Greg Sands of Costanoa Ventures on building a boutique Venture Firm, firm culture, and portfolio theory - Venture Unlocked 010

In this episode, we speak to industry veteran Greg Sands, who founded Costanoa Ventures after spending 13 years at Sutter Hill Ventures. Prior to Sutter Hill, Greg serves as the first product manager of Netscape (where he wrote the initial product plan and coined the name “Netscape”).

He founded Costanoa Ventures as a boutique early stage firm to solve for a gap he saw between seed stage funds and larger lifecycle firms. The firm primarily invests in B2B seed stage companies in categories such as the Future of work, Fintech, Data/Machine learning, and security.

Although the firm employs a traditional craft approach to venture capital investing, their model is unique in many ways including the incubation/co-creation of companies and the use of in-house operating partners to add value to portfolio founders.

In this episode, Greg and I discuss:

* What was it like leaving Sutter Hill and raising a fund for the very first time as a solo-GP.

* The role of having mentors and champions around you when starting off.

* How he thinks about hiring team members.

* What it means to build and maintain a culture designed for durability.

* Why they take a relatively concentrated approach to investing, and how this translates to portfolio construction theory.

* Why venture is a service business.

Mentioned in this episode:

* Costanoa Ventures

I’d love to know what you took away from my conversation with Greg Sands. Follow me @SamirKaji and give me your insights and questions with the hashtag #ventureunlocked. If you’d like to be considered as a guest or have someone you’d like to hear from (GP or LP), drop me a direct message on Twitter.

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