LA Venture

Brian Frank talks about how everything in the food system can be improved, and how VCs are investing with a technology lens instead of a problem solving perspective. Tune in to learn more about: *The biggest opportunities ahead in the food system *Evolution of replacing animal protein, including synthetic biology *How Brian is perfectly positioned to help the next generation of founders in the industry

Brett Queener from Bonfire spends 20-30 hours onboarding each of his companies and shares some of his playbook and rules of thumb. I like a lot of his operational tips:

Katelyn Foley is the President of UP.Labs, a venture lab that builds SaaS companies in partnership with large corporations. Katelyn was previously a partner at BCG Digital Ventures.

Follow Katelyn Foley: https://www.linkedin.com/in/katelynfoley/

Follow Minnie Ingersoll: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mingersoll/

In this episode, you will learn:

(1:03) How Katelyn has created 15 businesses in 8 years.

(2:57) What about the studio model Katelyn changed when coming to UP.Labs

(4:00) How Katelyn selects a strategic problem to build a business around.

(6:49) Why startups should not be doing digital transformation work.

(8:20) Why public companies struggle to incubate new businesses.

(10:00) Why opportunities exist where high value and high friction meet.

(11:59) In SaaS, you want to augment decisions that already happen.

(14:04) Intelligence augmentation is the buzzword.

(17:04) Where opportunity exists for OEMs while the industry shifts to EV.

(21:30) How Katelyn sources new opportunities.

(23:18) Katelyn's opinion of CVCs.

(27:27): Why businesses developed by UP.Labs only need seed funding.

Available on: Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Past Conversations and Transcripts available at: tenoneten.net/podcasts

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March Capital was investing in generative AI long before ChatGPT went mainstream.

In today's episode, we talk with Partner Wes Nichols, who has brought his 30 years of analytics and AI experience as an investor and entrepreneur to help March Capital with this area of focus.

Wes is an industry authority in predictive analytics, marketing, AI/machine learning, and digital transformation. He authored the Harvard Business Review cover story, Analytics 2.0, on next-generation analytics to drive more predictive decision-making, with a follow-up article underway currently.

A two-time entrepreneur, Wes has created high profile analytics software companies. Most recently, Wes was co-founder and CEO of MarketShare, which had a $450 million exit to Neustar. Prior to that, he was the founder and CEO of Direct Partners, one of the industry's first data-driven analytics and CRM companies, which was acquired by Omnicom Group.

In summary, he's one of the founders who really put LA on the map and set the foundation of LA Tech.

Episode Details:

(0:54): Wes' entrepreneurial background

(4:01): Creating one of the first digital marketing companies

(8:10): What makes a VC valuable to an entrepreneur

(10:15): From angel to full-time investor at March Capital

(13:10): Comparing vertical vs horizontal applications of AI

(15:33): Positive applications of data and sentiment analysis

(17:45): What the military optimizes for

(19:38): Joining the LAPD Reserve Police Officer Program

(25:45): Why being an entrepreneur helps Wes be a better board member

Follow Wes Nichols:

https://twitter.com/wesnichols

Follow Minnie Ingersoll:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/mingersoll/

Follow the LA Venture podcast:

https://twitter.com/TenOne10

https://www.instagram.com/ten.one.ten/

Explore other LA Venture episodes:

https://www.tenoneten.net/podcast

Will Coffield is a co-founder and General Partner at Riot Ventures, a hard tech fund that invests at seed and Series B.

In this episode Will shares:

• The technological renaissance taking place at the US Dept. of Defense.
• What caused the United States' lead in defense tech to narrow
• What is at stake in the ongoing defense technological race between the US and China

Galen Shaffer is a Senior Vice President at Eos Venture Partners, a Series A fund, investing in the future of insurance. In this episode Galen shares: - Why cyber insurance is a $30B opportunity for startups. - What the first wave of D2C insurance startups got wrong. - Why novel data is often not impactful data.

• Why nearly every software category can be reimagined with a generative AI-first approach
• Why Q4 2023 and Q1 2024 could be "pretty bloody" and a "moment of truth" for startups
• Creandum's approach to winning competitive Series A deals
• Why VC poses career risk for associates early in their careers

Aaron Samuels tells us about investing in intersectional founders, he explains what identity saliency is to Minnie and he shares how he and Brian Hollins were able to parlay their scout investing into $66M Collide Fund I.

Dan Wenhold co-leads Fifth Wall's real estate technology fund. He tells us how Fifth Wall has massively grown their AUM by bringing in LPs from the real estate industry who want access to innovation in PropTech. He also tells us how Fifth Wall has stayed innovative and leaned into creative deal structures that are outside the typical VC playbook.