Operational Support

Obviously, if we fund hundreds of startups per year, we cannot provide every one of them intensive one-on-one support. That’s the bad news. The good news is that we believe we can provide something better.

Although there are obvious logistical considerations that prevent us from taking board seats on hundreds of companies, we also believe that the standard VC model of support is not relevant or appropriate for seed-stage companies. At the seed stage, regular board meetings are a distraction, not a benefit. Furthermore, the support that a typical seed-stage company needs is much broader than any one individual, or board member, can ever provide.

Initially, we'll be working with incubators and angels to make sure our portfolio companies have accesss to the help they need. Then as we ramp up, we'll be building an internal advisory board. Eventually, this board will include experts across all operational and technical areas (sales, marketing, software development, outsourced manufacturing, HR, fundraising, etc and be available as a free resource to all of our portfolio companies. If a company needs sales help one month, it can work with a sales expert. If it needs HR help another month, it can work with an HR expert. When it’s time to fundraise, it can work with a fundraising expert. The goal is to give each portfolio company access to the help it needs, when it needs it.

Furthermore, we'll actively promote collaboration and sharing of best practices across our portfolio companies. Too often, startups operate in relative isolation. This is true even in a highly concentrated startup environment such as Silicon Valley. The reason is that founders and early employees tend to spend every waking moment living and breathing their new company. However, at RSCM we ask the question, “What would happen if the heads of marketing of each of our portfolio companies had a beer or breakfast once a month with 6-8 heads of marketing of other similar stage companies?” And what if this was also happening for the heads of sales and software engineering? The answer, we believe, is that all companies would benefit enormously from this information exchange. The problem is that these types of events do not come together on their own. We plan on facilitating these gatherings in geographic areas where we have multiple portfolio companies.