Raising money to build a startup is a huge challenge. To be able to raise any money at all, you must first understand how investors think. We have developed the following courses catering to entrepreneurs in different stages of their entrepreneurial journey.
>>>During this week’s roundtable, we had as our guest Dharmesh Shah, Founder and CTO of HubSpot. Dharmesh discussed his entrepreneurial journey with candor, humility and generosity. Wonderful conversation.
You can listen to the recording of this roundtable here:
Jon Staenberg, Managing Partner at Staenberg Venture Partners, discusses the trends he is seeing and the investment thesis he is following.
Sramana Mitra: How have you been? How has COVID been? Has everything been okay?
Jon Staenberg: I was just talking about that this morning. I feel very lucky. I traveled a lot during COVID. I got a lot of business done. I have to say that I feel very fortunate. Now, it seems like airports are busy. People are traveling and they are eager to get out. In fact, I hold investor and founder dinners in San Francisco and Seattle. I get a lot of unsolicited reminders that we should get going with those.
>>>Shane Neman is the Founder of EZ Texting, JoonBug.com, and Principal at Neman Ventures. Shane has bootstrapped two companies as a solo entrepreneur, found successful exits for both, and is now an investor. Needless to say, he has no bias against solopreneurs.
Sramana Mitra: We are going to spend quite a bit of time today with Shane Neman. I met Shane a while ago in his Entrepreneur Journey story. I found a lot of interesting insights and lessons from his journey that I wanted to highlight and showcase for you. That is what we are going to do for a while today then we will see what else we have time for. Welcome to the show, Shane.
>>>In case you missed it, you can listen to the recording here:
During this week’s roundtable, we had as our guest Rajeev Singh-Morales at Alma Mundi Ventures. We discussed the Europe – US bridge for tech startups.
Adios
As for our entrepreneur pitch, we had Tarun Gulati from Pune, India, pitching Adios, an app for achieving mental clarity. It aligns with the mental health tech startup trend that Rajeev discussed earlier.
FaveKitchens
Next, we had Praveen Akula from Seattle, Washington, pitching FaveKitchens, a restaurant tech startup that is already doing significant revenue and wants to raise a round.
You can listen to the recording here:
If you haven’t already, please study our free Bootstrapping course and the Investor Introductions page.
If you’ve been bootstrapping your company for a bit, and are wondering whether or not to raise money, remember, Investors are looking to multiply the money that they put into startups.
Multiply by how much? 2X? 3X? 5X? 10X? 20X?
Jon Staenberg, Managing Partner at Staenberg Venture Partners, discusses the trends he is seeing and investment thesis he is following.
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Karthee Madasamy is Founder and Managing Partner at Mobile Foundation Ventures. We discuss the nuances of Deep Tech investing.
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In case you missed it, you can listen to the recording here:
During this week’s roundtable, we had as our guest Jon Staenberg, Managing Partner at Staenberg Venture Partners. We discussed the trends he is seeing and investment thesis he is following.
Foodoop
As for our entrepreneur pitch, we had Chandra Subramanian from Helsinki, Finland, pitch Foodoop, a two-sided marketplace for home cooks to offer their services to consumers.
You can listen to the recording of this roundtable here:
In case you missed it, you can listen to the recording here:
If you have been bootstrapping and think you are ready for investors, you need to learn how investors think. First, please study our free Bootstrapping course and Investor Introductions page. Then start looking for entrepreneur – investor fit. Today I introduce you to Scott Sandell.
Scott Sandell, General Partner at NEA, is one of NEA’s star investors. He has been named to the Forbes Midas list every year since 2007, and has been involved with eight Unicorn companies including Salesforce.com, Workday, Webex, Tableau, and others. During our conversation in 2015, Scott discusses, specifically, Webex and Tableau in quite a bit of depth. In both companies, the scrappy, capital-efficient management of those businesses were striking!
Among Silicon Valley’s venture firms, NEA holds a special place in my own entrepreneurial journey, being the first VC firm that I successfully raised funding from. Oddly, at that time in the late nineties, the fact that my company was doing product development in India was considered unacceptable. Of course, all that changed in due course, and today India is firmly established on the startup map, as are China, Europe, and many other nations. NEA was an early adopter of the global entrepreneurship trend, and has offices in India and China. They also invest elsewhere in the world, where they don’t have offices. You can listen to the podcast interview here and the entire roundtable program here:
Scott Sandell, General Partner at NEA, is one of NEA’s star investors. He has been named to the Forbes Midas list every year since 2007, and has been involved with eight Unicorn companies including Salesforce.com, Workday, Webex, Tableau, and others. Scott discusses, specifically, Webex and Tableau in quite a bit of depth. In both companies, the scrappy, capital-efficient management of those businesses were striking!
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Android | Google Play | Stitcher | TuneIn | RSS
During this week’s roundtable, we had as our guest Karthee Madasamy, Founder and Managing Partner, Mobile Foundation Ventures. We discussed the nuances of Deep Tech investing.
VEGG
As for our entrepreneur pitch, we had 1Mby1M Premium member Akshar Vastarpara from Gujarat, India, pitching VEGG, a smart home solution.
You can listen to the recording of this roundtable here:
Michael Smerklo is Co-founder and Managing Director at Next Coast Ventures. We have a terrific conversation about a range of issues including solo founders and their ill-treatment by VCs.
Sramana Mitra: We are going to start today’s session with a conversation with Micheal Smerkio, co-founder and managing partner at Next Coast Ventures. Welcome back to the show.
>>>