Podcasts about Highland Capital Partners

E111 Breaking up big tech monopolies on Fireside with a VC speaking with Manish Patel, founder of Nava Ventures, a $175m VC fund in San Francisco, Teaching Faculty at Stanford University, early Googler, and former General Partner at Highland Capital Partners. Talking about his history at Google pre-IPO and the current state of monopolies with Google, Apple and Microsoft and what should regulators do as well as regulatory capture with Open AI and other tech titans. Manish also talks about Nava VC and their Series A concentrated strategy backing 15 startups per fund from a roughly $175m fund.   Links and Resources:   Watch the full episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/HSjpaXNrclE. Find all episodes of Fireside with a VC on your favorite podcast platform: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/FiresideVC. Learn more about the Nava Ventures: https://www.nava.vc/. Follow Manish Patel on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/manishpatelli/. Follow Andrew Romans on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/romans/. Join our Newsletter to get our insights and curated content from the VC-startup ecosystem - Fireside with a VC: https://subscribe.7bc.vc. Learn more about 7BC Venture Capital here: https://7bc.vc/. Join the conversation, leave comments, and tell us what you think about these topics and this episode.

There's one marketing tactic that can make people laugh, it can make people gasp. But either way it'll make them remember your content for years. It's shock factor. And people aren't using it enough in B2B marketing. It's eliciting this strong emotional response that grabs your audience's attention, gets them talking about your brand, and makes your content rise above the noise. What's not to love? So in this episode of Remarkable, we're talking about a group of filmmakers who know about shock factor: Traktor. And with the help of our special guest, Senior Director, Head of Content at Domino Data Lab, Yuval Zukerman, we chat about going for the shock factor, creating a series of ads for a single campaign, and using your constraints to your advantage.About our guest, Yuval ZukermanYuval Zukerman is Senior Director, Head of Content at Domino Data Lab. He joined the company in July 2022 as Director of Technical Alliances. Prior to Domino Data Lab, Yuval served as Manager of Partner Marketing at VMWare. He has also founded his own company, Enavigo, LLC, focusing on technology leadership for results-oriented marketers, mobile development, developer relations, translation and localization project management.Over his career, he has served in a variety of roles across the technology lifecycle. From developer and engineer to project manager, technology consultant to technical creative and sales. He has worked with non-profits, medium-sized clients and global Fortune 500 companies in verticals that included CPG, B2C and B2B services, hospitality and financial. Past clients include Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts, Wells Fargo, Verizon Wireless, The Coca-Cola Company, Philips, and The Greater Boston Food Bank. He has a B.S. in Computer Science from UCLA and an M.A. in Information Technology and Software Engineering from Harvard.About Domino Data Lab​​Domino Data Lab powers model-driven business for the world's most advanced enterprises, including over 20% of the Fortune 100. Their Enterprise MLOps platform speeds up the development and deployment of data science work while increasing collaboration and governance, to scale data science into a competitive advantage. Their platform enables thousands of data scientists to develop better medicines, grow more productive crops, adapt risk models to major economic shifts, build better cars, improve customer support, or simply recommend the best purchase to make at the right time. Domino is backed by leading venture capital firms: Sequoia Capital, Bloomberg Beta, Coatue Management, Dell Technologies Capital, Highland Capital Partners, In-Q-Tel, and Zetta Venture Partners.About TraktorTraktor is a group of filmmakers based in Venice, California. Though they're based in California, they're originally from Sweden and met in film school: Directors Sam Larsson, Pontus Löwenhielm, Patrik von Krusenstjerna, Ole Sanders, Mats Lindberg and producer Richard Ulfvengren. They're globally renowned for their work serving brands like Lego, Nike, PepsiCo, Levi's, Fox Sports, MTV, Virgin Atlantic, and more. They've done music videos for Fatboy Slim, the Flaming Lips and Madonna. At least twice they've been recognized as the most award-winning directors in the world. They've won three Grand Prix at Cannes, a handful of Clios, an Emmy, and been nominated for a Grammy.What B2B Companies Can Learn From Traktor:Go for the shock factor. Knock your audience off-balance with unexpected content. It's inexpensive, it's attention-grabbing, it's memorable. Traktor made ads for Fox Sports that showed a man high diving straight into the ground, and another of two blindfolded men swinging oversized bats at each other. They were shockingly off-kilter for sports ads at the time. Over 20 years later, Yuval still remembers them vividly. Ian says, ”I wouldn't say Traktor's first ads are cheaply done, but comparatively. Like, there's no celebrities. They're just jarring. It's just taking the one salient point that you want the person to know and finding some sort of crazy connection out there in the ether to drive that home and then make the audience think, make them laugh.”Create a series within your campaign. It gives you a format while allowing you freedom to play on your theme. So you can create a variety of ads that appeal to different audience preferences, increase brand awareness and recall, and even run A/B testing with them. It's like how Traktor made a series of ads for Fox Sports. Ian says, ”They have one ad on an Indian sport and one on a Chinese sport. As the viewer, you realize it's a series. It becomes something that's beyond just a one-off thing. And now people think they're so funny. That's where ads are at their best, when it's less of a one-off and more of something that's ongoing.”Use your constraints to your advantage. Traktor leaned into their tight budget, and in doing so created stylized videos that were visually unique and captivating. Ian says, “If you don't have the budget, how can you steer into doing things grainier or less quality or unintentionally done in that way?”Quotes*”You're taking time from your audience. Traktor is giving them an exchange: Humor. They're giving you a giggle and a laugh. And that is something that is very important for us, to provide people value for their time. Time is the most valuable thing we have. So you better not waste it.” - Yuval Zukerman*”No matter what your goal is in the content, stand up to your core set of values. Live up to those standards. I always tell my kids, ‘Are you proud of what you just did?' Because there's something you can feel good that you delivered or created.” - Yuval ZukermanTime Stamps[0:55] Meet Yuval Zukerman, Senior Director, Head of Content at Domino Data Lab[2:08] Why are we talking about ads by Traktor?[3:01] What does Yuval's work at Domino Data Lab entail?[5:35] Learn more about Traktor[12:07] What makes ads by Traktor remarkable?[20:35] What are marketing lessons we can take from Traktor?[27:58] What's Yuval's content strategy?[33:02] How does Yuval get leadership buy-in on new content?[41:40] How does Yuval prove the ROI of content?LinksCheck out films by TraktorConnect with Yuval on LinkedInLearn more about Domino Data LabAbout Remarkable!Remarkable! is created by the team at Caspian Studios, the premier B2B Podcast-as-a-Service company. Caspian creates both non-fiction and fiction series for B2B companies. If you want a fiction series check out our new offering - The Business Thriller - Hollywood style storytelling for B2B. Learn more at CaspianStudios.com. In today's episode, you heard from Ian Faison (CEO of Caspian Studios) and Meredith Gooderham (Senior Producer). Remarkable was produced this week by Jess Avellino, mixed by Scott Goodrich, and our theme song is “Solomon” by FALAK. Create something remarkable. Rise above the noise.

Our third anniversary episode features the first of three episodes recorded live at GroceryShop in the Vantage podcast studio. We welcome three rock star venture capitalists--Ashley Hartman (Bluestein Ventures), Matt Nichols (Commerce Ventures), and Kevin Parakkattu (Plug and Play) --who share their thoughts on the future of retail tech. In a fast-paced discussion, we dig into the current funding environment, challenges scaling once promising technology, and what each of our panelists are looking for now. We also discuss the outlook for generative AI, connecting offline and online behavior, personalization, sustainability, store level analytics, retail media, and more!As usual, we kick things off with our analysis of the week in retail news, starting with the Fed's interest rate pause and IPO fever. We then discuss Lowe's CEO saying the quiet part out loud when it comes to addressing a big driver of retail theft, before returning to the Wobbly Unicorn Corner for news of Stitch Fix's plans to right the ship. Then it's an early look at both holiday hiring plans and several firm's sales forecasts. About VantageEnterprise brands and retailers in over 120 countries around the world use Vantage for data-driven ecommerce advertising. Vantage was built on the primary goal of helping ecommerce businesses of all sizes around the world grow. Driving this growth: artificial intelligence, machine-learning technology, predictive analytics, and performance at scale. We're committed to helping businesses identify opportunities and grow revenue in an easy and data-driven way. We leverage the data from the thousands of retailers worldwide to best understand how to be successful. About AshleyAshley co-leads Bluestein Ventures, driving the firm's strategy, portfolio company support, and deal pipeline. Ashley has made over 30 investments in the space, and is an observer on three boards, including Base Culture, Grovara, and Rethink. Ashley has appeared in Forbes (here and here), has been featured on industry podcasts (here, here, and here), and regularly serves on food industry panels.Ashley has deep experience leading growth strategy and establishing scalable infrastructure necessary to build sustainable ventures. Prior to Bluestein, Ashley was Vice President of Strategy & Operations at Hartman Windows & Doors, where she was responsible for growth strategy, leading expansion across the U.S. as well as setting the platform on which to grow. Ashley also worked for Coinstar in Business Development, focusing on launching their new ventures. After college, Ashley was an Analyst at NERA Economic Consulting.Active in the Chicago and food community, Ashley serves on the Board of Naturally Chicago, on Selection Committee of the Good Food Accelerator, and as a mentor at Food Foundry, The Hatchery, and the LeAD Accelerator, in addition to being a judge at Booth's new venture competitions. She is also on the National Leadership Council of United States Artists. Ashley received an MBA with honors from Harvard Business School and a BA in Political Economy, summa cum laude, from Williams College.About MattMatt has been an investor in and operator of early-stage technology companies for more than 20 years. He leads the firm's commerce infrastructure/retail technology investment team and is a member of the management committee. He serves on the boards of several portfolio companies, including Grabango and Pensa.Prior to Commerce Ventures, Matt was the CEO of Gemvara, a disruptive jewelry eCommerce business that was sold to Berkshire Hathaway. Matt also worked as a venture capitalist at Highland Capital Partners and Morgan Stanley Venture Partners where his investments included Bullhorn (Acq'd by Vista Equity Partners), Pixable (Acq'd by SingTel), Avamar (Acq'd by EMC), Tarari (Acq'd by LSI), and Perceptive Software (Acq'd by Lexmark). Matt was a member of Morgan Stanley‘s Technology Corporate Finance team where he was part of the Google IPO team and also spent time in Google's corporate development group.Matt studied Economics at Pomona College and earned an MBA with high distinction from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth.Fun Fact: Matt was once a nationally-ranked badminton player.About KevinHighly versatile venture capital leader with a track record of demonstrated performance. Sourced and led 40+ Seed and Series A investments exceeding $10MM deployed with a combined market value of >$50MM inclusive of portfolio companies BigID, Madison Reed, ZigZag Global, ChargeAfter, MANSCAPED. Developed strategic partnerships with Nike, McDonalds, YUM Brands, Ernst & Young, PVH, and 12 other retailers and brands. Tenacious at developing investments, securing customer loyalty, and forging long term relationships with internal and external business partners. An adept people leader with a reputation of attracting and developing high performance teams.About UsSteve Dennis is a strategic advisor, keynote speaker, and bestselling author of focused on growth, innovation, and the impact of digital disruption. He is widely considered one of the foremost and influential voices in the retail industry. You can learn more about Steve on his  website.  His #1 bestselling book Remarkable Retail: How To Win & Keep Customers in the Age of Disruption is available at  Amazon or just about anywhere else books are sold. Steve regularly shares his insights in his role as a Forbes senior contributor and on Twitter and LinkedIn. You can also check out his speaker "sizzle" reel here.Michael LeBlanc  is the Founder & President of M.E. LeBlanc & Company Inc and a Senior Advisor to Retail Council of Canada as part of his advisory and consulting practice.   He brings 25+ years of brand/retail/marketing & eCommerce leadership experience, and has been on the front lines of retail industry change for his entire career.  Michael is the producer and host of a network of leading podcasts including Canada's top retail industry podcast,       The Voice of Retail, plus  Global eCommerce Leaders podcast, and The Food Professor  with Dr. Sylvain Charlebois.    You can learn more about Michael   here  or on     LinkedIn. Be sure and check out Michael's latest venture for fun and influencer riches - Last Request Barbecue,  his YouTube BBQ cooking channel!

