOs are playing in filling the gaps in certain seed-stage ventures.
Jon Staenberg, Managing Partner at Staenberg Venture Partners, has been a Seed Investor in over 300 ventures over the last 30 years. Jon draws from his long background and discusses some of what interests him to invest in a startup. He also reflects on the question People or Market: Which takes priority?
Bernard Moon, Co-founder and Partner, SparkLabs Global Ventures, discusses their seed investing activities.
Jake Seid, Managing Director, Stone Bridge Ventures, talks about trends, AngelList Syndicates, ICOs and more.
Charlie O’Donnell, Partner at Brooklyn Bridge Ventures, talks about his Seed investing activities and related industry trends.
Jonathan Lewy, Managing Partner at Investo, discusses pre-seed investment strategies and the Series A gap.
Mark Achler, Managing Director, MATH Venture Partners, discusses their investment strategy and the industry trends.
Yanev Suissa is General Partner at SineWave Ventures out of Washington DC and Silicon Valley. The firm invests alongside some major firms like Andreessen Horowitz and NEA. Yanev talks about how they invest, and also the trends he sees.
Nathan Lustig, Managing Partner of Magma Partners, a Latin-America-focused fund, talks about their strategy, as well as the dynamics of the LatAm market.
Nitin Pachisia, Founding Partner at Unshackled Ventures, discusses pre-seed and seed investing.
Todd Belfer, Managing Partner of Canal Partners, talks about financing early-stage niche B-to-B SaaS opportunities.
Don Hutchison is one of the most experienced and long term Angel investors in Silicon Valley. We discuss the trends of the industry and ways to mitigate the Series A gap that is a serious issue right now.
Julien Nguyen is General Partner at IT Farm, a seed-stage fund focused on Digital Health. We explore trends in the industry, as well as what IT Farm’s sixth fund likes to invest in.
Sunil Bhargava, Founder and Managing Partner, Tandem Capital, helped us explore the difference of post-seed versus pre-Series A financing.
Padmaja Ruparel is Co-founder, Indian Angel Network (IAN), and Founding Partner, IAN Fund. She has been a key player in shaping India’s still somewhat nascent startup eco-system. Those interested in Indian startups and the funding trends must listen to this interview.
Oded Hermoni is Managing Partner at Rhodium Venture Partners, and is also co-founder of an Angel group, J-Angels.
Cem Sertoglu, Partner at Earlybird Venture Capital, based in Turkey. Cem brings the spotlight on Turkey and the Eastern and Central European startup eco-systems.
Amir Banifatemi, Founder and Managing Partner of K5 Ventures, a fund focused on pre-seed, seed, post-seed and early-stage investments from Southern California. Amir is also a Board Member and former President of Tech Coast Angels, a group of 340 angel investors from Southern California.
Victoria Pettibone, Managing Director of Astia Angels, a group focused on funding women entrepreneurs. She discusses what they like to invest in, as well as the trends she sees in the deal flow and the portfolio.
Cindy Padnos, Founder and Managing Partner at Illuminate Ventures, discusses a topic that we’ve been highlighting recently: the need for multiple seed rounds as a way to bridge the Series A gap.
Aniruddha Malpani, Director and Founder of Malpani Ventures, is an active angle investor in the Indian circuit. He discusses what he looks for in companies he wants to invest in.
Darshan Vyas, Co-Founder Managing Director, LOUD Capital, discusses seed investing in the startup eco-system in the Mid-West from Ohio.
Rob Purdy, Founder and Global CEO at Power2Motivate. Rob’s is a classical 1Mby1M case study that I suggest you take a look at.
Stefania Mallett, CEO at ezCater, who raised multiple seed rounds, and then, over a period of a decade, $70 million. Stefania describes her journey of building a 2-sided marketplace for catering services that will do a billion dollars in billing soon. Great story of a woman entrepreneur who focuses on data, metrics, and results, not bias!
