Being an outsider these days has a lot of advantages. It can allow ideas to crystallize in ways that someone who is too close to an industry may avoid. Today we welcome Nate Pierotti, Principal of New Stack Ventures, an early-stage fund whose mission is to invest in outsiders and founders that don’t come from the same educational pedigrees or locations we typically see in the venture world. New Stack has been encouraging entrepreneurship in new places and innovation in new technologies and recently announced the close of their second fund of $42.6 million. In this episode, we discuss the mass exodus from the Silicon Valley, the effects of the pandemic and the recent market meltdown on VC firms, and the future of technological startups.

About Nate Pierotti:With New Stack Ventures, Nate Pierotti has used his deep technical knowledge and invested in startups like insurance platform Covie and life sciences platform BTR. He was previously co-founder and CEO of Monarch, a sports robotics company. He received multiple patents for his work at Monarc, and was part of engineering and product design. He graduated with a Bachelor's Degree in Computer Engineering from the University of Iowa.

A word from our sponsor:

At Ripple, we manage all of our fund expenses and employee credit cards using Jeeves.

The team at Jeeves helped get me and my team setup with physical and virtual credit cards in days. I was able to allow my teammates to expense items in multiple currencies allowing them to pay for anything, anywhere at any time. We weren’t asked for any personal guarantees or to pay any setup or monthly SaaS fees.

Not only does Jeeves save us time, but they also give us up to 3% cash back on our purchases including expenses like Google, Facebook or AWS every month. The best part is Jeeves puts up the cash, and you settle up once every 30 days in any currency you want, unlike some other corporate card companies that make you pre-pay every month.

Jeeves also recently launched its Jeeves Growth and Working Capital initiative for startups and fast-growing companies to enable more financial freedom for every entrepreneur. The best thing of all is that Jeeves is live in 24 countries including Canada, the US and many other countries around the world. Jeeves truly offers the best all-in-one expense management corporate card program for all startups especially the ones at Ripple and we at Tank Talks could not be more excited to officially partner with them.

Listeners of Tank Talks can get set up with a demo of Jeeves today and take advantage of our Tank Talks special with a $700 sign-on bonus and skip the waitlist that already has thousands of companies by visiting tryjeeves.com/tanktalks to get setup today!

In this episode we discuss:

02:33 Nate’s background and his journey into startups and technology

04:34 Nate’s experience with building his first startup, Monarc

07:13 What differentiates non-coastal founders in the VC world

08:20 Nate’s transition into venture capital with New Stack Ventures

14:24 How entrepreneurs have resisted the pressure to move to the Silicon Valley 

17:06 How New Stack Ventures keeps its founders from becoming complacent

18:01 Finding and scaling management teams locally

20:48 The future of outsider-built technologies and startups

25:37 What the mass exodus from the Silicon Valley means for entrepreneurs

28:00 Supporting diverse founders outside of the Valley

29:10 How New Stack competes with other firms in the Midwest, and firms along the coasts

35:41 How New Stack advises its founders and helps them access capital and opportunities

Fast FavoritesPodcastsThe 20 VC

Blog/NewletterAbove the Crowd by Bill Gurley

Tech GadgetAirPods

New TrendUnit Economics

BookPredictably Irrational by Dan Ariely

Life LessonTreating people fairly and with respect

Follow Matt Cohen and Tank Talks here!

Podcast production support provided by Agentbee.Agency 

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit tanktalks.substack.com