Sitar Teli is Managing Partner at Connect Ventures and has been a venture capitalist for eight years, focusing on early-stage investments in both consumer and B2B companies. Previously with Doughty Hanson Technology Ventures, where she led their Series A round in SoundCloud, she has experience with content, gaming and ecommerce startups. Sitar has a dual degree in Mechanical Engineering and Economics from Duke University. A special thank you to Mattermark for providing all the data displayed in today's show and you can find out more about Mattermark here!     In Today's Episode You Will Learn:   1.) How did Sitar make her way into the wonderful world of VC?   2.) How does Sitar approach the difficult task of saying no to entrepreneurs? What is the framework she has adopted over her 8 years in venture? 3.) There are a large amount of sources of capital for business in the seed stage, why did Sitar believe this was the stage with the most opportunity? Is too much capital chasing too few deals? 4.) With the increasing prominence of crowdfunding, is it a viable alternative to VC? Is Sitar concerned that quality deal flow is being lost to Crowdfunding? 5.) What is driving the growth of the European tech startup scene? 6.) Prior to making investments such as that of Citymapper, one obviously has to look at the team and the product. So what do you look for in a founder and what to you makes a great product?    Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Sitar's Fave Book: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay Sitar's Fave Blog or Newsletter: Benedict Evans Newsletter Sitar's Fave Apps: Outlook, Sunrise, Citymapper Sitar's Most Recent Investment: Knyttan   As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Sitar on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here!      Free Ebook: How to boost your Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) by over 100%   Have you ever wished more of your website visitors would convert into a sale, signup or referral? If so, you need Loyalty Bay. With their saas conversion optimizer tool they increase any conversion metric by offering potential customers a choice of personalised rewards to get them to convert. They work with large enterprises like Virgin Media through to startups and have increased conversions on average by over 100%. Free 30 day trial at www.loyaltybay.co.uk

Sumeet Shah is an investor @ Brand Foundry Ventures, who have investments in the likes of Warby Parker, Birchbox and Contently. Sumeet himself is pivotal in sourcing and managing new opportunities at Brand Foundry with over 6 years of experience across the startup and private equity industries, formerly running new business strategies at Gist Digital and handling business development and project work at Gotham Consulting Partners. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Sumeet made his way into the wonderful world of VC? 2.) What stage is Brand Foundry active in? Does Sarah Lacy’s analysis of a ‘Series A Crunch’ concern Sumeet? Has he seen a widening in the gap between the amount that raise seed to then go onto raise Series A? 3.) What does Sumeet believe are the key pieces to run a successful business? In the first 100 days, what are the most important elements to focus on? 4.) Sumeet recently tweeted ‘To All Startups, the most helpful investor is not always the largest’. How can startups determine who is the most helpful? What should startups expect from their investors? What does Sumeet believe makes the best investor? 5.) What would Sumeet say is his biggest strength as an investor and what would he most like to improve upon? As a seed investor, how does Sumeet respond to Aileen Lee’s suggestion that in investing you can only make really money when invested in unicorns? 6.) Is Sumeet bullish on the future of NYC tech? What are the strengths of NY? Where is it booming? Are there any elements of SF, Sumeet would like NY to have? Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Sumeet's Fave Blog or Newsletter: Term Sheet by Dan Primack, Strictly VC Sumeet's Fave Book: Things A Little Birdy Told Me by Biz Stone Sumeet's Most Recent Investment: Lola: A Better Month Awaits You As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Sumeet on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here! Free Ebook: How to boost your Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) by over 100%   Have you ever wanted to know who someone is simply from an email address? With Loyalty Bay's Super Users product now you can. Simply input an email address and it will go off and find publicly available profile information i.e. Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter etc for that email address. This is incredibly powerful in building a richer data profile on your users for marketers and business development people alike. Free 30 day Trial. Check out www.loyaltybay.co.uk