Kevin Frechette brought his sales experience to the startup world, and has built a highly successful venture in a massive industry. The startup, FairMarkit, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Highland Capital Partners, OMERS Growth Equity, GGV Capital, Insight Partners and ServiceNow.

As the years have gone by, Deven Soni is the co-founder and CEO of Matador Gold Technologies. He has bought and built many businesses throughout his career.Deven has extensive experience in M&A and technology private equity.During his time at Goldman Sachs and Highland Capital Partners, he related to the entrepreneurs more than the financiers.In our conversation, he goes into detail about the choices he has made that have brought him to where he is today. He discusses what he would do differently, and some of the key insights he learned along the way as well.Deven believes that getting clear on your goals drives success. Another driver of success is finding those key strategic partners that will lift your business beyond the startup phase.Join us today to get a closer look at the twists and turns of Deven's career path, and learn from his journey today!Check out some of our most popular episodes:Chicken S#!it CEOs w. Mogens SmedLeadership Lessons from Louis Vuitton, Samsonite, and Now, EVCP Growth EquityCanada's Best Venture Partner w. Bruce CroxonFor more information on our sponsor, please visit Olympia Trust CompanyStay in the know and follow along:Connect with our host, Cory Cleveland on LinkedInVisit The Insider's Guide to Finance WebsiteFollow us on LinkedInSubscribe to our YouTube channelSubscribe to The Knowledge Bank Letter - a periodic letter of actionable insights, interviews, and quality curationsPlease note that the information contained in this interview is not financial advice but for entertainment purposes. I am not a financial advisor and make no warranties or representations concerning the accuracy or suitability of the information contained in this interview. I recommend that any and all investment decisions be made with the advice of accredited investment advisors.

My guest today is Sean Judge (https://twitter.com/seanjudgeciv ), general partner at Castle Island Ventures (https://twitter.com/CastleIslandVC ). Sean has been investing since he started working in 2011. He was fortunate to take a wide lens approach early on in his career and narrowed over time until he ultimately landed in the Web3 early stage venture space. He is partnered with some amazing minds as Castle Island, and aspires to build a generational VC firm. He takes us through the mega trends they invest in and why the future for this space is bright. First receiving ICO offers at Highland Capital Partners from companies started by major talent but no revenue and a white paper to meeting Matt Walsh while he was at Fidelity and putting a personal check in Castle IslandWe Discuss...2023 Outlook-Proof of Reserves with Exchanges-Stablecoins-From 555 Seed and Series A deals in 2019-20 to 1400 in 2022-People are still leaving comfortable full-time jobs because of the promise of Web3How to Survive a Bear-Seed or Series A check to last closer to 36 month rather than 18-Plan for the best (rebound mid-2023), Prepare for the worst (2-2.5 yr bear)-Big consumer brands are still moving forward so lean into Sales and Marketing-If your audience are crypto-native then focus on making your product as sticky as possiblePick and Shovels Business following 3 megatrends: Monetary Networks - custodians, data analytics, compliance softwareDeFi - decentralized focus on all aspects of traditional financeConsumer/Web3 - sovereignty over dataChapters:00:00-10:50 Founding Story10:50-14:19 Outlook for the Space in 202314:20-19:37 VC advice to Survive a Bear Market19:38-24:30 Role of Decentralization in Web3 Startups and Investing24:31-29:36 Crypto-Native Portfolio Breakdown and Outlook29:37-44:20 What is the Future of DeFi and Enterprise Blockchain?44:21-51:40 Consumer Side of Web3 in 202351:41-57:26 Closing QuestionsThanks for listening! Did you know you can also watch the show on YouTube? Just hit the link below and don't forget to subscribe!Web3 w/ Me - YouTube

Deven Soni sits down with #Clockedin with Jordan Edwards to discuss his new app Matador Gold Technologies and how it will modernize the gold buying experience!Deven Soni is an experienced operations executive and investor. He spent several years as a technology-focused investor at Goldman Sachs and Highland Capital Partners where he invested over $200mm in technology growth and venture deals as a private equity investor. Deven has deep experience with asset digitization, co-founded Wired Investors, a tech-focused buyout firm that acquired 12 businesses between 2015-2017. Now the CEO of Matador Gold Technologies, Deven seeks to disrupt and modernize the gold buying experience by creating an easy to access, audited platform for anyone to secure savings or avoid the wealth destroying effect of inflation.To Contact Deven:Deven's Email: Deven@Matador.networkMatador Website: https://www.buymatador.com/ Hope you find value in this. If so please provide a 5-star and drop a review.Complimentary Edwards Consulting Session: https://calendly.com/jordan-555/intro-call

Who are the tech companies in the Boston tech scene that are going to scale and become the next anchor companies like Rapid7, CarGurus, Amwell, or DraftKings? If I was pulling together a list of companies, I would definitely add Fairmarkit to the short-list. The company is revolutionizing the way organizations buy and sell through automated sourcing. It is a massive market in a sector that has been vastly underserved in terms of leveraging technological advancements like AI. Plus, regardless of economic conditions, procurement teams are always going to be looking for ways to reduce expense and automate business processes. Fairmarket recently announced a $35.6M Series C led by OMERS Growth Equity, with participation from GGV Capital, Insight Partners, Highland Capital Partners, and ServiceNow. In this episode of our podcast, we cover: * Advice on taking that entrepreneurial risk of starting a company. * The beginning of Kevin's professional journey and how sales helped propel his career at tech companies like EMC and Turbonomic. * The full story of Fairmarkit from the very early days of an idea to where it is today. * The benefits of having an executive coach. * And so much more. If you like the show, please remember to subscribe and review us on iTunes, Soundcloud, Spotify, Stitcher, or Google Play.

Peter Bell has quite literally done it all in business. He began his career in 1986 at a growing startup EMC, as Employee #81. After spending 10+ years at EMC, Peter became an entrepreneur co-founding Storage Networks and later taking the company public and serving as its CEO. Afterwards, Peter became a venture capitalist working at Highland Capital Partners, a $3 Billion venture capital firm, for 12 years. After Highland, Peter helped launch Amity Ventures, a venture capital firm focused on partnering with founders of technology companies to build category-defining businesses and serves as Amity's Chairman. Based in San Francisco, CA, the partners at Amity have invested in over fifty companies across all stages of company growth throughout their years in business together. In this interview, we talk about: - Peter's corporate journey with EMC - being a part of a growing startup, getting an MBA at Harvard Business School - Peter's entrepreneurial journey with Storage Networks, taking the company public and serving as a public company CEO - Peter's academia journey - being an Adjunct Professor at MIT's Sloan School and Boston College - Peter's venture capital journey with Highland Capital Partners and now his own venture firm Amity Ventures - Peter's personal journey - meeting his wife at BC, managing work-life balance, and fatherhood/parenting Peter's Socials: Amity's Ventures: https://www.amity.vc/ Peter's Twitter: https://twitter.com/peterwbell Peter's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/peterwbell/ Grateful Living Info: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9Bo0LHtRJJNJBUYIceg27w Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3Hn4ttttmbWfVqAhWh4Jhi Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/id1503185956 My Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/aroy81547/?hl=en Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/gratefulliving4 Medium: https://gratefulliving4.medium.com/ Time Stamps: 0:00 Intro 0:55 Can you talk about your childhood and what type of kid you were? 4:14 What was your relationship with business? 8:17 You met your wife in college. Any advice on love? 14:06 You left PWC 2 months into starting the job. Was that a hard decision? 18:21 Are there lessons from your early business career at EMC? 21:55 How did business school come about? 26:04 EMC grew a lot over the years. Any leadership lessons from Dick and Roger? 32:30 You started Storage Networks after EMC. Can you talk about Storage Networks? 35:12 Any words of wisdom on taking a company public? 39:07 How was your work life balance as a public company CEO? 42:07 You sold Storage Networks. Any advice on selling a company? 45:28 Getting into academia after selling your company, how was that? 50:50 You joined Highland Capital Partners in 2006, how was that process? 53:51 young people going straight into VC 59:33 Starting Amity 1:02:25 Raising a fund? 1:07:06 Managing all aspects of running a VC? 1:11:21 Any traits for becoming an entrepreneur? Any good way to prepare? 1:20:19 How do you keep up with trends and markets? 1:25:08 How have you managed parenting your kids as someone whose found a good amount of success?

