1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Anshu Sharma (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Do you lead deals?

Anshu Sharma: In Silicon Valley, even $100,000 doesn’t really make you a lead in any meaningful sense.

Sramana Mitra: Depends on what stage. Maybe we should visit the stage question first and then come back to the size question.

Anshu Sharma: It’s not about leading or not leading. The way I think about it is I love being the first check in. That’s what people typically call lead. The classical angel investing is you put in $25,000 and value the company at a few million dollars and then hope for a quick next round so that your investment multiplies.

If I understand the case and I’m willing to lean in, usually there are other investors who typically join in and we end up constructing a much larger round. A perfect example would be PubNub. When I met the founder of PubNub, it was essentially one person who built some software and was doing this full time. By the time we close the round and I reached out to people I knew, we ended up having a multi-million dollar round. That’s just the nature of how I like to bring things together.

Sramana Mitra: You would come in and get things going. You would then drum up momentum in your network. Because you have put your skin in the game, people would come behind you. That’s the way you like to use your influence.

Anshu Sharma: That’s how it’s turned out.

Sramana Mitra: What about geography?

Anshu Sharma: I’m primarily focused on the Silicon Valley market but I’ve made a few investments in India. I’ve invested in Razorpay and a company called Innovate, which is like the WeWork of India. There have been a handful of investments in Indian startups where I came across an idea where I understand the market. 80% is Silicon Valley-based. 20% is India.

Sramana Mitra: Where in India are you from originally?

Anshu Sharma: I grew up pretty much all over India. My parents currently live in New Delhi, so that’s home but I grew up all over North India. I ended up going to school in West Bengal for my engineering degree.

Sramana Mitra: If you look at your deal flow from the last 15 months, what are the trends that you see?

Anshu Sharma: It’s funny in some ways. I don’t ever sit down and analyze my deal flow. I don’t sit down and analyze where this is all headed. I don’t sit down and figure out whether AI is getting warmer or cryptocurrency is doing better. I am almost entirely focused on the quality of the founding team and the market they’re going after.

Sramana Mitra: I’m not really thinking from that perspective. I’m just curious because you do have a good deal flow. I’m curious about what you’re seeing. It’s more of understanding what’s interesting out there that you see that helps us draw some awareness.

Anshu Sharma: It goes back to my roots – enterprise software. In today’s day and age, it’s almost always some form of SaaS or PaaS. The new twist now is majority of those companies that are doing something new in that space have either a data-driven or an AI-driven angle to the story. That pretty much covers almost all of the companies I’ve invested in the last two years.

Sramana Mitra: Talk a little bit more about the company that you have invested in. Maybe talk about some of the highlights of your portfolio. You talked about one just now – the integration one. Maybe a couple more?

Anshu Sharma: The one that most people know the best is my very first angel investment which was Nutanix.

This segment is part 2 in the series : 1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Anshu Sharma
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