Roland Reynolds, Industry Ventures

On this episode of Origins, we sit down with Roland Reynolds, a managing partner at Industry Ventures. Industry Ventures is a fascinating “full stack venture capital firm.” Their funds invest into companies and venture capital partnerships through both primary and secondary transactions, which is an important part of the venture ecosystem that we have yet to cover on the Origins podcast. We cover a lot in this episode — including Roland’s experience working earlier in his career at JP Morgan and Columbia Capital, as well as founding one of the first dedicated micro-VC fund of funds more than ten years ago. Roland’s firm, Little Hawk Capital, was an LP in Industry Ventures, and ultimately merged into it to begin their primary fund of funds business. What we found most interesting about this conversation was the breadth of the Industry Ventures business — their flexibility to approach the venture landscape in many different ways — as buyers of other LP’s positions in VC funds, as well as secondary buyers of individuals and employees shares in VC funds and companies, as primary investors in VC funds, and finally as direct investors in startups. Industry has the ability, and in fact mandate, to do it all. We learned a lot in this episode and think you will too.