TheOnePoint

What does it take to build a billion-dollar beauty brand in a country where everything changes every 100 kilometers? 🇮🇳Manish Taneja, Co-founder & CEO of Purplle - India's leading beauty e-commerce unicorn - sits down with Rohit Yadav in this special India Series episode to share the unfiltered story of building from zero to unicorn status. From surviving 6 months with no cash to using AI to d...

John Rikhtegar of RBCx has been dissecting the venture ecosystem with surgeon-level precision lately. Two of his recent analyses — on GP-LP alignment and VC-backed IPOs — pull back the curtain on where real returns (and misalignments) hide. Takeaways: ▪️ The Alignment Mirage → “Even if you have perfect alignment, it doesn’t guarantee success.” Small funds look better aligned — lower fees, higher c...

The headlines on American manufacturing have it wrong. The story isn’t just about tariffs or reshoring incentives. The real headline is the trillion-dollar number — the annual investment required to double U.S. manufacturing capacity. That’s more than the GDP of Switzerland. This is just one of the highlights from my thought-provoking chat with Aidan Madigan-Curtis from Eclipse (Links at the end)....

For years, the startup promise was simple: Join early. Take less salary. Share in the upside. It sounded like a fair trade — until the fine print appeared. The real challenge? When paper equity meets real-world tax and timing rules. With Andrew Endicott of Gilgamesh Ventures, we explored the hidden complexities of startup compensation — and how perception and structure don’t always align. Founders...

Who doesn’t love a hustle story? Especially in venture capital. This one starts in 2009, with Jared Carmel helping a Facebook employee cash out their stock options. Fast forward: he’s now running Manhattan Venture Partners, a $1.5B secondaries powerhouse — ranked top 5 in the U.S. And here’s the punchline: Venture’s old playbook — fund startups, wait for the IPO, call it liquidity — is broken. The...

I’ve been waiting for this one.  What do - two decades of startup investing, the European moment, democratisation of venture capital, and growth stage opportunity - have in common?  It’s the VC firm redalpine ! The most interesting thing about European venture right now isn’t just the startups being built. It’s the setup investors are staring at. On the surface, the story looks familiar: macro noi...

Ten years ago, investing in US supply chain and manufacturing tech felt like swimming against the tide. Non-consensus, long sales cycles, hardware risk — most VCs stayed away. Today? We’re in the middle of a reindustrialization moment.  And Jackie DiMonte , co-founder of Grid Capital , explained it better than anyone on my recent podcast: Reindustrialization isn’t just a policy slogan. It’s the co...

The most puzzling thing about Blitzhire acquisitions isn’t that they’re expensive. It’s that they’re deliberately inefficient. Billions flow through structures that make zero financial sense—unless you’re one of a handful of AI giants racing at breakneck speed. Here’s the playbook Villi Iltchev unpacked on TheOnePoint Podcast: ▪️ Instead of acquiring the company, buyers pay billions for a non-excl...

Until recently, “venture capital in India” was shorthand for consumer apps, low-cost data, and billion-user TAM slides. Payments, e-commerce, food delivery. Then came a different kind of story. Leo Capital . In just a few years, it has built four funds and is actively investing across the U.S., Europe, Southeast Asia, and, of course, India — and stitched together a thesis that quietly rewires how...

Noah Lichtenstein has a simple but sharp take on venture right now: Capital is commoditized. Edge comes from operators . The irony is hard to ignore. Venture used to pride itself on sourcing the next big thing before anyone else. Now? Most funds are chasing the same deals, and the only real differentiator is whether a founder wants you in the room . Crossover’s bet is that founders want people who...

Lately, I’ve been thinking about what really drives systemic change in venture — not lofty slogans, but the small, structural choices that compound into outsized impact. At Alma Angels, a few patterns keep showing up. They look tactical in the moment, but in hindsight, they’re transformative: ▪️ Measure impact in deals, not press. A traditional syndicate might do 5–15 investments a year. Alma Ange...

Series A used to be the “first real round.” Today it looks more like the old Series B. The shift is measurable. Median Series A round size in the U.S. has climbed into the $15–20M range — nearly double a decade ago. Meanwhile, the so-called jumbo Seed ($5–9M) has taken over the slot Series A once occupied. Labels changed, expectations escalated. What does that mean in practice? 1. ARR thresholds a...

One of the most surprising “turnaround” stories right now isn’t a brand. It’s a region: Europe. For decades, Europe played the background track in geopolitics — comfortable under Pax Americana, importing cheap energy, outsourcing security, and letting its industrial base thin out. That era ended the moment Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine. And suddenly, the continent that perfected managed scarci...

