432nd 1Mby1M Entrepreneurship Podcast With Swapna Gupta, Qualcomm Ventures

Swapna Gupta, Senior Investment Manager at Qualcomm Ventures, explains the firm’s investment strategy.

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431st 1Mby1M Entrepreneurship Podcast With Yash Hemaraj, Arka Venture Labs and BGV

Yash Hemaraj, Founding Partner at Arka Venture Labs and Partner at Benhamou Global Ventures (BGV), discusses Arka’s recent partnership with 1Mby1M to accelerate Indian B-to-B SaaS companies.

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1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Navid Alipour of Analytics Ventures (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: What do you want to convey to the audience as your parting thoughts?

Navid Alipour: We’re getting the word out about what Analytics Ventures is doing. Geographically, all our current companies happen to be in San Diego but our hands aren’t tied. We could launch a company in Berlin, London, or in Des Moines, Iowa.

Sramana Mitra: You’re worried about geography given your high touch venture studio model? >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Navid Alipour of Analytics Ventures (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Are you shooting for unicorns?

Navid Alipour: While we certainly wouldn’t shy away from getting home runs with unicorns, our business model is to stay with that baseball analogy. We want to be able to make money for ourselves and other co-founders by hitting singles and doubles. Your traditional venture fund invests in 20 deals knowing that 10 of them will likely fail and they’ll have a couple of 1x, 2x, or maybe 3x return. They’re betting on one or two home runs to make the fund. >>>

432nd Roundtable Recording on February 20, 2019: With Swapna Gupta, Qualcomm Ventures

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

Roundtable Recap: February 20 – Think Through Your Working Capital Needs

During this week’s roundtable, we had as our guest Swapna Gupta, Senior Investment Manager, Qualcomm Ventures, who explained the firm’s investment strategy.

Zodhya
As for entrepreneur pitches, up first we had Rohith Pallerla from Hyderabad, India, pitching Zodhya, a hardware device that optimizes energy consumption in commercial air-conditioning systems. Zodhya already has paying customers. However, the company needs to address flaws in its working capital strategy that stems from the current pricing model. Very interesting and instructive discussion that entrepreneurs should listen to and learn from.

Qlicket
Next, Vivek Kumar from San Francisco, California, pitched Qlicket, a blue collar workforce retention solution, also with paying customers.

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1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Navid Alipour of Analytics Ventures (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: What constitutes the profile of a founder that you would want to found a company with?

Navid Alipour: If it’s not a corporate founder, whether it’s a very large public insurance company or a private advertising company, it’s usually going to be a scientist, academician, or entrepreneur. They have a certain domain of expertise but they can’t take the risk of quitting their job. They have a husband or wife, a mortgage, two kids, or they’re an entrepreneur busy doing something, and they say, “When I’m done with this, I’m going to do this other idea.” >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Navid Alipour of Analytics Ventures (Part 2)

Navid Alipour: Our LP’s said “We want you to start other companies that are applying artificial intelligence, machine learning, and deep learning to clean structure data.” By applying this AI, you can make a prediction or you can detect something that doesn’t belong.

By doing one of those things, you’re going to increase revenues, decrease costs by bringing operational efficiencies. Or in the healthcare sense, you are not just saving money in bringing efficiencies, but you’re also prolonging life and saving lives as well. In breast cancer example, if detected earlier, the odds of survival are significantly higher. That’s where we’re proud. >>>