My guest for Ep191 of The Startup Playbook Podcast was Stew Glynn.

Stew started his investing career after joining Shark Tank’s Steve Baxter in building out his family office, Transition Level Investments.

In 2019, they then launched TEN13 VC, where Stew is a Co-founder & Managing Partner. TEN13 is a global deal by deal venture capital firm that has invested $100M across 80 portfolio companies.

They have built up an incredible portfolio of companies including the likes of Linktree, Go1, Clipchamp and me&u (formerly known as Mr. Yum).

In this episode we covered a wide range of topics including

• How his childhood experiences in Zimbabwe shaped his view towards risk and business
• The pros and cons of the deal by deal investing model
• TEN13’s approach to network based investing
• Lessons from investing $100M across 80 companies
• & much more

Timestamps

• 2:05 Stew’s background
• 15:11 How growing up in Zimbabwe shaped his views on innovation and investing
• 19:34 Advice to founders on overcoming challenging times
• 30:07 Staying in the game long enough to find product market fit
• 35:47 Meeting and working with Steve Baxter, the origins of TEN13
• 40:37 The decision to make TEN13 a community based, deal by deal investing structure compared to a traditional venture fund
• 48:23 Benefits and challenges of the deal by deal structure for founders and investors
• 53:41 Investing in Australian vs international startups
• 58:32 How TEN13 supports their portfolio companies
• 1:03:43 How Stew supported the Mr Yum team on their merger with me&u
• 1:08:23 The sectors Stew is currently excited to invest in

Our partners

A big thank you to Holly Cardew, Brendan Hill and An Vo for their help with this interview!

Also a big shout out to our partners for the show:

Scendar 

Scendar is the OG startup accounting firm in Australia catering to all stages of your business’ life. If you’re busy running your startup, you don’t have time to do your own books and forecast. Instead, fully outsource your finance function, giving you time and resources back to focus on what you do best in growing your business. Find out more at Scendar.com

Vanta

Vanta helps businesses get — and stay — compliant by automating up to 90% of the work for the most in-demand compliance frameworks. And with over 300 integrations, you can easily monitor and secure the tools your business relies on.
Join over six thousand fast-growing companies that use Vanta to manage risk and prove security in real time.
Startup Playbook Podcast listeners get access to an exclusive offer of USD$1000 off their plans. Head over to vanta.com/playbook to get access to this exclusive discount.

Links mentioned

Stew’s links:

• Stew’s LinkedIn
• Stew’s Twitter/X
• TEN13

People mentioned:

• Steve Baxter
• Alex Zatarain
• Adir Shiffman
• Phil Knight – Shoe Dog
• Alexander Dreiling
• Holly Cardew
• Liam Millward
• Brendan Hill
• An Vo
• Kim Teo
• Adrian Osman
• Bevan Slattery

Companies mentioned:

• Transition Level Investments
• KPMG
• General Electric
• Eight Sleep
• Nike
• Clipchamp
• Carted
• Instant
• SAP
• Tola Capital
• Microsoft
• Spotify
• Go1
• Y Combinator
• Atlassian
• Canva
• River City Labs
• PIPE Networks
• TPG
• Car Next Door / Uber Carshare
• DoseMe
• Playbook Ventures
• Rockfish Data
• Mr Yum / me&u
• Airtree
• Everlab

Feedback/connect/say hello:

Rohit@startupplaybook.co
@RohitBhargava7 (Twitter)
/rohbhargava (LinkedIn)
@rohit_bhargava (Instagram)
My Youtube Channel

Credits:

Music: Paycheck

Other channels:

Find all of the links for the podcast on Linktree here

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