Scientist asks a VC: How do VCs ‘add value’?
Welcome to a new part of a Venture Capital Primer for Scientists series based on hundreds of workshops I have given during my work as a deep tech VC at Main Sequence.
In early stage venture, investors add value beyond capital.
Bill Bartee, our Managing Partner at Main Sequence, often says “We’ll do anything it takes — we’ll mop the floors if we need to.”
Deep tech companies have much to build and generally need all the help they can get.
You should ask VCs what — specifically — they can do to help. Here’s how I would answer for Main Sequence.
A partnership to build
We’ll be at your side as you grow doing real work, not just advising, often learning. Some weeks you won’t need us. Other weeks you will need us a lot. In my case, I work with most of the companies that I have invested in on a weekly basis.
Most of this is structured around our slam dunk financing plan for the next round. We imagine the best possible step-change in value and the milestones that will deliver it. Then we make it happen.
X-portfolio & industry collaboration to build the category
We work across the portfolio to help companies deliver advantage to each other. For example, combining ingredients into revolutionary new food products, building new products combining sensors and quantum software, co-investing in shared infrastructure, educating government and industry together what is possible.
We spend time with industry building a community of innovators in large companies who want to understand the world we are building. They teach us about their market and give us special access.
We run projects to facilitate the discovery and emergence of new categories. e.g. there is no quantum computing market yet… well, its coming.
We run weekly/monthly education and peer support sessions for different parts of the portfolio to come together and learn.
Talent network to build your team
Our People & Culture team help look for talent, collaborate on designing the org chart for the months to come, build your bench, co-design compensation plans and ESOPs, facilitate diversity and creation of remarkable cultures.
Investor network to build your next round
Believe it or not we spend a lot of time raising capital. Many rounds are built peer-to-peer between investors who have a common interest in a thesis.
In Main Sequence this is a combination of personal networks which are nurtured over decades and an institutionalised network supported with software and people.
Packaging Services to tell the story
Science driven companies often begin with some IP and the rest of the company needs to be built quickly. We have a number of services to package a company quickly into the best version of itself for the outside world including:
Messaging and PR
Design
Prototyping & industrial design
Voice Capital to extend your reach
Recently we created Voice Capital — a curated community of cultural leaders from music, movies and sport. This powerful community invests their voice as well as their capital into our companies and helps explain their impact to the world.
Venturing is more like movie production than banking.
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Every day, I write about what I am learning in deep tech venture building. I hope you will follow me if this is valuable to you ⇢ @philmorle
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