YouSaid · the spoken record

Ayan Mitra

lines on the record
25
first
2015-11-20
most recent
2015-11-20
sittings or episodes
1
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podcast

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  1. “I really like reading a very short blog that Seth Goden writes. He's a marketeer. He's very readable and very home truths.”

    2015-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC FF 022: Crowdfunding Is Here To Stay with Ayan Mitra, Founder & CEO @ Crowdbnk · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “Yep, there's a company we funded in 2014 called Breezy. It does, it has a software layer that goes on Android devices and simplifies the user interface for people who perhaps are not all favorite the internet, the older generation. And they are very exciting business and they've grown from where they were and we invested both in terms of value and team. They've now been invested in BiobC in the US and they are one of our stars in the portfolio there. I have actually seen the valuation go up.”

    2015-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC FF 022: Crowdfunding Is Here To Stay with Ayan Mitra, Founder & CEO @ Crowdbnk · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “I've been asked this question a fair few times and I don't think there's a zero or one answer. I think it really depends what you're doing as to what your route should be and what the market's doing. So if you are trying to compete with Uber without a war chest, you're wasting people's money on your own time. However, if you are, you know, if I summarize that, it's a technology-enabled consumer facing services. I think more and more people are going down the war chest route. And if you want to play in that space, you kind of need to have that or access to it. Whereas if you're in a market where it's always going to be a multiplayer market and you have very key planned stages by which you can get better valuations, then one might say that you're better off doing that because you'll dilute less. Traversing the entrepreneurial journey at CrowdBank, I”

    2015-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC FF 022: Crowdfunding Is Here To Stay with Ayan Mitra, Founder & CEO @ Crowdbnk · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “Because the reason I got into it, because I think Warren Buffett quotes that book all the time. And I don't need to say how Berkshire Hathaway have performed against the S&P. Absolutely. He's the guru. But it's a very good read. And I've taken quite a lot of my investing one-on-ones from that.”

    2015-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC FF 022: Crowdfunding Is Here To Stay with Ayan Mitra, Founder & CEO @ Crowdbnk · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “I have lots of favorite books, but the one that I think I would mention in this context is a very old book by Benjamin Graham called Intelligent Investing. And if you haven't read it, I would thoroughly recommend it.”

    2015-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC FF 022: Crowdfunding Is Here To Stay with Ayan Mitra, Founder & CEO @ Crowdbnk · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “There's a strong pull because of efficiency and transparency of these investors coming and using direct investing platforms.”

    2015-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC FF 022: Crowdfunding Is Here To Stay with Ayan Mitra, Founder & CEO @ Crowdbnk · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “I think there's two elements to that, given what we do, and that includes us and others in the sector, our costs of operation is a lot lower, are a lot lower. So we are far more efficient in processing transactions of any asset class, frankly. We happen to be in a sort of early stage growth capital because that's where the funding gap is. But by being more efficient, we are actually distributing value back to people who invest through us. If you are an investor trying to get exposure to asset X, you can go and pay a fund manager a lot of money to actually get that exposure, or you could try and use platforms like ours. And I think what we are finding is we're actually getting quite a lot of that share of that wallet as it moves. And these people on our platform, they are fund managers in their daily life, and they appreciate the value that we bring. So I think”

    2015-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC FF 022: Crowdfunding Is Here To Stay with Ayan Mitra, Founder & CEO @ Crowdbnk · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “Yeah, exactly. So I think you can see that it'll take some time before people get track record. And I think once that happens, then it'll become a little bit more mainstream. But we shouldn't discount the fact that we are also trying to change consumer behavior here. So it'll take time for people to be comfortable to start investing in smaller companies. And it's a good opportunity for wealth creation, but it comes with its risk. People need to be educated about it. They need to understand it. But once they do that, this presents a lot more efficient, transparent, and cheaper way of actually exposing yourself to this asset class.”

    2015-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC FF 022: Crowdfunding Is Here To Stay with Ayan Mitra, Founder & CEO @ Crowdbnk · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “I think having a track record will help. And it's very easy why it hasn't happened because on average from seed to IPO, the tenure of company, I don't know how long it takes has actually gone up, used to be around five to seven years, and I think it's actually north of nine now.”

