1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Ben Narasin, Founder and General Partner at Tenacity Venture Capital (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Today, the industry is segmented in to pre-seed, seed, post-seed, pre-Series A, early Series A. Where are you positioning yourself?

Ben Narasin: I’m happy with anything before the Series A. My focus has always been finding entrepreneurs that I believe are venture-scalable and helping them raise their first venture round. I got over 327 VCs in my eight years as a seed investor. In that eight-year period, between 63% and 71% startups I seeded went on to raise follow-on rounds. Typically, Series A. Those rounds often came from the introductions I made.

Roundtable Recap: August 19 – A Discussion on Small Exits

During this week’s roundtable, we had as our guest Warren Weiss, Managing Partner at WestWave Capital and former General Partner at Foundation Capital. We had a terrific discussion on small exits as seen by a seasoned investor.

You can listen to the recording of this roundtable here:

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1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Ben Narasin, Founder and General Partner at Tenacity Venture Capital (Part 1)

Ben Narasin is Founder and General Partner at Tenacity Venture Capital, a new Seed fund.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by having you introduce yourself a little bit to our audience – both your personal background and the genesis of Tenacity.

Roundtable Recap: August 12 – Spotlight on Veteran Entrepreneurship

During this week’s roundtable, we had as our guest Bradley Harrison, Founder, Managing Partner at Scout Ventures, for a terrific discussion on how military professionals are engaging in entrepreneurship and an eco-system supporting them. Quite fascinating!

atexto

As for our entrepreneur pitch, we had Esteban Gorupicz from Palo Alto, California, pitch atexto, an AI speech recognition technology for improving the accuracy of speech applications.

You can listen to the recording of this roundtable here:

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1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Rajeev Singh-Morales, Founder and Managing Partner at Alma Mundi Ventures (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: When it comes to some of the patient monitoring stuff, which is a very active category, all applications of information technology, especially the AI algorithm in drug discovery, how do you view the role of FDA or an equivalent regulatory body?

Rajeev Singh-Morales: I’ll be very candid. I’m not an expert on FDA or the equivalent in Europe. We are working with a company that has developed a technology for the diagnosis of sleep apnea. In today’s world if you’re told by your primary care physician that you might have sleep apnea, you have to go to a clinic.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Rajeev Singh-Morales, Founder and Managing Partner at Alma Mundi Ventures (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: What trends do you see in your deal flow? 

Rajeev Singh-Morales: We are a fund that is mostly B2B. We don’t a have an industry focus. There are certain areas in pharma and biotech which are extraordinarily hot right now. We don’t invest in that. We do invest in digital health. That is really quite interesting right now. Everything around telehealth and remote diagnostics and remote healthcare in the US and in Europe is gaining a lot of attention.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Rajeev Singh-Morales, Founder and Managing Partner at Alma Mundi Ventures (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Talk about the companies themselves.

Rajeev Singh-Morales: Let me start with one that was just sold about two months ago. Returnly is a firm that we invested in five years ago. It was sold to Affirm for $300 million. It was founded in 2014 by an immigrant from Spain. We invested in 2015 in a convertible note. E-commerce is booming now. Most people buy stuff that they want to return.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Rajeev Singh-Morales, Founder and Managing Partner at Alma Mundi Ventures (Part 1)

Rajeev Singh-Morales, Founder and Managing Partner at Alma Mundi Ventures, discusses the Europe – US bridge for tech startups.

Sramana Mitra: Your name is so interesting. It seems like there is a whole story in your name and your firm’s name. Do you want to start with a little bit of background?