For decades, venture capital’s edge came from being in the room. The right dinners, the right syndicates, the right backchannels. But are those edges are eroding!?  Companies stay private longer, DPI is suppressed, and capital pools are more crowded than ever. Selection risk is up, liquidity is down, and “alpha” doesn’t look like it used to. If yesterday’s advantage was network and knowledge arbit...

In 2024, India’s startup IPO market was on fire. Thirteen new-age tech companies — from Swiggy to Ola Electric — went public raising around US$3.4 billion But 2025 looks different. As Anoop Menon (Principal at Chiratae Ventures) told me on TheOnePoint Podcast, the IPO engine has shifted gears. Not because of India’s fundamentals — which remain strong — but because founders and boards are asking th...

🔥 Excited to announce the launch of TheOnePoint — Sharp Takes. A new, punchier podcast format that is shorter, sharper, and yet impactful. And in the first episode, we talk about a touchy and overlooked topic – VC’s legal fees 💸Most startup founders don’t realize they’re paying for something they shouldn’t. Yet… 99% of VCs still include it. As Auren Hoffman (GP at Flex Capital) shared with me on...

I had a fascinating, in-depth conversation with Cali Chill, Chief Investment Officer at OurCrowd, covering a wide arc of the venture capital landscape — from the democratization of VC and how platforms are opening access to world-class deals, to different types of investors, to the geopolitical forces reshaping investment priorities, and the risks and why investor education is more critical than e...

You may not care about geopolitics, but geopolitics cares about you. This hit me hard during my conversation with Larsen Jensen – former Navy SEAL, 2X Olympic medalist, and now Founding GP at Harpoon Ventures . Here's what's happening RIGHT NOW that most are missing: 💡 The Great Awakening : Silicon Valley is returning to its roots. We started with ARPANET, the space race, and Cold War tec...

🚀 From €10M to €1.2B+ — What It Takes to Scale a VC Firm (And What Comes Next) If you're Speedinvest, you don't just scale — you reinvent. In our latest episode of TheOnePoint Podcast , I sat down with Daniel Keiper-Knorr , founding partner at Speedinvest . What started as a boutique €10M fund in 2011 has now evolved into a €1.2B+ platform and one of the most active early-stage investors...

Most VCs believe data will transform every industry… except their own. That contradiction sparked something radical. Rob Hodgkinson , MD at SignalRank , isn’t just another investor. He’s part of a quiet revolution—one that's rewriting how we pick winners in venture capital. 📈 Instead of betting on founders or decks, they bet on investor track records. 👀 Instead of chasing hype, they eliminat...

🚀 Consumer tech is riding the wave. Industrial tech is building the next ocean. While consumer tech saturates, a trillion-dollar opportunity is hiding in plain sight — and it’s in the factories, warehouses, and robotics labs of Europe. In my latest episode of TheOnePoint Podcast , I spoke with Sagar Chandna , Senior Partner at Runway FBU — one of the few VCs boldly focused on deep tech and indust...

🧠 “Humanoid robots? Overhyped. AI-powered cobots? Quietly making waves around the world.” That’s just one of the sharp takes from my latest episode of The One Point Podcast , featuring Oliver Kahl from MIG Capital — one of Europe’s leading DeepTech investors. We unpacked the industrial robotics revolution — not the flashy headlines, but the real innovation happening behind the scenes in factories...

🚨 Venture capital isn’t broken. But emerging managers need to rethink their playbook. 🎙️ I had a deep, no-BS conversation with Matt Curtolo, a seasoned LP and venture allocator, about the brutal reality of raising a first or second venture fund today — and what emerged was a masterclass in navigating the current VC landscape. 💥 Key truths Matt shared: 👉 LPs aren’t allergic to seed/pre-seed. The...

🚀 From University Halls to Leading the Robotics Revolution 🎙️ Just wrapped up an amazing podcast episode with Albane Dersy , co-founder of Inbolt , and I’m still buzzing from the insights. When most people think of robotics, they think hardware. But Albane flipped the narrative: 👉 “Robotics is not just hardware anymore — it’s software and technology.” Inbolt is giving industrial robots eyes and...

🚀 Building the Future of Fashion, One Shipping Container at a Time 🌍👕 Imagine a world where clothes are manufactured anywhere, anytime, in the exact amount we need —eliminating waste, reducing carbon emissions, and revolutionizing the industry. This isn’t just a dream. This is Rodinia Generation. I recently spoke with Trine Young , Founder & CEO of Rodinia Generation , and her story blew me...