Welcome to the Founder & Funder Experience. Brought to you by Format One. This podcast brings to light the different journeys select founders and funders took to get where they are today. We hope their lives and their learnings continue to inspire both present and future innovators!
Founders Serving Founders: Hooman Radfar of Collective
“If you want to get a deal done as an entrepreneur, you can create the narrative that rationalizes your bias. And so when I call (references), I’ll give you some questions that I asked, I think the most salient piece of information is, okay, tell me a time when you were low, or that you had a transition? What did they do for you?”
— Hooman Radfar (Founder & CEO @Collective)
Today’s guest is Hooman Radfar (https://www.linkedin.com/in/hooman/), Founder & CEO at Collective (https://www.collective.com/about-us.html?ref=homepage_nav) (backed by General Catalyst, QED, Google’s Gradient Ventures, and Expa). Collective's vision is to increase the number of financially successful businesses-of-one by enabling self-employed people to focus on their passion not their paperwork.
Having been on the VC-side of the table, Hooman really understands how incentives at the capital level impact every aspect of company-building. Aside from sharing insights on the market and how Collective was born, Hooman shares his unique approach to company building, covering some of the most important pillars of any startup: 1) Fundraising and 2) Relationships.
The outsized opportunities in the small-business market.
How to dissolve bias when selecting your VC/Investor partners.
Back to basics— doing business with people you have strong relationships with.
Building things for the love of building!
19 Feb 2021
The Journey Into Venture and Back Again: Gautam Gupta of M13 Ventures
“I would just caveat that I don't believe that being an operator makes you a better investor. It's still an incredibly hard job of picking great companies. We’ve all seen great venture capital investors who've never been operators…”
— Gautam Gupta
Today’s guest is Gautam Gupta (https://www.linkedin.com/in/gautamgup/), Partner at M13 Ventures (https://m13.co/) and founder (former CEO) of NatureBox (http://www.naturebox.com/), a digitally native brand of snacks. He started his career as an early stage investor at General Catalyst, and had the great fortune to join the firm at 18 years of age, spending his first 8 years as part of a team that scaled it from a small firm to one with global reach. In this interview, Gautam talks about his unique learnings and journey from starting in venture, venturing out as a founder, and returning to venture!
Highlights
Starting a career at a startup VC and being part of its growth into an international brand.
The ups and downs of building a consumer startup.
The ONE 10x thing founders often don’t make the time for …
Distilling the art of successful fundraising. Period.
27 Jan 2021
The Ascent from ‘Angel’ to ‘Institutional’: Sheel Mohnot of Better Tomorrow Ventures
“I'm looking for leaders that I think can lead a company of hundreds of people in the future. And sometimes, you just don't get that feel, there's no way to quantify it. It's like a gut feeling that you have, but we're only looking to invest in companies that will have massive outcomes.” — Sheel Mohnot
Today’s guest is Sheel Mohnot, Co-founder and GP at Better Tomorrow Ventures (BTV). BTV is an early-stage venture fund focused on building the future of fintech by leading seed and pre-seed rounds of fintech companies.
Before becoming an institutional investor, Sheel founded the podcast “The Pitch” and a tech-enabled food company, Thistle, serving 10’s of thousands of customers every week. He also invested in numerous tech companies as an angel investor, successfully achieving two meaningful exits in fintech companies.
In this interview, Sheel talks about the journey from operator to angel, and now, institutional investor. If you are serious about getting into venture capital for life— you’ll enjoy Sheel’s sharing!
“So I would say, the main thing I look for, is a founder
who can clearly articulate their vision.”— Sheel Mohnot
Highlights:
Successful fundraising = clarity in communication!
The single point of failure on unsuccessful early-stage venture deals.
Enjoying being a VC, unapologetically.
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