Car insurance isn't exciting. Unless you're the Silicon Valley company turning this enormous industry on its head. That's Jerry. Thanks to machine learning, Jerry finds its customers the best, customized quotes from more than 50 insurance carriers in 45 seconds. For free. The typical customer saves $800 a year on car insurance. And now its evolving into a mobile-first car ownership “super app,” aiming to save customers time & money on all their car expenses. I wanted to find out how they're scaling the team. So I tracked down John Spottiswood, Chief Operating Officer of Jerry. John knows how to build a Rockstar team because he's been a part of some of the valley's biggest success stories. He led business development for Lending Club, Earnin, and GoodHire. Led a division of QuinStreet. Even served as President of Match.com Clearly, Jerry is onto something big. The company has raised $130M in VC from: Y Combinator, SV Angel, Bow Capital, FundersClub, Goodwater Capital, Kamerra, Liquid2 Ventures, Oriza Ventures, Highland Capital Partners, Park West Asset Management. In this 20-minute conversation, John shares how he's putting a Rockstar in every seat at Jerry.

Miguel Armaza sits down with Alex Taussig, Partner at Lightspeed Ventures, a global multi-stage VC with over $10B in AUM, focused on accelerating disruptive innovations and trends in the Enterprise and Consumer sectors. They've backed some amazing companies, including Snap, Affirm, and GrubHub. Alex focuses on online marketplaces and co-leads Lightspeed's investment efforts in Latin America. He is also the author of the popular weekly newsletter, DRINKING FROM THE FIREHOSE, in which he writes about recent trends in commerce, media, tech, climate, science, and popular culture. In this episode, we discuss - Alex's story and why he decided to stop pursuing a Phd and left academia to join the tech investing world - The intersection of marketplaces and fintech and why the payment technology is the motor oil that makes transactions flow smoothly for marketplaces - Why in Venture Capital it's very important to ask the best possible questions and pay close attention to the answers that reveal an underlying truth - Early investing mistakes and the importance of focus - Lessons from several years of writing a successful newsletter… and a lot more! Alex Taussig Alex joined Lightspeed in 2016 as a partner on the consumer investment team and has spent 12+ years in venture capital. He is passionate about partnering with founders who are reimagining major categories of commerce using technology. At Lightspeed, Alex has led investments in startups disrupting massive industries like food (Daily Harvest, Frubana), retail (Faire), education (Outschool), and weddings (Zola). He also co-leads Lightspeed's investment efforts in Latin America. Prior to joining Lightspeed, Alex was a partner at Highland Capital Partners, where he led investments in and supported over a dozen companies, including thredUP (IPO TDUP, 2021), Carbon Black (IPO CBLK, 2018), 2U (IPO 2014, TWOU), and RentJuice (acquired by Zillow, 2012). Alex is a trained research scientist and breaks down business problems with deductive logic and analytical rigor. He originally studied physics at Harvard College, where he graduated summa cum laude, and then went on to receive a Master's degree in materials engineering from MIT, where he was part of a research group building the first fully optical computer chip. Alex also received an MBA from Harvard Business School, where he was a Baker Scholar, an honor given to the top 5% of the graduating class. Alex publishes a popular weekly(ish) newsletter called DRINKING FROM THE FIREHOSE, in which he writes about recent trends in commerce, media, tech, climate, science, and popular culture. He lives in San Francisco with his wife and two children and enjoys baking, anime, and heavy metal music. About Lightspeed Venture Partners Lightspeed Venture Partners is a multi-stage venture capital firm focused on accelerating disruptive innovations and trends in the Enterprise and Consumer sectors. Over the past two decades, the Lightspeed team has backed hundreds of entrepreneurs and helped build more than 400 companies globally, including Snap, Nest, Nutanix, AppDynamics, MuleSoft, OYO, Guardant, Affirm, and GrubHub. Lightspeed and its affiliates currently manage $10.5B across the global Lightspeed platform, with investment professionals and advisors in Silicon Valley, Israel, India, China, Southeast Asia, and Europe. For more FinTech insights, follow us below: Medium: medium.com/wharton-fintech WFT Twitter: twitter.com/whartonfintech Miguel's Twitter: twitter.com/MiguelArmaza Miguel's Newsletter: https://bit.ly/3jWIpqp

Idelic, Inc., a Pittsburgh-based leader in commercial trucking analytics and driver management solutions, has announced the close of its Series B fundraising round, a $20 million raise led by Highland Capital Partners with participation from AXA Venture Partners. Additional participants in the round included previous investors Birchmere Ventures, Origin Ventures, TDF Ventures, and SaaS Venture Capital. In conjunction with the financing, Craig Driscoll of Highland Capital Partners will be joining Idelic’s Board of Directors. Hayden Cardiff, Idelic CEO, talks about the new round and how Idelic makes trucking safer and more efficient by preventing accidents, reducing driver turnover, lowering insurance costs, and—most importantly—saving lives. Their flagship product, Safety Suite®, is the most comprehensive driver management platform in the transportation industry, integrating data from multiple technology sources into a single system of record that enhances workflows and provides unparalleled fleet analytics. Safety Suite uses machine learning to turn fleet data into truly predictive insights that enable fleets to efficiently manage their entire safety operation and identify at-risk drivers before a crash occurs.

Miguel Armaza sits down with Dan Rosen, Partner and Founder of Commerce Ventures, a sector-focused VC fund, investing in infrastructure and enablers for the Commerce Continuum Dan is also an alum of our very own, Wharton School. We talked about - Dan’s background and why he decided to build Commerce Ventures - The evolution of the fintech industry over the last 20 years - Commerce Ventures investment process - Their approach to building sector theses - The importance of talent, diversity, and mentoring future generations - And a lot more! About Dan Rosen Dan Rosen Partner Dan has been investing in tech startups for 20 years. He founded Commerce Ventures with the vision of creating a sector-focused firm that demonstrably helps its portfolio companies. At Commerce, Dan focuses on technology innovations in the payments, financial services and insurance fields. He serves on the boards of Blooom, ClickSWITCH, Kin and Socure, and participates as an observer on several other portfolio boards, such as BillGO and MX Technologies. Prior to starting Commerce Ventures, Dan was a Principal at Highland Capital Partners, where he focused on mobile and payments-related startups. He has also worked as an Associate at HarbourVest Partners, in Corporate Development at RSA Security, and as a financial services software consultant for American Management Systems (now CGI Group). Dan studied Finance and Information Systems at the University of Pennsylvania and earned an MBA with Distinction from Harvard.

Today I’m joined by Brian Kirkbride.    Brian is the co-founder and co-CEO of FitLab — an integrated holding company of Performance Lifestyle brands.    In this episode, we talk about FitLab’s evolution from venture studio to holding company. How they’ve partnered with brands like XPT, McGregor Fast, and Freeletics. Then Brian and I discuss the future of the fitness space, including digital options, the in-person experience, and community.    More from Brian   Brian Kirkbride is the co-Founder and co-CEO of FitLab, the fitness and sport lifestyle company whose brands include Electric, Freeletics, McGregor FAST and XPT.    Brian has spent nearly two decades building and scaling companies in sport, fitness and wellness. At Nike, Brian oversaw business development and partnerships, and was founder & GM of the Nike+ Lab and the Nike+ Accelerator. Brian was previously COO of Kalologie, a retail wellness company, as well as a venture capitalist at Highland Capital Partners. Brian received an undergraduate degree from Vanderbilt and a MBA from Harvard Business School.   More from Fitt Insider    Fitt Insider is a newsletter and podcast dedicated to the business of fitness and wellness.  Join industry-leading operators and investors by subscribing: http://insider.fitt.co

He is the General Partner at Amity Ventures where he focuses his energy and expertise on partnering with entrepreneurs to build companies of consequence. He has spent three decades starting, building, and investing in technology businesses. His thematic areas of focus include Machine Learning, Big Data, Cybersecurity, Internet of Things, Autonomous Logistics, Data Analytics, Cloud Computing, Personal/Mobile Commerce, FinTech, and Enterprise Software. He has served on the boards of numerous technology companies over the past two decades including, most recently, Gigamon, LevelUp (acquired by Grubhub), Ocarina (acquired by DELL), Turbonomic, WePay, Qumulo, and ENJOY. He is currently on the board at Vowel, an emerging leader in enterprise collaboration, Column, a platform for public notice, and Playco, a leader in mobile gaming. He began his career at Price Waterhouse in Boston. In late 1986, he began to sense the opportunities arising in the information age of enterprise computing and joined an exciting young company in Natick, Massachusetts, EMC Corporation. He relocated to San Francisco in 1987 to help lead EMC initiatives in Silicon Valley. EMC was acquired by Dell in September 2016 for $67 billion. In 1998, he embarked on his own entrepreneurial journey and co-founded StorageNetworks, a pioneer in cloud computing. He led the company as its CEO and completed an IPO in 2000. After stepping down as CEO in 2003, he formed his own investment firm, Stowe Capital, focusing on early-stage investments in enterprise software, data center infrastructure, and consumer internet companies. He was a member of the faculty at MIT Sloan School of Management from 2003 to 2006, where he taught entrepreneurship. He was also a Distinguished Executive in Residence and member of the faculty at Boston College from 2003 to 2010, where he taught at the Carroll School of Management. In 2006, he joined Highland Capital Partners, a leading global venture capital firm, where he led investments in early and growth-stage technology companies, eventually becoming the Managing General Partner of the firm. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his family, serving as a Trustee at Sacred Heart Schools Atherton from 2012 through June 2018. He joined the Board of Trustees of Boston College in 2000 and currently serves as a Trustee Associate. He is also an advisor to the Shea Center for Entrepreneurship at Boston College. He holds a BS in Management from Boston College, an MBA from the Harvard Business School, and an Honorary Doctorate from Babson College. Join Randy Seidl and David Nour on this episode of the #TechSalesInsights podcast with Peter Bell. Don't forget, two quick points: Seidl and Nour host each week's guest at a Twitter Chat, so search Twitter for #TechSalesInsights for the latest updates, and We turn the show notes from these podcasts into more in-depth articles, so check them out at SalesCommunity.com. Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/salescommunity/message

Qumulo, a Seattle storage startup helping companies store vast amounts of data, announced a $125 million Series E investment today on a $1.2 billion valuation. BlackRock led the round with help from Highland Capital Partners, Madrona Venture Group, Kleiner Perkins and new investor Amity Ventures. The company reports it has now raised $351 million. CEO […]

