anamitra
@anamitra
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partner at @aforeVC, investing in pre-seeds. first PM at twitter. Have a startup idea? Please tell us https://t.co/sejJ1K8PVp
San Francisco
Joined January 2008
In this episode of the Pre Seed Show, we profile @serenaa_ge. She is an 18 year old college dropout shaping the future of LLM training with @datacurve_ai. The TV show Silicon Valley motivated her move to San Francisco!
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VC funds charging founders for legal fees still blows my mind.
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Origin story of the blue check mark on Twitter: .Oprah Winfrey wanted to join Twitter in 2009. But there were 100s of “Oprah Winfrey” accounts on Twitter already. How would users know who the real Oprah is. Enter blue check or verified accounts. Instant hit. EVERYONE wanted it.
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It feels like there are far too many VC firms. To put it into context. in the US. 🚀There are ~600 VC firms. 💼There are ~2,000 PE firms. 👔There are ~10,000 Hedge funds. Are there too many VC funds?.
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We launched a common app for pre seed, where Alpha founders can reach many investors all at once when they apply. As a pre seed angel or fund, you see quality deals at the same time as us. Join us
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It is a little surreal to be investing $750K in Pre Seeds and owning as much of the company as a later stage fund owns investing $25M!. Big things start small 🚀.
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Why do series A investors make startups pay for the funds’ legal fees?. No founder will oppose it because there are bigger fish to fry, but it seems the complete opposite of founder friendly.
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The venture business is a lot like the movie business. The idea has no intrinsic worth. Give the same idea to ten different founders and you’ll get ten different companies. The finished product’s value is subjective, your taste against mine. The best venture book-Michale Ovitz.
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Micro VC is the new Scout program. With one key improvement for the angel/operator. they are not tied down to any one Series A fund. Scout = usually exclusive relationship with the Series A fund. Lots of VC feedback and training. Micro VC = Non exclusive. All DIY.
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After years of taking capital, it’s nice to be able to return some. Good feeling 🙏🏾.
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Announcing $150M Afore Fund III and Afore Alpha, the best in class Pre Seed deal for any founder, anywhere in the world, no matter how early they are. Read on 👇.
We announced two pieces of news this morning, about the close of Afore’s $150M Fund III and the launch of a new product–Afore Alpha– that gives founders the meaningful funding they need, the transparency they want, and the 1:1 support they deserve. (1/x).
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Palantir is an enterprise software company valued at $47B with ONLY 125 customers (S-1). So many different ways to be successful in business.
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Conviction is a vague, often used, virtue signaling term in VC. It evokes images of passionate table banging in support of an idea. In truth, it is simply the investment check size divided by the fund size. Larger the ratio, greater the conviction.
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Turner came out of nowhere. No network. No platform. No problem. A complete underdog with relentless curiosity and drive. He quit his job, moved out west to work with @AforeVC with no promises for the future. He bet on himself and look at him now 🙌.
Announcing @BananaCap_ Fund 1!. 🍌🧢 is an internet-first, sector and geography agnostic tech investment firm investing from pre-seed to pre-IPO. Fund 1 initial check sizes are $25k-$300k. Thank you to all the founders and LP's that made this possible!.
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Venture capital is a great leveller. A no name person from nowhere can bond with founders and break into amazing deals while a storied operator with exceptional experience and enviable resume may flounder for years. You have to earn it every day and the past is mostly irrelevant.
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Soonicorn - is a company that’s soon to be a unicorn. Learning something new everyday.
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ZhongAn is a fascinating Chinese insurance company. They sell micro policies, which can be as low as $0.03-$1.00 per policy. Often non recurring premiums. The average customer buys 10 policies per year, compared to <2 policies for traditional insurers. ZhongAn market cap is $49B.
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Who’d be amazing fintech angels or funds at the seed stage? One of our portfolio companies is wrapping up a $5M round and would love to include folks. DMs open.
