Solo-GP #2: David Yakobovitch, DataPower Ventures: Niching down a thesis on data-powered companies

"Solo-GP Series" ep. 2, with David Yakobovitch, Solo-GP @ DataPower Ventures (datapower.vc) and On Deck Angels Fellow.

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If you’d love to learn more about how to become a Solo-GP, look for this upcoming series on Venture Notes (venturenotes.co) our private newsletter where we will share the full episodes while we just publish a 15min excerpt on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

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Even more startup founders are onboarding in their captable non traditional VC firms, in the form of Solo-GPs, via nano-funds or syndicates.

Most of the time, these Solo-GPs are operators-investors, meaning that they have a dual profile

• on one hand their run their startups or are part of a fast-growing startup as a key hire, and
• on the other hand they are growing a deal flow and a community of founders & LPs which allows them to raise a nano-fund or develop a syndicate

Over the past 3 years, we have been witnessing this increasing population of such Solo-GPs.

Still some operators with this potential profile have not launched yet, for various reasons

• they are unsure about their value-add
• they are unsure about how to structure it
• they are unsure about quality & repeatability of their deal-flow…

... and many other questions.

That is why I am launching with the help of On Deck a short series Called “Solo-GP Series” to help you kickstart your thinking about becoming an operator-investor / Solo-GP. In this short “Solo-GP Series” podcast series, you’ll understand

• how to identifyyou actually have a deal flow and how to develop and nurture it the tipping point to launch as a Solo-GP
• how to craft a compelling thesis
• how to build an LP community …

… plus so much more.

I'm in the process of launching my solo-gp pre-seed fund, Olive Capital, focusing on web3 European founders driving change in the way we Create, Collaborate and Communicate.. If you are raising fund, send us your deck! If you want to learn more, head to olivecapital.vc.

In this second episode of the “Solo-GP Series” podcast, we get to know David Yakobovitch, who lives a true passion for data. David is also an On Deck Angel Fellow and a Solo-GP: during the pandemic, David launched DataFrame Ventures which invested in 20 data-driven companies. Now, David has transformed DataFrame Ventures to DataPower Ventures, in a move that puts a differentiated emphasis on Data that he explains in this show. In this 4-part episode, David shares with us a greate amount of insights and actionable pieces of advice while driving us through

• how & why he started a career in data and to develop a unique understanding on the power of it
• how he started investing, his initial source of dealflow
• how he started to add value to the startups he has been backing and a lot of examples of investments David has made in the data space
• how his thesis was becoming clearer along the way
• why David decide to move away from an undifferentiated data-driven focus to a specific data-powered focus and his 5 unique thematics David is focusing on
• why shaping a thesis changes how you are perceived by the founders community and the implication on the dealflow
• the importance of building an LP community... + so much more.

I am sure you will love this episode, lets get right in.

-- These podcasts are produced by UPCOMINGVC® upcoming.vc, created and hosted by Raphael Grieco.