7 Seed Investor Podcasts Discuss What They Look For In Startups

There is currently a lot of capital in seed investing, with somewhere between 500 and 700 micro VCs extremely active in what we call the pre-Series A ecosystem. Some are really small funds of $10-$15 million dollar funds, some are $30-$50 million dollar funds, some are $70-$100 million dollar funds, and in some cases they do small Series A investing. This is quite a recent phenomena that has emerged over the past few years, perhaps even just within the past 18 months. Huge numbers of people have raised small funds. As a result, a lot of seed deals are getting funded. Recently, over the past month, I’ve spoken with the following group of seed investors about this trend, as well as the types of startups that seed investors are looking for. Have a listen to our conversations, shared below as 30-minute podcast interviews, to learn if seed investors might be interested in financing your startup.

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!

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.

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.

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.

Corey Schmid is General Partner at Seven Peaks Ventures, a firm with a focus on the Pacific Northwest.