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Twitter reported quarterly revenue of $1.01 billion today, the first time it broke through the billion $ mark. To think it all started with a few clicks on an ad like this in April 2010. Only took 10 years!
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Pre Seed has really taken off in the last 5 years because until recently it wasn’t possible for many many startups to get to early product market fit with just a $1M in funding.
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Startups are hard, just so hard. Almost nothing is easy. It’s kinda crazy that we all still do it 🤔.
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some of us were fortunate enough to build bits of twitter. in the end all that matters are the memories and the relationships. love you all.
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The blue checkmark or Verified Accounts is the first product I worked on at Twitter ’09. It was an emblem of trust to distinguish the real Oprah from impersonators. But it became an universal object of desire & signal of hierarchy for users. Human nature = product inspiration.
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Our perspective on the 5 myths surrounding the Pre-Seed stage of venture capital. Thanks to @TechCrunch for publishing. @gjain
Five myths of pre-seed investing by @anamitra.
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On this Pre Seed Show, @thisisgrantlee the founder of super hot AI startup tells us how he got to product market fit -> from zero to 17M users! . He doesn't believe in fois-gras'ing AI startups with too much capital :)
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I would like to unpack this weeks political events from the perspective of B2B SAAS. A thread. 1/26.
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The investor who is willing to take on more risk - that others don’t understand - always has a competitive advantage.
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As an early employee, I am biased, but Twitter has always been more than a company, product or stock. It's a movement. It's special.
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I’ll be interviewing @aileenlee @jeremyl & @dafrankel from @CowboyVC @BessemerVP @fcollective at the 4th annual Pre Seed Summit. What would you ask these amazing VCs about everything that’s going on in venture right now? DMs open.
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The US doesn’t get the credit it deserves for the scale and speed at which we are vaccinating vast numbers of people. Unmatched by any other nation.
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The venture capital league table is always in flux. Top funds 5 years ago are not so top now. Funds and GPs fade in and out all the time. Other funds breakout of nowhere and make a claim for themselves. The future favors the optimist 🚀.
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One of my biggest learnings in startup land: To play the long game you have to take it in the chin in the short term, maybe often. It takes a lot of emotional maturity to see the world that way. A lot. I learned mostly from mistakes I made.
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VCs don’t turn cities into tech hubs by just moving there. Successful founders who recycle their wealth locally do. The critical mass starts with founders, and then investors follow.
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So much flux in the market now - angels, rolling funds, pre seed, seed, brand names getting beaten, change of guards, fog of valuations - everything is up for grabs. What a massive opportunity to make a dent 👊.
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If series A relies on the prepared mind, Pre Seed benefits the imaginative mind.
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We led both the Pre Seed and the Seed round @HightouchData but this post is not about Hightouch the company, it’s about the founding team
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@JonErlichman Google acquired Applied Semantics in 2003 for $120M. The company behind AdSense. It generates $15B annually for Google.
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Mechanics of fund raising was today’s topic and @chudson along with @iamjakestream @TurnerNovak @rrhoover were profoundly authentic and transparent about the real ups and downs of raising a debut fund. Thanks you!.
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With SVB and FRB out, startup and VC fund banking is wide open. A good bundle of CX, UX, speed, attractive products is not easy to offer.
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An @AforeVC pre seed is a special pre seed, like @flatfilers. “With an aggressive bet from Afore and our incredible pre-seed investors, we finally were off to the races”. Over $42M raised in 18 months since the pre seed 🤩
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The most wonderful VC schwag ever from @ShrugCap and @Nivo0o0. Also fitting that a Plaid investor owns the day @hunterwalk 🙌
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Need Ben Edelman to represent me against Chinese restaurants for all the grossly inaccurate forward looking statements in my fortune cookies.
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March 2020 - VC will never be the same . April 2020 - VC will struggle well into 2021. May 2020 - VC doing top up rounds, selectively into star companies. June 2020 - What COVID? VC party is back on, let’s go!. July 2020 - 🤷♂️.