Welcome to the 12th episode of The CEO Story Podcast! With weekly podcasts releasing, "The CEO Story" takes a deep dive into the success (and sometimes pitfalls) of being your own boss! We encourage each and every individual to candidly share their stories to help other entrepreneurs understand the highs and lows that come with the journey.As always be sure to check out more of our podcast episodes:Podcast Website - https://ceostory.buzzsprout.comYoutube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCasaMQttGpdFnIMeWXER1SQWebsite - https://www.togethercfo.com/Give us a Like on Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/TogetherCFO/Like our LinkedIn Page - https://www.linkedin.com/company/together-cfoGive us a Follow on Instagram - @TogethercfoIn this episode, I had the pleasure of interviewing Charles Huang, Charles is the Founder and CEO of Lynchpin Technologies and Founder and Managing Partner of Lynchpin Capital. Charles has spent his career focused on health care innovation. Previously Charles was a VP at Blackstone in their Global Portfolio Operations group, on the Equity Healthcare team. Before Blackstone, he was a VC at Spark Capital focused on health/technology startups and an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Highland Capital Partners.  He also has worked in the Strategic Financial Planning department of Harvard Pilgrim Health Care and spent time as a consultant at Towers Perrin.He is an advisor/investor in companies and organizations dedicated to health innovation such as Blueprint Health, Startup Health, TEDMED, and Luminary Labs and an angel investor/advisor to companies such as CredSimple, Artemis Health, Sonavex, Greatist, Health Connections, and Imperative.  He also has co-authored several Harvard Business School cases and notes on health care technology, innovation, and policy.Charles received his BA in Public Health from Johns Hopkins and earned an MBA from Harvard Business School and an MPA from Harvard Kennedy School of Government.Stay up to date with Charles:Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/acharleshuang/Twitter - https://twitter.com/cchLynchpin Capital Website - http://www.lynchpin.io/Scale Health Website - https://www.scalehealth.com/

Produced by Foundersuite.com, "How I Raised It" goes behind the scenes with startup founders who have raised capital. This episode is with George Arison of Shift Cars (Shift.com), an online car shopping platform that brings the car to your door for test drives. In this episode, George talks about how fundraising is a process of "VC thesis matching," how he raised the seed round by going back to previous bosses and co-workers, how startup valuations really work, tips for surviving a downturn, why the next few years will be great for founders, and more. We also go deep into what happens during a "down round" and how to best deal with it -- for example, getting existing investors to commit to a price, dealing with anti-dilution clauses, changing the liquidation stack, increasing the option pool to keep employees happy, and more. The Company most recently raised $181 million of Series D venture funding in a deal led by Lithia Motors. BMW i Ventures, Alliance Ventures, G2VP, Highland Capital Partners, Goldman Sachs Investment Partners, DCM Ventures, Threshold Ventures, 122 West ventures, MicroVentures and other investors also participated. This series is produced by Foundersuite, makers of software to raise capital and manage investor relations. Foundersuite's customers have raised over $2.2 Billion since 2016. Create a free account at www.foundersuite.com

Bob Davis, the founder of Lycos and General Partner at Highland Capital Partners joins the show. In this episode we discuss: Bob’s entrepreneurial journey, from taking Lycos from founding to IPO in 9 months, to an eventual $5.5 billion exit Perspectives on the venture industry and the impact of COVID-19 on the capital formation environment Comparisons of the blockchain industry to the early internet era General thoughts on Bitcoin’s macro narrative and the evolution of the market infrastructure to support this asset   Learn more about Highland Capital Partners at www.hcp.com

This episode is a live recording of our interview with Rob Toews. He shared inspiring thoughts on deep learning applications' impact on AI commercialization. Additionally, he talked about investing in the future of AI and current industry trends. Visit Robin.ly to view the video: http://bit.ly/2TzV9su Rob Toews is a venture capitalist at Highland Capital Partners. The company's HQ is in Boston, MA. However, they have been in the Bay Area for more than 20 years and invests in 6 to 8 companies a year. Also, Toews writes about AI in his column on Forbes.

Minnie Ingersoll is the cofounder of Shift which is an online marketplace for buying and selling used cars. The compány has raised $300 million from investors such as Highland Capital Partners, Great Oaks Venture Capital, and DCM Ventures to name a few. She is now a partner at the early stage VC TenOneTen and also hosts the LA Venture podcast.

Minnie Ingersoll is the cofounder of Shift which is an online marketplace for buying and selling used cars. The compány has raised $300 million from investors such as Highland Capital Partners, Great Oaks Venture Capital, and DCM Ventures to name a few. She is now a partner at the early stage VC TenOneTen and also hosts the LA Venture podcast.

I once read a blog post that stated an interesting fact. The number of professional athletes in the U.S. is equal to the number of positions in venture capital. Needless to say, positions are scarce in the VC industry and they are highly sought after. For Claire, she was determined to land a position in venture capital after getting her MBA at Wharton. She devoted months of her time sitting in coffee shops researching and learning the industry, while creating a recruiting plan, cold emailing VC firms, and offering her research to investors in hopes of landing an open position. Well - Her determination paid off when she joined Corigin Ventures and she recently joined Highland to help the firm built out its New York office. Highland has a long history of success as a leading VC firm and their track record speaks for itself to the tune of 46 IPOs and 127 acquisitions. In this episode of our podcast, we cover: * How living in Kenya for six months influenced her career. * Her experience working in investment banking during the economic crisis. * How dedication and commitment through cold emailing landed Claire a position in the VC industry. * All the details on Highland Capital Partners and what she is targeting for investments. * How to get investors to respond to cold email pitches. * What first-time founders can expect during the process of raising capital. * And more! If you like the show, please remember to subscribe and review us on iTunes, Soundcloud, Spotify, Stitcher, or Google Play.

Oisin Hanrahan is the cofounder of Handy which is an app through which users can book cleaners, plumbers, handymen, and other household service providers. The company raised over $100 million from investors like General Catalyst, Highland Capital Partners, Slow Ventures, Box Group, Revolution, and Fidelity to name a few. Handy was recently acquired by ANGI Homeservices. 

Oisin Hanrahan is the cofounder of Handy which is an app through which users can book cleaners, plumbers, handymen, and other household service providers. The company raised over $100 million from investors like General Catalyst, Highland Capital Partners, Slow Ventures, Box Group, Revolution, and Fidelity to name a few. Handy was recently acquired by ANGI Homeservices. 

Michael Wystrach is the co-founder and CEO of Freshly which delivers gourmet ready-made meals, prepared and delivered to your door. The company so far has raised $110 million from investors such as Highland Capital Partners, Slow Ventures, Insight Partners, Alumni Ventures Group, Total Access Fund, White Star Capital, Monkish Equity, The Yard Ventures, Chestnut Street Ventures, and Blue Ivy Ventures to name a few. 

Michael Wystrach is the co-founder and CEO of Freshly which delivers gourmet ready-made meals, prepared and delivered to your door. The company so far has raised $110 million from investors such as Highland Capital Partners, Slow Ventures, Insight Partners, Alumni Ventures Group, Total Access Fund, White Star Capital, Monkish Equity, The Yard Ventures, Chestnut Street Ventures, and Blue Ivy Ventures to name a few. 

Bill Clerico is the co-founder and CEO of WePay which is a leading provider of integrated payments for software platforms. The company raised $75 million from SV Angel, Highland Capital Partners, Ignition Partners, August Capital, and founders of YouTube and PayPal. Ultimately the company was acquired by JPMorgan for a reported $400 million.

Bill Clerico is the co-founder and CEO of WePay which is a leading provider of integrated payments for software platforms. The company raised $75 million from SV Angel, Highland Capital Partners, Ignition Partners, August Capital, and founders of YouTube and PayPal. Ultimately the company was acquired by JPMorgan for a reported $400 million.

Today's guest is Rob Toews, Investor at Highland Capital Partners. Before Highland, Rob did strategy at Zoox and earned his JD/MBA from Harvard. In this episode we discuss how AV development is creating opportunities in AI, simulation, and mapping, why Tesla doesn't use LiDAR, Apple's acquisition of Drive.ai, and predictions around what current trends mean for the future of the AV landscape.

George speaks with Jason Fudin CEO and co-founder of WhyHotel, an alternative lodging service that operates pop-up hotels in newly built, luxury apartment buildings. His startup recently secured $10 million in Series A funding from Highland Capital Partners after scoring $3.9 million in seed funding earlier this year. WhyHotel has properties in DC and Baltimore and is expanding into Ballston Quarter, Centro Arlington and The Boro in Tysons. Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/georgeindc)

Hayden Miyamoto is the founder of NoHatDigital and co-founder of Wired Investors and Media Block. He has built and scaled several 7-figure online businesses, has trained thousands of people in digital entrepreneurship and has deep experience developing systems to scale websites. Deven Soni is a former internet-focused venture capital investor at Goldman Sachs and Highland Capital Partners where he helped fund several top media and software businesses.  He is also the co-founder of Wired Investors and Media Block Together, Hayden and Deven have co-founded 2 different acquisition firms, have analyzed thousands of deals, and purchased and operated 20+ businesses in the past 3 years. Covered In This Episode Hayden and Deven's background/story. The history of Wired Investors. An overview of deal sourcing and due diligence. What is compelling about buying an online business? Why is this a good asset class? Why are people selling their online business? What type of person is the best fit to purchase an online business? An overview on deal structures - how to practically buy a 7-figure business. The things you can do to an online business post-acquisition to take it to the next level. Parting advice for people looking to buy an online business. Resources Mentioned Wired Investors Thank You Thanks for listening to the Kingmakers podcast! If this episode has helped you in any way and you feel like we have earned it, please leave us a five-star rating and review on iTunes.  Reviews are extremely helpful and we read every one of them! Join The Kingmakers Community Subscribe to the Kingmakers podcast. Apply to our Business Buyers Workshop. Subscribe to our email list for regular business buying resources and advice.