    2015-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC FF 022: Crowdfunding Is Here To Stay with Ayan Mitra, Founder & CEO @ Crowdbnk · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “either some investors losing money because of deals not being structured properly or mispriced or what may be and I hope the regulator doesn't overreact and shut parts of the market out. That's a risk to wider adoption because otherwise you end up creating exactly the problem you're trying to solve, the democratization of finance won't really happen without the retail crowd.”

    2015-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC FF 022: Crowdfunding Is Here To Stay with Ayan Mitra, Founder & CEO @ Crowdbnk · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “Whereas crowdfunding platforms in general, and that is changing as they are getting capitalized themselves, don't have that sort of a budget to actually compete for the retail mindshare, which unfortunately not a lot of people actually read financial times. They're rather mainstream. So that's one of the things, awareness. And the second one is, I would say regulation. We've been very lucky in the UK to have a proactive regulator who has worked with industry. with every industry, you know, there's a hype curve and eventually the market corrects. I would go as far as to say we're in the hype curve now. I think there will be market corrections with regards to”

    2015-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC FF 022: Crowdfunding Is Here To Stay with Ayan Mitra, Founder & CEO @ Crowdbnk · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “So I absolutely agree. I think this is a very, very nascent industry. And just thinking about the numbers in the UK, the debt market is 168 billion pounds. So you can see the entire of crowdfunding in the UK is less than 10 billion, depending on whose numbers you go by. But it has grown and it has all the potential.”

    2015-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC FF 022: Crowdfunding Is Here To Stay with Ayan Mitra, Founder & CEO @ Crowdbnk · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “You could say that, but I think for us on our platform, I think we've done some B2B and our investors generally tend to be sophisticated and they would look at it on an investment by investment basis. But generally, long tail retail crowdfunding, you would need the idea to be easily understandable. And that's the reason why big consumer facing brands might end up going down this route more often than not, which we haven't seen yet. So really big brands still haven't picked that up, but I think they will.”

    2015-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC FF 022: Crowdfunding Is Here To Stay with Ayan Mitra, Founder & CEO @ Crowdbnk · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “I think there is some evidence to suggest that easy to understand products generally tend to do better in terms of the retail crowd getting involved.”

    2015-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC FF 022: Crowdfunding Is Here To Stay with Ayan Mitra, Founder & CEO @ Crowdbnk · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “I enjoyed working with Georgia. I think he is a hugely impressive young man. And I think what he's achieved so far and his growth trajectories and industry is in. This is not a recommendation, my personal, me as a personal investor in it. I think that I'm tipping that from for your Unicorn. So we'll see if he gets there. But I think I would say it was one of the most exciting to work with.”

    2015-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC FF 022: Crowdfunding Is Here To Stay with Ayan Mitra, Founder & CEO @ Crowdbnk · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “In short, I don't think they are. I think, look, the ecosystem is evolving and actually there is room and requirement for both types. VCs have been around for ages and VCs, I would sort of class as a capital pool with discretionary decision making to invest in companies. I think they have a very, very important role and they will remain there. I think what I think will happen, and there's early evidence of that, that they will start to work together in collaboration because I think it's very clear from our experience in the marketplace that investors like institutional investor to be involved in the same round. And if you flip on the other side, sometimes even a VC might actually benefit from diversifying the investor base. A typical example is we just finished raising money for Gojimo, which had index ventures.”

    2015-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC FF 022: Crowdfunding Is Here To Stay with Ayan Mitra, Founder & CEO @ Crowdbnk · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “Because even though it's actually quite difficult sometimes for early stage companies, you may not have all the data at your disposal to be able to count with something very accurate. But our view is that given these are early stage companies, it's actually crucial that the investment happens at a sustainable value such that investors can make money. And what I mean by that is even if a company were to be hugely successful, if at the stage we are getting involved in, the valuation is perhaps skewed, then by the time an institutional investor decides to get involved who will intrinsically value this, then the early investors will lose out and we don't want that.”

