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Exploring the Evolving Nature of Consumer Tech Investing
Mary Miller is the Head of Business Development within Growth Equity Investing at Norwest Venture Partners. Prior to joining Norwest in 2023, Mary was a Director at SoftBank’s Vision Fund and has held a number of other positions focused on investments in consumer technology companies. First, we explore some of the administrative and investing roles that Mary has worked in as she explains how she ended up in her current role. Next, we talk about some of the advantages and opportunities that working for SoftBank’s Vision Fund gave Mary as well as some of the lessons learned while working at such a large fund during the downturn of the market in 2022. After that, Mary explains a case study of the company Fanatics and explains the tremendous growth and evolution of the company over the past few years, focusing on her role in creating value for the company. Then, Mary breaks down what consumer technology is and how the industry has evolved over the recent past. Finally, we open the floor to members of the Notre Dame Venture Capital club (students who are actively trying to or already have broken into venture capital careers) to ask their insightful questions.
Growth Investing in Latin America
Luiz Ribeiro is a Managing Director and Co-Head of the Brazil Office for General Atlantic, a leading global growth equity firm. First, we discuss the impact of Luiz’s early career experiences at buyout firm Advent International on his investment philosophy and the lessons he learned from serving as the CFO of one of his portfolio companies. We then dive into the importance of investing in digital first companies and flexible management teams in volatile markets as well as the rise of copycat companies in Latin America. We wrap up with a conversation on price discipline in the face of increased deal competition, differences between investing in the U.S. and Latin America, and the ways in which General Atlantic leverages its global platform to help entrepreneurs.
Navigating & Leveraging a Larger Fund Size
Gurmaan Bhatia is a Vice President at FTV Capital focusing on the Vertical Software and Payment verticals. In this episode, we dive into the advantages of raising a $2.3 Billion fund - over 2x FTV’s previous fund size. We discuss the opportunities that come with larger check sizes, more follow-on offerings, and even special situations investments. Gurmaan lays out FTV’s thematic focused approach to investing combined with their unique style of engaging with entrepreneurs pre and post investment. Gurmaan also gives his thoughts on what makes a strong value-add partner to entrepreneurs and management teams at large as well as what students interested in the field should begin to think about to succeed in the people-driven industry of growth equity.
Sales Excellence at Insight Partners
Travis Kassay is an Executive Vice President in the Sales Center of Excellence at Insight Partners, a leading global private equity and venture firm with over $90 billion in assets under management. Travis explains the role of the Insight Onsite Team to help guide portfolio companies in product & tech, marketing, sales, talent, business development, and more. Specifically, we discuss the key ways in which Travis helps Insight’s portfolio companies in the areas of sales and customer success. Travis breaks down some of the best tactics to scale a sales organization at a growing software company and maintain alignment between different divisions of an organization. We also dive into the Travis’ role in sales due diligence on investment deals and what characteristics Insight Partners looks for when making an investment.
Investing in Middle Market Software and Tech-Enabled Companies
RJ Gentile is a Vice President at Providence Strategic Growth (PSG), a growth equity firm that has raised over $10 billion in capital and partners with middle-market software and tech-enabled service companies. We dive into RJ’s transition from private equity to growth equity and discuss his time at Summit Partners, one of the earliest entrants into the growth equity space. RJ then discusses PSG’s approach to sourcing and making investments compared to other middle market growth equity firms and talks about the end markets he focuses on. We wrap up with a conversation on career advice for progressing as a young professional in the investment industry.
Partner in Operational Excellence in Software Growth Equity
We are joined by Vinny Prajka, Partner in the Operational Excellence Group, at the software growth equity firm JMI Equity. In our conversation, Vinny gives his take on what makes software attractive from an investment perspective, the role of a member of a private equity operating team, and the main ways in which he helps portfolio companies. We also dive into the major challenges software companies often face and the key metrics SaaS businesses should track to measure their success.
