LA Venture

Eric Manlunas joins us to explain all the different things that Wavemaker is doing--starting with $250-500k seed checks, anchoring other funds like Wavemaker 360 and Thin Line and even building companies at Wavemaker Labs with Buck Jordan.

Tom McInerney is a full-time angel investor with 120 angel investments.  He shares how he gets into rounds like Clubhouse, Tala, Segment, his view of investing during Covid, and why he spends time hanging out in Clubhouse.

Adam Lilling probably has the coolest job.  He's the founder and managing partner at Plus Capital, where he works with celebrities like Ellen and Portia who want to invest in growing companies (post-seed) that align with their values.

Today we chat with Deb Benton about her new fund, Willow, that she founded with Amanda Schutzbank.  Deb is on the board of Carbon38, TomboyX, The Leaf Group and she has all sorts of insight on how to do consumer investing well and what sort of metrics to look for.

Don Stalter and David Resnekov are colleagues at GFC (Global Founders Capital), a $1.2B fund that will invest pre-product all the way through later growth rounds and will even lead multiple rounds for a company.  Interesting, entrepreneurial approach to VC.

So interesting talking to Brendan Wallace about how he built Fifth Wall to $1.2B in 3.5 years. We talk about how the retail landscape is changing, how the work week will change and hopefully how the carbon impact of real estate will change.

Jason Schoettler started Calibrate Ventures where he invests in advanced automation (usually Series A).   He and long-time partner Kevin Dunlap have made some really good investments (Ring, Dollar Shave Club) and some newer pretty cool looking ones (check out the Moxie video).     We talk about why he feels comfortable investing in hardware (when there's a subscription), how to be a good board member, and much more.

Dovi Frances is the founder of Group11 VC, one of the nation’s top decile performing FinTech funds. Group11 has led fintech investments into category defining companies such as Tipalti, Sunbit, TripActions and next insurance to name a few. (Series A sweet spot). Dovi is a bold thinker who isn’t afraid to throw jabs at other venture capitalists for hosting too many lavish parties and yoga sessions. This one is a fun listen.

Blue Bear Capital invests in technologies for the energy sector ($1-4M first check).  We talk with Ernst and Vaughn about the energy supply chain, the growth of renewables and what Ernst calls BroPEC.

One of the newest partners at Upfront, Aditi Maliwal, tells us about her path to partner, her investments in Chime, BetterUp, and her time in Google corp dev.