The tech companies I back (in my head)
Startups and venture capital (VC) are two areas within the technology landscape that I am super fascinated by. One could argue that VC’s are just financiers dressed in GANT and Patagonia but that’s a very cynical view. A lot of the best VC’s have a deep understanding of the technology they invest in and quite a few of them have built/scaled/operated in startups before climbing over the fence. Sahil Lavingia, the founder & CEO of Gumroad is a particular favourite.
Even still, it’s an industry that is notoriously hard to break into and even harder to become a significant player in. As a software engineer, I obviously love to code and be technical but I think that startups and the world of VC offers another opportunity to build an entirely different yet useful set of skills. That’s my obsession with Range coming through again! I’m intrigued by the process of identifying and selecting new companies and why some get investment while others do not. I understand that market size, financials and investment theses have a huge role to play but I also think that those things can come secondary to what the VC’s personal world view is. I’m fascinated to understand how much of investing is down to gut and experience as opposed to the rigorous due diligence and technology evaluation that is often cited.
Getting that breadth of experience was one of the reasons why I was so keen to work in Launchpad, bp’s technology business-building team. They operate like a startup, bring in early stage companies, back them in every way possible with funding, technology expertise and growth hacking to make them even more successful. I’m still very early in my Launchpad journey but I’m super excited to learn from the tech team’s wealth of experience and to get exposure to the process of identifying promising companies, if possible.
For now, my view of what makes a company a great prospect boils down to four key questions:
Is the technology good and is it solving a real problem?
Would I use the company’s product?
Am I excited by the narrative of the company and its founder(s)?
Can I clearly see how the company could generate revenue?
These questions may be extremely basic but when I reflect on the companies that I deeply admire now like Tesla, Uber, Apple and Twitter I think they each address those questions with force. So, with my primitive questions for identifying valuable investment opportunities at hand, here is a list of companies I think have potential.
Obviously, I don’t have the money/network to be able to invest in these companies but if I could, I would. Some of these you may have heard of, others maybe not, I’ll leave it up to you to research and decide if I need to read a few more books on VC.
Thanks for reading!