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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.
Monetizing Talent and Investing in the Creator Economy
Sara McLay is a Director at UTA Ventures, the growth arm of the United Talent Agency. First, Sara talks about her career journey through the entertainment industry and delves deeper into what UTA is, specifically highlighting the unique role she has on the Ventures team. Next, Sara explains what the Creator Economy is and how celebrities like Mr. Beast have been able to leverage their talent and platforms in this new economy to create business empires. Afterward, Sara discusses how UTA aims to capture value in this type of economy by investing in and partnering with celebrities who have followings that aspire to consume like and emulate their celebrity icons. Finally, Sara explains how to break into the entertainment and venture industries, and she also provides examples of notable brands and celebrities she collaborates with through UTA.
From Boardrooms to Breakthroughs: Exploring the Role of the Board Member in Venture Capital
Jeff Bocan is a partner at Okapi Venture Capital, which is a venture capital firm based in Ladera Ranch, California that invests during the seed stage in technology and software driven companies. First, we talk about the factors that led Jeff to pursue a career in venture capital and some of the unique insights he gained from interesting experiences that he had early on in his career. We also talk about his current role at Okapi, and we analyze Okapi’s unique investment strategy and how they work to create value for their portfolio companies. Next, we do a deep dive into what it means to be a board member of a VC funded company, how board members are chosen, and what specific ways board members can provide value to the companies they oversee. Finally, we talk about Jeff’s time on the management team of the successful startup Mophie, as well as how Jeff almost became the “Burrito King of London.”
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.
Building a Unicorn Tech Startup
Jason Boehmig, CEO of Ironclad, joins the podcast to discuss his journey launching a revolutionary software company disrupting the legal industry. Jason and his team have raised capital from some of the best VCs in the world, including Accel and Sequoia, and we dive into the process of successfully fundraising in Silicon Valley. Jason also talks about the insights he learned from his time on Wall Street, how he went about early product development, and the importance of avoiding feature creep as a software company scales. Other topics include the evolving role of the CEO, goal setting and change management, strategies for hiring, and relationship building.
Investing in Automation & AI
In this episode, we are joined by Jason Schoettler, co-founder and managing partner of Calibrate Ventures. Jason and his investing partner have funded companies like Dollar Shave Club (acquired by Unilever), Soft Robotics, Ring, SolarCity, and Chegg. In our conversation, we discuss his decision to start his own venture firm, synthetic data, the challenges robotics companies face over SaaS businesses, and what startups need to achieve to secure a Series A investment after seed capital.
Private Investing - From the Top
In this episode we speak with Peter Bell. Peter is the Chairman at Amity Ventures, a VC and PE firm investing in "category defining" technology companies, and the CEO of Epiphany Technology Acquisition Corporation, a SPAC targeting technology companies. Peter's career began in entrepreneurship and has led him to private investing. Peter has a unique view on making private investments and his firm invests across various stages from early stage VC to late stage SPAC investments and buyouts. We discuss Peter's decision-making process, fund strategy and investment strategy, and SPAC deal structure and management. Listen to learn from his stories.
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.
Intro to Venture Studios
Mike Fitzgerald, co-founder and partner at High Alpha, a venture studio in Indianapolis, comes on the show to discuss the strategy and operations of venture studios. Mike’s background in software, sales, and entrepreneurship guides our conversation on starting companies at venture studios, the attractiveness of B2B SaaS, and guiding exits and innovation through large corporations. This episode also provides insight into Mike’s experience founding a venture studio and his advice from that process.
Navigating Y Combinator
Conor McCarter is the co-founder of Prequel, which helps companies set up and manage their data stacks so they can focus on what matters: getting insights to drive their businesses. We talk about with Conor about pursuing a dual engineering masters degree and MBA at Harvard and subsequently deciding to jump in full time to work on his startup. We also focus on Conor’s experience with Y Combinator, which is the premier American seed money startup accelerator. Topics include applying and interviewing for YC, maximizing time given the unstructured nature of the program, the infamous Demo Day, and the state of Prequel after going through the accelerator.
Healthcare VC Investing
With over 20 years of experience in venture capital and degrees from MIT and Harvard, Dr. Jeff Himawan, Managing Director at EW Healthcare Partners, joins the show to discuss the role of venture capital in research-intensive pharmaceutical startups. Jeff outlines the impact that longer holding periods have on healthcare venture firms’ relationships with LPs as well as the characteristics needed to raise new financing rounds for pharma startups. Other topics include the impact of the pandemic on healthcare investing, the entrance of big tech into healthcare, and the lack of innovation by big pharma.
Supercharging Startups & Corporate Innovation
Conor and Alex chat with Cristin Pacifico, manager and venture capitalist at TechNexus. We discuss TechNexus’ unique combination of businesses, corporate joint-ventures, and a fast-growing startup investment portfolio in addition to Cristin’s outlook on the biggest opportunities for technological disruption. Cristin also talks about her background in financial planning and analysis, the M&A process for a startup seeking an exit, and the rise of SPACs as a means for companies to go public.
Breaking into VC
Conor and Alex interview Caroline Yeager, a Senior Associate at Vitalize Venture Group, and discuss the fundamentals of venture capital, how to break into VC, and the role of an entry-level analyst. Drawing from her experience sourcing potential investments and managing the due diligence process at Vitalize Venture Group and GE Ventures, Caroline provides her perspective on what makes a successful startup and touches upon the differences between corporate and traditional VC.