Growing a venture in an emerging channel by Emily Lonetto - Quarterly Publication - Ed. 01 - Flipbook - Page 14
Growing a venture in an emerging channel by Emily Lonetto
VENTURE CAPITAL
and they will help you. But also, you can help them.
And this is a community, so give back.
ALWAYS LISTEN TO YOUR HEART AND FOLLOW
YOUR PASSIONS: Listen to yourself. Ask yourself:
What do you want to do in your career? What type of
business do you want to operate? Do you want to be
an entrepreneur or do you want to be something else?
Really listen to what your heart is saying, because if
you are not doing something that you’re passionate
about, I don’t think you will ever achieve the fullest
success that you could realize.
ON SPOTTING OPPORTUNITIES
At a very high level, there are two major things I look
for when spotting investment opportunities:
THE VISION: I ask, is this a huge vision? Do we believe
that this could be a big business? Is this a big market? Do they have a unique insight that will enable this
company to win? Do they have a competitive moat?
And how are they going to win with their competitive
moat?
THE FOUNDING TEAM. What I have learned over time
is that success is actually not correlated with number
of years in the industry or number of years experience.
Success is more correlated with three things that I
look at now:
WORKING WITH
A VC TO SCALE
YOUR STARTUP
BY JANET BANNISTER (MANAGING PARTNER,
REAL VENTURES)
F
rom starting as an entrepreneur to taking on
my current VC role at Real Ventures, I have
learned that there are main behaviours to
maintain for anyone who is thinking of setting
out on an entrepreneurial path:
ALWAYS BE LEARNING: Both in terms of how you
can be a better leader and how you can be a better
entrepreneur.
ALWAYS DEVELOP STRONG BONDS WITH PEOPLE
WHO MAKE YOU A BETTER PERSON: Work with
people who you learn from, who give you energy, who
support you — because you will need those people
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1. Self-awareness. So is the founder aware of where
their strengths are, where their weaknesses are?
Are they aware of where they need help?
2. A growth mindset. And I mean that in respect to
a personal growth mindset. Are they somebody
who is always looking to get better and learn?
3. Transparency. And by that I mean not just trans-
parency with the board, but transparency, with
themselves. And so being true, willing to look at
the metrics and say, “OK, is this working or is it not
working?” And, “What what do I need to do to improve?” And just being open, honest and transparent with where they stand and where they need
to go.
CASE
STUDY
Real Ventures is an investor in Toronto based venture PartnerStack. Lead
by CEO and Co-founder Bryn Jones,
PartnerStack has developed a platform
for companies to launch, manage and
build channel partner programs. Their
full stack solution fully supports partner
marketing, referral and reseller channel
needs from a single platform. To date,
they support over half a million partnerships globally, and counting.
After graduating from Y Combinator,
Bryn met Janet Bannister who, after a
convincing meetup in Starbucks, invested in PatnerStack and hasn’t looked
back since. Their symbiotic and transparent relationship has lead to sustained
growth for PartnerStack. Together, they
focused on building a strong foundation
instead of generating short-term revenue, something Janet believes to be
crucial to a startup’s success.
“
There is no silver bullet for
finding and solving problems.
I spent a lot of time early on
looking for silver bullets, but
I realized it’s more important
to have a lot of willingness to battle
through really hard problems.”
- Bryn Jones
Co-founder and CEO, PartnerStack
LISTEN TO THE
FULL STORY
ON LAUNCHPOD
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