Startup Project Nataraj

Startup Project Podcast: Episode Notes - Navigating the Shifting Investment Landscape with Sajid Rahman

Guest: Sajid Rahman - Top Angel InvestorHost: Nataraj - Senior Product Manager, Investor at Incisive.vc & Startup Advisor

Episode Overview:

Join us as we delve into the evolving world of startups and venture capital with Sajid Rahman, a prolific angel investor with over 1000 investments.



Key topics explored in this episode:



Market Shift: Analyzing the transition from the funding boom to a more cautious investment environment. Exploring the prevalence of down rounds, the rise of secondary deals, and strategies for investors in the current climate.


Dry Powder Explained: Demystifying the concept of dry powder – uninvested capital committed to VC funds. Understanding how and when VCs deploy capital and the implications for startups seeking funding.


Web3 Deep Dive: Exploring the latest trends in the Web3 space, including the intersection of AI and blockchain, real-world asset tokenization, and the development of decentralized infrastructure. Discussing strategies for identifying promising projects and avoiding scams in this evolving landscape.


AI Investment Landscape: Examining the current AI boom and the potential for both foundational models and application-layer companies. Addressing concerns about overvaluation and identifying key factors for successful AI investments.


Sajid's Investment Strategies: Gaining insights into Sajid Rahman's approach to angel investing, syndicate management, and running multiple funds focused on Web3, YC companies, early-stage startups, and AI.




Additional Resources:



Connect with Sajid Rahman on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rahmansajid/


Connect with Nataraj on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/natarajsindam/


Follow Startup Project for more episodes and updates: https://open.spotify.com/show/3Cx7Q5r9Ow9eikxQjsJjjq?si=5d154bcf6b0541f7




#startup #investing #venturecapital #web3 #AI #angelinvesting #podcast #startupproject #secondarydeals #drypowder #blockchain #artificialintelligence #fundmanagement #YC #startupecosystem




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Brian Bell is the Managing Partner at Team Ignite. Bell has experience in product development in AI at Microsoft, AWS, and startups.

Full conversation includes:
🔸Transition from Product Management to full time investing
🔸Investing in YC
🔸Operating an investing Syndicate
🔸Growth hacks to grow your syndicate
🔸Is AngelList loosing its advantage?
🔸Red flags in pitch decks
🔸If money was not an object, what would you be doing?
& more.

Listen now 👇

Follow Brain on twitter here - https://twitter.com/brianrbell
Follow Nataraj on twitter here - https://twitter.com/natarajsindam
Follow 100 Days of AI here - https://thestartupproject.io/100-days-of-ai/

Subscribe now 👇
🔸Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/3Cx7Q5r9Ow9eikxQjsJjjq
🔸YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCs8lGcgpE7JC-alvUhMPk3g
🔸Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/startup-project/id1551300319?uo=4

#startups #angellist #investing




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New episode with Todd Bishop, GeekWire's co-founder.



Todd is a longtime business and technology journalist who reports on subjects including AI, the cloud, startups, and health technology, plus Amazon and Microsoft, in addition to hosting GeekWire's weekly podcast. This is Todd's second appearance on the Startup Project podcast.



In our conversation, we discuss:

🔸 How is a tech business journalist using AI?

🔸 Does AI live up to the hype?

🔸 Covering Big tech's AI strategy as Geekwire Editor

🔸 Amazon's ecommerce AI assistant

🔸Why hasn't Amazon integrated Alexa with an LLM?

🔸Data privacy legislation in AI

🔸Layoffs in tech

🔸TikTok Ban, will it or will it not happen?

🔸Much more



Listen now 👇

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCs8lGcgpE7JC-alvUhMPk3g

Lister to Todd's first appearance on the podcast here.



Follow Todd on twitter here - https://twitter.com/intent/user?screen_name=toddbishop

Follow Nataraj on twitter here - https://lnkd.in/gUJ_Gah

Follow 100 Days of AI here - https://lnkd.in/g_8T8_rZ


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In this episode Nataraj talked to Peter Mueller who is the founding partner of Breakwater ventures investing in early stage tech startups in Pacific Northwest and Wester Canadian Startups.

The conversation includes:
- how to think about angel investing & pre-seed investing?
- Seattle pre-seed ecosystem
- learnings from Seachange fund
- thesis for breakwater
- Whats making Western Canada an interesting place to invest?
- investing in AI
- long tail opportunity in AI

& more.

Follow peter on twitter here - https://twitter.com/pjsmueller



Follow Nataraj on twitter here - https://twitter.com/natarajsindam



Follow 100 Days of AI here - https://thestartupproject.io/100-days-of-ai/


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In this episode Nataraj spoke to Brendan Rogers Ex Cofounder of Wag, a NASDAQ listed public company.

Full conversation includes:
- Origin story of WAG
- His journey into investing in India
- Why he is bullish on Indian startups?
- Opinion on different sectors & more

To stay in loop for future conversations check out thestartupproject.io

For above average opinions on big technology sign up to https://above-average.beehiiv.com/

Follow 100 Days of AI by Nataraj at
https://thestartupproject.io/100-days-of-ai/




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Welcome to 50th edition of the Above Average Newsletter. Your bi-weekly source of Above Average takes on the business of big technology written by Nataraj Sindam.

Topic 1: What’s with Direct-to-Consumer Companies?What’s common among all these companies?All birdsBrilliant earth groupPelotonRent the runwayThey are all public direct to consumer companies whose stock is down ranging from 80 to 95% in last couple of years.If you are direct to consumer company the best time to go public was in 2021 when the pandemic has fueled an ecommerce spending spree. Once this is over, the markets realized a lot of these direct to consumer companies have no path to profitability and have unsustainable business models.So what can we learn from what is happening with direct to consumer companies -When you are willing to spend on high customer acquisition cost (CAC), you can create a short term non profitable direct to consumer company, even when industry dynamics don’t support it. If you spend enough amount of money on Facebook and Google ads you can sell any decent product.VC money was used to subsidize CAC, that is clear. But that stopped and these companies are not close to profitability and a lot of them are on the verge of bankruptcy. But if I am an investor in such brands the one thing I would look for is that the product innovation should reflect in my customer acquisition cost being low. If you are not able to get very low customer acquisition cost on your product or brand, then technically you are not creating value with your product. Your customer acquisition cost reflects whether the product/brand is actually desired by the customer & if the industry dynamics support it or not.

Topic 2: Where is the AI opportunity?It’s easy to see big funding rounds in AI for foundation model companies and think AI is all about Fearsome Foursome funding Geoffrey Hinton’s ex-students or ex-open ai employees.But I think the real opportunity in AI for next couple of years is in the long tail of building specific narrow application that solve small problems that were not possible before. There is treasure trove to be exploited by teams of 1-3 developers to build SaaS applications which can generate millions in revenue.LLMs are a super power for full stack application developers. If you want to build something and are looking for such ideas feel free to reach out to me.

Topic 3: 100 Days of AI experimentsAI is going to impact us all, so as part of 2024’s first 100 days I am going to spend 1-2 hrs a day learning, experimenting, reading & tinkering with the latest AI models, products & content. You can follow along by following me on Twitter or here on my blog . My goal in this 100 days will be focused on what new things we can build using AI and what to expect from AI in future. The series is also published here on hackernoon .

If you are listening to this and have not subscribed to the newsletter, please go subscribe.

Till next time, stay above average.

Nataraj




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