Venture Studio

This week, Dave interviews Michael Yavonditte the founder and CEO of Yieldmo and an active angel investor in New York City. If you’re a fan of The Studio, you can find more episodes at venturestudio.org or soundcloud.com/venture-studio. Subscribe on iTunes and never miss an interview. As always, you can find us on Twitter @VentureStudio. Prior to founding Yieldmo, Mike worked at AltaVista, was CEO of Quigo (which he sold to AOL in 2007 for $360MM), founded Hashable and began angel investing. In this episode, Michael and Dave discuss YieldMo, some thoughts on startup company boards, and how Mike spots entrepreneurs he wants to invest in. You can find Mike on Twitter at @MikeYavo.

In this week’s episode, we welcome Stephanie Palmeri of SoftTech VC. Dave and Steph discuss SoftTech’s growth as a microVC, how crowded the competitive landscape really is for seed-stage founders, and the case for having a west coast investor on your cap table. At SoftTech, Steph has led investments in Poshmark, True & Co, Clever, Handshake, Grovo, Panorama Education, Lantern, and ClassDojo. She is currently on the board of Chariot, Educents, Envoy, Fatherly, and Spoon University. She also led the firm’s investment in Niche, which was acquired by Twitter. One of SoftTechVC’s most notable investments to date is Fitbit, which went public in June of 2015 with a valuation of about $4.1 billion. SoftTech’s founder Jeff Clavier has also been a guest on Venture Studio- you can find his episode on our iTunes or SoundCloud pages.

In this week's episode of Venture Studio, we welcome back one of our favorite guests, David Tisch, who runs Box Group, an early stage venture investment fund based in New York. The last time David was on Venture Studio (see Episode 1 of the podcast), he had just finished the first class of Tech Stars New York and had recently started angel investing through Box Group. Since then, Box Group has become one of the most prolific New York-based seed investing firms, having backed over 150 companies including Warby Parker, Blue Apron, Class Pass, Harry’s, Handy, and Spring, which David co-founded. Box Group has some notable exits including Sunrise, Vine and Behance. In this episode, David talks about why investors get so much press coverage these days, what it means to “add value” as an investor, how and why he co-founded Spring, and why the NYC ecosystem continues to move in the right direction.

In today's episode, Dave chats with Joanne Wilson- a prolific angel investor in New York and a major supporter of the city’s startup ecosystem. Joanne Wilson began angel investing in New York after careers in retail, wholesale, media, non-profit, education and real estate. Her portfolio now has over 80 companies and some highlights include investments in LittleBits, Justworks, One Fine Stay and Blue Bottle Coffee. Joanne blogs regularly at gothamgal.com and you can find her on twitter @thegothamgal. Joanne is an outspoken supporter of women entrepreneurs and the co-founder of Women Entrepreneurs Festival.

In today’s episode, Dave interviews Alex Iskold, a 2 time founder, an angel investor, and the Managing Director of Techstars New York. Techstars is one of the most prominent startup accelerators in the world. Techstars make entrepreneurship accessible by opening doors to capital, mentorship, marketing, business development, customer acquisition, and talent recruitment. Like many accelerators, Tech Stars runs 13-week programs and also invests in its member companies. Today’s guest Alex Iskold founded GetGlue, which was acquired in 2013 and Information Laboratory which was acquired in 2003. Alex writes a great blog about startups and venture capital at alexiskold.net and you can follow him on twitter at @alexiskold.

In this week’s episode, Dave chats about foxes, hedgehogs and Columbia Lions with company builder and angel investor Amol Sarva. Amol co-founded several startups including Virgin Mobile USA, Peek, Halo Neuroscience, Knotable, BEMAVEN, Knotel, and he also built a building in New York called East of East. He studied cognitive science for his Ph.D. at Stanford with an undergraduate degree from Columbia. Amol blogs regularly at amol.sarva.co and you can see a list of his investments at sarva.co. His personal website is amolsarva.com.

John Frankel is the head of ff Venture Capital, an early-stage New York venture capital firm that includes some of the web’s hottest startups in its portfolio. Check out our Venture Studio Vault interview with Frankel to learn what motivates him as an investor, why he’s so attracted to early stage companies and his thoughts on where the next tech bubble will manifest. This interview was originally released on October 24, 2011.

Another edition of the Venture Studio Vault. In this interview from May 2011, Dave chats with the multi-talented Bo Peabody, co-founder of Village Ventures. Prior to Village Ventures, Bo co-founded and sold Tripod, the original social network. Bo was one of very few venture investors who was bullish on media and content in 2009/2010/2011, with founding experience or investments in Everyday Health (which is now public), Babble, VoodooVox and HealthGuru Media. Bo wrote a great book called “Lucky or Smart” in 2005, which is based on his experience at Tripod. To answer the “Lucky or smart” question for himself, Bo often says that he was “smart enough to realize he was getting lucky.” Today, Bo is a Venture Partner at Greycroft Partners, based in New York City.

Today we have another classic episode from the Venture Studio Vault. Originally recorded in May 2011, Dave interviewed Jeff Clavier, an angel investor who helped build the microVC ecosystem. Jeff is the founder of SoftTech VC, one of the pioneers in the recent boom of high-volume sub $100MM seed funds. SoftTechVC is based in the Bay Area but Jeff and his team spend a lot of time in NYC with their portfolio companies. At the time of this recording, SoftTechVC III had just launched, with a target of $35MM, but ultimately closed at $55MM. Today, SoftTechVC is investing out of its $85MM forth fund. One of SoftTechVC’s most notable investments to date is Fitbit, which went public in June 2015 with a market cap of $4.1BN billion. Today, Fitbit has a market cap north of $7.5BN.

In this episode, originally from May 2011, Dave interviewed Matt Harris, the co-founder of Village Ventures. Two companies that Dave and Matt discuss in this interview are BankSimple and On Deck Capital. Village Ventures lead Simple’s $2.9MM Series A Round in September 2010. In 2014, BBVA acquired Simple for $117MM. As for OnDeck Capital, Village Ventures participated in the Series A round in January 2006. OnDeck went public in December 2014 with a valuation of about $1.3BN. At the time of this recording, OnDeck had originated $130MM in loans. At IPO, it’s origination volume was up to $1.7BN. In 2012, Matt Harris joined Bain Capital Ventures, where he leads the New York office and focuses primarily on financial services investments.

Originally recorded in April 2011, in this episode Dave interviewed the CEO and co-founder of Thrillist, Ben Lerer. Dave and Ben talk about the founding story of Thrillist and its 2011 acquisition of JackThreads. Ben also discusses Lerer Ventures, a seed fund that he and his father started 2010. Now Lerer Hippeau Ventures, the fund has become one of the most active seed funds in New York. Some notable portfolio companies include MakerBot, Warby Parker, Refinery29, Plated, SailThru, Birchbox, Brit+Co, RebelMouse and Casper Mattresses.

Originally recorded in April 2011, in this episode, Dave interviewed David Tisch. At the time of the recording, David and his team had just completed Techstars New York’s first cycle - this interview took place two days after Techstars’ first demo day in New York at Webster Hall. Dave and David talk about the origins of Techstars New York, how to build a great accelerator class, and some of the most exciting companies from that first Techstars NYC class. David also discusses angel investing through his investment firm Box Group. At the time of the interview, Box Group had invested in 27 companies. Now, Box Group has become one of the most prolific New York-based seed investing firms, having backed over 150 companies including Warby Parker, Blue Apron, Class Pass, Harry’s, Handy, and Spring, which David co-founded. Box Group has some notable exits including Sunrise, Vine and Behance.