By: Ben Freeberg
It’s more about the people than anything else. Scout Ventures, one of Alpha Venture Partners’ more than 50 partner Venture Capital firms, loves to spend time meeting with founders and entrepreneurs early in the company’s life-cycle, well before Scout would write a check. By forming relationships with the startups early, they learn what the company is working on and what the future iterations could be.
For Entrepreneurs:
Entrepreneurs don’t always get feedback when a VC firm passes. So, here’s what Scout seeks.
Do you have relevant experience in the industry or starting a prior company? If neither the founder themselves nor early team members have that experience, focus on explaining upfront why the team itself is well-positioned to be successful in the field.
If your company is a SaaS platform, be sure to bring on team members who have either built a similar product or have extensive experience on the sales front. Enterprise sales experience is crucial to success, especially having managers who know how to coach and manage a sales team. Scout is looking for management teams who have already lived through the experience and understand the process. Convince us that you are able to build the top of the sales funnel effectively and then move prospective clients throughout the pipeline.
For VCs:
At the seed stage of investing, Scout believes that venture investing is a team sport. Therefore, it’s vital to get many strong, value-add VCs looking at a deal and eventually investing alongside each other.
Whether it is opening up your firm’s rolodex, helping to build out a company’s sales team or advising on strategic partnerships, it is imperative for VC firms to work together to help build strong companies. There are many ups and downs in early stage startups, so founders seek investors who are there to assist and advise them. If Scout, or one of their portfolio companies, could be helpful as your firm is diligencing an investment opportunity or supporting one of your own portfolio companies, please reach out.
Scout’s Startup Spotlight:
Liveninja is on a mission to humanize the way people do business online. Using the latest advancements in real-time technology, LiveNinja provides a suite of tools that enable businesses to serve their customers in the most natural and effective way possible. LiveNinja joined Scout’s portfolio just over one year ago.
The Company recently closed a $2 million round, bringing total funding to date up to $3.5 million, to launch LiveNinja Messenger. The new product will make it easier for businesses to manage conversations, no matter where or how the customer chooses to engage. The ability to embed this product into a company’s website is truly differentiating LiveNinja from other messenger applications currently in use.
Scout wrote the initial check with full knowledge that it would take some work to accelerate the growth of the platform. Scout helped reorganize the business and change its model from a B2C to a B2B focus. They brought in several later stage investors, including Comcast Ventures and Citi Ventures, and helped identify a in VP of sales who had extensive experience at Adobe and Microsoft. We are excited to see this company continue to grow and develop as it puts their most recent capital raise to work.
Thank you to Brendan Syron and the Scout Ventures team for helping to pioneer our initiative to showcase our incredible partner Venture Capital firms as they seek out great investment opportunities and meet like-minded investors and entrepreneurs. Scout is at the outset of launching its 3rd fund, taking the lessons they have learned investing over the past few years to solidify their investment strategy and continue to help build great businesses. Please email Ben Freeberg at ben@alphavp.com to have your firm highlighted in a future post.