1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Alireza Rahnema of 7 Gate Ventures (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Would it be fair to say that you’re comfortable with pre-seed investment?

Alireza Rahnema: Absolutely! Over 50% of those are pre-seeds. So far, a significant portion stay. Almost 90% have gone on to a seed and we have invested on as they grow up.

Sramana Mitra: Talk about the types of companies that you like to invest in – B2B, B2C, hybrid? What’s your comfort zone?

Alireza Rahnema: We’ve talked about this between ourselves. There’s a difference in opinion in the industry that you should know how to approach. We are comfortable in identifying the founders that are exceptional. So our investments range from B2B or B2B2C. We have invested in marketplaces in cloud services.

The sector is pretty agnostic. I know we like to focus on a founder that is exceptional, somewhat coachable and amenable to our interaction with them, and also is able to create a strong model around the startup – making it competitive in the long term.

Sramana Mitra: Talk about some of the companies that you’ve invested in. In particular, take us through some of the case studies? Help us understand at what point did these companies come to you. How did they get to you? What was going in those companies that captured your attention and led you to invest. Let’s start with the three you said that you’ve exited already. Let’s start there and take all three of those and do a mini case study on each.

Alireza Rahnema: One of the companies that has a very interesting background is where the founder was working at 7 Gate as an Analyst. She showed a great deal of interest and curiosity but at the same time, we noticed that she was passionate about veganism, fighting animal-cruelty, and sustainability when it comes to consumption.

Every opportunity she would get would be spending time promoting this mantra – creating content for her website and her social media feed and finding out fantastic recipes for vegan food. It was obvious that this was her passion. She was very able to manage her time. We decided to take a shot at this first-time founder. We had no experience in creating a media platform and made a small investment with the promise to create investments. Six months later, we doubled down on our investments.

Now as we speak she has been acquired by a Los Angeles based media company. Her social media following exceeds one million viewers and subscribers. Her company is called LIVEKINDLY. She’s been dubbed as the Queen of Veganism. This is one of the cases where the founder’s passion, eagerness, and work-ethic really inspired us to back up.

Sramana Mitra: How much capital went into this company? How much did the company get acquired for?

Alireza Rahnema: The timeframe of this acquisition is fairly short. First check in was $50,000 and another $50,000. This was acquired for 3x.

This segment is part 3 in the series : 1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Alireza Rahnema of 7 Gate Ventures
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