Hugh Massie is CEO at DNA Behavior International, a company that had a slow start and hovered in the $2-3 Million revenue range for the first six years of its existence. Today, this fully bootstrapped company does over $10M in revenue and is accelerating further. Hugh offers important lessons in managing a company that is ahead of the market.
Ravi Gururaj, Chair of NASSCOM’s product council, and Sharad Sharma, Founder of iSPRIT, each with enormous contributions towards the growth of the Indian software product eco-system, weigh in with their thoughts on the various aspects of the market.
Venktesh Shukla, founder of TiE Angels and General Partner Monta Vista Capital discusses some shifts happening in the world of seed investing.
Greg Besner, Founder and CEO at CultureIQ, is a serial entrepreneur and an angel investor. We discuss both his journey as an entrepreneur, lessons thereof, as well as his methodology and philosophy of angel investing.
Swati Chaturvedi is Co-founder and CEO at Propel(x), an online platform where entrepreneurs are connected to angels. Swati and I discussed some of the key trends of the seed financing eco-system as viewed from Propel(x).
Paulo Rosado is CEO of OutSystems, one of the very few enterprise software companies out of Europe, and they have succeeded in building a substantial global business.
Art Papas, CEO and Co-founder at Bullhorn, discusses how he pivoted a venture-funded startup, bootstrapped it to product-market fit and momentum, raised venture capital again to take out his original investors, and is now getting ready to go public. He also reiterated his more fundamentals-focused philosophy, emphasizing the need to attain product-market fit before raising funding.
Tim Hentschel, CEO at HotelPlanner and Meetings.com, has bootstrapped his company to $25M in revenue, growing 20% y-o-y organically. He emphasizes our mantra of entrepreneurship = customers + revenues + profits, financing, exit, valuation all being optional. Of course, today’s atmosphere is so frothy that such fundamental-oriented thinking has few takers.
Tom Foremski, Publisher of SiliconValleyWatcher.com, discusses the future of journalism and provides his views on a new business opportunity that he foresees: Media-as-a-Service (MaaS).
Anant Agarwal is CEO of edX and my former professor at MIT. We have a wide ranging and comprehensive discussion on the future of higher education, complete with startup ideas and analysis of entrepreneurial ventures within education. Definitely worth a look, if the subject interests you.
Caleb Sima, a world-class security expert and serial entrepreneur, was working on his security startup, BlueBox Security (acquired by Lookout in 2016), at the time of this discussion. If security is your interest, this is a great session to listen to.
Henry Schuck, Co-founder and CEO of DiscoverOrg, is a first-time entrepreneur who has bootstrapped his company to $25 million ARR, and then raised private equity financing from TA Associates. Henry sees a clear path to $100 million. Very inspiring story!
Sinclair Schuller, CEO and Co-Founder of Apprenda, built this enterprise software company with $55 million in financing from Upstate New York. He has raised funding from Silicon Valley, but without moving here. Listen to what he has to say about moving to the Valley.
T.M. Ravi is Managing Director and Co-founder of The Hive, a venture studio. The discussion touches upon a couple of key issues: the prevalent incubator/accelerator model of 3-month classes, we agreed, is bogus; and the Future of Work: Utopia or Dystopia?
Alexandre Wentzo, CEO of Casewise, an enterprise software company that started in London and has scaled in the US. The company is self-financed and did $24 Million in revenue last year. Our discussion focuses on some of the nuances of starting an enterprise software company in Europe and scaling it in the US.
Demitris Memos is CEO of MarineTraffic, a $5M+ revenue startup from Greece. Much of Southern Europe, especially Greece, is in economic trouble, and there is an exodus of talent. It is great to see Demitris’ success story against that backdrop.
Jon Ellis, Founder of Investorist, has raised ALL his equity financing from customers. This interview is very much worth listening to for those looking for alternative financing strategies besides Venture Capital.
