Venture Capitalist Alex Iskold on why he co-founded the 1k Project, human blockchain of giving back
1k Project: If you are a family or an individual who is financially displaced by COVID19, there is an opportunity for you through a 1k project to get $1000 for 3 months. This project has supported 250 families since April when it started. Today we are going to talk to the Venture Capitalist who is the founder of 1k project and founder of 2048vc, Alex Iskold.
About Alex Iskold: Alex Iskold is a co-founder and Managing Partner at 2048 Ventures. Alex is a 4x founder, a software engineer, and an investor in over 110 startups. He writes one of the top startup blogs called Startup Hacks. Alex is also a co-founder of the 1kproject - a volunteer effort focused on pandemic relief.
Prior to founding 2048 ventures, Alex spent 5 years at Techstars as the Managing Director of its NYC program. Alex was also the founder and CEO of Info Lab (acquired by IBM), founder and CEO of GetGlue (backed by USV, RRE, Time Warner), and a Chief Architect of distributed computing startup DataSynapse (acquired by TIBCO).
Alex currently serves as a Coach and a VC in Residence at the Arthur Rock Center for Entrepreneurship at the Harvard Business School. Alex previously taught an award-winning undergraduate computer science class at NYU. He holds a B.S. in Math with Honors from Lehigh University and M.S. in Computer Science from NYU. You can email Alex at alex@2048.vc, see Alex's connections on Linkedin, and follow him on Twitter @alexiskold.
Here are the She-VC Questions we discussed:
When COVID19 hit, lot of people panicked, but you decided to do something about it. Tell me what was your mindset when COVID19 hit and how did you decide you are going to bring changes.
Andrew Yang tweeted about 1k project, Forbes reported about 1k project, 1k project impact on so many lives. Tell us more about the stories that 1k project has impacted..
How other VCs and entrepreneurs can join you in the 1k project initiative.
Since you are in She-VC, tell us about why you decided to start your own fund. Tell us what were your past experiences as serial entrepreneur that helped you to be a fund manager.
What are the pain points for an emerging fund manager?
The million dollar question. Are you investing during COVID19 ? Are you gonna invest in a founder through zoom meeting?
Tell us some of the investments that you have done through 2048vc
In a market like this, there are many false positives specially for such an early stage investor, how do you invest in great companies?
When an entrepreneur is reaching out to you? What are the stop signs in that investment meeting ? What are the idiosyncratic risks that you can bypass?
What is the future of 1k Project? How can people support this project?