Richard Kerby, co-founder and general partner at Equal Ventures, shares the journey of Equal Ventures and thought behind Emerging Managers Circle. He provides insights into the investment decision-making process at multi-partner venture capital firms and offers advice on how to position your business for success. Finally, he discusses the issue of diversity in the VC industry.
Richard Kerby, co-founder and general partner at Equal Ventures, shares the journey of Equal Ventures and thought behind Emerging Managers Circle. He provides insights into the investment decision-making process at multi-partner venture capital firms and offers advice on how to position your business for success. Finally, he discusses the issue of diversity in the VC industry.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
[2:55] New York’s is becoming an increasingly attractive hub for startup ecosystem players.
[6:56] Equal Ventures investment philosophy and process; and why consensus doesn't lead to great investment decision making.
[17:09] The hype days are gone. You can’t just tell a story and try to raise money without a real business.
[18:26] Emerging Managers Circle benefits to emerging GPs as they pursue their dreams of starting their own firms.
[21:03] How more diversity at the LP and GP levels can unlock the hidden potential of the startup ecosystem
The non-profit organization that Richard is passionate about: BLCK VC, BVCC
About Guest Speaker
Richard Kerby is Co-founder and General Partner at Equal Ventures. Prior to co-founding Equal Ventures, Richard was an investor at Venrock, where he led seed-stage and Series A stage investments in 6Sense, Amino Apps, Beckon, Burner, Luxe Valet, and Salsify.
Prior to joining Venrock, Richard was an investor at Institutional Venture Partners (IVP),where he focused on identifying and evaluating later-stage investments. While at IVP, Richard worked with IVP portfolio companies such as Dropbox, FleetMatics, PopSugar, Shazam, and Yext. Prior to joining IVP, Richard worked in the Investment Banking Division of Credit Suisse.
About Equal Ventures
Equal Ventures is a New York-based early stage venture capital firm that backs founders and businesses that are disrupting legacy markets. Its core focus areas are retail, care, insurance, supply chain and climate. Portfolio companies include wrapbook, gerry, ODYSSEY, MVMNT, WeeCare, SmartHop, ThreeFlow among others.
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Hustle occurs across every demographic in the world. Diligence is desire to learn about something different or learn more about something you know. There are many people across the globe who want to learn. And then portfolio support is: do you enjoy helping people? Helping is universally seen across every demographic as well. So, I think the fundamental traits of what someone needs to have to succeed in this space are universally seen across every demographic.
Gopi Rangan: You are listening to The Sure Shot Entrepreneur - a podcast for founders with ambitious ideas. Venture capital investors and other early believers tell you relatable, insightful, and authentic stories to help you realize your vision. Welcome to The Sure Shot Entrepreneur. My guest today is Richard Kirby. He's the founder and general partner at Equal Ventures. Equal Ventures is a NYC-based venture capital firm. We're gonna talk to Richard about his investments, the kind of startups he wants to invest in, and the successes he's had, and also how he looks at startups in today's market. Richard, welcome to The Sure Shot Entrepreneur.
Richard Kerby: Thanks for having me, Gopi. It's a pleasure to be here.
Gopi Rangan: Let's start with your journey of where you grew up. You grew up in Queens and then you spent some time on the west coast. You were in the Silicon Valley as well, and then you went back to New York, and now you live there and you started Equal Ventures.
Tell us about your journey, how it started.
Richard Kerby: Sure. So as you mentioned, originally was born in New York at Mount Sinai Hospital here in New York. I actually live like five blocks from there, and so I know this is audio only, but if you looked over my show, you would see the building that was born in, which is a funny little zoom anecdote there.
But yeah, so did that and then eventually went to Georgetown for undergrad. So spent time in DC actually then after graduation, came to New York, worked at Credit Suisse here as an investment banker for a couple years, and then made my way out to the Bay Area and so moved to SF to join a venture firm called Institutional Venture Partners - a later stage fund in the Bay Area. When I was there, the check size was more in the $30 million range. They've since become much, much larger, and so I'm sure their check size has grown even beyond that at this point in time. But I had a great time working there and was able to work on a number of interesting deals in companies like Dropbox, Shazam, FleetMatics, Yext, PopSugar. I had a great time with the team over there and then had an itch to kinda go earlier in stage in venture. So, from there I joined Venrock, also in the Bay Area originally, and spent five years there focusing on series A investing there. Companies like 6Sense and others that I worked on there were also a great experience and a great learning time for me too, which has been fantastic.
I was there five years. Maybe the last year and a half or two years of that I had moved to our New York office. I'm just a New Yorker at heart, so it was great to get back home and then eventually Rick and I started Equal Ventures and so that's where we're at today - running this seed-stage focused firm.
Gopi Rangan: So you are on the east coast and you were on the West Coast. Which is the best coast?
Richard Kerby: East coast. Not any question. I'd say that every day.
Gopi Rangan: I see that your loyalties are very clear.
Richard Kerby: You know, folks in the West coast keep moving to New York and so, you know, must be right. Yeah.
