448th Roundtable Recording on June 27, 2019: With Nnamdi Okike, 645 Ventures

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

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Sarbvir Singh of WaterBridge Ventures (Part 5)

Sarbvir Singh: We believe that just focusing on size and hungry businesses is not always the right solution. We want to rightsize our fund. There is also the reality of running a fund and there is a cost to it. You have to get both sides right.

There are different solutions that people can arrive at depending on their perspective. We believe in s right-sized fund that is focused on early-stage. Focus on what you know. The other thing is unlike some other early-stage funds, we don’t follow a spray-and-pray kind of approach.

Roundtable Recap: June 27 – Startup Trends Discussion with Nnamdi Okike, 645 Ventures

During this week’s roundtable, we had as our guest Nnamdi Okike, Co-founder and Managing Partner at 645 Ventures. Excellent conversation about trends and his firm’s investment thesis.

Rigava Solar

As for the entrepreneur pitch session, we first had Arun Joshi from Haryana, India, pitch Rigava Solar, a solar systems integration firm.

Serve Community

Then Matt Turner from Alameda, California, pitched Serve Community, a gamified app for volunteering for non profits. Great concept!

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1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Sarbvir Singh of WaterBridge Ventures (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: The second question I have is what is your analysis of the trend of small funds like yourself that are doing the early-stage investments exiting into the later rounds. Do you see that happening a lot in the Indian ecosystem right now?

Sarbvir Singh: We look at it in two ways. It is a trend. After the emergence of Reliance, it brought a lot of this access revolution in India. This is the second most important VC. I think it’s a global trend to some extent.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Sarbvir Singh of WaterBridge Ventures (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Let’s double-click down on some of the companies that you have funded. As you talk about them, talk about what situation were they in when you got involved.

What did they have by way of proof points that you resonate with. Let’s start with the one that you already exited.

Sarbvir Singh: The company that we already exited is Unacademy. It’s continuing to grow rapidly. It’s a platform. There’s a lot of content creators in India and there are a lot of people who want to access that content, but they don’t have a platform to access that.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Sarbvir Singh of WaterBridge Ventures (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: In the case where people have raised some money before, just raising money doesn’t qualify people for another round of funding. There need to be metrics. I was more interested in what those are.

Sarbvir Singh: In those situations, they have the resources to build something out there. There are customers. In some cases, they may be paying customers. In a B2C situation, they might not be paying but we look for high engagement.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Michael Smerklo of Next Coast 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 Michael Smerklo was recorded in April 2019.

Michael Smerklo, Co-Founder and Managing Director at Next Coast Ventures, talks about some of the ventures his firm has invested in and the philosophy in general.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by getting to know you and introducing you to our audience. Tell us a bit about yourself as well as about Next Coast. 

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Sarbvir Singh of WaterBridge 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 Sarbvir Singh was recorded in April 2019.

Sarbvir Singh, Managing Partner at WaterBridge Ventures, talks about the firm’s India-focused investment thesis.

Sramana Mitra: Tell us about WaterBridge Ventures. What are your activities? Where are you positioning this fund? How big is this fund?