The Capital Stack

This week I had one of my favorite people in the world on the Capital Stack. My man Jason Gunn aka of McLovin. Jason is the Director of Marketing at Galley and is a successful foodservice software executive. This podcast is a treat!

A chef at heart and with more than 20 years of experience in the Foodservice industry, Jason has served in a variety of roles from leading restaurant operations to distributor sales, then promoted to corporate leadership positions for several national distributors to support eCommerce, category management, and supply chain initiatives. Later, Jason became a founding member of Attribytes, a Software as a Solution (SaaS) & data management company, which claimed the #210 spot on Inc Magazine’s national list of 500 fastest growing companies.

This week I am interviewing my friend and fellow board member TX Zhuo of Fika Ventures. We go into detail about speaking about the importance of fintech in emerging software applications as well as how to properly construct a seed portfolio.  

An entrepreneur at heart, TX has been involved with startups since his college days where he started then successfully sold an online college textbook marketplace. After a stint at McKinsey where he was a core member of their financial services and consumer goods practices, he came back to his roots and served as the CFO for an electric vehiclestartup, Lit Motors. Thereafter, he worked for Innovation Endeavors, a seed stage venture fund backed by Eric Schmidt. In 2012, he co-founded Karlin Ventures, based in Los Angeles, where he served as the managing partner for 4 years before co-founding Fika Ventures. He is a strong proponent of transparency and efficiency and is constantly on the lookout for new platforms that seek to disrupt old, antiquated industries.

Once a competitive badminton player who trained 4-5 days a week, he now can be found on the golf course or maxing out his ClassPass account on the weekends. He is also passionate about supporting initiatives that help cancer fighters.

TX holds an MBA from Stanford and a BA in Mathematics and Economics from Wesleyan University.

This week I am speaking to San Diego legend David Tal of Verse (not to be confused with legend yours truly David Paul). David has built one of the greatest B2B lead generation platforms on the market today. He speaks very candidly about the challenges of startups and moving upmarket.

David Tal is the co-founder and co-CEO of Verse. Born and raised in San Diego, and a VC-backed entrepreneur for 10+ years, David has always been passionate about “putting San Diego on the map” as a center of tech, innovation, and disruption. This passion has driven him and Verse to become one of San Diego’s fastest growing companies. After graduating with a BS in Economics from UCLA in 2003, David experienced firsthand how quickly the world had moved online and how consumer journeys increasingly began and lived online. David also saw how businesses were trying to engage and communicate with this new growing stream of online leads and prospects. So, David set out to help companies in real estate and other industries create effective and authentic connections with their prospects by effectively merging the best abilities of technology and people. David lives in San Diego with his beautiful, successful wife and three children.

Today I am interviewing Brad Thomas, co-founder and COO of Evercast - a SaaS workflow and conferencing platform for media companies. Evercast is the household name for film-makers to get their movies produced quickly and effectively and has been used in many blockbuster hits in 2022 such as Avatar, Top Gun Maverick,. and Jurassic Park.

Brad Thomas is a serial tech founder who co-founded Evercast, a virtual conferencing & collaboration platform which is used by thousands of professional creatives within major Hollywood studios, advertising agencies and gaming companies to develop content remotely. 

This week I am speaking to Melissa Widner, CEO of Lighter Capital.  She has an incredible story of going from operator to capital allocator.  Now she takes the helm of the largest brands in revenue based financing in the world.  

Melissa Widner is the CEO of Lighter Capital, the pioneer and leader in revenue-based financing for tech startups, founders, and companies. Seattle-based Lighter Capital is backed by National Australia Bank and Silicon Valley Bank as well as US VCs.

Previously, Melissa was the Managing Director of NAB Ventures, the VC arm of the National Australia Bank, and a General Partner at Seattle based SeaPoint Ventures. She was the founder and CEO of 7Software, a Silicon Valley based enterprise software company acquired by Concur (Nasdaq: CNQR, acquired by SAP). She was also the CEO of Northwest Industrial Supply. Under her leadership, both companies generated over a 10X return to investors.

She is the co-founder and Chairperson of Sydney-based Heads Over Heels, an organization that supports women entrepreneurs running companies with high growth potential.

What You Will Learn:

- Alternatives to Equity

- Identifying Shark VCs

- Debt vs. Revenue Based Financing

If you cannot tell todays pod is by far one of my favorites. Nevin and I completely nerd out on the art of deal sourcing and product market fit.

Nevin Raj is the Co-Founder and COO of Grata, a platform that makes it easy to source middle market investments. Prior to Grata, Nevin worked in private equity at Riverside Partners, where they were responsible for due diligence and deal execution for enterprise software and healthcare companies. Nevin also worked as a business analyst at McKinsey & Company in their business technology group, where they gained experience in strategy, M&A, and operations. In addition, Nevin has worked in investment banking at Jefferies and in business development at Axial.