Gopi Rangan: Let's start there. Over the past few years, the venture ecosystem has kind of dispersed and there are a lot of new hubs, and especially New York has blossomed over the past few years.
How did that happen? What's the current situation for venture firms and startups in New York?
Richard Kerby: Sure. Yeah. I think prior to the pandemic, New York had started becoming a more and more of a presence within the tech and venture ecosystems, which I thought was great. Obviously I'm biased in that sense, but I think what really kickstarted it really was, unfortunately, the pandemic that I think really kicked off hybrid work in general. And then as you know, operators and investors realized, 'Hey, I'm able to do my job from multiple places, potentially anywhere. I'm no longer beholden to the Bay Area as the stronghold of the industry. So, if I can build a company and/or work as an investor in any city I want in the United States, for better or worse, lots of people think New York's a really great spot to live in.'
So we've seen massive influx of both operators, founders, investors within the New York ecosystem, which I think has been great. And then I think you're now starting to see the venture firms maybe take it more seriously as a its own entity too, where you're now seeing multiple firms like Andreessen Horowitz and LightSpeed and Index starting to open New York dedicated offices.
We're happy to see more our folks here, we think that's gonna just continue to attract more talent, and if we're looking forward to welcoming more folks in the industry.
Gopi Rangan: Although I live in Silicon Valley, I have invested in New York as well, actually along with you in Gerry and a few other companies in New York. It's great to see New York growing.
When there were startups in a few years ago in New York, they were mainly focused on media or finance. Now I see various other types of industries as well targeted by startups coming out of New York. I hope that trend continues. How did you decide to start Equal Ventures and how is Equal Ventures different from other VC firms?
Richard Kerby: I guess we did our final close either late 2019 or early 2020 and we thought that there was a void for a seed stage focused lead firm, a firm that was gonna take concentrated bets. For us, that means we invest in about four or five companies a year, so not that many. We do that so that we can have the bandwidth to help every company. So we're on the board of 90% of our investments, and we couldn't do that if we're making 10 investments a year. So, making sure that we have the time to spend with each founder and be as helpful as possible was important to us. We thought that there was a founder set that that would work for.
Obviously I think there's also a founder set that says, "Hey, gimme the money and get out of my way." I think that's also a founder set that exists there, but we thought that there was a void there. And one of the things we kept hearing from founders in the raise process and prior to raising was that there wasn't actually a dearth of capital at all. There's plenty of capital. When a founder said, "Hey, I'm raising $3 million. I actually have like $3 million of demand. But all that demand is contingent on who the lead investor is and at what price that is." And so they actually had the capital just kinda waiting there, but it was like lingering and waiting for some fund to say, 'Hey, I'm gonna lead and price a round.'
We decided that we happy to be that firm for folks. And so, you know, we're happy to catalyze rounds. We have no shame in being able to say, "Hey, we think this is a great deal, regardless of who's already committed, and we wanna make sure that we can get you the capital you need and also the support you need to hopefully help you succeed.
Gopi Rangan: Do you have a preference for startups based in New York, or do you invest in other locations also?
Richard Kerby: We invest pretty much anywhere. We have a number of companies in New York. Beyond New York we have companies in Charlotte, North Carolina, Boulder, Colorado, Austin, Texas, Miami, Florida, Los Angeles, California.
Actually, we have, I think, pretty much the most US cover except for San Francisco. We have a single portfolio company there, not like intentionally just that it hasn't happened yet for us, or better or worse.
Gopi Rangan: Ouch. A VC firm not investing in Silicon Valley startups. There are some good. There are a whole set of dynamics that you have to deal with the Silicon Valley startup.
Richard Kerby: Yeah. Our viewpoint is that there are great companies everywhere and we wanna make sure that we can just go wherever they reside and so we don't care where they're located for better or worse else just hasn't happened there for us yet, but I'm sure, well at some point.
Gopi Rangan: You mentioned that you're an early-stage investor. Like how early are your investments? How early is too early and what's your sweet spot?
Richard Kerby: Yes, so we pitch ourselves as a seed stage focused firm. I think there's many definitions for that. The way we try to think of it is, at what point in time is the company roughly 12 months away from being able to raise a Series A? For some companies you can be 12 months away at launch date. For some companies it's pre-launch, you can be 12 months away because the dynamics of your business can grow quite quickly. Or, it takes three, four years to get to that point. And so those different tenures I just mentioned to you are all examples in our portfolio. We invested in companies pre incorporation, pre-launch, been around for a year, been around two years, been around three years, even four years. It's a wide range for us. Again, we wanna be leading the round that's the round directly before the series A. So it could be a seed round, it could be a seed extension, it could be a bridge.
We're pretty much indifferent to what you call it. The more important piece for us is do we think that you 12 months away from having the proof points that a series A investor's gonna wanna see for your particular category? Cause they vary by category, by prog type, and so forth.
Gopi Rangan: The filter you use is that, "can you get to Series A? Will you get the metrics ready for series A in 12 months? And sometimes for startups, it could be at the time of launching their first product, first customer, or some other startups would be a little earlier and you would be okay to invest as early as a pre-revenue companies. Is that right?