Jen shares her experience working with start-ups as a talent and search specialist and answers all your most pressing questions. This episode is the first of many salon episodes where we feature an expert from the field who has worked extensively with founders, from early to growth stage. Jen Holmstrom joined GGV Capital in 2016 and leads the firm’s talent and recruiting efforts. To support founders as their companies scale, she created Founders+Leaders, a leadership development platform that provides training, mentorship, network and more. Prior to joining GGV, Jen was a Talent Partner at Highland Capital Partners and a leader on the executive search team at Facebook. Jen’s career has been focused on team building in fast growing companies. Before Facebook, Jen was a Director at San Francisco-based Riviera Partners, an executive search firm focused on recruiting engineering and product leadership for fast growing venture-backed technology companies, and also worked with SPMB, a technology focused talent search firm. Jen received an MBA from UC Berkeley Haas School of Business and BS from Boston College. Highlights from the episode: 3:13 What’s the biggest pain-point you hear from founders?  4:28 What are some things that people should be looking for in cofounders or first couple of employees if they want to scale?  5:14 How important is it to define culture early on? Does it help with hiring later on?  6:24 What happens after I’ve exhausted all the people in my network? What do I do about hiring?  7:07 When is the right time to bring a recruiting function in-house?  8:46 Have you seen any companies doing unique things on candidate experience that help them standout from the crowd?  10:33 What are some best-in-class practices for recruiting?  13:37 What is a head of people and why is it becoming a prominent role in startup land? What makes someone good at that job?  17:59 How do you think about employee engagement? How do you hold people accountable in an organization but also ensure that they have high satisfaction? What types of tools help with this?  19:51 How do distributed teams work? How do you maintain culture in a distributed team? What tools do you recommend for helping distributed teams?  24:11 How does a start-up compete against large companies like Facebook and Google when you can’t pay as much as the competition?  27:05 How do you have hard conversations? What are tricks to help make these conversations go better as opposed to being terrible?  29:08 How do you become a more successful manager? What are some tips to managing teams?  30:20 What book or article do you recommend?  30:56 What’s your favorite interview question? 

Welcome to Episode 48 of The VentureFizz Podcast, the flagship podcast of your most-trusted source for startup and tech jobs, news, and insights! For this episode of our podcast, I interviewed Bob Davis, General Partner at Highland Capital Partners. As a founder and an investor, Bob has been there from the very beginning of the Internet. He was the Founder and CEO of Lycos, which was a dominant company back in the Web 1.0 era. For the past 17 years, he has been a Venture Capitalist at Highland Capital Partners. His track record as a VC speaks for itself, having led investments at several successful companies that resulted in exits like nuTonomy, Bullhorn, Quattro Wireless, Turbine, and several others. In fact, just last week, one of his investments, Handy, announced its acquisition by ANGI Homeservices (the owners of Angie's List & HomeAdvisor). His current portfolio includes Lovepop, SessionM, Harry's, Freshly and others. In this episode of our podcast, we cover: -The full background story of Lycos, from its early days to ultimately becoming the most visited internet destination in the world back in 1999 -Setting a record as the fastest company to ever go public in the history of the NASDAQ -How he evaluates investment opportunities, and the specific criteria behind those decisions -The difference between products that are vitamins versus pain-killers -Plus, a lot more! Lastly, if you like the show, please remember to subscribe to and review us on iTunes, or your podcast player of choice!

From the show floor at TRANSACT, the largest payments technology show in the world, ETA CEO Jason Oxman sits down with Rich Aberman for a conversation on the future of fintech. Rich is the co-founder of WePay, a Silicon Valley startup turned payments technology success story. Rich founded WePay in 2008, just one year out of college. Now in its 10th year, WePay has left an notable mark on the fintech world. Funded and supported through its early years by major tech players like Max Levchin, Steve Chen, Y Combinator and Highland Capital Partners, Rich and his team have built an impressive online integrated payments platform. And in August of 2017, JPMorgan Chase announced that it would acquire WePay at a reported valuation of over $220 million. Jason and Rich took a few moments during the Paysafe opening reception on the TRANSACT show floor to talk about WePay’s journey from early funding rounds to acquisition, as well as his observations on payments technology and financial services.

Alex Taussig is a Partner @ Lightspeed Venture Partners, one of the leading firms of the last decade with a portfolio including the likes of Snapchat, Mulesoft, Max Levchin’s Affirm, The Honest Company and many more incredible companies. As for Alex, at Lightspeed, he has made investments in Zola, Daily Harvest, Vector & Poncho. Before moving to the West Coast, Alex spent 7 years at Highland Capital Partners, where, as a Partner, he made investments in thredUp, JauntVR and RentJuice (acq by Zillow) and was involved in several IPOs. Alex is also the writer of a fantastic newsletter: Drinking From The Firehose. In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Alex was inspired by being at Harvard at the time of Facebook to make the move into tech and how that landed a role in VC with Highland Capital Partners? 2.) Why is Alex optimistic about the current state of the retail environment, despite media skepticism? What are the value propositions that physical retail provides online retailers (Warby Parker, Real Real etc)? How does Alex believe we will see the re-platforming of retail in the future? 3.) In today's incumbent world, how can consumer apps demonstrate breakout growth? What does Alex mean when he discusses the importance of product channel fit? Once found, should fuel be poured on the fire to exploit the fit? What would suggest sustainable vs non-sustainable product channel fit to Alex? Who has done this particularly well? 4.) Why does Alex believe that Amazon's cash flow is one of the main reasons for it's success? What is the key working capital metric? How does this unpack into 3 core elements? What is "negative working capital"? What are the core benefits of this? How can startups use these mechanics to use cash flow as their prime advantage? Items Mentioned In Today’s Show: Alex’s Fave Book: The Divine Comedy Alex’s Most Recent Investment: The Daily Harvest As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Alex on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC. Leesa is the Warby Parker or TOMS shoes of the mattress industry. Leesa have done away with the terrible mattress showroom buying experience by creating a luxury premium foam mattress that is ordered completely online and ships for free to your doorstep. The 10-inch mattress comes in all sizes and is engineered with 3 unique foam layers for a universal, adaptive feel, including 2 inches of memory foam and 2 inches of a really cool latex foam called Avena, design to keep you cool. All Leesa mattresses are 100% US or UK made and for every 10 mattresses they sell, they donate one to a shelter. Go to Leesa.com to start the New Year with better nights sleep! Zoom, fastest growing video and web conferencing service, providing one consistent enterprise experience that allows you to engage in an array of activities including video meetings and webinars, collaboration-enabled conference rooms, and persistent chat all in one easy platform. Plus, it is the easiest solution to manage, scale, and use, and has the most straightforward, affordable pricing. Don’t take our word for it. Zoom is the top rated conferencing app across various user review sites including G2Crowd and Trust Radius. And you can sign up for a free account (not a trial!). Just visit Zoom.us.    

Randy Altschuler is a serial entrepreneur who has co-founded three successful companies, including Office Tiger in 1999, CloudBlue in 2001, and mostly recently Xometry in 2013. Randy is currently CEO of Xometry, an advanced manufacturing company with investors including Highland Capital Partners. In this episode, Randy discusses how he transitioned from a traditional finance background to entrepreneurship. He also discusses his insights into the most important parts of building a company.

After seven years as a general partner at Highland Capital Partners, Wyc Grousbeck transitioned from venture capitalist to owner of the National Basketball Association's Boston Celtics. Grousbeck speaks with Bloomberg Business of Sports co-hosts Scott Soshnick and Michael Barr about the current state of the Celtics, N.B.A. player salaries, and basketball's popularity in Europe and Asia.

Panel discussion between Sean Dalton (Partner at Highland Capital Partners), Joe Ellis (CEO and Co-Founder of vidRovr), Hemai Parthasarathy (Scientific Director of Breakout Labs, Thiel Foundation), Nina Tandon (CEO and Co-Founder of EpiBone), and Misti Ushio (CEO of TARA Biosystems). The first 35 minutes are largely introductions to each of the panelists, explaining their career paths that lead them to becoming entrepreneurs or investors. The next 45 minutes are a lively panel discussion answering questions such as “What role does IP play in starting a company” (minute 35), “how do license deals get negotiated and what are common terms, especially with university startups” (minute 50), “best practices for startups on how to build a cost-effective IP filing strategy” (minute 62); “why does IP have particularly important value at the beginning and end of a startup’s lifecycle?” (minute 65), “advice for students who want to be entrepreneurs and investors?” (minute 67).

Rishi Garg is a General Partner @ Mayfield Fund, where he focuses on new media platforms, disruptive financial services and new marketplaces. Prior to joining Mayfield, Rishi was as Vice President of Corporate Development and Strategy at Twitter where he led the company’s most active M&A program, including the acquisitions of Periscope, TellApart, TapCommerce, and many others. Prior to Twitter, Rishi was the first Head of Corporate Development at Square. Rishi was also the Founder of a leading venture-backed startup, FanSnap and has also held roles at Google, Highland Capital Partners and Morgan Stanley.   In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Rishi made his way into VC following time at Twitter and Square? 2.) How does Rishi look to analyse the state of co-founder relationships? What questions get to the core issues? What are the signs that encourage and worry Rishi? 3.) To what extent does a co-founder leaving the company concern Rishi? In what circumstance is this understandable? How should this process be played out? 4.) How much of a role should VCs play post-investment in the relationship of the founders? What are the dangers of this? How should VCs balance helpful and over involved? 5.) Why is Rishi anti the rise of the very large Series? What are the inherent dangers of this? How does he convey this concern to founders? Items Mentioned In Today’s Show: Rishi’s Fave Book: The Tibetan Book of Living & Dying, Malcolm X Rishi's Fave Blog or Newsletter: Wait But Why As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC, Rishi on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC. The Simba Hybrid. The most advanced mattress in the world. With a unique combination of two thousand five hundred conical pocket springs and responsive memory foam, it offers the perfect support for two people. A mattress that responds to you and your partner’s sleeping patterns. Delivered free, with a one hundred night sleep trial, free returns and a ten year guarantee. Start your free trial at simbasleep.com Cirrus Insight is a plugin for sales pros who use Gmail and Outlook.  It automatically updates activities in Salesforce so you don’t have to.  It was named #41 on the Inc. 500 list of fastest-growing companies, and it has more than 1,700 customer reviews on the Salesforce AppExchange. Today, it serves over 150,000 sales people across 5,000 organizations using Gmail, Outlook, iPhone, iPad, and Android. Cirrus Insight is perfect for sales, support, and success teams who want to save time, schedule 3x more appointments, track email opens and much more with Salesforce information at their fingertips in the inbox. www.cirrusinsight.com/20VC  