The education listed is for Nevin Raj, who attended Harvard University from 2009 to 2013. Raj studied applied mathematics while at Harvard, and was also involved in activities and societies such as Drug and Alcohol Peer Advisors (DAPA), Peer Advising Fellow, and Harvard College Consulting Group (HCCG). Raj's secondary field of study was statistics.

What You Will Learn:

• Sourcing Best Practices
• PMF
• Getting Funded by David Sacks

Today I am talking to the Bobby Brannigan, a scrappy Irish kid from Brooklyn who knows how to make a buck. 

A serial entrepreneur and angel investor, Bobby Brannigan is co-founder and CEO of Mercato, the online marketplace that empowers independent grocers to grow their business in the face of ever increasing competition.

His business roots started as a kid working in his family's Brooklyn, New York grocery store. As a teenager, Bobby began instituting new ways to create efficiencies and increase revenue for his family’s store. While in his sophomore year at State University of New York at Fredonia in 2002, Bobby founded ValoreBooks.com, which became one of the internet's largest online textbook marketplaces. It was acquired by Simple Tuition, the largest online student loan marketplace in the country in 2012.

-What You Will Learn:

-Marketplaces

-Solving the Cold Start Problem

-Bootstrapping vs Fundraising

-COVID Explosions

-Pivots

Today I am talking to the Bobby Brannigan, a scrappy Irish kid from Brooklyn who knows how to make a buck.  Bobby Brannigan grew up in his father's butcher shop in Brooklyn where he learned firsthand the complex logistics of running a grocery store. After starting and selling an $85M tech company in his college dorm room, Bobby went back to his roots to help his dad get his grocery store online. That's when he realized the challenge modern grocers face: creating a consistent online experience to match in-store.

Mercato was built with all the small details in mind. We empower grocers with easy-to-use marketing, e-commerce, and service tools that result in seamless online ordering and delivery. We aren't just a tech company who stumbled into groceries - we're a grocery company that builds tech to help grocers sell more and stay in business. Instead of third-party shoppers, every order is handpicked directly from the store. Our merchants have some of the best locally sourced ingredients, and our mission is to help more people experience them. We believe food is more than just nourishment for your body. It's an opportunity to take quality, fresh ingredients and turn them into something bigger. To us, every meal is a moment.

What You Will Learn:

-Marketplaces

-Solving the Cold Start Problem

-Bootstrapping vs Fundraising

-COVID Explosions

-Pivots

This week David is interviewing Jim Douglas who is a Managing Partner at Fulcrum Equity based in Atlanta, Georgia. Fulcrum is a growth equity platform that focuses on software technology and healthcare services in undercapitalized markets. Jim has been actively investing for years and I am truly fortunate to have him on the show.

Prior to joining Fulcrum, Jim was CEO of Vesdia, a pioneer in loyalty and card-linked marketing for financial services, airline, and hospitality companies, which merged with Cartera Commerce and sold to Raketun. Before Vesdia, he served as CEO for Atlanta-based Visionary Systems, Inc. (VSI), a provider of decision systems for credit providers and retailers that was sold to Trans Union. Prior to these roles, Jim served as the Executive Vice President of Corporate Development and Chief Financial Officer with CheckFree Corporation, the leading provider of electronic billing and payment services to financial institutions. He has also held the role of Vice President and Corporate Controller of Medaphis Corporation, a leading provider of medical billing and management software and services for physicians and hospitals. He began his career with KPMG in the Financial Services practice after graduating with a BBA in Accounting from Georgia State University.

Jim is currently a board member of Kobiton, Dropoff, SureFire Local, Kevel, Digital Hands, Vertify, and GoPivot. He has also served on boards supporting the growth of successful Fulcrum exits in Fattmerchant, QASymphony, Prevalent, LogFire, ALS Resolvion, and outside of Fulcrum GroBanking, FactorTrust, and Paymentus. In the community, Jim sits on the boards of Venture Atlanta, ACG (Association for Corporate Growth), and UNICEF Southeast Region.  

What You Will Learn:

Growth Equity Strategies

Capital Efficiency and Valuation

Diversifying a Portfolio with Services and Software

Investing Through Market Cycles

In this episode of the Capital Stack, David talks to the man with perhaps the sexiests accent in the Valley - Piet Jan de Bruin - about the modern data stack!

Piet is the co-founder & COO of IOMETE, a YC-backed early-stage startup in the data cloud space. IOMETE is a fully-managed data lakehouse platform that enables organizations to become data-driven in an easy and cost-effective manner. (http://www.iomete.com)

From 2016 to 2020 Piet was CEO of DTC startup Tuft & Needle (www.tn.com) that he and his team bootstrapped to $200m in revenue (exit late 2018).

Piet earned a m.sc. degree in Business Economics from Erasmus University Rotterdam in the Netherlands. 

When he's not building IOMETE, Piet likes to spend time on the family farm in central Brazil, reading and practicing jiu jitsu.

Favorite Quote - Theodore Rosevelt:

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."

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