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Welcome aboard @kaylakav and welcome to San Francisco. Here’s to doing amazing things together 🎉.
Quick lil life update! Excited to share that I've joined the investment team @AforeVC 🍾. I'm stoked to have the opportunity to learn from some of the best investors in the biz: @gjain and @anamitra. Here's the quick version of my VC journey so far. (ty for inspo @ekaurghar).
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This podcast from @notationcapital interviewing @naval is really really good Naval articulates pre-seed succinctly.
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Always trying new things at @AforeVC.
are you hacking on something on the side? in the "-1 to 0" stage? looking for co-founders? or just wanna co-work with smart ppl?. i'm hosting a "co-working & co-founder matching" day with @AforeVC in sf next weekend - super low-stakes / unstructured. rsvp:
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Great news for pre-seed founders!
Introducing Spearhead: An accelerator for angel investors — and $35M to back them
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It’s hard to say “how can I help?” even legitimately any more :).Need alternate phraseology.
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“Sell before you build”. So many learnings from the early days of building @HightouchData. I’m so glad that @kashgupta_ was able to share what worked for them in this the 2nd episode of the Pre Seed Show
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If you’ve read @fredwilson’s excellent post about gross margins, you should also read @ataussig’s newsletter today. Alex explains the role substitutes play in consumer product gross margins.
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It's quite awesome to start something from the ground up again and working in a small team, alongside @gjain and @venkateshkr.
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“Here’s to the country 🇮🇳 that transformed a shoestring $74M budget into cosmic success, reminding us all that the universe favors the bold, but especially those who are both innovative and wise”.
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Many thanks to @peterfenton for spending an hour and a half with @AforeVC. Much gratitude!.
Lucky to have @peterfenton of @benchmark today at the @AforeVC office dropping nuggets of wisdom with portfolio founders!
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Restaurants converting into grocery stores to meet community needs and stay in business. Such a smart idea. Already happening in San Francisco.
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Very excited for @hunterwalk and @satyap’s talk! Sign up y’all 👇.
We’re helping our friends @AforeVC launch their Angel to Fund Manager program. @satyap & @hunterwalk will be leading a session on picking the right partner & raising your first fund. And #winning.
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VC as an asset class raised $70B this year, beating the 2018 record. But less than half the funds closed in 2020 compared to 2018. More capital than ever flowing to fewer funds
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New PitchBook Venture Monitor report out today. One takeaway for us: Median age of a company taking seed funding today is 3 years, that’s older than the median age of a company taking Series A in 2014! #PreSeedSummit
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Wonderful group of investors 👇. If you are just starting, do consider @AforeVC. Nothing is too early for us and we have dedicated $124M exclusively for pre seed.
If you're a founder looking for great VCs, DM me and I'll introduce you to my cap table. Some standouts:.@thisiszann @anamitra @darian314 @olegmalenkov @laureltouby @tim_katt @SeanMahsoul @JuliaLipton @elliotcohen @allisonstrousew @karimatiyeh @alexsongis @alexiskold.
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One thing I’m convinced of, pre seed might sound small, but if you look closely it’s actually the polar opposite, frighteningly big opportunities.
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The trickle down effect of the public market turmoil has finally hit the pre seed market. Valuations are way down for a vanilla pre seed, no longer the crazy $100M pre, it’s down to a humble $50M now. Yes, the good old days!.
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Forget Snapchat and WhatsApp for a second – Kik is the dark horse of the Internet http://t.co/pnrgAgN0Cj via @pandodaily.
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Jeff Bezos: I took 60 meetings to raise $1 million, raised it from 22 people at approximately $50,000 a person
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Not enough for rich countries to hit vaccination goals. Unless we help poor countries too, the mutants can come after all of us.
Scientists believe that the variants of SARS-CoV-2 responsible for this second wave of cases in India already include at least two mutations that make them more dangerous
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