Timestamps 18:15 - How to make it work when your co-founder is your wife 28:39 - How to find product-market fit 36:24 - Selling his company Wildfire to Google 41:45 - What it's like working for Google 47:14 - The Swiss startup ecosystem Biography Alain Chuard is a Swiss serial entrepreneur and former professional snowboarder living in Palo Alto, California. He is best known as the founder and Chief product officer of Wildfire Interactive, the social media marketing technology company acquired by Google in July 2012. At Google, Alain was responsible for overseeing Wildfire’s strategy, integration into Google’s Display Ads Division, and external representation of the product. His early professional years were spent as a financial analyst with New York investment bank Salomon Smith Barney and as an Entrepreneur in Residence at Highland Capital Partners. Alain is also a former world-ranking professional snowboarder who competed on the World-Cup Pro Tour. He was ranked in the top 4 in Switzerland, placed in the top 4 in the NY State qualifier for the U.S. National Championships, and is among the most published snowboard athletes in history. Alain holds an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business (2007) and a bachelor’s degree in economics from Macalester College (1999) in St. Paul, MN. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/swisspreneur/message

Imagine a world where regulation and compliance didn’t rule financial services with an iron fist. Ok, that’s never going to happen but certainly it’s fair to hope for an environment that makes it easier to market investments to high net worth investors. And to some extent, the system is trying to ease up a bit on the regulatory and compliance issues that have rankled the investment industry for decades. New startup fintech companies may be focused on offering broader reach at a lower price point. But according to our next guest, this is somewhat misplaced. Fees in the industry have typically been high precisely because the cost of doing business is high. Peter Hans is the co-founder and CEO of Harvest Exchange -- Peter explains that it’s expensive and long cycle to identify and acquire customers -- especially as trends on the investment side encourage deeper diligence and more access to more information. Harvest enables the conversations institutional investors want to have with their clients and makes them happen by connecting these investors to public and private communities. We’re not talking about Facebook for finance -- we’re talking about 7000 top investors and investment firms (funds like 3rd Point and Highland Capital Partners) who are seeking tools to more efficiently communicate with existing and prospective clients and investors. Peter and I talk about: * why the asset management industry has been slow to adopt change and new technologies * how some of the leading firms are beginning to use best practices, tools and techniques pioneered in other industries to better communicate, market, and ultimately, attract more investors and assets to their funds and products ***Thanks for joining us on the Tradestreaming Podcast. If you're listening to this episode on iTunes, please give it a ranking and rating so that others know of the value you're finding in it. Thank you ahead of time.****

Summary:Bob Davis was not only the founder of the search engine/web portal known as Lycos, he was also the CEO, first employee, and for a time, the ONLY employee. Bob recounts how Lycos took technology from academia, turned it into a viable company, and became one of the "four horsemen" of the dot com era. Today, Bob is a partner at the venture capital firm, Highland Capital Partners. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Ben delves behind the scenes of a VC firm with Alex Taussig of Highland Capital. Highland Capital Partners Alex on Twitter

Are New England's most promising companies getting sold before they have a chance to get really big and really influential? A discussion moderated by Scott Kirsner, with Michael Greeley, Founder, IDG Ventures, Paul Maeder, Co-founder, Highland Capital Partners, and lots of entrepreneurs. Recorded: November 28, 2007 Length: 59:19, Size: 27.1MB

