Phil Bronner and I have known each other for the last 15 years. Phil started as a self-described snotty-nosed kid running around Baltimore trying to play ball and became one of the most successful venture capitalists in the D.C. area.

"I was leaving for school, and my dad said congratulations. You're going off to college. I really hope it goes well. But if it doesn't, you're never coming back here. You're going to the military. And that stuck with me."

He started in venture in 1999 and worked his way up, gaining his apprentice-style experience through a big fund that had $650 million under management. "It's hard to learn the business outside of the industry. You sort of have to learn it by doing." After 15 years, he decided to pave his own path and co-founded Ardent Venture Partners.

Phil shares his journey of what it is like to be a black man in venture and how we can break the cycle of making deals with "the same people we always have."

"How does venture work? It's driven by two things—your relationships and pattern recognition. You do research and other things. But, you also say, well, I backed the person who looks just like that person who reminds me of this person. And that makes you more comfortable doing that deal. So when your networks are white males, it's going to lead to referrals that are from other people who look like them."

Phil has an incredible way of seeing things from others' perspectives and finding a workaround to be successful. "Often, we allow emotion to color our perspective on the situation. But you have to pay attention and separate that from your decision-making."

Visit LinkedIn to connect with Phil or learn more about Ardent Venture Partners.

______

Phil's Bio

Phil Bronner is the co-founder of Ardent Venture Partners, a venture fund investing in companies that transform the way we work. He is currently on the board of Reserve Trust, Verituity, ExecOnline, OneMain Financial (O.M.F.), and an investor in Method Financial and Collective. Before co-founding Ardent Venture Partners, Phil was Founder/Managing Member of Summer League Ventures (S.L.V.). Active S.L.V. deals include Morning consult, ExecOnline, Ordway Labs, Gather.ai, Anno.ai, and AirSide Mobile.

Prior to S.L.V., Phil was a General Partner with Novak Biddle Venture Partners. Over the course of his 15-year career, he led 16 investments (was actively involved in 20) with investments totaling over $100 million. Three of Phil's series A investments went on to be worth $880 million or more. Investments include 2U (TWOU), Infoblox (BLOX), SolidFire (Acquired by NetApp), AddThis (acquired by Oracle), Webs (Acquired by Vistaprint), Approva (Acquired by Infor), LifeShield Security (acquired by DirectTV), ClearStandards (Acquired by SAP), Social Gaming Network, and Logic Library (Acquired by S.O.A. Software). In addition, Phil's past board observer seats include N.E.W. Customer Service Companies (acquired by Asurion), AnswerLogic, a natural language search engine (acquired by Primus Knowledge Systems), and Spectrum K12 (acquired by Power Schools). Phil was the founder of Quad Learning, a venture-backed startup acquired by Wellspring Higher Education, served as a management consultant at McKinsey & Co., and worked as a software engineer at I.B.M.

Phil earned a B.S. in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University; a J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania's School of Law; and an M.B.A. from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. Phil and Brooke live in Washington DC with their 3 kids: Dylan, Sophia, and Mason.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices