1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Roman Kikta, Managing Partner at Mobility Ventures (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 Roman Kikta was recorded in September 2020.

Roman Kikta is Managing Partner and Founder at Mobility Ventures. Roman discusses his firms’ investment thesis.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Robert Weber of Great North Labs (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Here in 1M1M, we are huge believers in bootstrapping. We encourage people to bootstrap first and raise money later. It creates a healthier term sheet and trajectory, but it is hard to do in such expensive cost structure situations.

My other question, based on what you have said, is about the structure and the strategy that you are following for your fund. You described a couple of case studies where you exited into full-on rounds of funding. Talk about how you are thinking about early exits and not playing this game of building unicorns. 

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Robert Weber of Great North Labs (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: A couple of questions emerge from what you have said. I’ll ask them in sequence. What is the current dynamics of companies building out of Minnesota?

You talked about Zencoder which started in Minnesota. Did they move to Silicon Valley or did they continue to operate from Wisconsin? 

Robert Weber: Initially, Zencoder maintained their operations here, but they were under some pressure to relocate to the Bay area and they did that. In the case of Field Nation, it had grown quite a bit more than Zencoder ever did.

Roundtable Recap: December 17 – Spotlight on the Indian Startup Ecosystem

During this week’s roundtable, we had as our guest Sasha Mirchandani, Founder and Managing Director, Kae Capital, an early stage fund focused on India. I’ve known Sasha for over a decade, and we discussed the evolution of the Indian startup industry at length.

Predicate Group

As for entrepreneur pitches, up first we had Joe Ko, Predicate Group, an incubator for online brands. Joe has excellent domain knowledge in e-commerce.

SpecFash

Next, Rajesh Soundararajan from Madurai, Tamilnadu, India, pitched SpecFash.com, a concept-stage venture for luxury eyewear.

You can listen to the recording of this roundtable here:

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1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Robert Weber of Great North Labs (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: What is the situation in the Minneapolis area for the kind of companies that you are looking for? What is the scale of the deal flow? How active are the entrepreneurs?

Robert Weber: I would imagine that Twin Cities is like many cities in the world. They have a corporate mindset. We have the largest amount of Fortune 500 companies per capita in the US.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Robert Weber of Great North Labs (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 Robert Weber was recorded in September 2020.

Robert Weber is Managing Partner at Great North Labs located in Minneapolis.

511th 1Mby1M Entrepreneurship Podcast With Fabrice Grinda, FJ Labs

Fabrice Grinda, Founding Partner at FJ Labs, discusses his firm’s investment thesis around marketplaces.

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511th Roundtable Recording on December 3, 2020: With Fabrice Grinda, FJ Labs

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