Fireside with a VC

Episode #48 John Vitti, founder & CEO of VersusGame, a prediction game of culture discussing:

· How he raised $25m in his Series A Funding round and built this company from scratch to transacting over $100m in 2021 with payouts to players, game creators and his startup.

· Being transparent and authentic and developing relationships as a key driver of success.

· The importance of listening to other people and developing empathy leading to spotting trends and being able to form vital partnerships.

· How he and his team came up with a prediction game of culture where players can play for free, for sponsored prizes or cash.

· His belief of how knowledge should be rewarded and how the game is designed to not be a vice or corrupted like Wall Street.

· How to take valuable content and find ways for partners to monetize their content and content creators without advertising, which everyone hates.

· Increasing engagement and developing new rewards for content creators.

· Raising seed capital and venture capital, pivoting and learning from failure.

· Talking about the launch of the VersusGame TV show this summer.

Download Versus Game from the app store and play on mobile or play on www.versusgame.com or follow on Instagram.

Subscribe to Fireside with a VC on YouTube and all podcast platforms: https://anchor.fm/FiresideVC.

Join the 7BC Venture Capital Syndicate to co-invest with our VC fund (https://angel.co/s/sevenbc/ZZAgQ) or invest in our 506c VC fund which co-invests with our main VC fund. [email protected]

Episode #47 Niran Shrestha, founder & CEO of Kwant AI, NYC SaaS for the construction industry. Discussing:

• How IoT smart badges collecting real-time data connected to an AI operating system of software can save lives, save huge amounts of money, increase productivity by 11% and speed the time to completion of projects.

• How fatalities and accidents are prevented and reduced using smart technology.

• How projects are completed more efficiently and faster.

• Challenges of growing a SaaS AI company in the global construction industry.

• Overcoming challenges of being an immigrant founder and raising VC funding from top VCs.

Video: https://youtu.be/jL53Mf5_Moc

Subscribe to Fireside with a VC on YouTube and all podcast platforms: https://anchor.fm/FiresideVC.

Join the 7BC Venture Capital Syndicate to co-invest with our VC fund (https://angel.co/s/sevenbc/ZZAgQ) or invest in our 506c VC fund which co-invests with our main VC fund. [email protected]

Episode #45 Zach Coelius founder of Coelius Capital an active San Francisco early stage VC fund. Discussing:

· Brutal war story of how Facebook exploded his startup in a good and bad way.

· Working with Mark Zuckerberg as a partner.

· Crashing and burning and rising from the ashes as a person and professional.

· How Zach successfully pivoted from entrepreneur to VC.

· How to launch a Syndicate on Angel List, rolling fund and VC fund without institutional LP investors.

· Advantages of leveraging a diverse network on Angel List.

· Advice to founders on finding product market fit and fundraising.

· Advantages of being a hands-on VC with real founder experience of both success and failure.

· How to raise LP capital from angels and family offices over Zoom.

· Access to deal flow vs being shackled by strict portfolio construction adherence.

· Valuations for startups sane or insane and how to make strong returns in today’s valuation landscape.

Leave a comment to join the discussion.

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Find Zach Coelius’ fund on Angel List.

Join the 7BC Venture Capital Syndicate to co-invest with our VC fund (https://angel.co/s/sevenbc/ZZAgQ) or invest in our 506c VC fund which co-invests with our main VC fund. [email protected]

YouTube https://youtu.be/Ds29Yxg4_VU.

Episode #45 Ryan Welsh, CEO & cofounder of Kyndi, Natural Language Processing (NLP) AI company, raised $43m in funding from 7BC Venture Capital, Dick Kramlich, Pivot North, Intel Capital & Darling Ventures on Fireside with a VC. Discussing:

· How deep AI is good or bad for humanity and threats to the human race.

· Impact AI will have on economies of different countries and impact on human happiness.

· How NLP is a leap forward for humanity and business.

· Ability to take search to entirely new level and reading and intelligently processing unstructured data in limitless documents beyond human capabilities.

· Investment case for enterprise to adopt NLP and AI.

· How fundraising is different for a B2B AI NLP company compared to a SaaS company.

· Understanding details of AI at the technology level and Kyndi’s pioneering methods of mixing AI methodologies to fuse new methods and capabilities.

· Understanding searching text in the old way, the new way, how Kyndi does it and others by breaking it down into different types of search.

Subscribe to our Audio podcast and YouTube channel. Video on YouTube: https://youtu.be/n2WF8wCVGO0.

Join our Syndicate to co-invest with our VC fund (https://angel.co/s/sevenbc/ZZAgQ) or invest in our 506c VC fund which co-invests with our main VC fund. [email protected]

• Discussing strategies and advice for first moves when starting a business and then how to raise the first capital for a potentially high-growth high-tech business.

• Characteristics of great founders, recruiting cofounders, advisors, angels and VCs that add value.

• How to triage or think about startups that come into your inbox or orbit.

