1Mby1M Udemy Courses with Sramana Mitra: Financing

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.

Roundtable Recap: May 10 – Not All Micro-VCs Are Chasing Unicorns

During this week’s roundtable, we had as our guest Steve Beck, Managing Partner at Serra Ventures. Steve discussed his firm’s non-Unicorn investment thesis. Refreshing to hear.

Isha Pay
As for entrepreneur pitches, we started with Bama Venkatachalam from Fremont, California, pitching a cryptocurrency gateway for e-commerce companies to accept payments in all kinds of crypto currencies. Bama is a 1Mby1M premium member.

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Featured Videos

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Bryce Roberts of OATV, Indie.vc (Part 1)

Responding to a popular request, we are now sharing transcripts of our investor podcast interviews in this new series. The following interview with Bryce Roberts was recorded in August 2016. 

Bryce Roberts, Managing Director, O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures (OATV), and Founder, Indie.vc, discusses the issues with the venture capital financing model, and explored alternatives.

Sramana Mitra: You have a very different point of view about venture capital than the traditional VC point of view. Tell us what your philosophy is. >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Greg Sands of Costanoa Ventures (Part 1)

Responding to a popular request, we are now sharing transcripts of our investor podcast interviews in this new series. The following interview with Greg Sands, Costanoa Ventures was recorded in December 2017. 

Greg Sands, Founder and Managing Director at Costanoa Ventures shares his investment focus.

Sramana Mitra: Tell us about your investing focus. How big is the fund? What size investments are you making?

Greg Sands: Costanoa Ventures invests in the entire stack of business-facing software. These are companies that change the way the world does business. We’re investing out of a $175 million third fund. There are two modes. We do seed investments, which most typically are half a million to a million and a half. Then Series A investments that range from $2 million to $6 million. >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Dave Hornik of August Capital (Part 1)

Responding to a popular request, we are now sharing transcripts of our investor podcast interviews in this new series. The following interview with Dave Hornik, August Capital was recorded in December 2014. 

Dave Hornik, General Partner, August Capital, as some of you may know, shocked the industry years ago by being the first VC to start blogging. His peers were aghast! Well, clearly, he saw something before everybody else, and today, many VCs blog, Tweet, and do all sorts of other things to engage in social media, now a dominant force in the industry. He discusses a number of points, of which, I want to particularly draw your attention to his views on the subject of Freemium.

Sramana Mitra: I have this memory of almost 10 years ago when you were blogging. >>>

Roundtable Recap: May 3 – Spotlight on EdTech

During this week’s roundtable, we had as our guest Jennifer Carolan, Co-founder and General Partner at Reach Capital, a venture firm with 100% focus on EdTech. The conversation was an excellent exploration of the state of the union in EdTech investments.

Vpharmacist
As for entrepreneur pitches, we spoke with Tamilvendan Rajaraman from Chennai, India, pitching Vpharmacist, an online pharmacy that is bootstrapped and executing very well, competing in a crowded market.

You can listen to the recording of this roundtable here:

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1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Guy Resheff of Grove Ventures (Part 1)

Responding to a popular request, we are now sharing transcripts of our investor podcast interviews in this new series. The following interview with Guy Resheff, Grove Ventures was recorded in December 2017. He is no longer with the firm. 

Guy Resheff, Partner at Grove Ventures, focuses the spotlight on Israel.

Sramana Mitra: Tell us about your investing focus. How big is the fund? What size investments do you make?

Guy Resheff: Grove Ventures is an early stage VC focusing on deep technology companies. Anytime you see a very tough technical problem involving deep science, that’s what we are all about. Our fund size is $110 million. We invest in seed and A >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Heidi Roizen of DFJ (Part 1)

Responding to a popular request, we are now sharing transcripts of our investor podcast interviews in this new series. The following interview with Heidi Roizen, DFJ was recorded in March 2016. 

Heidi Roizen, Operating Partner at DFJ, discusses her important article, “How to Build a Unicorn From Scratch – and Walk Away with Nothing,” and imparts crucial lessons to entrepreneurs on how to look at terms in a venture financing situation.

Sramana Mitra: We have been living in world of unicorn mania. We have tried to put some perspective on this issue. There are good sides to the unicorn mania. There are bad sides to the unicorn mania. Let’s start with one

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1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Hernan Kazah of Kaszek Ventures (Part 1)

Responding to a popular request, we are now sharing transcripts of our investor podcast interviews in this new series. The following interview with Hernan Kazah of Kaszek Ventures was recorded in November 2016. 

