1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Eric Benhamou, Founder and General Partner at Benhamou Global Ventures 2021 (Part 4)

Eric Benhamou: Another example where Salesforce.com does not do a very good job at is mobile engagements. Despite the pandemic, we are still living in a world that is increasingly more mobile. You have to be able to capitalize on mobile engagement opportunities all the time. There are many things that are potentially limiting in Salesforce. That is the space that is available for younger companies who don’t have the architecture baggage of Salesforce. 

Sramana Mitra: From a fund strategy point of view, you would consider investing in companies that build on somebody else’s stack?

Eric Benhamou: Absolutely. A great example of this is a category – MarTech tools. Some people say that it is an overfunded space because 8,000 to 9,000 companies have been funded there. On the other hand, we have such an insatiable appetite for improving digital engagement tools – tools that help us understand customer journeys in the digital world.

We consume these tools. All these tools build on the existing marketing stack. They create a different way of solving a very important digital problem that leverages existing stacks. 

Sramana Mitra: You have your deal flow and your portfolio and you watched the broader trends. What are some things that you are looking for? You have something going on trend-wise and you want to invest in that trend. Are there nuggets that you could offer with more specific directions? 

Eric Benhamou: There is a lot. Frankly, I’m very optimistic about our industry right now. I don’t mean all of the venture capital. As I mentioned before, we focus on the early stage. One trend that accelerated in 2020 is that more of our peers started to deploy more of their capital downstream which means expansion, growth stage, and later stages.

Even though it was a record year in terms of the amount of venture capital invested, much more of it was invested downstream. There were fewer investments in seed, seed plus, and series A. It makes this environment that we play in less competitive in the sense that there are fewer chances of valuation inflation.

We take the valuation inflation in series C and D plus companies but not at series seed and seed plus. If anything, series seed valuations have tapered down a little bit in the last two or three quarters. It’s a benign environment for us and we want to take advantage of it. That is more of a capital deployment trend that I am referring to. In terms of opportunities in the end market. You find them literally across the board of vertical sectors.

I’ll give you one that looks a bit far fetched – waste recycling and waste management. Anything that is of waste management is an opportunity for technology disruption. I did not suspect that up until a year ago. I started to look into this closely.

First of all, there is a societal trend. We generate more and more waste, but at the same time, we have less and less tolerance for poorly managed waste. This is one of the attributes of a consumer society. As part of our climate change and climate control policies, we want to do a better job at recycling waste. 

This segment is part 4 in the series : 1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Eric Benhamou, Founder and General Partner at Benhamou Global Ventures 2021
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