For Private Equity and VC Portfolio Firms
I founded a VC business, Assembly Capital Partners, in 2018. This focused on B2B Fintech in the UK. Assembly was the first venture investor in e.g., Instanda and Landbay. In investment banking and venture capital, I have seen human capital failures cause individuals, teams – and even whole firms -- to fail. Leaders without a vision, tactics over strategy, founders who could neither delegate nor build a bench, teams with no communication. This has motivated me to focus on human capital optimization, working with senior executives and Founders.
Are there Founders or senior team members in your portfolio who need help? I’m happy to coach them, subject to mutual fit. I understand their world and yours. As an objective partner, I can help the team meet their own goals whilst they secure your investment returns.
I came to venture capital from a very different (public markets) background. I was fortunate to identify and invest in the firms that I did. I expected innovation which can drive a scaleable business model to be very rare, and this turned out to be perfectly true. Much more surprising was that businesses often fail – and do so predictably --because of human capital issues.
A key insight of Nobel Prize winner, Joel Mokyr, is that Schumpeterian growth (driven by innovation that scales and which transforms an industry) is much rarer than Smithian growth (driven by trade and efficient capital markets). The power law of VC returns and talent is implicit in this.
One-to-one founder and senior executive coaching can help individuals improve decision-making and execution. A good coach facilitates the ability to:
• prioritize
• deliver accountably
• manage risk-taking
• deal with the unexpected
• attract and retain “power law” talent, and,
• to communicate with clients, the team and providers of capital.
Conflicts of interest in coaching are, I believe, real and under-studied. When I coach someone I have in mind their interests and well-being. This means confidentiality is a given, as is going wherever the coaching leads. Investor and investee should already have made sure there is alignment of interests.