1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Arihant Patni of Ideaspring Capital (Part 4)

Arihant Patni: I just had a breakfast session with a bunch of corporate venture folks. They’re all talking about how they want to evangelize startups, invest in them, work with them, and partner with them. I think that’s a terrific philosophy.

I can talk about a couple of slightly more evolved startups that we invested in coalition with other venture funds. One is called worxogo, which is in the AI space to enhance human capital productivity by sending sales agent-type nudges and motivational behavior tweaks.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Matt Holleran of Cloud Apps Capital Partners (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: I’m going to ask you something based on what we just talked about with your background as the head of platforms at Salesforce.com. My assessment is that there are probably a couple of hundred SaaS companies at this point that are doing upwards of $50 million in annual revenue.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Arihant Patni of Ideaspring Capital (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: You were okay with them coming to you with a business model hypothesis or a use case hypothesis, but not necessarily a completely validated use case hypothesis?

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Matt Holleran of Cloud Apps Capital Partners (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: It is very refreshing to hear that you’re willing to do a $4 million to $5 million round on pure team and concept and no line of code. But the truth is, most of the micro VC’s who are doing B2B SaaS are looking for product-market fit.

Some are looking for a certain MRR metric, whether that is $20,000 or $40,000 per month, and in some cases, $80,000 per month before they’re willing to write that $1 million to $3 million check. I don’t think your point applies to consumer market at all.

It definitely doesn’t apply to B2B SaaS because we have talked to hundreds of micro VC’s at this point who aren’t investing at the concept stage. >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Arihant Patni of Ideaspring Capital (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: It sounds like you’re looking at the enterprise software opportunity that’s born in India, but with a global market. Is that an accurate observation?

Arihant Patni: Absolutely.

Sramana Mitra: So let’s talk a little bit about these 10 investments that you made. Give us a few examples and help us understand your thought process. At what point did these companies come to you? What did you see in each of them that caused you to really make the bet? Just walk us through a few case studies that gives us an insight into the way you think about investments. >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Matt Holleran of Cloud Apps Capital 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 Matt Holleran as recorded in February 2019.

Matt Holleran, General Partner at Cloud Apps Capital Partners, talks about his firm’s investment thesis in what he calls Series A. His is one of the rare firms that invest at the concept stage.

Sramana Mitra: Tell us about yourself,a bit of your background, and about Cloud Apps. >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Arihant Patni of Ideaspring 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 Arihant Patni as recorded in February 2019.

Arihant Patni is Managing Director at Ideaspring Capital, a fund focused on enterprise companies born in India and selling to the global market.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s get you and Ideaspring introduced to our audience. Tell us a bit about yourself as well as Ideaspring. What fund size are you working with? What kind of investments do you like to make? >>>

438th Roundtable Recording on April 4, 2019

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