Our guest today is Claire Fauquier ( https://www.hcp.com/team#/team/claire-fauquier-0 ) a Principal at Highland Capital Partners ( https://www.hcp.com/ ). Highland Capital Partners is one of the oldest venture capital funds that invests primarily at Series A and focuses on the early growth stage. Some of their investments include Harry's, Rent the Runway, and Clearbanc. In this episode we explore some of the differences and milestones companies typically have at the seed and series A stages. explore the milestones at Series A for technology startups and the purchase behaviors of small-medium businesses. One book that inspired Claire professionally is Radical Candor ( https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1509845380?camp=1789&creativeASIN=1509845380&ie=UTF8&linkCode=xm2&tag=theconsumervc-20 ) by Kim Scott. One book that inspired her personally is The Glass Castle ( https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/074324754X?camp=1789&creativeASIN=074324754X&ie=UTF8&linkCode=xm2&tag=theconsumervc-20 ) by Jeannette Wells. You can follow Claire on Twitter @clairefauquier ( https://twitter.com/clairefauquier ). You can also follow Mike on Twitter @mikegelb ( https://twitter.com/MikeGelb ). For all episodes, please visit theconsumervc.com ( http://theconsumervc.com/ ). Thanks again for listening. On this episode we discuss - * What attracted her to finance and venture capital? The differences in criteria from seed to series A? Diligence process at series A. What made her make the jump to Series A/B from Seed? What is hard about Series A/B investing? It seems like with the proliferation of seed-specific funds, it's easier to track companies from earlier on. * What are some mistakes she's made as an investor? Coronavirus is very top of mind. Has this impacted how she invests? Is she more focused on current portfolio companies rather than new investments? How does she think about deals broadly; if she had an investment philosophy, how would she characterize it? * In the consumer spectrum, what types of businesses is she focused on? What is her investment criteria for B2C businesses? What does she advise founders to focus on? How does Highland work with consumer businesses once they invest? What is one thing that she would change about Venture Capital? Full transcript Mike Gelb 1:08 So let's start out very early back in your career, what initially attracted you to finance and then specifically venture capital? Claire Fauquier 1:19 Yeah, I kind of want to separate those two things, because I never felt like I was a finance person. And I think that in venture, we're lucky, because we're sort of not finance people. And I've told people that if I must be bucketed, into the finance world, I'm kind of in like, the fun finance. So. So yeah. So I got into investment banking, because I was a finance major, I was drawn to the numbers and the math and thinking about the economic implications of finance, which I felt was really interesting. But of course, when you're, you know, 2021 and deciding on what you want to do after school, there's sort of one career path for finance majors. And that's going into investment banking. So that's where I sort of delineate it and say that I don't ever really thought of myself as a finance person, I sort of just ended up in that career path thinking it would be a good launching pad. And it was I think I learned a lot. I think I learned a lot of what I didn't want as well. And then I moved on from that. What drew me to venture is totally different. For me, it's this real connection with how we're changing the world, how we're thinking about where the world is, in five to 10 years, and interacting with the people that are enabling that I think it's probably one of the absolute best jobs in the world when you feel like you were the dumbest person every day. And I mean that in a humble way. It is fascinating to talk to all these industry experts and people that are devoting their life to something that is really cool and highly relevant and tangible to what we're doing as consumers day to day and how we live our lives. And so it's sort of the story arc of being part of something that's bigger, I think that drew me to VC and less sort of the the aspects that I would attribute to Finance, if I can sort of answer that from a roundabout perspective for folks Mike Gelb 3:03 that I know that entered in VC and kind of went, you know, worked a couple years in investment banking, similar sentiments I've heard is that you know, really grateful for my investment banking experience, learned a ton, but really happy. It's kind of over wanted to talk a bit about your experience first working in seed, and then how like the milestones change at the series A and Series B rounds, and what you're more focused on at Highland. Claire Fauquier 3:30 Yeah, that's a good path to go down. And I think there's a lot of meat there. That probably changes at least from my perspective relatively often. But my most recent working theory, I think, is that seed investors are really fantastic when they can be sort of product oriented when they have a view on the entrepreneurial journey. And that is not to be taken lightly. I think that that skill set is incredibly valuable, and I'm incredibly envious of it having only spent a tiny, tiny portion of my career on the operating side, I think that once we get later and later, there's sort of this emphasis on evaluating business models and thinking about the sort of story arc and stage progression of a company rather than just being so focused on product. And so, for me, I felt like I almost didn't have the stomach for being a professional seed investor. And my investment banking background, as good as it was, I think, also made me much more apt to poke holes into things. And so that was sort of, you know, a bit of my mindset coming into things. And series A is fantastic for me, because the best part of this job in my perspective is working with founders, as I mentioned, and I think that series A you still get to spend all that great time working operationally with founders on some of the biggest challenges that they'll be facing going forward. But there's a little bit more of the business model to pull apart and to analyze and so it's sort of this perfect marriage of my background. Having said all that, Do some angel investing and I get to sort of keep my feet wet in that arena to really make bets on people that I think are exceptional. And and I get to sort of scratch that itch, which is a really nice little marriage, sort of an added side bonus that I love about series A that I hadn't fully wrapped my mind around is that just the way the portfolio construction work, seed investors are writing many, many, many more checks, right? at origin we wrote, you know, for per person, we wrote probably three to five more times the amount of checks that that we do now, or that I do now at series A and B. And so just based on that portfolio construction, you naturally can't be as close with all of your portfolio companies throughout the cycle of the company. And so there's this natural progression of sort of rolling off the board and and regular conversation with your companies that probably Series B or C or something like that. Whereas that a because you're you're making sort of more concentrated investments. You stay with that company up until exit and then That's really special to me, because I like creating that really deep bond with founders, I was felt it was kind of sad when the natural progression happened. And the company sort of graduated on to Series B, and C, and things just got so busy that all of a sudden our check ins went from, you know, every week to every two weeks, every month, two every quarter or something like that. So I like really being in the trenches with people. I think that's fun, Mike Gelb 6:23 great point that you're saying about seeing investing in series A and that you don't write as many checks per year? Do you feel that at the series a stage you maybe have to become more specialized in terms of the actual industries itself, knowing those particular maybe business models or metrics? Claire Fauquier 6:40 Yeah, that's a really good question and something that I struggle with, and I think that every VC probably thinks that pretty regularly. Yeah, I would imagine. I think there's pros and cons to specialization. I think the general thread though that you're getting at is that you need to be much more focused and much more thoughtful with your deal sourcing, I Rather than seed seed is very difficult in my mind to be thematic or to be doing any meaningful outbound sourcing, just because it is. So based on network and based on happenstance and who you might meet who leads you to somebody else. Versus at A and B, you can be a bit thematic, because you have generally companies that have been funded in previous rounds. So you get to sort of watch them as they progress up to your stage. And you can be a little bit picky in sort of who you reach out to and sort of go hunting, if that makes sense. Mike Gelb 7:35 No, it does. It does. I wanted to also talk about, you know, maybe the current landscape at the series A and B. stages, seems like there's now this proliferation and has been for the past few years, how there's so much, you know, seed and seed specific funds. Just how are you thinking about series A and Series B as a as a general landscape. Claire Fauquier 7:58 It's funny, you mentioned that in a minute. Hearing this correctly, your perception is that there's more seed funds than there are a and b fund. Right? Yes, yes. Yeah, I see it the opposite. Actually, I think there's very few dedicated seed funds versus series A and B funds. And I think on sheer number, there's a lot of early stage funds, because there's a lot of great emerging managers who are focused on earlier stage because they have smaller checks to write. But in terms of for the big behemoth funds, I think series A and B is much more of an established category. So it's interesting that you see it from a different perspective in my mind, but I when I think of funds that are purely see their institutional funds, you know, maybe on fund two or three, that are willing to lead rounds and really sit on the board and sort of play that institutional seed role, I don't think have a ton of fun. And I think origin is one of them, which sort of made us stood out which was exciting to really be a seed exclusive fund. But then I think once we get to series A and beyond, there's a lot of multi Stage funds, and there's much more capital floating around at the series A and B stage, which, in my opinion, at least makes it more competitive to a certain degree. Because there's less of a chance of finding a company that no one else has talked to. Mike Gelb 9:15 Wow, it's really interesting how you're seeing it. This is probably where we should have started at the very beginning. But how do you think about series? A Claire Fauquier 9:23 good question. I think the benchmarks and KPIs and all that stuff kind of fluctuate as time goes on. And as we, you know, move through economic cycles and stuff like that. But I think of series A and the second sort of true institutional round, they'll say so at origin, we thought about seed as the first institutional round. And so the company had maybe raised some Angel rounds or friends and family rounds or something like that. And this was the first time that they were really thinking about the, you know, transformation of the company into sort of a business where they're putting in place governance and a board and things like that. And, and pre the seed round, they were probably testing products had an MVP had early sales had some pilots in place or early sales with consumers etc seed a in my view was always to test out a couple hypotheses that were narrowing and narrowing in terms of true product market fit. And then at a, I think about it as sort of real product market fit where a especially consumer company has sort of the operating playbook in their minds where they know how to acquire customers with relative certainty. So the band of customer acquisition costs, for instance, starts to narrow and they have relative certainty that if they apply, you know, X amount of dollars to marketing, they'll get X amount of dollars in revenue. And they have a relatively good example of what their ideal customer looks like their supply chain, all those various things. And so for me, that really sort of indicates without thinking about, you know, the KPIs that can move, it's sort of that that true product market fit that we know the company He is ready to take that much larger round of capital and apply it to the business and have some idea of what the output then will be. That makes sense. So it's like a more of a stabilized CAC, I've talked to other investors too, and they say, like, at the series A, that's really when a company should really have product market fit. Yeah, I would agree with that. I don't think it means necessarily that the company has got everything figured out. You know, I think I think there's a lot of caveats that we and founders could throw on things that things can change quickly. And we all know that especially right now, right, like a lot of safer industries from an investment perspective have been thrown on their head during the COVID environment, but series A doesn't mean necessarily that the company is you know, off to the races, there's going to be operational challenges and I think a good investor can help with a lot of that stuff. But I think it does mean that once a company's raising series A they're not spending expensive venture dollars figuring out product market fit and figuring out who best to sell their product to this have an idea. Now it's time to really execute and pour that fuel on the fire. I wanted Mike Gelb 12:05 to also talk about your like transition from a seed to a series A like what was maybe the toughest thing from changing from, you know, from origin seed investing to series, a investing, Claire Fauquier 12:17 very quick kind of cop out answer is that the hardest part is, is giving up the relationships you have with your existing companies and relinquishing board duties. And so I still spend a lot of time with my portfolio companies from origin because it just simply really missed those founders. But I know that's not what you're getting at. The trickiest thing I think are the biggest sort of difference is the sourcing machine, I think, at seed is. So my sort of view at seed is that it's typically the first time that founders are accessing institutional capital. They may have had startups in the past and so they may sort of know the process, but general there probably isn't existing institutional investors on the cap table with which that founder can get some help in introductions and talking to people and stuff like that. So at seed, it's sort of to a certain degree a bit of a numbers game, which is why there's a lot of networking involved and a lot of chat amongst a lot of different seed investors to try to get deal flow. And that includes a ton of different outbound facing things like demo days, and coffee chats, and introductions to founders through other founders and meetups and happy hours and all those various things. At series A, my view is that the sourcing machine or how those companies finds us is very different. And then at that point, those companies tend to have institutional investors at that point, which they get coaching from in order to raise series A which is a great thing. But it means for me, I need to be much more proactive and keeping those companies on my radar I need to start building a relationship six months out because the the connection between the Of Us isn't so happenstance based, it's much more deliberate. And then I need to have probably a little bit more of a view or a thesis on what the company is doing. Because I'm now going to be doing much more diligence and diving into the business model and various other things. And I find it harder to take a bet on big macro trends at series A versus it is at seed, because seed tends to be about, you know, smart people and products and stuff like that, which I think series A is as well on top of sort of some of the metrics and stuff that we talked about. Mike Gelb 14:32 So when you're doing your outreach and outbound, are you reaching out to companies directly, that are on your radar to like establish relationships, maybe six months out when they'd be raising A's? Or are you almost like relying on your network of seed investors to you know, think of you when they're raising a series A, Claire Fauquier 14:52 it's both I'd say so I typically have a couple theses. I'm working through and I We'll both you know, check in with my seed investor friends make sure they know the theses that I'm working on make sure they know the types of companies I'm looking at. So that hopefully I'm one of the first calls when one of their portfolio companies is raising and or thinking about raising. But I'll also keep tabs on companies I hear about that are funded or companies that are in adjacent spaces to companies I've already chatted with, or, you know, various other trends that sort of pick up on what I've looked at. And so I'd say it's, like everything in venture there's no perfect process, but it's it's a combo of sort of the network in building up that network, planting the flag of our brand and telling people what we do and sort of hunting for some of the extraordinary opportunities that we can try to create a proprietary relationship with earlier on and other people Mike Gelb 15:52 know that that that's fascinating, and something that we actually haven't really talked about at the series, a part about how you actually solve In the differences between sourcing at seed in series A, I'd love to learn a little bit more about your due diligence process, Claire Fauquier 16:05 probably the same priorities as it isn't seed, it's just a little bit more of a digging process. And so at Highland, we think about people market and product. And in that org, so people have to be there for sure. Right. So we have to believe that these founders are the founders we want to work with for the next five to 10 years, we have to believe they're the extraordinary people that are going to tackle the problem they've laid out in front of them. And we do a lot of testing in that area. And that can be over a number of different calls. That's a ton of reference checks, that is speaking with a lot of members of the team to hear about their perception of the founders and the leadership that exists at the company. And so a lot of sort of pressure tested on that side. Market is probably the next most important thing and then product thereafter. And it kind of follows that that same methodology that I just mentioned, in that we need it to be really big market, we need to test the market, we need to make sure that the company is well suited to enter that market to really take market share. That sort of, you know, a lot of customer calls, a lot of industry