Global Founders Capital’s Don Stalter on their belief in larger portfolios, managing a global investment firm, and building systems and processes to deliver value at scale

Follow me @samirkaji for my thoughts on the venture market, with a focus on the continued evolution of the VC landscape.

On this week’s Venture Unlocked episode, we had the pleasure of hosting Donald Stalter, Partner at Global Founders Capital, a global multi-stage venture firm that has raised $1.6B across two funds and has backed companies such as Kalshi (led by Don), Deel, Headway, Slack, Away, Hellofresh, and Brex. The firm has a very unique model that employs capital across geographies, stages, and industry sectors, and Don provided insight on how the firm executes on this strategy so effectively.

Previously Donald co-founded CityDeal, which he later sold to Groupon where he built Groupon's international offices in Europe and Asia. He subsequently led BD at Airbnb global.

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In this episode we discuss:

01:36 Don’s journey into Venture Capital

03:18 How being an operator influenced Don’s path as an investor

06:30 What is Global Founders Capital mission and focus?

09:08 The fund construction model for Global Founders Capital

10:27 How they balance growth vs. early stage and how location factors into their investments

12:50 How Don and his team add value at scale across his portfolio

14:45 How their operations team and investments team work together

17:20 The risk/return Global Founders Capital underwrites to and their return targets

20:32 How the frothiness of the market in growth-stage investments affects how they approach growth investing.

22:52 The non-obvious opportunities for global investments

25:03 How the firm manages global investing out of a single fund

26:20 The benefit of bringing a strong operations background to global investing

28:30 Global Founders Capital’s pitch to LP

30:13 Differences between US LPs and international LPs

31:28 Recapping the recent market conditions and what the future looks like

33:38 What is the most counterintuitive lesson he’s learned as an investor

34:37 The investor he admires

35:32 The firm he feels is the best in the world

Mentioned in this episode:Global Founders CapitalFelicis Ventures

I’d love to know what you took away from this conversation with Donald. 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.

Podcast Production support provided by Agent Bee Agency

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ventureunlocked.substack.com