Roundtable Recap: December 3 – Looking for an Entrepreneur with a Passion for Literature and Film

During this week’s roundtable, we had as our guest Fabrice Grinda, Founding Partner at FJ Labs, who discussed his firm’s investment thesis around marketplaces.

We then went on to discuss one of my startup ideas from 8 Startup Ideas for the Post COVID World that has generated a lot of interest: Startup Idea for the Post Covid World: Meaningful Friendships Through Literature and Film.

Henrietta Tech

As for entrepreneur pitches, we had Pedro Guardado from Baltimore, Maryland, pitch Henrietta Tech, a direct doctor-patient relationship platform.

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510th 1Mby1M Entrepreneurship Podcast With Vishesh Rajaram, Speciale Invest

Vishesh Rajaram, Managing Partner, Speciale Invest, discusses his fund’s investment thesis.

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510th Roundtable Recording on November 19, 2020: With Vishesh Rajaram, Speciale Invest

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

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Shripriya Mahesh at Spero Ventures (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: We have a series that we do on our blog called Death by Overfunding. We have case studies after case studies of companies that had no business going out of business but went out of business for absolutely the wrong reasons.

One of my saddest case studies is this eBay seller who did phenomenally well. They raised a lot of money and started doing stuff that did not scale and stick. They went out of business and that company was so well put together to begin with. It hardly needed any money. It did fine as a bootstrapped company.  

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Shripriya Mahesh, Founding Partner at Spero Ventures (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Do you want to do another one? 

Shripriya Mahesh: One of our most recent investments is a company called Mati. They allow identity verification. Filip is the founder. He has been an immigrant for a long part of his life. He grew up in Europe. When he was a child, he wandered off to the UK and told his parents that he wasn’t coming back because he wanted to study. He moved to the US and came to college here in the US.

Roundtable Recap: November 19 – Seed Funding for B-to-C Ventures

During this week’s roundtable, we had as our guest Vishesh Rajaram, Managing Partner, Speciale Invest, who discussed his fund’s investment thesis.

AYA AsYouAre

As for entrepreneur pitches, we had Sunali Aggarwal from Chandigarh, India, pitch AYA AsYouAre, a matchmaking site for LGBT in India. This discussion would be useful for any entrepreneur considering funding for a B-to-C startup.

You can listen to the recording of this roundtable here:

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1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Shripriya Mahesh, Founding Partner at Spero Ventures (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: You want to give another example?

Shripriya Mahesh: Sure. Another example is a company called Core, which is a meditation company. We invested in Core at their seed round. They hadn’t launched as well, so it was based on a pre-product market fit.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Shripriya Mahesh, Founding Partner at Spero Ventures (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Let’s talk about some of the companies that you have invested in. In particular, as you describe their stories, talk about when they came to you or when you found them, what was it about them that convinced you to write these checks?

Shripriya Mahesh: Venture, as you know, is about exceptions. I’m going to talk about mission-driven companies as well as companies that have fallen outside of those bounds. I’ll start with Skillshare. At the time when we met them four years ago, they raised what would now be called a series