Ben Zises’ Post

For Gold House Venture Network investor Nikhil Basu Trivedi, it all starts and ends with the entrepreneur. Given that his fund, Footwork, only makes a handful of investments per year and only leads rounds, he looks for three key elements in every founder: 1) know their business inside-out 2) are showing they can be magnets for talent 3) are a combination of both hungry and humble. As well as four key elements in every company: 1) early signs of product-market fit 2) the potential for the product or service to be loved by customers for decades 3) a market that may not be big today but has the potential to expand and be very big in the future 4) founders who are hungry and humble, relentless in their quest to attract great talent to the team, and who know their business inside-out. Contrary to the assumption that Trivedi's background (high school in Silicon Valley, an Ivy League education) would naturally lead him to the tech and VC, he highlights his outsider status upon moving to the San Francisco Bay Area from the UK as a teenager as a pivotal factor. Initially lacking knowledge about technology and entrepreneurship, he became captivated by the Bay Area's unique environment. “I became absolutely fascinated by it, because if you visit the Bay Area, let alone move here, you obviously notice how unique of a place it is,” he says “Everything is about tech, everywhere you look and go. Every person discussed - the heroes and the villains - are in our little tech ecosystem. So as a teenager I think I developed a yearning for becoming an insider one day. And I guess that’s what I am now.” Today, he’s transformed that yearning into a thriving career, having launched Footwork just over 2 years ago. Nikhil’s passion for venture capital was further sparked during his college years when he interned at Insight Partners. “I found myself just loving the day-to-day of talking to entrepreneurs. That love informed a mantra I’ve kept for my career: to make sure that I get out of bed every day feeling excited to get to work. It’s a feeling that encapsulates the things that matter to me: the belief that I can be good at the job, that I’m growing and learning, that I’m having a positive impact on society, that I admire and trust and respect the people I work with. And the answer to that mantra has been “yes” for me on almost every day of my professional life, for 12 years now. I feel so lucky.” You can read more from Nikhil at his substack: https://substack.com/@nbt This series spotlights members of the Gold House Venture Network, which convenes top Asian Pacific early-stage investors and fund managers for programming, deal-sharing, and collaboration led by Gold House Ventures. To apply to the network, tell us more about yourself here: https://lnkd.in/e7GRdiGP

J20 Ventures is planning to raise its second fund as soon as this fall, firm founder and managing director May Li told me. The firm will target somewhere between $30 million and $50 million for its sophomore effort, a substantial step up from the $1 million it raised for its debut in 2016. May founded the firm as a Junior at Georgetown University, pulling together capital from high-net-worth individuals to invest in some of the entrepreneurs she helped guide through her student entrepreneurship organization. “I’m a very decisive person and like to be ahead of the curve,” she told me. “If I see opportunities, I’m going to think of ways to maximize the potential. I saw these opportunities in my organization in college, and I just thought, ‘Why wait until I graduate?’” I also spoke with Dean K., CEO of personalized supplement company Gainful, which was one of J20's first four investments made while May was still in college. “May Li was literally one of our first-ever checks; she invested in Gainful whilst the founder was building the company out of his dorm at Georgetown,” he told me. “May is very good at identifying not only spaces and businesses very early and providing support throughout that business’s journey, but also the individuals that she looks to invest in, identifying them very early and helping support them." Read more on Venture Capital Journal. #venturecapital #womeninvc https://lnkd.in/grJH-m-f

"From his home base in Antwerp, however, Van den Brande set about building his venture firm. He did so without many conventional advantages. He did not have a proven track record, nor had he apprenticed at a storied fund. Though he had worked as a financial analyst in Boston for a spell, he had few connections to the power brokers of Sand Hill Road, let alone the endowment managers sitting beyond the green-felt lawns and pale stone of the Ivy League. And, as he would have told you himself, he was a bit odd. Van den Brande lacked the easy charm that could beguile entrepreneurs into parting with their equity or seduce limited partners into penning a check. What he did have was formidable intelligence, jolting directness, ferocious curiosity, and a total allergy to bullshit. These final two traits would prove the making of Van den Brande and his firm. In the thirteen years since its founding, Van den Brande has built Hummingbird into one of the best-performing venture funds of the past decade. It has delivered three vintages with over 10x net returns. It’s done so without hitting the buzziest startups of the past cycle, instead capitalizing on a roster of relatively under-the-radar giants, including Peak Games, Gram Games, Kraken, BillionToOne, and FPL Technologies. It’s the kind of sustained excellence liable to make marquee fund managers up the dosage of their daily nootropics out of concern. Hummingbird has achieved this success while staying out of the limelight. Van den Brande and his team have driven such returns by ignoring much of the asset class’s conventional wisdom – and forging an extremely opinionated investing framework. Many venture capitalists emphasize the importance of the entrepreneur to their underwriting; none mean it quite as much as Hummingbird. For Van den Brande’s firm, the founder is not merely important; they are the only thing that matters. Forget about flocking to a hot new market or playing nice with Sequoia or Benchmark. If you want to deliver consistently superior returns, Hummingbird believes you need to find the most exceptional entrepreneurs on earth – not merely the top 1%, but the top 0.1%. Finding such outliers is not easy. It also might not look like you’d expect it to. Hummingbird isn’t searching for the slick Stanford MBA, affable Google APM, or winsome McKinsey associate. It cares little for credentials or the experienced pitchman’s smooth patter. Instead, Van den Brande’s seven-strong roster of investors is pursuing a very specific kind of entrepreneur – someone with unreasonable ambitions, astonishing clock speed, and a frightening hunger that portends a deep, personal unease. Such people do not always make adept students or easy colleagues. But they’re liable to have a handful of bumblebees buried in the freezer. And to have a good reason for it, too, if you care enough to ask." https://lnkd.in/gpw3BtHB

Today’s VC Spotlight 💡 Skoden Ventures is a boutique venture fund specializing in #earlystage startups led by Indigenous, Black, Brown, and Women founders. Committed to amplifying underfunded entrepreneurs, this VC allocates pre-seed capital to fuel high-growth creative companies. Prioritizing businesses catering to Gen Z and Millennial audiences, Skoden Ventures supports ventures offering entertainment, edutainment, and creative goods that authentically represent diverse backgrounds 🙌🏽 Founded on Indigenous values, the impact-driven fund aims to generate financial returns while bolstering cultural assets and fostering social, human, and natural capital in communities. Led by Founding Partners Kelly Holmes, Mnicoujou Lakota, and Alice Loy, Skoden Ventures champions the investment in undercapitalized entrepreneurs. They seeks to elevate #startups meeting the demand for diverse products, services, and experiences. The fund has an impressive track record ✨ including 121 startups, 54% women founders, 52% BIPOC founders, $200+ million annual revenue, $315 million capital raised, and hundreds of small businesses supported, establishing a leadership role in the creative economy and entrepreneurship landscape. #venturecapital #VCfund #diversityandinclusion #diversefunding https://lnkd.in/gFGMVcUt