521st Roundtable Recording on March 4, 2021: With John Frankel, ff Venture Capital

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

Best of Bootstrapping: Discussing Investing Across Sectors in India with Swapna Gupta, Qualcomm 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 Swapna Gupta.

Swapna Gupta, Senior Investment Manager at Qualcomm Ventures, explains the firm’s investment strategy. You can listen to a podcast of our conversation here or watch the roundtable video below:

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Roundtable Recap: March 4 – Covid’s Impact on Startups

During this week’s roundtable, we had as our guest John Frankel, Partner at ff Venture Capital. We had an extensive discussion about Covid’s impact on the startup ecosystem, the changes we notice, so forth.

IBEDx

As for our entrepreneur pitches, up first we had Kaustubh Kashyap and Ismail Umar from Dubai, UAE, pitch IBEDx, an EdTech venture.

Digial Sound Catcher

Next, Manuel Mionl from Las Vegas, NV, pitched Digital Sound Catcher, a chip venture.

Safe Deal

Then, Chen Osipov from Fremont, California, pitched Safe Deal, a browser extension for safe shopping.

You can listen to the recording of this roundtable here:

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Best of Bootstrapping: Discussing Investment Strategy With Deepak Jeevankumar, Dell Technologies Capital

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 Deepak Jeevankumar.

Deepak Jeevankumar, Managing Director at Dell Technologies Capital, discusses his fund’s focus and preferences. You can listen to a podcast of our conversation here or watch the roundtable video below:

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Best of Bootstrapping: Investing in Concept Stage Startups with Matt Holleran, Cloud Apps Capital Partners

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 Matt Holleran.

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. You can listen to a podcast of our conversation here.

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

Matt Holleran: The most interesting market in the world and business problems to work on are business software problems. I’ve been in the business software industry for 25 plus years in leading customer support companies in the enterprise software world like Salesforce.com, Clarify, and Datasweep. I started my career at Morgan Stanley. Then I was at another firm called Emergence Capital Partners for six years prior to starting Cloud Apps Capital Partners in 2014.

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1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Sasha Mirchandani, Managing Director at Kae Capital 2020 (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: Is there anything else that you want to highlight from your experience or portfolio before we move to the entrepreneur pitches?

Sasha Mirchandani:  What we’ve learned over the years is that large markets are critical. A lot of times, we go after really good entrepreneurs, but the reality is going after a very large market helps the cause tremendously. I encourage entrepreneurs to think through the markets they’re going after.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Sasha Mirchandani, Managing Director at Kae Capital 2020 (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: What are the highlights of your portfolio currently? If you have exited some, you can talk about those as well.

Sasha Mirchandani: Before I co-founded Kae capital, we’ve done several investments which were very successful like Myntra. We did a company where I am still a shareholder. I was the first investor in a company called Fractal Analytics which we closed with 200 million apex partners.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Sasha Mirchandani, Managing Director at Kae Capital 2020 (Part 4)

Sasha Mirchandani: We have a company called Wysa, a mental health chatbox based out of Bangalore. The bulk of their opportunities is in the North American market. Post-COVID, we have all seen the value of taking care of people’s mental health. It’s a major problem, but it’s a stigma, which is unfortunate.

Wysa has done a phenomenal job of helping people in duress. As we go, we’re becoming a US business. We’ve got primarily most of these in Northern Europe, the US, and across Asia.