The Power of Inflection Points
TCV is one of the largest growth equity firms in the world and has invested over $16B in public and private technology companies. We had the pleasure of speaking with David Zhang, a Partner at TCV, to discuss his career in technology investing. David has over a decade of experience in the global tech industry and he focuses on investments in fintech, digital media, and e-commerce, including investments in Airbnb, Brex, and Klarna. During our conversation, we cover the rationale for TCV’s crossover investing approach as well as the power of investing at pivotal moments and inflection points in a company’s journey. We also dive into why David made the jump into growth equity, what he looks for when making an investment, and advice for young professionals pursuing a career in technology investing.
EdTech & Micro-Internships
We chat with Jeff Moss, Founder and CEO of Parker Dewey, an education technology marketplace focused on connecting students to micro-internships with reputable companies. We discuss the value of micro-internships, how Jeff transitioned from being a director at Susquehanna Growth Equity, and how Parker Dewey overcame the challenges of building out a two-sided marketplace. Jeff has amazing wisdom on how to develop your career, don't miss this one!
Jumping into the Deep End
Jere Doyle is a Boston College professor and proven entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and angel investor across many different companies and funds over the course of his illustrious career. In our conversation, Jere gives his take on the role of innate ability and learning in becoming a successful entrepreneur and describes how entrepreneurship is “the pursuit of opportunity with total disregard for current resources.” Drawing from Jere’s company-building experience, we discuss when the best time is to take the leap into entrepreneurship and the challenging evolution of the CEO role as a company scales. We wrap up the episode with a dive into his top investment themes, including marketplaces, SaaS, Big Data, and AI.
Growing Money - Notre Dame’s Way
We are joined by Scott Malpass who served as the Chief Investment Officer for Notre Dame’s endowment, growing it from $400 million to over $12 billion. We discuss the strategies and practices that allowed Notre Dame’s investment office to achieve amazing long-term returns on its endowed capital. Specifically, Scott gave his thoughts on asset managers and how to find good ones, the University’s role in private investing, and acting as a co-investor for world-class private equity firms. Scott’s wisdom on long-term investing is unparalleled, don’t miss this episode.
The Bank Behind the Innovation Economy
We are joined by Brian Plamondon, a member of the Healthcare Corporate Venture Relationships team at Silicon Valley Bank (SVB). With over 50% of venture-backed life sciences and tech companies in the US banking with them, SVB is engrained within the Silicon Valley ecosystem. During our conversation with Brian, we cover how SVB helped its clients during the pandemic and COVID’s impact on the venture and M&A space. Additionally, we discuss growing verticals within the healthcare industry, increased capital allocation to megafunds and solo GPs, and the state of the venture capital industry abroad.
Funding Female Founders in FinTech
Elizabeth Davis, a venture investor at Anthemis on their Female Innovators Lab team, helps us kick off the fall semester with an exciting discussion on early-stage investing and the rise of financial technology companies. In addition to diving into key sub-verticals and investment themes within fintech, we focus on how Elizabeth is working to combat inequities that women face in the venture funding space. Only about 2% of all venture funding goes towards women and Elizabeth wants to change that by helping female founders on the front lines.
Supporting High Growth Companies
Conor and Alex chat with Mike Anello, co-founder and managing director at M33 Growth, a growth equity firm in Boston MA. On this episode we discuss key aspects of providing value to Growth Equity portfolio companies. Mike touches on his experience in his role as a managing director, creating operations teams, and pitching a company's value to its potential customers.
The Business Behind Growth Equity
Conor and Alex chat with Sean Cantwell, founder and managing partner of Boston-based growth equity firm Volition Capital. Sean provides insight into the process of raising capital from limited partners (LPs) for a new fund and factors of differentiation for investment firms. We also discuss the key metrics and qualities Sean looks for when making new investments and Volition Capital’s stake in the growing low-code/no-code technology space.
What is Growth Equity?
Conor and Alex speak with Fred Kauber, an analyst at the software and consumer focused growth equity firm Stripes. We discuss the defining characteristics of growth equity compared to early stage venture investments, Stripes’ investment thesis, and the importance of leveraging the firm’s network and operational expertise to help portfolio companies tackle their toughest challenges. Fred also provides some background on how he broke into the growth equity space and what his day to day job entails as a growth equity analyst.