calls a lot of speaking to people in our network who might have a proprietary view that we might want to tap into. And then on the product side, that's really digging into the business model. And that can be everything from you know, go to market strategy, monetization strategy, the financial model and the various things that are wrapped up in that. Mike Gelb 17:36 What do you mean by testing the market? Claire Fauquier 17:38 I think it starts sort of top down probably and so the top that is really the total addressable market and so right so that needs to be a huge market but then when I say test, I think there's sort of a big difference between you know, the headline Tam number but then what's actually addressable for a company and how much they can really take market share. From incumbents create market share if that's the type of market that they're in, this is something new. How much they can actually deliver and the value and then the type of customer set that would resonate with the product, sort of sort of mean poking holes in that way getting a little bit late deeper of a layer than just sort of the overall Tam number. Mike Gelb 18:18 Got it. Got it. So of course Coronavirus, very top of mind, you know, how has this impacted how you invest? Yeah, Claire Fauquier 18:26 you know, we're really lucky. Hyland has a 33 year old fund, and so has a very stable lineup of investors. And so we're certainly open for business. Our portfolio companies are in a really safe spot right now, which is very lucky for us. And so we're we're in a good place. We're certainly open for business. We're looking for deals. We are in process with one deal right now, which, you know, hopefully will close but TBD So it definitely means that we're willing to do deals, I think where it changes for us is that the bar is just that much higher now. It's just a little bit harder to get deals done. It has to be something that's really, really special and something unique and something that we think has real lasting and staying potential because the capital markets are a little bit tighter. And we can't necessarily just rely on, you know, multiple rounds of funding for the next couple years. Not that we necessarily want to do that before anyway. And it probably means that we will take advantage of some extraordinary situations like companies that had maybe unfortunate funding structures in the past or maybe have investors who are unable to fund future rounds of companies or things like that, where we can get into some companies that we think again, are really high quality companies, but might have some advantageous financing situations for us. How's Mike Gelb 19:55 the diligence process slowed down at all or are you not seeing as many new companies These days, Claire Fauquier 20:00 we're certainly writing checks and the diligence process has probably stayed the same. It's just sort of the bar and the threshold of the companies we look at has gotten higher. So it has to be a pretty special company or a pretty special situation. For us to invest it doesn't necessarily mean that you know, the diligence process has changed or that we evaluate things differently. It just means that you know, we have to feel something really great Mike Gelb 20:27 how has Coronavirus changed your focuses or your thesis says that you develop prior to Coronavirus. Claire Fauquier 20:35 I don't know if I have anything right now, other than some views I had before Coronavirus that I feel like have strengthened. And so and I sort of want to make that distinction because I think it's easy to go to some of the obvious things like remote work and remote education and things like that because, you know, why wouldn't everybody focus on those kinds of things and I think there's a ton of opportunity there. Say that I sort of had these before that have strengthened in that. On the e commerce side. I'm incredibly bullish on the pipes and infrastructure behind e commerce because I think there's just so much opportunity on that side. And when we look at ecommerce penetration, it's incredibly low compared to retail sales. And that's something that I was really focused on before Coronavirus. Now I'd say I'm even more bullish on it, because I think that every retailer who's got a significant portion of their sales from brick and mortar is now thinking about how they can make their eecom more efficient. So I think in a way, you could sort of make the argument that ecommerce has taken a bit of a hit right now and it will take a bit of a hit because discretionary income probably will tighten, which is probably true. But when I think about the next five to 10 years or so, I just think there's absolutely no way that ecommerce won't grow. It's just so inevitable to me that we're doing things in a much more digitally connected way. So that's kind of one example, I'd say. And then I sort of had a bit of a thesis before on some SMB software and some workplace collaboration software and tools. And that seems to be strengthened, like times 100, because we're all working remote, and it seems to be working somewhat. Okay. And so I like that kind of stuff. And you and I had talked about this offline. I like that kind of stuff, because I think some of the consumer habits and patterns match the consumer side a little bit more for SMBs, rather than enterprise. And that sales cycle is really appealing, but can create some really nice sticky businesses kind of like the enterprise side. So it's sort of this like nice marriage. And so those views obviously are very strongly held now because I think we're seeing that even if we all can go back to work, and I mean, us who can work remotely unfortunate ones who can do that. It might take us a long time to do that until we feel really comfortable going into offices or getting on planes or taking Ubers everywhere. If we don't necessarily have to So therefore, I think these tools sort of, you know, give us greater flexibility. For example, I'm seeing chatter amongst some VCs that people are trying to think about what the next tool is beyond zoom, because we're sort of already seeing some of the limitations on zoom. Right? And so sort of, if we're already as VCs in a way and and technologists of early tech trends, I think thinking about what comes after zoom, right? A lot of the corporate world is sort of just getting on to zoom but we're sort of thinking, Okay, now what, how can we make this better? And I'm sure there are founders that are working on it, I would love to talk to them. Mike Gelb 23:35 I hear you I think there's a lot of innovation that's coming in video communication, what are what are maybe some other businesses or or even business models that you're focused on, Claire Fauquier 23:44 that you can't one remains something that I focus on, especially in the consumer space. Otherwise, I'm starting to look now and have been before anything that can be sort of an end consumer experience through a marketplace or through A digital distribution channel. This is incredibly cliche, but I've been chatting with a telemedicine provider for the last six months or so. And now it sort of really accelerated my conversations with them because again, this seems like something that is not going to go away from a telemedicine perspective, I got sort of lucky that I've been talking to the company before. But that's an example I think of my lens on consumer, which is really to think about anything that impacts the life of the end consumer. And I think about that in both terms of the sort of end, you know, consumer with their discretionary income, but also SMBs or mom and pops or small businesses are sort of the prosumer mentality. And that's interesting to me. And so that category is probably what a lot of people are looking at right now which is things like digital health, digital finance, digital education, workplace tools, and Selling tools, as I mentioned, for small proprietors, and mom and pops and stuff like that in the marketplaces sort of behind that the two sided marketplaces. Mike Gelb 25:08 Thanks for that. Those are quite a few exciting trends. I wanted to also touch on a point that you've made a couple times now about you've been focused on products that are for small medium businesses, and how small medium businesses purchase behavior are more similar to consumers than enterprise. I wonder if you would mind elaborate of what you mean by that. That'd be great. Claire Fauquier 25:31 I think about it in terms of, you know, the SMB, and consumer, I think, is sort of limited in their budget. The way that they buy is very different from an enterprise it typically is a self serve process. It is typically handled, I would assume, by a marketing department content lead often things like Shopify and Etsy and those storefronts are often attracting consumers through commerce. intent through digital marketing, that kind of stuff versus having a an enterprise sales force with, you know, six to 12 months selling period, and really lumpy contracts that need to go through 456 layers of review within a company before they can get implemented. Similarly, the adoption process of the product tends to look much more like consumer adoption process, sometimes a little bit heavier with sort of a bit of an onboarding and a sort of customer success person or that kind of thing. But we also that in the consumer world, versus maybe, you know, a two to six month pilot program or implementation or service fee implementation or something like that on the enterprise software side of things. So I think that my sort of view on that is that these businesses hopefully can scale a little bit more quickly. The average contract values tend to be much smaller, obviously than enterprise for obvious reasons. You need much more volume, but because they're sort of self serve, they tend to be one through digital marketing and content and stuff like that they sort of think and act a little bit more like a consumer, rather than having sort of a real enterprise sales engine within the company. Mike Gelb 27:11 Thanks for that. I think that's really well put about small medium businesses and how their buying patterns are similar to consumer. Claire Fauquier 27:17 I'm just trying to stretch the definition of consumer. Absolutely. Mike Gelb 27:21 After you invest in a company. Let's talk about how you've worked with the founders and businesses. And what do you see first time founders after raising a series A might struggle with the most Claire Fauquier 27:31 Yeah, so the first tenant I'd say is that we both have to be excited to work with each other. I've seen the best partnerships and the best way for me to add value and I think vice versa for a founder to feel comfortable to come and ask for advice and resources and the network that we can bring is if we both are excited to work together. I think the moment a founder thinks about it as a check in the moment the investor thinks about it as a money making opportunity then you You've lose some of that magic, which I think is special about this business and kind of gets back to what you mentioned in your first question, which is that I don't think of this necessarily as just finance. It's a lot more fun than that. But I think that, for first time founders, the best thing we can bring that I want to emphasize is the role of an institutional investor and an institutional board member. Right? So it's not my job, in my view, to be changing product or changing, you know, go to market strategy, or trying to change the founders view of the vision of the company, right? Like, that's the founders job. They're living this so much more than I am living and breathing the problem. And I've invested in the founder, because I'd be up most face that most faith that they are the best person to be running the company and to tackling this challenge. And I want them to know that I believe in them, right. However, there's a lot of stuff that a founder has to worry about on sort of the corporate business building side, that user Don't think about. When you're building a product, right, or when you're launching a business or when you're trying to get customers that we can do, and we've seen over and over and over again, and that's things like governance and thinking about how to hire the right people at the right time, how to think about corporate layers, and how to think about the hierarchy within the company, how to think about when to enable managers to take over certain roles versus others, how to think about fundraising and cash management and how to think about, you know, the long term views and strategy of the business and to be a partner to make those decisions with them. It's sort of how to anticipate all of those things from a board level that the founder might not necessarily know because they've probably never been through before. Whereas with our fun, we've got a 33 year history. And amongst that we've got I think, 47, IPOs and 100 ish, m&a outcomes or something like that. And so we should have seen some of this stuff and I think the value that we can bring is to bring that sort of knowledge of pattern recognition. So we don't have to reinvent the wheel for the founder every time, we tend to be very even keeled and very steady, because we've seen so much in the past too, right. And so our view is really to be a partner to the founder, in both good times and bad times, because I think we all recognize that even with all those great exits and outcomes, there's never a company that only has good times that just doesn't exist. And so that sort of even keel of seeing things for many, many years, I think can be very helpful in balancing for a founder when they realize that we're, you know, their partner and we can be the first call and things are not going well because they're Unknown Speaker 30:40 not by themselves. That makes a lot of sense. Mike Gelb 30:43 What is one thing that you would change when it came to venture capital? Claire Fauquier 30:48 I wish I wish there was a way for founders and investors to test out their working relationship before they started working together. That's sort of a real like touchy feely pie in the sky. Kind of one. But I do believe that there is a kind of magic when an investor and a founder have a really good relationship. And I think that a lot of founders can get really turned off of VCs, if they have the wrong experience or have the wrong investor in their company. And I've heard founders before, say, they you never want to take VC dollars or whatever, again, which is a totally fine thing to say. But oftentimes, I think it's because they've either had a mettlesome board member or you know, something hasn't quite gone the right way. And vice versa, I think for VCs, you know, sometimes there are certain founders who just have a certain working style and those things don't click and so maybe if I had to answer off the top of my head right now, it would be to have a way to sort of pressure tests the relationship before, you know, to date before getting married. Mike Gelb 31:48 No, that makes sense. That makes sense. Yeah. Because of course, you know, it's a, as you talked about a lot on this show. It's not just a check. It's it's a relationship. You know, you're obviously going to be involved anywhere from five Five 710 years, I guess Claire Fauquier 32:02 it sort of goes back to again, why a and b can be a fun stage because you can build a relationship with a founder for a year or two or so that's not quite the same as being in board meetings. But, you know, that's kind of fun to doing deals with founders when you've known them for a year or two. Mike Gelb 32:17 Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. And also, in some ways, I'd imagine to just to kind of do on the pressure testing side talking to previous investors in the company, although they would probably sing the praises of the company and the founders. So it might be tough to, you know, but even just being able to maybe do a little bit diligence on how the board meetings actually go or, you know, just a little bit of of what that cadence is like, yeah, Claire Fauquier 32:43 totally, we try to do the best we can, but there's a bit of a dance of no one wanting to show their cards too much. Of course, Mike Gelb 32:50 of course. What's one book that inspired you personally, and one book that inspired you professionally, professionally, Claire Fauquier 32:56 I keep going back to radical candor by Kim Scott. It's a Fantastic I think of thinking about the motivators and drivers of individual people. It's technically a book that is written for managers on how to be a good manager to their, to their employees. But I think it's so much more than that, to be honest, and it's taught me a lot, I think of interpersonal relationships and skills within a workplace, which is pretty great. And then on the personal side, I tend to skew to memoirs a lot. I love memoirs. And so I really like the glass Castle by Jeannette walls, and I really like educated by Tara Westover. I think those are fantastic books. Mike Gelb 33:39 Cool. That's great. And no one's mentioned any of these books before on the show. So very original, very original. What's one piece of advice that you have maybe for a founder that's raised a seed looking to raise an A, and are kind of in that stage of their business? Claire Fauquier 33:53 I did lean on seed investors. They're there to help. I think that for My vantage point most often than not, founders don't rely on VCs enough. There's a reason why we're talking about all of this stuff. Like it's more than a check and whatever. And I think that founders are so good at being hard workers and crushing hours and stuff like that, but forget to ask for help sometimes. And investors are there for this exact thing, which I just mentioned, which is to be the institutional investor, they should be good at least at helping you raise a series A and so focus as much of your effort as possible on the business and get your investors to help you with the series a process. Mike Gelb 34:41 I think it's a great piece of advice so founders put your investors to work well. Claire, thank you so much for coming on. This is a great conversation. I really enjoyed it. Claire Fauquier 34:51 I didn't tell us some great questions. This was fun. Thank you. Mike Gelb 34:54 And there you have it. It was such a treat having clear on I particularly enjoyed our conversation about the purchase. Be euro small and medium businesses. If you'd like to keep up with Claire, you can follow her on Twitter at Claire folk. Yeah, this will also be in the show notes. If you're enjoying the show. If you could please leave a review on the apple podcast app as it helps other folks find it. That would really be helpful. If you are a founder and working on something innovative. have a question you'd like to hear VCs or founders answer on the show. You can DM me and follow me on twitter at Mike galp. You can also follow for episode announcements at consumer VC for all episodes, please visit the consumer VC calm. Thanks again for listening folks, and please stay safe.