Venture Studio (26): John Frankel, Founding Partner, ff Venture Capital

I recently had the pleasure of visiting with John Frankel, founding partner of ff Venture Capital, at their beautiful new NYC headquarters.

Originally from England and with 21 years at Goldman Sachs under his belt John brings an unconventional background to the table as a venture capitalist. Yet his approach is not what one might expect upon hearing this singular detail.  I learned, for example, that he's been actively investing in early stage startups (such as Quigo (sold to AOL) and Cornerstone onDemand (now CSOD on NASDAQ) for well over a decade before finally deciding to leave GS and starting his own fund full-time. I also learned that he has a unique (and refreshing) sense of the notion of "risk" in the realm of early-stage investing. Lastly, I learned that he's immensely thoughtful about the macro trends and forces at play in and around the tech space- not surprising from a guy who studied philosophy at Oxford.

Anyway- my favorite line was when he said in a tongue & cheek way that during all those years at the bank he was asking himself what he wanted to do "when he grew up". Looking at ff's formidable portfolio and the amount of fun he's having working with great entrepreneurs who want to change the world- it seems that he's found his calling.

Enjoy!

00:05    Coming to VC from  a so-called non-traditional background

01:32     Transitioning from angel investing to full-time venture investing

02:23     John's great and original take on the notion of early-stage investing being "risky"!

03:21     What motivates him as an investor? (Some great stuff here) "A better education than he received at Oxford"... "Working with great entrepreneurs who   want to change the world"

04:19     John's take on where things are going and all the "bubble talk" these days

05:50    "We continue to see an unbelievable number of amazing companies"

06:22     On getting in touch with @ffventure  (warm intros please!)

For the full interview click on the image of John just below: 

Venture Studio (13): Jeff Clavier, Founder SoftTech VC (or, "A Well-Tempered Clavier")

This is Episode (13) of Venture Studio

I sat down recently to speak with with angel investor turned MicroVC, Jeff Clavier, @jeff, founder of SoftTechVC I, II & III on a recent visit of his to NYC. (My thanks to the great people at Polaris Ventures' DogPatch Labs down in Greenwhich Village for hosting our talk.)

Jeff is a fascinating guy who saw a special opportunity in 2004 to invest in capital-efficient Web 2.0-type companies and got into angel investing in a big way, investing his own money in 20+ companies. He turned out to be enormously gifted at it. Hearkening back to my recent Series on Angel Investing, he most certainly skipped the "Mug" phase that Mark Suster and I have joked about. 

He then had the opportunity to raise a small fund and thus became what the press like to call a "Super-Angel"- but what really is more aptly-named, a MicroVC. After 65 investments in this Fund (SoftTech VC II), he has now launched SoftTechVC III, (aka "the real-deal"as he jokingly called it) which will still be a "small" fund, but certainly considerably larger than II.

It was great to hear Jeff's perspective on early-stage investing, the market segments that interest him these days and how he has evolved over the years as an investor. Enjoy.

:26  -  A little background on @jeff & how he first got into angel investing

1:19 -  Raising his first micro-fund in 2004, which was $15M in size

1:43 - The pioneers in the MicroVC space, including Josh Kopelman

2:23 - On making 65 investments in SoftTechVC II w/10 exits already(!)

3:05 - Launching SoftTechVC III & venture partner Charles Hudson

4:14 - What types of companies/sectors will III be investing in? (See Matrix)  Listen carefully here about Jeff's approach to various sectors

6:02 - After 99 investments & reaching this level- what changes in your approach?

7:21 - Epic Line: "In our business there's no pride- we basically do whatever it takes to help our companies"

7:31 - Jeff's perspective on acquisitions (of which he's had 17!) and how he works w/his portfolio company entrepreneurs in this regard

9:01 -  Has he noticed network effects amongst his portfolio companies?

9:55 - Jeff invests in a bunch of NYC companies- what are his thoughts on NYC?

11:11 - What are the biggest challenges for him?

12:47 - What's an average day like for Jeff?

SOFTTECH VC III (so far)

                  

               

Mapping the Whole Venture Ecosystem (or my new life as a Venture Cartographer)

                               
This is part of my various series on Venture Capital, Angel Investing and Entrepreneurial Culture.

It all started when it occurred to me that we were missing a nice visual map of Silicon Alley's early-stage ecosystem available for everyone to use. Entrepreneurs were always asking me about various angels and VC's and I just thought that such a map would be a good resource to which I could refer people. I also thought that adding the twitter addresses of all these investors would be a nice feature as well. So one night I did just that and mapped out New York's early-stage tech investor ecosystem and posted it here on my blog.

After receiving so much great encouragement and so many submissions and corrections, I thought I'd do the same for our neighbors to the north- my old stomping grounds- Boston! That took me a bit longer, of course, because the ecosystem is quite a bit larger than NY's coupled with the fact that I couldn't do most of it from memory. I haven't lived in Boston for over nine years now! 

Well, the encouragement and emails kept flowing. There was a real need for this. No one enjoyed wasting hours looking various funds up online or clicking through some spreadsheet or flipping through one of those venture capital directories for that matter. I knew then that I had to take the next step into what appears to be a new discipline- I think I am going to call it Venture Cartography.  :)

The Silicon Valley/San Fran map was soon to follow and I'm happy to say it is now up and running! Corrections, submissions, etc. more than welcome as usual. Bring it on!

At this point, however, I realized I needed help. I really wanted these maps to be interactive and provide richer information for us all. So I gave my friend Shane Snow a call. He is a super-talented entrepreneur, hacker, designer and journalist extraordinaire who can basically do anything. 

Our collaboration has resulted in this interactive map, which is a precursor to us mapping the venture ecosystem of the entire world in its component parts. Now all you have to do is just click on the city you are interested in and then click on any investor to get a good understanding of his or her background, investments, blogs, opinions, twitter-feed and the like. 

We've put a lot of effort into teeing this up, but this is meant to be crowd-sourced on an ongoing basis- so please- send us all the names, the people, the angels, the accelerators and the funds we are missing! You can email us here: info at venturemaps.co   (yep, that's .co, not .com)...

We'll be thankful for all the help you can provide. Apologies in advance to anyone we've left out.

I want to offer a special thanks to the folks who have given us excellent insight into their respective ecosystems, especially the venture investor and irrepressible gadfly Stewart Alsop  (@salsop) as well as my buddy JJ Freitag  (@jjfreitag) over at Azure Capital. Thanks guys!