1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Suman Talukdar, Founder and Managing Partner at AiSprouts.VC (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: For the entrepreneurs who are listening, you cannot fit a square peg in a round hole. Just like when you were looking for the product-market fit, you are going to have to find an investor entrepreneur fit.

An investor who is looking for one type of exit is not going to invest in the other style. You have to bang against the wall if you are going after investors who are not interested in your style of investment opportunity. Keep that in mind.

I recommend to spend a lot of time in our financing module of the curriculum. Go to the blog and spend time in the seed capital series. Get in the heads of investors. You have to understand who you should go after.

If you can spend enough time in our body of work around investors, give me a shortlist of 15 investors who you think are going to be good for you. It takes me five minutes to introduce you to the investors. I am going to blow my credibility by introducing you to 15 investors that are not relevant to you.

The reason why I am harping on investor-entrepreneur fit these days is because I see entrepreneurs wasting a lot of runway by doing it the wrong way. This is a complex game. You need to understand it before you play it.

Before we conclude your case study, let’s do one company that you have invested in. Take us through the process of how and when they came to you, what did you see in them that made you write the check? 

Suman Talukdar: I’ll give you two rapid-fire examples. The first one is a company called Hayden AI. I met them through the circuits here in Silicon Valley. As I was getting to know them, one investor that I knew at another fund said, “Hey, we like this company.”

We soft circled some interest from several investors. That was the trigger for me – a social peer validation. The technology was unique, it’s AI for public safety. There aren’t a lot of companies doing that. They can potentially produce a billion dollars of revenue in cities with products that are 10X cheaper than anything else. There is a scale in the upside that was unique. They had pilots within a few months. They can get to a lot of revenue, making them very capital efficient.

The second company is called BoostUp AI. They raised approximately four and a half from Kanin and a few other investors. The founders are out of IIT. They had a couple hundred thousand in revenue when I met them. They had raised very little money. They were doing very well with a product that made sales smarter. There was a soft circling interest from other investors. Forecasting is a big market. It’s being used by everyone. The traction in customers was impressive. They were able to do with the tenth less capital than companies that were founded eight years ago who were trying to do the same thing. They had great teams and strong traction. They were going after the big market with a big vision.

Sramana Mitra: Thank you for your time.

This segment is part 5 in the series : 1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Suman Talukdar, Founder and Managing Partner at AiSprouts.VC
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