New to VC is an educational series for a group of relatively new investors who want to be exposed to the best venture and startup thinking. Each event is attended by accredited investors and non-partner VCs that skew intentionally, but not exclusively, toward underrepresented backgrounds.
The platform role comes in many flavors from fund to fund--and some venture professionals have used it as a springboard to joining the investment side. Others are moving from investing to various types of portfolio support. We'll discuss the role and the career paths around it with three venture professionals who have experience on both sides of the investment and platform teams.
Speakers:
Olivia O'Sullivan, Partner at Forum Ventures
At Forum, Olivia leads a word-class Platform team that spans across investing, marketing, community-engagement, GTM support, and fundraising. We're on a mission to make the entrepreneurial journey more accessible, and successful, for early-stage B2B SaaS founders. Through our studio, accelerator, and seed fund we've backed 300+ startups that have gone on to raise $1B+ in follow-on funding. In addition to Forum, Olivia is an active angel-investor, mentor and ultra-marathoner!
Forum Ventures is the leading early-stage fund, program and community for B2B SaaS startups. Founded in 2014 as Acceleprise, we’re on a mission to make the B2B SaaS journey easier, more accessible and successful for early-stage founders, through pre-seed and seed-stage funding, high touch programming, corporate perks and introductions, and an active SaaS community.
Cat Middleton, General Partner at The Venture Collective
By way of background, Cat spent a decade operating in early stage startups before joining the Primary Ventures partnership where she played a critical role in shaping the firm's post-investment approach for the better part of five years. Today, she is a General Partner and founding team member at The Venture Collective (TVC), a transformational, early-stage venture firm backed by world class entrepreneurs and business leaders. Led by a seasoned team of venture investors, ex-founders, and investment management executives, they invest their capital, time, and network into highly defensible, fast-growing companies with the potential to solve the world’s largest problems. In her spare time, Cat also works closely with the W Fund, ADP Ventures, and PeopleTech Partners. If you'd like to get in touch, she is @thecatmiddleton on all the social networks.
The Venture Collective (TVC) is a transformational, early-stage venture firm backed by world-class entrepreneurs and business leaders. Led by a seasoned team of venture investors, ex-founders, and investment management executives, we invest our capital, time, and network into highly defensible, fast-growing companies with the potential to solve the world’s largest problems. Our strategy is grounded on writing high conviction checks at Pre-Seed and Seed with healthy follow-on reserves through Series A; demonstrating deep value to enable increased ownership over time.
Lexi Quirk, Head of Product and Platform at 645 Ventures
Lexi Quirk is the Head of Product and Platform at 645 Ventures. As Head of Product, Lexi guides the development of their proprietary software, Voyager, in alignment with the firm's investment strategies. She works closely with the 645 engineers, developing the product roadmap and ensuring the platform evolves to meet the firm's needs. Lexi also leads the 645 Ventures' platform team, which aids founders in PR, recruiting, and Go-To-Market tasks.
645 Ventures is an early-stage venture capital firm that partners with exceptional founders who are building iconic companies. We manage $550m AUM, and we invest at the Seed and Series A stages and leverage our Voyager software platform to enable our Success team and Connected Network to help founders scale to the growth stage. Select portfolio companies that have reached the growth stage include Iterable, Goldbelly, Resident, Eden Health, FiscalNote, and Squire.
Sponsors:
Haymaker is a public relations firm based in New York, which works with the most exciting high-growth companies operating in the U.S., including Oatly, G2, Gympass, and Pipedrive.
Cooley LLP — Our lawyers advise venture capital firms, corporate VCs, growth equity firms, family offices and high-growth companies on 1,700+ private financings each year. We understand all angles and offer support at all stages of investment. Our integrated, cross-disciplinary team can take you from fund formation to investment to exit, partnering with your internal resources to guarantee seamless collaboration and offering the specialty platform you need to support your portfolio companies.
This is event is hosted by nextNYC. To learn more about nextNYC and/or sign up for their newsletter, visit http://next.nyc