1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Alireza Rahnema of 7 Gate Ventures (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Let’s do another company.

Alireza Rahnema: Another company that has a very interesting background is Spocket. Spocket is one of the top three service providers on the Shopify platform. They help e-commerce retailers acquire products to sell and help find the right products based on desires and the location. The backbone is what makes it interesting for us.

The founder is of Iranian descent. He was attending medical school when he started dabbling in drop shipping. A few months on, he created the first version of Spocket which we tracked. He came to us on hearing about 7 Gate. He was invited to attend a Tech Stars program while working at Spocket.

Due to the travel ban, he wasn’t given the visa to attend this three-month program at Techstars. It was a stressful period for his company. He basically had to join conferences via teleconference. They successfully came out of that program with Techstars investing in the company. He’s now raised $5 million at a valuation of between $20 million and $25 million. His MRR is between $60,000 and $75,000 as of this week. I’ll be happy to talk to you about one of the other examples we had.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s do one more example and then we’ll switch.

Alireza Rahnema: An example of a very successful Vancouver-based startup, which everybody has heard about in Vancouver, is called the The Next Big Thing. Shareshed is a marketplace for sharing outdoor equipment such as tents, kayak, and paddles. That company has been acquired by a larger company which was a travel vacation bookie services in a span of year and half. We’re very happy.

Sramana Mitra: I’m going to ask you something a bit more of a broad trend and how you are playing to that trend. Based on what you’ve told me, I’m drawing the kind of conclusion that you’re not chasing unicorns but are looking at some of the niche opportunities as well. Is that an accurate observation?

Alireza Rahnema: Absolutely! That’s absolutely right. Given that this is a very broad topic, market-changing innovation might be very difficult to come by given the dominance of the big companies. As investors, you need to show returns, and there are opportunities where going in early leads to good returns that might not to be on the thousands of returns.

Being happy with returns of 5x or 10x and maintaining that investment in more and more companies allows us to be sustainable. We’ve done that with a few of our companies. Large acquisitions might be few in between. In the sub-$10 million to $15 million range, there’s a lot of activity and we’re happy to be helping companies reach a growth stage where an acquisition will take place.

This segment is part 4 in the series : 1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Alireza Rahnema of 7 Gate Ventures
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