EP25: 2 Unicorns, 1 Decacorn and the process of building the muscle to pick a winner {Sameer of NexusVP}

Stars & Startups

EP25: 2 Unicorns, 1 Decacorn and the process of building the muscle to pick a Winner {Sameer Verma, MD of NexusVP}

Sameer has been an early-stage investor in over 38 companies that include 2 Unicorns & 1 Decacorn. On the episode I speak with Sameer Verma of NexusVP about some of his investments, the startup ecosystem, and we get a chance to dig deeper into how he thinks about investing. More recently though, Sameer’s investee company, Postman, was in the news for putting India on the map for creating a category creating unicorn!

Do listen to this episode in its entirety there are some fun anecdotes in the conversation. In case you have limited time, we discuss 5 of my favourite investments of Sameer’s portfolio (personal & that of Nexus') from min 47. These cover his investments in Hasura, Postman, Bira91, Licious & MyUpchar.

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→ Full episode of the podcast is available on YouTube: Part 1 & Part 2

→ We also have a coffee giveaway that's still open (31st July is the last day) from EP20! All you have to do is sign up the Newsletter & tag me & the Podcast on social media of your choice, Linkedin / Instagram/FB wherever! Just these 2 things for you to win a bag of coffee from BlueTokaiCoffee! And possibly a Zoom chat with Matt, co-founder of BTC!

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About Sameer:

Based in Bangalore, and a graduate of Illinois Institute of Tech, Sameer focuses on consumer internet, enterprise / SaaS, ed-tech, healthcare and b2b commerce domains. At Nexus, Sameer has led investments in Postman, Unacademy, Infra.market, Zolo, Hasura.io, Ultrahuman, Quandl, RoadRunnr (Zomato), Joveo and a variety of other companies.

His complete investment profile can be found on the NexusVP website.

Timeline:

05:46 - Radical prioritisation framework

07:25 - Becoming an investor

18:42 - Working in Venture investing, early days

27:53 - Thesis: Teams & People not stuck on idea

29:05 - His personal investing process?

31:40 - COVID's impact - behaviour shift & reinforcement loops

36:46 - Postman investment (part1)

47:53 - Anectodes & Investment stories

48:45 - Hasura

56:56 - Postman (Part2)

58:26 - Bira91

1:05:44 - Licious investment

1:10:20 - Investing in vice’s and VC’s not investing in such

1:12:37 - Incremental value delivered by Licious

1:15:53 - MyUpchar