1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Sumant Mandal, Co-Founder and Managing Partner at March Capital (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: The pool of talent has also broadened. Even a little country like Uruguay now has a couple of unicorns. I remember we did a case study a long time ago where there were two founders that met on the internet. One was from Ireland and the other was from Montevideo in Uruguay.

When I saw this unicorn from Uruguay, I was like, “Wow. A little country has come up in the process.” Estonia, of course, is churning out unicorn after unicorn and has become a startup nation. There are some interesting talent sourcing and team architecture changes that are happening in the world right now in how companies are being built.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Sumant Mandal, Co-Founder and Managing Partner at March Capital (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Are you saying that you are willing to write a $5 million check on a concept if those criteria are there?

Sumant Mandal: Yes. 

Sramana Mitra: That is unusual these days, because people want the pre-seed and the seed guys to finance the company to significant traction before they are willing to write $5 million to $10 million checks. 

Best of Bootstrapping: Sourcing Global Ventures with Ann Winblad of Hummer Winblad

If you have been bootstrapping and think you are ready for investors, you need to learn how investors think. First, please study our free Bootstrapping course and Investor Introductions page. Then start looking for entrepreneur – investor fit. Today I introduce you to Ann Winblad.

Ann Winblad, Co-founder and Managing Director of Hummer Winblad Venture Partners, is one of the most successful women VCs in our industry, and as I mentioned in my introduction, I have never heard her whining about bias against women. One of the most encouraging things she discussed when we spoke in 2014 is how her firm is sourcing interesting ventures from all over the world, not just Silicon Valley. Mulesoft, one of their hot portfolio companies, had its CEO based in Malta, originally!

You can listen to the podcast interview here and the entire roundtable program here:

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1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Sumant Mandal, Co-Founder and Managing Partner at March Capital (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: As you know, we have run 1M1M as a global virtual company right from the beginning, so nothing changed in our workflow. We don’t do anything in person.

Sumant Mandal: If you have kids at home, they are very keen for you to go back to the office, especially teenagers.

Sramana Mitra: Yes, I see work-from-home workers have a hard time with small children in particular. Let’s catch up a little bit with the situation in March Capital. What size fund are you right now? What size checks are you writing? What is the focus of your investment thesis?

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Sumant Mandal, Co-Founder and Managing Partner at March Capital (Part 1)

If you have been bootstrapping and think you are ready for investors, you need to learn how investors think. First, please study our free Bootstrapping course and Investor Introductions page. Then start looking for entrepreneur – investor fit. Today I introduce you to Sumant Mandal.

Sumant Mandal, Co-founder and Managing Partner at March Capital, emphasizes the impact of Covid on virtual companies and remote teams and discusses his investment thesis.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s catch up. Let’s also catch our audience up on how you are living the pandemic. What is happening with your fund and portfolio companies? What are you seeing? 

Best of Bootstrapping: Discussing Trends With Yanev Suissa, SineWave Ventures

If you have been bootstrapping and think you are ready for investors, you need to learn how investors think. First, please study our free Bootstrapping course and Investor Introductions page. Then start looking for entrepreneur – investor fit. Today I introduce you to Yanev Suissal.

Yanev Suissa is General Partner at SineWave Ventures out of Washington DC and Silicon Valley. The firm invests alongside some major firms like Andreessen Horowitz and NEA. Yanev talks about how they invest, and also the trends he sees. You can listen to the podcast interview here.

Sramana Mitra: So tell us about SineWave Ventures. What is the focus of your firm? How big is the fund? What size investments do you make?

Yanev Suissa: SineWave mainly works with enterprise technology startups similar to the ones in the 1Mby1M network. We look for commercial technologies where we can help them as a VC firm in navigating both commercial and public sector partnerships.

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1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Cindy Padnos, Founder and Managing Director at Illuminate Ventures 2021 (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: One of the areas that I am watching closely is Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS). I don’t know if you read some of my writing but I have been writing about this for about a year or more. I have had lots of conversations with lots of companies that are either already doing PaaS strategy or trying to PaaS strategy.

This is the classic Salesforce model where they started with a SaaS CRM application and then opened up their platform for developers to build applications around which led to the creation of the app exchange marketplace to sell through. This is a model that is being replicated by several players. Atlassian has done a nice job of it.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Cindy Padnos, Founder and Managing Director at Illuminate Ventures 2021 (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: What about geography? Are you only doing Silicon Valley?

Cindy Padnos: No, we always had a broader view in that as well. We’ve had companies in New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Chicago, Canada, and Southern California. We have always had a broader view. My partner, Jennifer is in Seattle. We look deeply into the Pacific NorthWest as well.

Sramana Mitra: So it’s all North America?