Fund 81

We sourced five startups from our Fund81 VC forum members to present for our June forum. Check out this episode to hear pitches from these incredibly tenacious entrepreneurs.

Presenting Startups:

Airin (Park City, UT) Nominated by both Resolute Ventures and Peterson Ventures

www.airin.ai

CarServ (Austin, TX) Nominated by Springtime Ventures

Mars Mundy

www.carserv.com

Fleeting (Brooklyn, NY) Nominated by the Hustle Fund

Pierre Laguerre

www.fleeting.us

Hostfully (San Francisco, CA) Nominated by me (MergeLane)

Margot Schmorak

www.hostfully.com

Reality Check (Palo Alto, CA) Nominated by Peterson Ventures

(Still in stealth mode) www.linkedin.com/company/reality-check-2020/

This discussion is an expression of personal opinion and does not represent the opinion of MergeLane or any company we discuss. Our conversations are for informational purposes only, including any mention of securities or funds. This is not legal, business, investment or tax advice and is not intended for use by any investor. Certain MergeLane funds own, or may own in the future, some of the securities and companies discussed in this podcast.

I’ve always thought of myself as someone who has a modern marriage. Three months into this COVID-19 situation, however, I'm starting to feel like I'm stuck in a 1950s sitcom in which my husband is a fun, lovable guy who can't wait to hang out with his male friends to get away from his nagging wife, and that I am a responsible, well-intentioned, but unlikeable wife who can't stop treating her husband like her elementary school student.

Through my conversations with other entrepreneurs and VCs, I've learned that we're not the only couple that has regressed into this dynamic.

How did we get here? More importantly, how do we get out? I recorded this podcast episode to unpack our regression.

As a VC, I have the opportunity to build relationships with people who have tremendous financial resources and connections. I often hesitate to ask my network to support philanthropic causes, because I want to respect our business relationship. After seeing the devastating impact of COVID-19 on our community in Vail, Colorado, however, I decided it was time to ask.

I invited four Vail nonprofits to present to my network. I’m sharing the recording of the event in hopes that it will inspire others to leverage their connections for good. I organized this event prior to George Floyd’s death, but I think this idea can easily be translated to support efforts to achieve racial equality. I am thinking about how I might implement that myself and welcome any of your ideas or opportunities for collaboration.

The presenting organizations are below.

Eagle Valley Community Foundation (link to donate: https://secure.qgiv.com/for/oucomfou/)

Eagle Valley Behavioral Health (link to donate: https://donate.vailhealthfoundation.org/campaign/eagle-valley-behavioral-health-website/c247252)

The Vail Valley Foundation COVID-19 Community Response Fund (link to donate: https://vvf.org/donate/community-fund/thank-you/)

Walking Mountains (link to donate: https://www.walkingmountains.org/give/other-ways-to-give/)

I learned far more than I expected from this presentation. Here are just five of my takeaways:

Vail Valley unemployment has surged from 2% in January to over 30%.

Unemployment checks will be reduced by $600 on June 26.

Eagle County has seen more suicides in the past seven weeks than COVID-19 deaths.

Feeding America has estimated that 8,000 of our 50,000 local residents were food insecure prior to COVID-19 and the explosion in unemployment. Based on experience at the food bank, the Eagle Valley Community Foundation believes the number of food insecure is now over 15,000 of our 50,000 neighbors.

The Eagle Valley Community Foundation food banks and pantries served over 4,000 people last week. This is almost a 300% increase over demand for food before the pandemic, and the number seeking assistance is increasing each week. The food served is also now often the primary source of family meals, rather than a supplemental source of meals.

Despite these dire statistics, I also heard many signs of hope in the presentation. You can hear more in the podcast episode.

Thanks for listening.

I’ve now invested in close to 100 entrepreneurs. When I think about the patterns I’ve seen, my most successful investments are backed by entrepreneurs who can really visualize a big idea and genuinely believe it’s possible. To get there, almost all of these entrepreneurs had to shed some deep-seated limiting beliefs. This has me wondering, how can we better spot big thinkers and big ideas with the propensity to scale, and how can we help our entrepreneurs think bigger? I invited Dick Rothkopf, co-founder of Learning Curve International, the manufacturer of the Thomas the Tank Engine toys, to share his thoughts.

Seth has been a MergeLane investor and advisor since the very beginning. I invited Seth to join the show because we’ve had some nice conversations about the challenge we each have in managing our personal bandwidth. Since having these conversations, we’ve both managed to carve out more time through some creative outsourcing and delegation, and I thought it might be helpful to share some of our lessons learned.

If you are listening to this sometime in the future, it is April 2020 and most of us are under a stay-at-home order because of the Coronavirus pandemic. Since many of us are feeling stretched by the new realities of pandemic life, we thought this topic would be especially useful.

Related thoughts:

https://www.sethlevine.com/archives/2020/04/investing-in-downturns.html

https://www.mergelane.com/post/how-conscious-leadership-bought-me-5-hours-of-extra-time-each-day

Dave Balter, CEO of MergeLane-backed Flipside Crypto, has built three previous startups in the midst of economic downturns. He believes that recessions are the greatest time to launch into successful models. In this Fund81 podcast episode, Dave shares his thoughts on why these eras drive opportunity.

Dave is the first guest to make a second appearance on the podcast. You can hear more from Dave in Episode #9 - Cryptocurrency Venture Investing: The Questions Every VC Should Ask Before Making a Crypto Investment.

In the last episode, I recorded an event I held to share what I've learned through my experience working from home for the past 15 years with some of our portfolio companies and some of the members of our fund 81 VC forum.

I shared that if I'm honest with myself, I value productivity and efficiency above all else. So it's not surprising, that I focused the agenda on my tips for becoming more productive and efficient while working from home. During the call, two of our MergeLane portfolio company CEOs shared that they actually have the opposite problem. Without that physical barrier between work and home, they have a really hard time shutting off.

When I listened to the recording, I realized that I failed to really hear what they were saying because I was so focused on my pre-determined agenda. This is a pattern that I now recognize thanks to studying Conscious Leadership which my colleagues Sue Heilbronner and Leah Pearlman turned me onto. You can learn more about that at Leadership.Camp.

I wanted to record this follow up episode to apologize to Bo and Allie and to share some answers to the questions I glossed over.

I’ve been working from home for the past 15 years. I have learned a lot about maximizing productivity, finding work/life harmony, managing home life, staying fit and maintaining a healthy marriage while working from home.

Related Resources:

https://tests.enneagraminstitute.com/

https://www.leadership.camp/

https://www.mergelane.com/post/how-conscious-leadership-bought-me-5-hours-of-extra-time-each-day

I have battled anxiety for many years. In that journey, I've learned a lot about how to manage it and support others who battle anxiety as well. I thought it might be helpful to share my thoughts.

With MergeLane’s new fund and the growth of our portfolio, we’re improving our fund administration processes and considering a few different solutions. Through this process, I’ve realized that I have a lot of questions that other new venture capital fund managers may have as well. To that end, I’ve invited a few of the fund administration solutions I am interviewing to join me on my podcast to answer these questions live. Our first guest is Tiffany Cholez with CFO Fund Services. http://www.cfofundservices.com/