How We Work

We love working together with entrepreneurs to turn something good into something great. Our history is one of leveraging our relationships to grow teams, attracting partners and customers, and then — together with founders — we build billion-dollar businesses. We are active partners who do everything we can for our companies. We haven’t forgotten how to hustle or get into the trenches with our companies at every stage. We are patient investors and strive to work together to build enduring companies that stand the test of time.

Our strategic advice and creative ideas help you think outside the box. We can guide you in changing the rules or assess when “good” isn’t good enough. We ask you, and ourselves, hard questions: Are we working to protect against the worst scenario? Are we leveraging the upside? Are we planning for assets as well as liabilities? Every business goes through pivotal moments: caving on a term or losing a customer, canceling a product line or keeping it in market, erring on a key hiring decision. We have made most of these mistakes before. Now we can help you find someone in our portfolio to help you think through next steps.

Our style is very direct and straightforward. We are not here to be your friends or to control ownership; we are all about helping you build a business. We prefer brutal honesty to hypocritical politeness. You won’t have to guess what we’re thinking; even if we have a hard conversation, it’s because we think it helps you as an entrepreneur.

We can have strong opinions, and will challenge you without confronting you. (If you’re uncomfortable with this approach, we’re probably not a fit.) Once we pick a management team, we back it and don’t second-guess it. In our board roles, we seldom vote against a management team. Instead, we are here to challenge your team to think ahead, think bigger, and consider impending pitfalls.