Episode #338 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Tasneem Dohadwala, Founding Partner at Excelestar Ventures.

It’s a lot more common to find VC firms that are investing into deep tech or hard tech, but when Tasneem started Excelestar Ventures in 2010, it was far from the norm. Not only was it abnormal to invest in companies building highly advanced engineering products, but it was also a very challenging time in the tech industry in general. So, to start a new VC firm was very rare.

Excelestar Ventures is a bit different than most VC firms as they operate an evergreen fund which gives them flexibility, especially during different economic cycles, in terms of the types of investments they can make versus having to raise a new fund every 2-3 years. The firm is also passionate about funding disruptive businesses led by under-represented founders. Across Excelestar’s entire portfolio, 61% of their companies are minority-led and 50% are female-led.

In this episode of our podcast, we cover:

* Fundraising advice for women or minority founders and why you should always be thinking about asking for introductions.

* Tasneem’s background story and how she got her career starting in finance at Goldman Sachs, plus her decision to go back to B-school at HBS.

* All the details about Excelestar Ventures in terms of the companies they are targeting, including her interest in personalized medical devices, as well as how their due diligence process works.

* Tasneem’s involvement with Golden Seeds, a firm focused on investing in women-led companies.

* Advice for pitching your company and the importance of being able to properly articulate the value proposition of your company, having the right market size for that investor, and another factor that she calls the confirmatory mindset.

* And so much more.