In Episode 1 of a Part 4 Series, Jessica Li talked about COVID -19 Impact on the Venture Capital space through the lens of the key points below.
Soma Capital is a fund built by founders, for founders in San Francisco, CA.
"Soma is founded by Aneel Ranadive, who has +10 years experience building startups and investing seed in over 100 startups including Cruise, Rappi, Embarktrucks, Astranis, Atrium and Lambda School (combined valuation of over $30b across all portfolio co’s).
Aneel works with his father Vivek Ranadive, founder of Tibco (sold for $4.3bn to Vista). Tibco software includes big data, analytics, event processing and cloud services. Tibco originally digitized Wall Street and powers 80% of Fortune 500 companies including many of the biggest banks, airlines, retailers, hotels, casinos, and government services. Vivek has also been involved at the early stages with all time greats like Google, Yahoo, eBay and even mentored Steve Jobs in the early days of Next." (From Soma Capital Website)
Key Points in this Episode:
Seed vs. Series A/B difference
Tailwinds in COVID
Companies combating COVID
Pitching virtually vs. in-person
Conserving cash/reducing burn (What are some of the strategic decisions that were taken?)
Silver linings
History precedents (World War II, dot.com bubble in the early 2000s, the Great Recession of 2008)
You don't want to miss the great insights that she provides based on her front-line and in-depth experience at Soma Capital.
Our next Episode in 2 weeks (on May 8th) , Jessica Li will be talking about her experience interacting women entrepreneurs especially in her role as as a Content head at Elpha. Elpha aims to create a tailored online network for women in tech.
Stay Tuned!
Episode 1 of a Part 4 Series: Impact on COVID-19 on the VC space by Jessica Li (Investor at Soma Capital and Content Head at Elpha) | Trendsetters, Movers, and Changemakers podcast - Listen or read transcript on Metacast
