A founder and a funder are spearheading the venture capital firm's bold pre-seed bets in India. Is catching them too young the new name of the game?
Can you make bets when you are blindfolded? “You need some kind of data,” says Nitin Sharma, a seasoned venture capitalist [VC]. The reason is simple. Information of any kind—about the product, user, scale and team—helps a VC in assessing risk and potential of an investment at all stages of funding, starting from the seed round. The visual sense, therefore, becomes the main tool in placing bets.
But what if all visual clues are blocked? No offering, no consumer, zero team and nil operations. Can bets still be made? “Yes,” reckons Sharma, who has had a stint in the US with venture capital firm NEA, was a founding team principal at Lightbox Ventures in India, and played angel when he founded FirstPrinciples VC during his solo investment journey.