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: March 14 – Learn to Bootstrap Effectively to Navigate Early Chicken and Egg Stage

During this week’s roundtable, we had as our guest Yanai Oron, General Partner at Vertex Ventures, who took us through his firm’s investment focus on deep technology ventures in Israel. The discussion includes an excellent window into how VC firms have different arithmetic depending on their size and structure.

Subba-Cultcha.com
As for the entrepreneur pitches, Mark Jennings from London, UK, pitched Subba-Cultcha.com, a Tripadvisor style music review and rating platform spanning live and recorded music. Very interesting idea, that needs to be bootstrapped to fundability, a chicken and egg situation that every entrepreneur has to navigate.

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Featured Videos

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Rehan Yar Khan of Orios Venture Partners (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 Rehan Yar Khan was recorded in September 2016. 

Rehan Yar Khan is General Partner at Orios Venture Partners, and an early investor in the Indian startup scene. Rehan’s core focus is on the Indian consumer opportunity, and that is what we focus on in this discussion.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by telling our audience a bit about your fund and your investments in recent years.

Rehan Yar Khan: We are an India-centric venture capital fund. I’ve been an investor for the last 10 years. I set up the fund >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Ron Heinz of Signal Peak 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 Ron Heinz was recorded in May 2017. 

Ron Heinz, Founder and Managing Director at Signal Peak Ventures, a venture firm operating mostly in the Rocky Mountain corridor, discusses what’s happening in Utah, as well as Colorado and Arizona. We’ve covered a number of companies from that area including Pluralsight, InsideSales, Steals.com, Ping Identity, and InfusionSoft. Today, there are over a thousand funded startups in those geographies. Bootstrapping runs heavy in the startup culture of the region.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by having you tell us about Signal Peak Ventures. >>>

6 Investors Discuss their Portfolios via the Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum

Entrepreneurs can learn a lot about investors from their process of evaluating the funding-worthiness of startups. Within the Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum, I have asked investors to talk a bit about their own investment portfolios. What have you invested in and why? When did the entrepreneur come to you? At what stage and with what metrics? What convinced you to invest? In the following interviews, each investor shares the kinds of businesses in their portfolios and explains why they were drawn to those companies.

Susan Mason, General Partner at Aligned Ventures, talks about the dysfunctions of the broader venture capital model, and what her firm is doing to address those. Excellent conversation.

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389th 1Mby1M Entrepreneurship Podcast With Rob Schultz, Serra Ventures

Rob Schultz, Managing Partner at Serra Ventures, discusses catering to startups in under-served geographies. His point of view aligns with what we’ve heard from some other investors.

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211th 1Mby1M Entrepreneurship Podcast With Yipeng Zhao, Embark Ventures

Yipeng Zhao, Managing Partner at Embark Ventures, talks about the firm’s investment thesis, as well as broader industry trends and what should and should not be funded.

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212th 1Mby1M Entrepreneurship Podcast With Christina Brodbeck, Rivet Ventures

Christina Brodbeck, Founding Partner at Rivet Ventures, talks about the firm’s investment thesis of funding companies that target the female demographic in its purchase decision cycle. Very interesting and under-served market.

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1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Nathan Lustig of Magma Partners (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 Nathan Lustig was recorded in October 2017. 

Nathan Lustig, Managing Partner of Magma Partners, a Latin-America-focused fund. He talks about their strategy, as well as the dynamics of the LatAm market.

Sramana Mitra: Tell us about Magma Partners. What is the focus of the firm? How big is the fund? What size investment do you make?

Nathan Lustig: We’re a US-Latin American venture capital fund. We got started in 2014. In our first fund, we had $2 million of >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Sandeep Singhal of Nexus Venture Partners (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 Sandeep Singhal was recorded in July 2016. 

Sandeep Singhal, Managing Director, Nexus Venture Partners, is a key player in the India-US startup corridor. The discussion spans trends in SaaS, Open Source, and the Indian venture capital market in general. If you are working in the technology startup sector with an interest in India, this is a worthwhile discussion.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start with some kind of basic level setting. The Indian SaaS startup scene has gone 

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389th Roundtable Recording On March 8, 2018: With Rob Schultz, Serra Ventures

In case you missed it, you can listen to the recording here:

7 Investor Podcasts Cover the Series A Gap

In the current investment climate, where capital is moving further and further upstream with all these larger funds wanting to invest in much larger Series A deals, entrepreneurs (and investors) need to find a way to mitigate the Series A gap. There’s clearly a Series A gap, with 50,000 to 70,000 seed-stage investments happening while only 1,200 to 1,500 Series A’s take place. Each of the following investors recently discussed this situation with me, along with other current entrepreneur-investor issues, during 30-minute podcast interviews. Startup entrepreneurs who need financing must be mindful of the Series A gap.

Nate Redmond, Managing Partner at Alpha Edison, a VC who has put trust-driven ventures at the center of his investment thesis. It’s a very interesting conversation for both entrepreneurs and investors to listen to.
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1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Sasha Mirchandani of Kae 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 Sasha Mirchandani was recorded in February 2016. 

Sasha Mirchandani, Managing Partner of Kae Capital, an early stage venture fund, is also a co-founder of Mumbai Angels. Sasha re-emphasized that Indian VCs only invest in India-facing B-to-C ventures and global B-to-B startups. India-facing B-to-B is not a sector that gets any investment, with few exceptions. We discussed the lack of exits in India, as well as the missing late-stage funding for B-to-C ventures facing the Indian market. Those of you who are working out of India would do well to keep these key points in mind.

Sramana Mitra: If you could tell us a bit about our fund and your investment in recent years and how that dovetails with the trends in the Indian industry. >>>

Roundtable Recap: March 8 – Perspectives from Investors in Under-Served Geographies

During this week’s roundtable, we had as our guest Rob Schultz, Managing Partner at Serra Ventures, on catering to startups in under-served geographies. His point of view aligns with what we’ve heard from the likes of Nitin Rai of Elevate Capital in Oregon, Mark Hasebroock of Dundee Venture Capital in Nebraska, and others.

Online Food Delivery Service
As for the entrepreneur pitches, Antriksh Pathak from New Delhi, India, pitched an online food delivery service that is already in revenue. We discussed positioning and growth strategy.

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388th 1Mby1M Entrepreneurship Podcast With Gary Little, Canvas Ventures

Gary Little, Co-founder at Canvas Ventures, discusses the various types of venture capital and the evolution of the industry into a rather segmented current eco-system. For an entrepreneur trying to raise money, all this is extremely complicated, but essential to understand, or else, you will find yourself trying to fit a round peg into a square hole.

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215th 1Mby1M Entrepreneurship Podcast With Mark Hasebroock, Dundee Venture Capital

Mark Hasebroock is Founder at Dundee Venture Capital, based in Omaha, Nebraska. The firm invests in the Midwest, likes small, capital-efficient deals and are open to early exits.

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