Hernan Kazah, Co-founder and Managing Partner at Kaszek Ventures, is one of the earliest VC firms to start investing in the Latin American market. Hernan is also a Co-founder of MercadoLibre, Latin America’s e-commerce leader. This discussion features a comprehensive overview of the trends in the Latin American startup scene.

Sramana Mitra: Tell us a little bit about your activities since we last interacted. You were still at MercadoLibre but I know you switched to VC for a while. Tell us what have you been up to since then. >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Jake Seid of Stone Bridge Ventures (Part 1)

Responding to a popular request, we are now sharing transcripts of our investor podcast interviews in this new series. The following interview with Jake Seid of Stone Bridge Ventures was recorded in November 2017. 

Jake Seid, Managing Director, Stone Bridge Ventures, talks about trends, AngelList Syndicates, ICOs and more.

Sramana Mitra: Tell us about Stone Bridge Ventures. What is the focus of the firm? How big is the fund? What size investments do you like to make?

Jake Seid: This is a vehicle that I formed after my time as President of Ten-X. When I moved to the advisory board, I saw a >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Jon Staenberg of Staenberg Venture Partners (Part 1)

Responding to a popular request, we are now sharing transcripts of our investor podcast interviews in this new series. If you haven’t already, please study our free Bootstrapping course and the Investor Introductions page. The following interview with Jon Staenberg of Staenberg Venture Partners was recorded in November 2017. 

Jon Staenberg, Managing Partner at Staenberg Venture Partners, has been a Seed Investor in over 300 ventures over the last 30 years. Jon draws from his long background and discusses some of what interests him to invest in a startup. He also reflects on the question People or Market: Which takes priority?

Sramana Mitra: Tell us about the focus of your investments and let’s introduce you to our audience.

Jon Staenberg: I’m a little disappointed that it took 374 shows to get me on, but I’m glad to be here. I’m kidding, of course! Congratulations to you for doing this. It’s nice to be interviewed. I’m an old dinosaur at this point, having done this for some 30 >>>

8 Investors Discuss Velocity and Financing within the Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum

Almost all investors are looking for startups with velocity, ventures that increasingly solve real pains in repeatable ways. If you can achieve velocity, then investors will chase you, because they know it’s not so easy to find companies that hit their stride velocity-wise. Be mindful that the best way for your startup to get to velocity may be by bootstrapping. Entrepreneurship equals customers, revenues, and profits. Financing and exit are optional. There are many examples of companies that would have succeeded as bootstrapped companies, but went out of business because they went after financing. To learn about the various levels of velocity investors are looking for in the startups they finance, please read the following interviews with a wide variety of VCs and seed investors.

Mark Achler, Managing Director, MATH Venture Partners, discusses their investment strategy and the industry trends.

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203rd 1Mby1M Entrepreneurship Podcast With Curtis Feeny, Silicon Valley Data Capital

Curtis Feeny, Managing Director at Silicon Valley Data Capital, talks about his firm’s investment thesis around Big Data and Machine Learning.

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202nd 1Mby1M Entrepreneurship Podcast With Vivek Ladsariya, SineWave Ventures

Vivek Ladsariya, Partner at SineWave Ventures, talks about the firm’s investment thesis, as well as trends in the industry.

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393rd 1Mby1M Entrepreneurship Podcast With Tim Guleri, Sierra Ventures

Tim Guleri, Managing Director at Sierra Ventures, discusses at length his firm’s investment thesis, unique relationships with CIOs, and some of the industry trends he sees.

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1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Eric Benhamou of Benhamou Global Ventures (Part 1)

Responding to a popular request, we are now sharing transcripts of our investor podcast interviews in this new series. The following interview with Eric Benhamou was recorded in November 2014. 

Eric Benhamou, Managing Partner of Benhamou Global Ventures, was the CEO of 3Com, a pioneer in the networking space, and the key competitor to Cisco. He also ran Palm, the first Smartphone maker, that 3Com acquired, then spun out, and took it public. He provides an insightful window into the opportunities in the enterprise cloud infrastructure space, and in Cyber Security, and also explains why he is not necessarily looking for Unicorn companies to invest in. This, I might point out, is a highly unusual perspective in today’s VC universe, so you may want to pay attention to his analysis of the market. >>>