Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Venktesh Shukla, Chair, TiE Angels (Part 4)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Irina: In your work as an angel investor, what are your daily challenges?

Venktesh: Well, there’s one company that I really like, and they have a technology which they claim is breakthrough. In concept on paper it looks great, but all the people and all the big companies that are target customers are saying, “Yeah, the value proposition is good. Yeah, this makes sense, but unless I use it, I don’t know if I’ll buy this.”

In order for them to use it, the technology has to be at a certain stage, which means it needs money. That’s the dilemma for an investor. You want some validation, but in order to get the validation, you need to put money in. And maybe when they implement, it’s not as good, it’s not as exciting and it’s not as differentiated. That’s the fundamental difference.

It’s the kind of thing that needs to be [put] into a chip, for instance, which means you need to buy some development tools so that you can put it in a format so that others can use it and then validate whether it works. That’s the thing that I am struggling with. I like the team, I like the concept, and the problem they’re trying to solve is a big one. It’s about how to extend the life of a battery in a handset, so it’s a very interesting problem. And there is definitely a market for it if it works. But in order to figure out if it really works, somebody has to put money in.

Irina: Thank you, Venktesh. Great insights.

This segment is part 4 in the series : Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Venktesh Shukla, Chair, TiE Angels
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