Ludovic Huraux, Co-founder and CEO of Attractive World, and now Shapr, discusses his journey from conception to exit. Among his many interesting points was a specific highlight on how he raised money from 80 investors.
Stephan Goss, CEO of Zeeto, has bootstrapped a traffic arbitrage business to $42 million in 2015 revenue. If you are working on an affiliate marketing / lead generation type of business, this is a useful conversation.
Sergio Furio, Founder and CEO of Creditas is building a FinTech company from Brazil that has just closed its $19.5 Million Series B. The conversation was a great deep dive into the Brazilian entrepreneurial eco-system.
Shaul Weisband, Co-Founder and CMO of Jifiti, shares his journey and talks about the pivot that his company made early on and its impact on the investors.
Eric Frenkiel, co-founder and CEO of MemSQL, discusses his journey from pre-IPO Facebook to YCombinator to a thriving In-Memory database company that has successfully navigated a fat startup path.
Venky Balasubramanian, co-founder of Plivo, along with his partner, has achieved the amazing feat of growing a relatively fast growth business to well over $10 million in revenue with just $2M in Angel financing. What’s even more impressive is that they have done this with a convertible note, first $250K from angel investors in India, followed by $1.75M from investors in the Bay Area. The company operates in the US-India mode, and for those of you working in that style, many important lessons are discussed.
Jeremy Young, CEO of Tanga Network, which has bootstrapped a ~$30M a year affiliate marketplace. It’s a Groupon-like business, but with much more sustainable unit economics and business practices. Very interesting discussion on how and why!
Daniel Gulati, Principal and Head of Seed Investment Practice at Comcast Ventures, discusses e-commerce startup trends and what can and cannot be venture financed at this stage, and why.
Pallav Nadhani, CEO and Cofounder at FusionCharts, is someone I have known for a long time, and he will always have a special place in my heart as a young entrepreneur from Calcutta, where I was born and raised. Pallav has bootstrapped an $8 million a year product company from Calcutta, and we discuss the philosophical question “Is growth at all costs desirable?” I encourage you all to think about this question amidst the Unicorn mania raging in our industry today.
Nevin Shetty, CEO of Blueprint Registry, did TechStars last year, and we discuss some strategies for getting into YCombinator and TechStars, the two high quality seed fund accelerators that are worth going through. Note, there are very few among the 7,500+ accelerators out there that are worth parting with 7-10% equity for.
Girish Rowjee, Co-Founder and CEO of Greytip Software, discusses his long journey selling HR and Payroll software to the Indian SMEs. Greytip is one of the two successful SaaS companies in India who have managed to penetrate the mid-market.
Venkat Vishwanathan, Founder and Chairman of LatentView Analytics, discusses the trends of the industry, in particular, the Do It For Me trend we’re seeing in the space.
Allan Wille, President and CEO at Klipfolio, discusses his long journey from a bootstrapped business to a venture funded, higher growth company with 8,000+ customers.
Eyal Levy, Co-founder and CEO of Yogibo, shares his lessons from the trenches building a niche online-offline brand that started with a set of bean bags. It’s a charming and very informative interview.
Christian Vanek, CEO and Co-founder of SurveyGizmo, has bootstrapped the company to $13 million and is forecasting $26 million within a year with no external funding. We had a candid discussion that was both inspiring and enlightening.
Shane Evans is Founder of Scrapinghub, a virtual company with 5M Euro in revenue and 132 people. They have employees in 43 countries and operate 100% virtually.
Mark Dorsey, VP of Business Development and Co-founder at Bonanza, discusses how the company found its unique angle to break into a group of sellers looking for specific solutions. The company has ONLY raised $1M in funding and has delivered over $75M in revenues. Great story.
David Ciccarelli, Founder and CEO at Voices.com, has scaled a two-sided marketplace to $20 million in net revenue and discusses his inspiring journey.
Nilay Banker, Founder & CEO at Inspyrus, takes us through his wonderful bootstrapping using services story, along with nuances in business model innovations.