What We Look For
Freshness
We look for entrepreneurs who not only have a fresh idea but their idea has generated initial tangible traction.
Team
Unless we are talking with a superhuman, we look for a team of founders with complementing skillset and shared values.
Make-it-happen attitude
Venture growth can be achieved by a team that is self-driven who assumes personal risks while creating tangible value for the venture. The team who makes things happen while respecting the integrity and value-system.
Customer-funded
The best capital for a venture is having paying customers as soon as possible. That's the best validation of venture-viability. We look for founders who share our mindset of making the venture customer funded as early as possible.
Sustainable Growth
Investment business, by its design, focuses on growth at any cost. Not us. We look for growth, but it has to be a sustainable growth for the venture. This eliminates unnecessary pressure of proving that a particular venture is valuable to the world. We aim to back ventures that makes high-growth business and serve humanity over the long run.
Board Member Seat
Our investment thesis is unconventional and there is a possibility of conflict with conventional business approaches. We’d like to have a Board Member seat for governance, accountability and learning and voting rights.
How We Evaluate
Unassuming attitude
We look for hyper-learners who have an unassuming attitude with execution bias.
Domains
We prefer investments in Finance, Insurance, Education, Social Media domains with a preference to SaaS model. On occasion, we can consider domains which are not listed here.
Skill
Calmness under pressure, unemotional, data-driven and cold-blooded decision making, Grandmaster-like analysis, flexibility and above all, execution bias even when the clarity is 60-70% in the matter.
Flexibility
Should be able to accept, articulate and penetrate into the new realities created through AI and other latest happenings in tech or at least willing to learn and pivot quickly with these advancements.
Non-negotiable
Ability to make rain and recruit Ninjas.
Tribe
Should be Synergistic to our other portfolio companies.
Aligned with our Gut
Should be aligned with what our gut/perception/judgment of intangible behavioral traits of entrepreneur/cofounders and market/users.
Responsive
Exhibit responsiveness both pre and post investment.
MANIFESTO
Invest only in the businesses which we’d like to do as founders. In other words, we should be able to understand the market well. No dumb investment.
Work with only the founders with whom we can happily work as colleagues even if the investment deal does not go through.
Work with the products and ideas which are “blitz-scalable.”
We prefer to work with 2 co-founders but not too many. One to look after the technology and the other to look after business growth!
Every founder must have basic understanding of economics.
We invest in businesses which we would like to do even if we do not have any investment capacity!
We like to evaluate businesses which are getting traction in a niche market. We are not interested in just the ideas, they are dime a dozen.
We tell the truth and we are open to hear the truth. We do not entertain fluffy, can-do, motivational, smart-looking but dumb ass presentations and idea pitches.
Our view of Angel Investment is simple: we work with smarter people than us who have a lot of passion to chase a dream and willingness to learn on the go.
These traits are not very common but not impossible either.
App Incubation Services
Phenovox Ventures offers App Startups technology advisory, incubation, and finance services. Via our incubation services, we facilitate Indie App Developers to develop, promote and maintain apps and get access to our Knowledge & Resources Bank.
Many Indie App Developers do not have accounts in international currencies such as USD, EUR, SGD, or GBP.
We offer payment processing solutions to accept payments from Google Playstore, Amazon App Store, or Apple App Store via our own Bank Account. We take up to 1.5% as the payment processing charges.
Our Technology Incubation Service is a unique service created to help Indian App Developers grow to do great app-based small businesses.