1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Patricia Nakache of Trinity Ventures (Part 2)

Patricia Nakache: Now there’s more of this bifurcation in the market of the haves and the have nots. We read it on the paper. We read on TechCrunch a lot about the haves. There’s probably a larger pool of companies that are having a harder time raising money probably because people have a bit of a hangover from the peak two or three years ago where they probably invested too quickly.

Right now, we’re in a period that is relatively healthy for entrepreneurs and for venture capitalists. There’s a lot of capital out there. I would say relative to 19 years ago when I started in the industry, it is far more competitive for venture capitalists to invest in good opportunities. I would say that is requires a lot more specialization than it did in the past where venture capitalists have had to go a lot deeper to build their credibility in specific areas because there are options available for entrepreneurs.

Entrepreneurs want to partner with somebody who actually knows something and can be a value add to them. Tha’ts a long-winded answer but hopefully that answered some of the things you were looking for.

Sramana Mitra: If you look at your deal flow in the last 15 months, what are you seeing as far as trends and highlights? Not necessarily only the ones you’ve invested in. What is significant? What stands out?

Patricia Nakache: There are definitely themes that are way more prevalent. We’re seeing a lot more of Blockchain and cryptocurrency-related ideas and opportunities. Across sectors, there’s a lot of emphasis on leveraging artificial intelligence to bring efficiency and productivity to different sectors. We’re seeing a lot more happening in the realm of digital health. That’s an interesting area.

The food and beverage sector has a lot more activity. At the outset of Trinity, the firm invested in retail as well as in technology. Some of the brick-and-mortar companies we invested in include Starbucks and Jamba Juice. We actually have a fair bit of historical food and beverage experience. It’s interesting to see some of these new food and beverage concept. Those are some of the things that we’re seeing. There are some sectors that we have been very active in historically.

I’ll pick one that I’m perfectly involved in, which is real estate tech. In the dot com days, we were the first institutional investors in a company called Loop Net, which is the first online marketplace for commercial real estate that we invested in. We actually did a pipe in the public company before it was sold. That was our first real tech investment. We have been very active in that sector over the years. Just in the past three years, it has become very active across the venture landscape. I personally can spend a lot of time there just given the amount of activity going on.

Sramana Mitra: What are some examples of interesting concepts in the real estate tech space? Have you invested in some in the last year?

Patricia Nakache: We’ve invested in a few.

Sramana Mitra: Talk about those.

Patricia Nakache: One that I invested about a year ago is a company called Real Nexus. It’s both a marketplace and workflow tools around retail real estate availability and trying to provide real time access to availability of information both in terms of what’s currently available and what should be available. That’s one area that we’ve made an investment recently.

We are investors in a company in New York called VTS, which is a CRM platform for commercial real estate. It’s interesting to see how a lot of SaaS concepts were more horizontal. Now we’re seeing a lot of really interesting deep vertical solutions particularly for very large verticals. There’s a bunch of really big needy verticals.

This segment is part 2 in the series : 1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Patricia Nakache of Trinity Ventures
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