6 min
Keyhorse Capital, Early Stage VC Investments Bringing Value To Kentucky -- Mario Mazzone Startup Stories
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- Entrepreneurship
In this episode we chat with Mario Mazzone of Keyhorse Capital, an early-stage VC investor focusing on Kentucky based companies. Mario talks about some of the verticals he’s bullish on, but says he spends more time looking at who the founders are. Some of the specific things that stand out to him are: founders with solid understanding of their industry, how well they’ve hit current KPIs, the number of users they have, how engaged the users are with their platform, how the users were acquired, if there's a technical founder and what the burn rate is. Mario tells us that it is obvious when a founder is passionate about an idea, and that’s essential to achieving success.
Mario mentions Xena Intelligence as a great investment he’s made. The e-commerce company was founded by Akhil Suresh Nair, who has 4x the valuation in the past year. Xena is proudly a Techstars portfolio company and has won several regional awards. Another thing that stands out about Akhil is how well he keeps his investors updated.
Mario wraps it up by giving advice. He says know your industry, never be afraid to ask questions, and find an idea that you’re so passionate about you don’t want to stop thinking about it to sleep.
Special thanks to Resound for helping with post-production audio editing.
In this episode we chat with Mario Mazzone of Keyhorse Capital, an early-stage VC investor focusing on Kentucky based companies. Mario talks about some of the verticals he’s bullish on, but says he spends more time looking at who the founders are. Some of the specific things that stand out to him are: founders with solid understanding of their industry, how well they’ve hit current KPIs, the number of users they have, how engaged the users are with their platform, how the users were acquired, if there's a technical founder and what the burn rate is. Mario tells us that it is obvious when a founder is passionate about an idea, and that’s essential to achieving success.
Mario mentions Xena Intelligence as a great investment he’s made. The e-commerce company was founded by Akhil Suresh Nair, who has 4x the valuation in the past year. Xena is proudly a Techstars portfolio company and has won several regional awards. Another thing that stands out about Akhil is how well he keeps his investors updated.
Mario wraps it up by giving advice. He says know your industry, never be afraid to ask questions, and find an idea that you’re so passionate about you don’t want to stop thinking about it to sleep.
Special thanks to Resound for helping with post-production audio editing.
6 min