    2015-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC FF 022: Crowdfunding Is Here To Stay with Ayan Mitra, Founder & CEO @ Crowdbnk · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “So valuation is a very interesting one. I did a valuation course at NYU taught by Ashwat Damodran and he's for a lot of people considered the Guru evaluation and I always like to borrow the way he thinks so he kind of sees valuation in two types. One is intrinsic valuation which is you're trying to create value and therefore that value, even the multiple distribution cash flow modeling, you come up with a valuation and you discount it for time and risk and you get up with a number and the other one is sort of momentum based valuation which is and don't get me wrong this happens in the stock market as well as private markets just so you know and there you know the price is what somebody's willing to pay for it our approach at CrowdBank is we go after intrinsically”

    2015-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC FF 022: Crowdfunding Is Here To Stay with Ayan Mitra, Founder & CEO @ Crowdbnk · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “Sure. So Crowbank, we basically look to raise growth capital for businesses through equity and debt. And our core focus is we actively go and due diligence to the company, we structure the deal, we price it, so that's valuation and coupon rates, and we invest alongside the investors who might be investing on those deals on our platform. And our philosophy is pretty much that we need to have skin the game to be able to stand behind the structure and the pricing before we take it out to investors. And that's kind of our approach.”

    2015-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC FF 022: Crowdfunding Is Here To Stay with Ayan Mitra, Founder & CEO @ Crowdbnk · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “Is actually going down to the marketplace, to the investors, to the businesses. So I think given the fact that there is technology that would make transactions lot more efficient, transparent, quick, it was a matter of time before something like this happened. And I think this is perfect. And I think the economic crisis in 2008 perhaps pushed it along a little bit when traditional credit was sort of squeezed out. But this would have happened regardless of the 2008 crisis or not.”

    2015-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC FF 022: Crowdfunding Is Here To Stay with Ayan Mitra, Founder & CEO @ Crowdbnk · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “I think my personal opinion on this is if you look at all other industries, you've seen technology come into those industries and change the way the whole ecosystem works and whether that is Amazon and it started with books or bidding with eBay and payments with PayPal. But in financial services per se bar the ATMs that were innovated sort of mid-90s mid-80s I believe nothing really has happened so all the financial engineering that went on was product engineering rather than leveraging technology to actually improve the service. Crowdfunding and alternative finance in general is the first wave of changes that you're seeing where technology is being brought to bear on these systems and the benefit”

    2015-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC FF 022: Crowdfunding Is Here To Stay with Ayan Mitra, Founder & CEO @ Crowdbnk · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  22. “Come out of it so the SEC ruling will definitely help but I think UK has already shown that it can beat America in this instance, not that it's a competition or anything. And I think that will carry on happening because I think we are truly innovators in this space.”

    2015-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC FF 022: Crowdfunding Is Here To Stay with Ayan Mitra, Founder & CEO @ Crowdbnk · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  23. “I think it's a very positive step, not so much because of what the actually is, because I think it's been greatly diluted from the original principles of when it was proposed. But what it sort of signals to the market about the fact that the alternative finance industry and crowdfunding is here to stay and is going to become mainstream. If you look at the crowdfunding sort of growth across the world, then I think you'll find UK is actually leading the market in that way before SEC. We've been around and growing tremendously in the last three years. And their FCA has been quite proactive in actually having a conversation to allow that innovation to happen. But America is huge in terms of the amount of capital it represents and the amount of businesses that”

    2015-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC FF 022: Crowdfunding Is Here To Stay with Ayan Mitra, Founder & CEO @ Crowdbnk · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  24. “I think there's three elements to that question, if I may. So I think one is, look, Kickstarter made the concept popular. And obviously crowdfunding is quite a wide word, and there's many, many types of it, whether it's Kickstarter, whether you do pledging, whether it's regulated crowdfunding, which is where CrowdBank is in, or whether it's been philanthropic capital like Kiba. They've been going for quite some time, very successful. So it really depends which part of the crowdfunding sector you're sort of looking at. But generally, it's not a secret that US venture capital and sort of early stage investing is a lot more popular in the UK and Europe. As a result, Wilds Crowdfunding and sort of regulated based crowdfunding which you might have seen there CC is just finally approved the final piece of the jobs act”

    2015-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC FF 022: Crowdfunding Is Here To Stay with Ayan Mitra, Founder & CEO @ Crowdbnk · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  25. “Well, my background actually is in technology, so I'm a software engineer by trade. And I started my career back in the mid-90s writing the first internet banking framework for a Bancot First Direct. So I have been around technology for a long time, and then I was helping a lot of startups from technical consulting perspective. And I find myself in New York, then Kickstarter launched back end of 2009. Early 2010, and that sort of gave me the idea that there was a place and role for a regulated digital investing play, which is where the sort of ethos of Proud Bank comes from.”

    2015-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC FF 022: Crowdfunding Is Here To Stay with Ayan Mitra, Founder & CEO @ Crowdbnk · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source