1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Clint Chao of Moment Ventures (Part 1)

Responding to a popular request, we are now sharing transcripts of our investor podcast interviews in this new series. The following interview with Clint Chao of Moment Ventures was recorded in March 2018.

Clint Chao, Co-Founder and General Partner at Moment Ventures, discusses the vertical niche opportunities in the tech industry.

Sramana Mitra: Tell us a bit about yourself as well as the firm. Let’s get you introduced to our audience and get to know one another.

Clint Chao: Absolutely. I’ve been investing in venture capital since 2005. I had an opportunity to be part of a venture capital firm before starting Moment Ventures called Formative Ventures. I launched Moment Ventures in 2013 with my new partner Ammar Hanafi. The two of us have been investing together since then.

Before becoming an investor, I was an entrepreneur and had an opportunity to work in a number of technology startups. Most notably, I was involved as an early employee at a company called C-Cube. It was at C-Cube where we had an opportunity to help commercialize the MPEG video algorithm. Many of the learnings that I’ve had from that experience, I try to bring on to the investing side.

Most of my background is in the sales and marketing execution part of companies. That’s the skillset that halts entrepreneurs at the startup stage. Many of them have never gone through taking a zero revenue company into becoming a potential industry leader in their target space. I try to bring whatever guidance and experience that I can to help them with that.

Sramana Mitra: How big is the fund? What do you like to invest in? What’s the investing focus?

Clint Chao: We are an early-stage B2B-focused fund. We typically like to get involved at the first institutional round of the company. That can be seed. It could be, in some cases, Series A. We like to keep the spectrum quite wide. We’re looking for interesting companies that could actually disrupt many of the industries that they’re targeting. Early on, they may raise little amount of capital. As they continue to grow, we know that industry leaders will ultimately need lots of capital. As a result, our entry point is somewhat dependent on the stage of the company.

Sramana Mitra: What is your comfort zone? Do you like to invest in companies that already have product-market fit? Would you consider investing in companies that are at the concept stage still looking to develop the product? How early do you go?

Clint Chao: We actually can cover both ends of that. Entrepreneurs are usually able to build some version of their initial product without much capital at all. By the time we get involved with them, usually there’s something generally working. Having said that, we have also invested in companies at the formation stage. We recently made an investment in a company on the very first day of the company’s formation. That usually comes when we know the entrepreneur in a manner that gives us conviction and excitement in what they’re doing.

This segment is part 1 in the series : 1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Clint Chao of Moment Ventures
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