• What are the key things you try to figure out when looking at a deal for the first time.

• Discussing current 2021 valuations for raising venture rounds and valuations of exits.

• How many boards should a VC be on.

• What is the point of a board, how to run a board meeting and the role a board should play.

• Dynamics of boards and how to communicate across a board and lobby for a specific outcome.

• When should a startup form its first board of directors.

• Understanding key terms to negotiate for and how to communicate and come through with an agreement.

• Investing in startups and VC funds.

• Investment themes changing over time.

• Is the current vintage of VC a good vintage considering entry point valuations and exit point valuations.

• Advice on self-actualization and building a culture or cultural norms that matters more than cash or stock option compensation at a startup?

• How to maintain cultural norms at a high-growth company over time as things change.

• What are you optimistic about?

• Life after death, the universe, the meaning of life and how that focuses decisions we make now.

Brad’s 8 books can be found here: https://rb.gy/l10yzb.

Subscribe to our YouTube channel for video of this and all podcasts: https://youtu.be/Vn_hlzfsD1s

Learn about investing in our 506c Angel Fund to co-invest with our primary VC fund contacting [email protected].

Episode #44 Brian Cohen, General Partner, New York Venture Partners (NYVP), Chairman Emeritus, New York Angels, legendary angel investor in Pinterest, Comixology, actively making 3 new investments per week, 100+ and NYVP. Talking about how to price pre-money valuations on seed rounds. How to create the partnership between founders and VCs. Talking about how to run a fundraising process for Seed, Late Stage Seed, Series A and beyond. Refining the pitch for your startup. PR advice for startups. How important is it to be in Silicon Valley or New York in the new post Covid world. Talking about M&A and how to position your startup for an exit. Subscribe and view video here: https://youtu.be/l-GYQgQ2eQA. [email protected]

Episode #42 Andrew Romans talking to Yuri Rabinovich, MD at Tribe V, at their VC Masterclass taking a deep dive on M&A for investors and venture backed startups.

· Different types of M&A exits and considerations: all cash, cash and stock, all stock, milestone based earnouts, PE exit structures & secondaries.

· Different types of M&A buys and specific dynamics: acquihire, team buy, geography buy, tech buy, revenue buy, customer buy, DCF buy, sector buy, PE buy and how this impacts founders vs early or late VCs.

· Secondaries and the direct impact and dynamics around the next fundraising and M&A.

· How a funding round and the post money valuation and cash-on-cash exit return will impact the options for exits and what will satisfy the newest investors.

· Pricing of fundraising rounds considering the exit value and who can buy the company.

· M&A as it fits into venture capital portfolio construction.

· Having the network and speaking to your network to understand the dynamics and multiples for that specific industry. Know this before you found your company or before you invest in that company to understand the entry point valuation and exit expectations and track these multiples of the industry and performance of the startup.

· Integrating M&A valuations and dynamics into your VC investment decisions.

· Lessons learned from Instagram being wanted by Twitter, feared by Facebook and courted by VCs driving optimal perfect storm outcome for Instagram exit. Absolutely nothing to do with DCF at the time of exit.

· Lessons learned from Yahoo! Buying Flickr and Google buying Picasa.

· Q&A with Tribe V about M&A.

Video: https://youtu.be/0oXIA9KgobA

Audio of podcast can be found on all podcast platforms with links from here: https://anchor.fm/FiresideVC.

Contact us to learn about investing in our 506c VC fund or joining our Syndicate on Angel List. [email protected]

Video introducing the fund for small investors: https://youtu.be/U6wQ6An_r3E.

Please use this link to invest in our VC fund on Angel List: https://angel.co/lead/sevenbc/lp-network/invite.

Join our Angel List Syndicate link (no cost or commitment to join this): https://angel.co/s/sevenbc/ZZAgQ.

Episode #41 Fireside with a VC - Louis David Mangin CEO & Co-founder at Confiant, one of our successful Fund II portfolio companies based in NYC in the cybersecurity malvertising sector protecting users of publishers and advertisers against bad actors attacking their devices, data and stealing wealth via fraudulent investment scams. Confiant is the industry leader in Detecting, Preventing, and Resolving Ad Issues.

Video: https://youtu.be/PFUFUF3-cCQ

Audio: https://anchor.fm/FiresideVC

· Lessons learned scaling SaaS revenues from $1m ARR to $10M ARR in 4 years.

· Selecting VCs and the value of the critical and confidential feedback loop from VC investors during the fundraising process.

· Understanding the evolution of the cybersecurity industry and malware advertising industry.

· The high rate of compound growth of the advertising industry over search, social, video and apps on the internet has left the industry with a dangerous load of technology debt which creates opportunities for bad actors to exploit.

· Ads are still the best way to reach people.

· The evolution of iterations of bad actors to forcefully redirect ads and attack the data to reach the target user demographic with specific fraudulent ads.

· The latest innovation on attacks are fraudulent investment scams, these are cloaked and hidden from the user unless they match the right user, demographic and profile.

