The second type of entrepreneur will answer questions when they can, but when they don’t know, they say so. Whenever we try to address potential risks, they tell us they don’t exist. What will cause customer churn in three years. So they’ll make sure they have a definitive response always, even if they shouldn’t. The first thinks they’re expected to know the answer to every question. We’re always meeting the same two types of entrepreneurs. Did you skip spring break to pursue a long-term project? Did you work while you were in school? Have you built anything that took months in heads-down crunch mode to make possible? When we consider working with you as a founder, we look for your willingness to make these tradeoffs earlier in your life and career. The most successful entrepreneurs are willing to sacrifice in the short term for long term impact. Being a founder is a constant, grueling exercise in deferring happiness and victory. But there are a few other things we haven’t seen written about or discussed to death that end up mattering a lot: Then there’s all the typical stuff: integrity, credibility, market understanding, learning ability, etc. This is an exceedingly rare set of skills - and it’s what we seek to find in every founder conversation we have. You have to be able to draw it yourself and execute at the same time. You can’t even wait for a roadmap to come into focus. You can’t wait for someone to hand you a roadmap. You have to overcome inertia, have an unbelievable amount of conviction, and be willing to drive through brick walls. To mix our metaphors, before a founder starts building their castle, they have to make sure they’ve picked the right piece of land.īuilding an enduring company is ridiculously hard. First-party retailers are valued very differently from third-party ecommerce sites. Venture capital fund software#SaaS companies have a different range of opportunities than on-premise software makers. Is the prize worth winning? The game is long and hard, and some markets are more rewarding than others. Third, we take a close look at the market you’re going after. As an extension of this, we want to see creative thinking around go-to-market strategy as well as product. That’s one of the strongest data points you can offer. If there are people using your product or service who wouldn’t know what to do without you, we want to hear about it. We reached out to the company and invested. Several years ago, we heard a handful of our founders raving about a new business intelligence tool called Looker. Second, if you have a product in market, a small group of passionate early customers is a strong indicator for us. What do you understand about a market or a need that no one else does - that other companies in the space get wrong? And why is your company the most likely to win at addressing this gap? Q: I’d like to write an article about the Venture Funds or its portfolio companies.Above all, we look for compelling and contrarian insight into how the world works. We are happy to refer deals outside of our geographic scope to other co-investors. If you have an exciting business outside the region, we’d love to hear from you. Though we invest in Maryland connected companies, we are stewards of the larger regional tech community. Does it still make sense for us to connect?Ī: Yes. Nonetheless, we encourage companies still attempting to find product-market fit to reach out. Our pre-launch investments are in opportunities exciting enough to justify the increased risk and are led by seasoned entrepreneurs. Q: Do the Funds make pre-product or pre-launch investments?Ī: We have done it in the past and as opportunists, we wouldn’t rule it out. That said, we do play well with other funds and are happy to look at deals that have already secured lead investors.Ī: We have over $110M of assets under management. Q: Do the Venture Funds prefer to lead deals or follow other investors?Ī: We are not followers by nature when we fall in love with a company, we like to put as much capital behind its founders as we can. Venture capital fund serial#Q: What kinds of entrepreneurs do the Venture Funds back?Ī: Our founders are not always serial entrepreneurs, but we like to back individuals with a track record of execution. Q: What size investments do the Funds typically make?Ī: Our investments can be anything between $500K to $2M. As generalists, we do not attempt to predict the future, but rather buy into our entrepreneurs’ visions for how the world is changing and what opportunity that presents. Q: In what industries do the Venture Funds typically invest?Ī: We are sector-agnostic and highly opportunistic.
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