Cloud Capital: 2021 Rewind

This is Cloud Capital’s second year of actively investing. After spending 2020 as a solo GP and investing in 9 startups, this year I am excited to bring aboard Manjot Pal Singh (Manji) as a fellow Partner in our shared endeavor to back exceptional teams. As Cloud Capital, we can now interact with more founders while still retaining our agility and nimbleness. Moreover, our portfolio now has cross-border access as we are split across India and US.

Our first order of business was to identify themes that we both were drawn to and decided to use them as our investment tenets:

  • Community as a moat: community leveraged as a propeller for business; ie-threedots, Avalon Scenes, FrontRow, etc

We also launched a hybrid investment vehicle where both our angel fund and syndicate would collectively invest anywhere from $50,000 to $300,000 in startups.

Unwrapping our 2021 activity:

  • Invested $2.4M in 2021 (1.4x of 2020 deployment)

Cloud Capital in a snapshot:

  • Top sectors of investment: Fintech, SaaS, EdTech, and Health amongst others

Learnings & Experiences:

  • Play long-term games with long-term people. As Cloud Cap, we can proudly say that there are investments where we are the first to commit without any ‘lead’ or an institutional signal in the round. Moving fast and throwing our absolute weight behind our conviction is an investor trait that high-integrity founders truly value. Both investors and founders benefit from such a relationship that is built on pure conviction and mutual admiration.

Summarizing this year in a single blog post is quite the challenge. While the pandemic introduced itself to us last year, unfortunately, 2021 has been far more calamitous than we would have hoped for. It is not my wish to end this year-round reflection post with a disparaging tone, but it’s important to remind ourselves of all that we have witnessed and endured earlier this year. The current perplexing frenzy and the bullish nature of the market slip you into a euphoria where it’s all about web3, unicorns, capital deployed, etc. We too are highly ecstatic about the next generation of companies being built out of India, but it’s also important to remind ourselves that there were far greater challenges that we were able to collectively overcome.

We are grateful to all of our LPs who backed our judgment, as well as all the founders who allowed us to come aboard on their journeys 🙏

Here’s to hoping that 2022 treats us all better!

Kashish & Manji 🥂

Cloud Capital invests in early-stage startups, writing cheques from $50–300k across industries — both web 2 and 3. If you’re an angel investor who wants to access our deal flow and invest alongside, then feel free to give us a shoutout.

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CEO @ EquityList (AngelList India company) | Partner @Cloud_Capital

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Kashish Sharma

CEO @ EquityList (AngelList India company) | Partner @Cloud_Capital