I’m liveblogging the Pune OpenCoffee Club meeting organized by nFactorial. There are over 50 people and SEED Infotech‘s classroom is overflowing. They are having to bring in more chairs for people who are still standing.

Neill Brownstein of Footprint Ventures is giving a pitch about his company

• Footprint has created $30 billion in value over 35 years. 20% IRR. 23 IPOs
• Among other companies, Footprint has invested in our own Veritas Software.
• Average run-rate of companies they fund is currently in the $1 million

Neeraj Arora, works in Mergers and Acquisitions at Google, focusing on APJ – mainly Australia and India

• They don’t invest in startups. They acquire. But they work closely with some seed funds.
• These are the guys that did the acquisition of a company in Australia which ultimately became Google maps
• They are not looking for anything in particular. Consumer, enterprise, early stage, late stage. Is all OK. Pre-revenue is good. But must be a product company.
• Question: do they only acquire companies with technology that is compatible with theirs? Answer: if it needs to integrate with Google products, then yes, the technology does need to be compatible.
• The company needs to relocate. Either to Mountain View, US, or Bangalore, in India. (in most cases)
• They sometimes buy companies just because they think it is cool, even if they can’t figure out where it will really fit in