Link to podcast. Link to podcast excerpts i found interesting.
Some of you may recall that Chris wrote a terrific piece a few months back on how founders should think about building AI products. This podcast is in much the same vein though I found it somewhat less useful …
This is a brief review of the essay Making Markets in Time by Abhraham Thomas.
I first heard of Abraham Thomas, from my then IIMA junior Sudhir Sitapati. This was just before Malhar ’97, the Xavier’s college fest. I was in the IIMA team for the Malhar quiz, and Sudhir told me that AT (as Abraham Thomas was called) was a formidable quizzer representing IITB. For some reason Sudhir, …
Enjoyable listen this, as Harry Stebbings interviews Cem Sertoglu, an elite European seed investor, who led, very likely the single best seed deal on the continent, the UiPath investment, where he has turned $16.5m invested (the last $10m written as part of the Series B round “with our hands shaking at the time”) into $2.1b. Whoa! Cem (pronounced as Gem) shares a behind the scenes look at the UiPath investment …
30 October ’24 | Link to podcast and transcript
One of the more interesting podcast interviews I have consumed in the past months / yr. Matt Cynamon the ‘Head of Library Sciences’ at Union Square Ventures comes on the AI + I podcast with Dan Shipper to talk about all the cool AI stuff they are cooking up at Union Square Ventures (USV).
You may have seen the OH (overheard) …
Link to podcast and transcript, organised by Venture Unlocked. The podcast was published 26 September 2024.
Saga Ventures raised $125m for their first fund. In this episode, the three cofounders and Partners, Ben Braverman (ex Flexport), Thomson Nguyen (Square), and Max Altman (Alt Capital) talk to host Samir Kaji on their fundraise, and the experience of raising in a tight fundraising market.
What I found interesting –
Mel Goldman has a central role to play in the origin of India’s now flourishing venture industry. In the late ‘80s, as the World Bank officer in charge of the Industrial Technology Development Project, he identified four local partner institutions (who thus became venture capital firms) for loans, earmarked for the specific purpose of these institutions providing venture capital in turn to innovative Indian ‘startups’. From this initiative, the seeds …
If you are a founder and get a pass from a VC who cites low TAM (Total Addressable Market) as a reason for passing, then be rest assured that in nine out of ten cases, that is not the real reason. The real …
Every other week, I get at least one, sometimes two, introductions or inbounds from senior corporate leaders wanting to ‘pick my brain’ around startups / venture, or wanting to have ‘open-ended conversations’. Not all of these are around exploring job opportunities, though about half are. The rest are split between offering advisory (to startups) and investing in them, or both.
I can understand the motivation for this. Startups are an …
Link to podcast. Link to transcript (organised by me). 1st November 2023.
Sajith: Mamoon Hamid covers the turnaround at Kleiner Perkins which drifted off course from the mid-2000s to the latter part of last decade, as it bloated into a multi-geography, multistage firm. He came in early 2018, and along with Ilya Fushman, reworked the firm into a smaller, focused firm, recalling its roots and origins, and its past …
March ‘24 | Link to the interview is here.
Sajith: Very interesting interview of Primary’s Ben Sun by Mario Gabriele. NYC has such a lot of interesting venture funds (Thrive, USV, Firstmark etc.) and clearly Primary is one of them. All of these evolved and developed their secret sauce to compete with Bay Area funds, and hence you see some interesting differentiators with each. With Primary, it is clearly …