10 Podcasts with Investors on Seed Financing for Startups

Once upon a time, there used to be Seed and Series A as financing options for startups. Now, we have pre-seed, seed, pre-Series A, and THEN Series A. And the Series A can often be a small $1-3 Million round, which typically comes from small venture firms. The bigger, more traditional firms have moved upstream, raising bigger and bigger funds. They can only do $5-10M Series A rounds, which often have the characteristics of Series B.

If you are a startup entrepreneur looking for help navigating the myriad stages of seed investing, please have a listen to the following 30-minute podcast interviews with some of today’s most respected Seed Investors.

Cindy Padnos, Founder and Managing Partner at Illuminate Ventures – Cindy 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 – Aniruddha is an active angle investor in the Indian circuit. He discusses what he looks for in companies in which he wants to invest.

Darshan Vyas, Co-Founder Managing Director, LOUD Capital – Darshan discusses seed investing in the startup eco-system in the Mid-West from Ohio.

Daniel Gulati, Principal and Head of Seed Investment Practice at Comcast Ventures – Daniel discusses e-commerce startup trends and what can and cannot be venture financed at this stage, and why.

Ashmeet Sidana, Founder of Engineering Capital – His seed-stage venture fund focuses on infrastructure technology, and he has a lot of insights to offer. He delivers one particular piece of wisdom that is close to my heart. He says, funding is like candy. Don’t eat too much candy. Whole wheat bread and proteins are customers and revenues. That’s what you should focus on. Brilliant analogy, don’t you think?

Bryce Roberts, Managing Director, O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures (OATV), and Founder, Indie.vc – Bryce discusses the issues with the venture capital financing model, and explores alternatives.

Greg Besner, Founder and CEO at CultureIQ – Greg 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) – She discusses some of the key trends of the seed financing eco-system as viewed from Propel(x), an online platform where entrepreneurs are connected to angels.

T.M. Ravi, Managing Director and Co-founder of The Hive – He shares his perspective as a founder of a venture studio. Our 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?

Venktesh Shukla, Founder of TiE Angels and General Partner at Monta Vista Capital – He discusses some shifts happening in the world of seed investing.