1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Steve Eskenazi, Angel Investor (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Let’s do some more examples of the kinds of companies you like to invest in. Is Resonato an IT investment?

Steve Eskenazi: It’s a technology company that occupies the intersection of technology and consumer electronics. Our first TVs were thick. Now, TVs are very thin. They are doing for the speaker market what was done to the TV market. They are making flat-core speakers. They don’t make the speakers. They license their technology. They’re heavily patent-protected.

They have found traction with soundbars, smart speakers, and the recreation space. It’s a neat company that is making a product that is faster, better, cheaper, smaller, more ergonomic, and better for the environment too. It’s an interesting space that not a lot of people are focused on.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s do a few more of these examples. I’d like to hear how they came to you, at what stage did they come to you, and what is it about them that caught your attention. In this case, was it the fact that they had technology that was already IP-protected?

Steve Eskenazi: It was the entrepreneur. I met the entrepreneur either through TiE or the J-Angels group. I kept in touch with him for a couple of years. He continued to reach out for advice. He is a South Korean entrepreneur whose dad is an executive at Samsung. The dad sent the family to the US to study. This entrepreneur went to Notre Dame but had to go back to South Korea to serve in the Army. He served at the demilitarized zone.

He reunited with his dad and his dad said, “I have all these ideas from my time at Samsung. Why don’t you take one of these? I liked that market. It was just a situation where I just gravitated toward this entrepreneur.

Sramana Mitra: Tell us a few more of these case studies and give us a feel for what kind of things you like to invest in.

Steve Eskenazi: One of my longest investments is in a company called PM Pediatrics, which is an East Coast company. It’s a childhood friend of mine solving the problem that parents of young kids have, which is kids don’t just get sick between 9 and 5. They offer after-hours care. They’ve moved towards telehealth practice. Their competition is emergency rooms whose average waiting time is 4.5 hours.

They executed and built the company that’s now over $200 million in revenue and explored what liquidity options and exit scenarios they might have. That’s in the middle of life sciences and technology.

Sramana Mitra: We don’t do life sciences, but the category of digital health is very much within our purview.

Steve Eskenazi: I can give you another example of a deal I just did. It’s a young Israeli. He dropped out of high school to do this. He set up a service on Discord. They were making YouTube videos and allowing people to be their own DJs in a house-party type of setting. He grew it to 20 million daily active users before Google and Discord shut them down.

They’ve kept their community intact. They have now explored doing this in a 100% legal fashion. They are in that process now. It’s called Rhythm.fm. That’s a very early-stage first check. It was the strong connection with the entrepreneur and my ability to help him. He’s local here in Silicon Valley.

This segment is part 2 in the series : 1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Steve Eskenazi, Angel Investor
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