We believe diverse teams win.
It is our collective experience that the unique cross-pollination of viewpoints, backgrounds, styles, and experiences that emerges from a diverse team drives creativity, innovation, decision-making, and success.
Research backs this up: diverse teams drive higher shareholder returns and faster revenue growth. According to McKinsey & Company, there is a 12% increase in the likelihood of financial outperformance for companies in the top quartile of gender and ethnic diversity. Moreover, according to HEC Paris Strategy Professor Oliver Gottschalg, who examined over 2,000 realized deals executed by 51 fund managers over 20 years, there is a 12% outperformance in IRR for private equity firms with at least one female on the team in contrast to all-male teams. Similarly, according to Paul Gompers and Silpa Kovvali of Harvard Business School, venture capital firms who increased their proportion of female partner hires by 10% saw on average 9.7% more profitable exits.
This outperformance is at the core of everything we do. Our team and Board are reflective of this belief not only in personal characteristics but also professional backgrounds. Our goal is not to create diversity through only inclusion but rather to create diversity through fostering a true sense of belonging.
We believe innovation is the backbone of financial success.
Technological innovation is the single most important driver of business growth today and moving forward. Companies, new or pre-existing, that build or leverage new technology to address customer needs or business processes build sustainable competitive advantages and create value for all stakeholders.
Our team and Board have spent their careers at the forefront of these innovations as operators, investors, and advisors to cutting-edge companies and management teams. Additionally, research has shown that diversity drives innovation. A study by BCG finds that companies with above average diversity scores have 45% innovation revenue, 19% higher innovation revenue than other companies. These findings were strongest, according to BCG, in sectors that were the most technologically intensive.
We believe increasing diversity in the technology sector is an under-recognized lever to accelerate innovation and growth.
We believe great opportunities should be available to all, and that closing gaps in access is not only good on its own terms, but is also a source of value creation through exploiting market inefficiencies.
We believe in championing talented members of underrepresented groups in our teams and investments. According to the 50/50 Women on Boards Gender Diversity Index, only 5% of companies in the Russell 3000, and only 4% of technology companies, have gender-balanced boards, defined as boards with women holding half, one more, or one less than half the seats. Of similar concern, according to a 2018 Deloitte study, only 11% of board seats in the Fortune 500 are held by men from minority backgrounds and only 4% were held by women from minority backgrounds.
We also believe many companies deserve access to greater resources, including public markets, than are able to reach it through traditional means. Our team and Board’s collection of skills are designed to help close these gaps wherever we can identify them.
We are seeking to partner with a later-stage innovative company. Many such companies are venture or growth capital backed, but struggle to get attention from private growth investors because they are not perceived as “sole market winners” or “unicorns.”
These “Diamonds in the Rough” are strategically well-positioned, high-growth, and with strong management teams, but can achieve far stronger results and create substantially more shareholder value with better access to capital that can serve as rocket fuel: they could augment their executive teams, accelerate investment into growth, and scale more effectively.
Sectors of particular focus and expertise include e-commerce, digital media, enterprise SaaS, and consumer.
Our team brings a diverse set of experiences working with pre-IPO companies to offer a toolkit of value-added capabilities to a partner including executive recruiting, financial readiness, investor relations support, and capital markets expertise. Our team has hands-on operating experience in start-ups, high growth companies, and mature corporations in both private and public company settings.
Our Board includes multiple executives who led pioneering SPAC transactions in the technology sector and can provide unique insight on the process to a potential partner. Our team also brings extensive experience leading capital markets transactions, including IPOs, large-scale M&A and debt financings.
