Follow me @samirkaji for my frequent, and sometimes relevant insights into the world of VC and tech. Every week, our team receives at least 15–20 emails from entrepreneurs that raising a seed or Series A round for their companies. While some simply reach out to solicit general advice, the vast majority are mainly interested in getting introduced to a specified list of investors. When an entrepreneur has put in the appropriate work to...

I’ve written fairly extensively about the evolution of the Micro-VC (or institutional seed) market over the last year - See previous posts for more detail. I recently gave a short presentation to a group to discuss the current state of the market along with some short-medium term predictions. Attached here is the, admittedly rudimentary, deck I used. Update on Micro-VC from Samir Kaji  ...

This is part 2 of 2. Part 1 is here. Follow me @samirkaji for my always random, sometimes relevant thoughts on the world of venture investing and startups. In my last post, I described how to effectively ask for a warm introduction to investors through mutual contacts. Of course, the premise of the article was centered around the supposition that most investors today still primarily (or solely) engage only with companies that are referred...

Follow me @samirkaji for my always random, sometimes relevant thoughts on the world of venture investing and startups. This is part one of two. Next time I’ll cover how to craft the perfect cold email to investors. For entrepreneurs, raising capital from external investors for first time can be incredibly challenging and frustrating. And I get it. Competition for capital is fierce. Seed rounds are up 2.5X from 5 years ago, and there are...

Building a business is really, really hard. Having closely worked with hundreds of founders over the last two decades, I’ve (admittedly vicariously) seen the darker moments that invariably accompany entrepreneurship. When my long time colleague and friend Sam left Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) to join First Republic Bank (FRB) three years ago, it wasn’t the classic case of chasing greener pastures. For starters, I had spent my entire...

Investing in Investor updates While seed rounds often have 1-2 “lead” investors, participation from many investors at smaller amounts, commonly small seed funds and angel investors, is standard. Over the past few years, I’ve been a moderately active angel investor. Like most angel investors, I’m usually the smallest check on a cap table and post-investment value-add is admittedly reactive in nature. Irrespective of check size, one of my...

Reposting from my entry via CBinsights . You can follow me @samirkaji for more of my thoughts on VC and tech. The Past, Present, and Future of Micro-VC Although it’s been less than a year since I posted my primer on the Micro-VC market, there have been a lot of developments since then. Loosely, Micro-VC firms are venture firms that raise funds that share the following characteristics: < $100MM in size (although most are <$50MM in...

I’ve never been much of a gambler. Perhaps it stems from my last 16 years spent as a banker, or my extreme disdain for losing hard earned money. So perhaps it comes as a surprise to hear that I’m a huge fan of casino games, specifically the game of blackjack. For me, the game represents the perfect combination of probability computation, intuition, and good old-fashioned luck. Winning in blackjack is fairly straightforward. A player wins...

Stating the obvious, building and managing a strong network is a critical component of success in business. And within the world of Venture Capital, network signal strength frequently serves as the determining factor between moderate and resounding success. Unfortunately, while most people are proficient at building a network, too many miss the mark of what it means to manage an effective network. It’s not hard to understand why. After...

Back in March, I posted a raw list of global Micro-VC firms that I was aware of. It remains a work in progress as new firms continue to emerge, and I’m sure there are a couple of dozen I’m still unaware of. Similar to the post from last year, I’ll be doing a full updated analysis of the Micro-VC landscape in the coming weeks, including some predictions, but in the interim, I wanted to share some of data that the CB Insights team pulled for...