· Bad actors have evolved from compromising banner adds to compromising search, social, video and apps.

· If you search for crypto investments on Google, half the search results are most likely fraudulent and will take your money, report back to you that you are making money, encourage you to invest more and never let you withdraw.

· Evolution of attacking the user’s device, presenting fraudulent ads, attacking the user’s data with phishing scams to stealing the user’s life savings.

· The need for Google, YouTube, Microsoft, Facebook and others to secure their own supply chain of ads to stop enabling these bad actors.

· Three pillars of cybersecurity: detecting, preventing, and resolving ad Issues and applying these to each emerging fraudulent vector.

· How publishers and advertisers can gain control of the information flowing over their digital pipes.

· The evolution of privacy and consent on what is legal and what that means for publishers, advertisers and users when the service is free and the user is the product.

· Confiant is now enabling companies to offer their users privacy and control over the information flowing over their pipes and reducing the access bad actors have to attack their devices, data and present fraudulent investment scams.

· Balancing making large parts of the web illegal vs compliant with consent driven privacy law.

· Going from zero to $1m in 4 years and then $1m to $10m in 4 years.

· How Confiant has grown its team with both cybersecurity engineers and now privacy engineers.

· Technology challenges of GDPR compliance.

· Importance of fostering a corporate culture to retain talent in a talent war.

· Enabling self-actualization of each employee to get both hiring and employee retention right to achieve and protect the vector of growth within your startup.

Contact us to learn about investing in our 506c VC fund, join our syndicate to co-invest with our fund or access late stage pre-IPO financings of our portfolio companies: https://angel.co/s/sevenbc/ZZAgQ

[email protected]

Subscribe to audio-only on all podcast platforms & YouTube.

Episode #40 Jonathan Fish, CEO & cofounder of QSBS Expert, explaining how to pay zero capital gains / no taxes on your gain up to $10m in tax savings or 10x the cost of your investment, whichever is bigger. Qualifications for Qualified Small Business Stock (QSBS) tax exemptions. The small business must have assets of less than $50m on the balance sheet (not valuation) at the time of the investment including the size of the round, must hold the stock for at least 5 years or roll or tack the exit gain into another QSBS qualifying investment within 60 days and hold for a total combined 5 years. Multiple rollover / tacks are permitted. Discussing which states adhere to federal QSBS and which states charge their own capital gains tax on QSBS stock disregarding the federal laws. How founders can best benefit from $10m or more in tax savings from their own gain of their QSBS startups and which documents to file as founders and when to start the 5 year clock ticking. How to gift some of your QSBS stock to trusts which can each get up to $10m+ from a single QSBS stock gain distributed to multiple trusts. Advice and recommendations on not being too overzealous with the QSBS programs and gifting strategies. How the federal Build, Back Better Infrastructure Plan may remove QSBS to free up more revenue to pay for the Infrastructure Plan and how that may stymie job growth, lost payroll tax and the multiplier effect of this program. How startups and investors can document and keep all records in good conduct to ensure benefiting from QSBS and other services offered by QSBS Expert and their other tax expertise. Note: 7BC Venture Capital and Andrew Romans are not offering any tax advice. This blog post and podcast are offered with the understanding that neither 7BC Venture Capital nor Andrew Romans is engaged in rendering legal, accounting, or other professional service. If legal advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional person should be sought.

https://www.qsbsexpert.com/

Video: https://youtu.be/RXl1Cs5g7C8

Contact us to learn about investing in our 506c VC fund which passes some QSBS tax savings to our LPs or joining our Syndicate on Angel List https://angel.co/s/sevenbc/ZZAgQ. [email protected]

Episode #39 Brian Cohen, General Partner, New York Venture Partners, Chairman Emeritus, New York Angels, legendary angel investor in Pinterest, Comixology, actively making 3 new investments per week, 100+ and NYVP. Advice to founders on how to raise angel and VC funding, make an emotional and personal connection with the angel, smile a lot, be funny, have breakfast, lunch and dinner with each company before investing, likes startups that understand the customer better than they understand themselves. All startups pivot, iteration is the new innovation, why taking too much capital too early is a huge mistake. I’m not in the investment business; I’m in the exit business. Must see a 20x return to buy into a current valuation and invest. A million reasons why to never invest in SAFEs. SAFEs do not get QSBS tax treatment. Love your investors that loved you and believed in you first. Check out part II of my chat with Brian in episode #41 as we continue our discussion.

Check out Brian’s book What Every Angel Investor Wants You to Know: An Insider Reveals How to Get Smart Funding for Your Billion Dollar Idea: https://rb.gy/jveizm.

Contact [email protected] to learn about investing in our 506c parallel VC fund for accredited investors or join our syndicate to co-invest with us on a deal by deal basis. https://angel.co/s/sevenbc/ZZAgQ

Video: https://youtu.be/TrOvU6OLxWE

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