Richard Kerby: That's exactly right.
Yeah. Okay. Yeah.
Gopi Rangan: Good.
Richard Kerby: We just closed an investment last week where by the time we signed a term sheet, they were pre-revenue. Between the term sheet and actually closing, they got some revenue, but you know, we're fine investing in companies pre-revenue. It's not like a prerequisite for us.
Gopi Rangan: How many companies do you invest in roughly in a year? I know that you recently raised a new fund. Have things changed and what's your cadence for investments?
Richard Kerby: Sure. Yeah, so always operate the kind of same way and so we invest in about four to five companies per year. There's two of us, myself and Rick, and we each do call it two, maybe three deals a year and that's the pace that we found that's worked well for us and hopefully, our plan is to continue that going forward.
Gopi Rangan: Two to three investments per partner per year is a pretty steady pace, which is kind of the old traditional way of venture capital. Let's talk about how that process works. How long does it take for you to go from the first meeting to say, 'yes, I want to make an investment', and what really happens in the first meeting? Can you take an example of one of your recent investments or one of your old investments where you've had the story play out? How did it start?
Richard Kerby: The sourcing aspect can come from many ways. Sometimes it's folks like yourself who are peers in this space and have found a great company and wanna share with us. We always appreciate that. Other times, you know, got a great team of folks within Equal - Chelsea, Simran, Adam. They're all also hunting in categories that we find compelling. So they're finding companies on their own. And then the other times, there are institutional pre-seed funds that are investing one round ahead of us. So, spending time with our peers at that stage also is another great way for us to find interesting deal flow.
To your next question about the first meeting, it's really trying to get a sense for two things. One, why is this founder or founding team uniquely qualified to go win in this space? And why is the path that they're taking the best path to go with?
I call the first meeting like a sniff test. Could this be a fit for us or not? Most times the answer is no, unfortunately, and so it can be passed after that first meeting. But it's really understanding like, "Hey, should we spend more time on this?" That's the goal for us in a first meeting, effectively. Assuming it does, it goes more into the the due diligence process and for us, the diligence process is twofold. One is figuring out: what are the two or three questions that really matter? Obviously we ask many more than that, but then they were trying to dissect, you know, what are the two or three questions that if we get answers to these questions that will give us conviction to say yes or no.
So the first part is figuring out what those most important points are, and the second part there is figuring out what is the answer those . How we go about answer those questions is basically spending time with the founder and their team as well as folks that we know in the industry to get answers those questions.
And then presuming that that company passes that process, then it's more the formal process of like agree to terms, setting a term sheet and then getting the docs in order for a close. But I'd say from the first meeting to a term sheet being signed, I think the fastest we've done was maybe 10 days, something like that, roughly speaking.
And then I'd say a more standard path for us it's probably like three or four weeks, something like that.
Gopi Rangan: Can you give an example of a story that played out well?
Richard Kerby: Yeah, I think an example would be a company we invested in called wrapbook. Actually maybe it might have been like the second or third investment made in the fund. So it was a pretty earlier investment in Fund 1 for us. It's a company that provides payroll processing and insurance for the entertainment industry. I think what really went well in that first meeting is we could get a real sense of the command. The CEO, a guy named Ali, just knew a space incredibly well. This is also right before the pandemic and so we were having this first meeting in person and so I think it's always just great to spend time people in person to get a sense for who they're, how they operate, what their passion is, why they wanna win in this category.
The second piece is that we just realized that like, wow, this model can be very, very lucrative. Those two points, our ears perked up and we said, "okay, let's try and do similar work here." then the process then became trying to better understand the entertainment payroll space.
Candidly, it wasn't a space that we had spent hours diving into prior to that. But we did the work to get up to speed in that space. That meant talking to former board members of legacy companies in the space, talking to potential customers, former customers that could be customers again down the road for this company.
All of that enabled us to get a good picture of where was their deficiency in the market to date and what's the best path to solving the deficiency. And then we said, "okay, is this team the right team to go after this?" Fortunately, all those things are marked as a yes for us, and we were really excited to make that investment and continue support the company.
Gopi Rangan: So the company very quickly passed the sniff test, and then you spent more time understanding the details and it turned into a good investment. How does the dynamics between you and Rick, your partner, how do you make decisions together? When you say you do two to three deals per person, do you collaborate on these decisions? What happens when you disagree? What's your advice to founders so that they can manage the conversations between the two of you?
Richard Kerby: Yeah, I think most firms can operate this way and that's the fact that we're not consensus. Rick and I do not have to agree on a deal for a deal to happen at Equal Ventures.
I just personally believe that consensus doesn't lead to like great investment decision making. And so I think when you've got like these outlier companies, a room full of 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 people, it's impossible to all agree on these really true outlier companies cause they just look strange. Maybe I find it compelling and you don't. And so you're less likely to wanna say yes and I am more. So, we're not consensus driven.
That said though, we take input from everyone on the team. When we do an investment or making its way through the process for a Equal deal, everyone on the team votes, whether they like to do either or not, they pose their questions, what they like, what they don't like, what they're worried about, what they wanna see answered.
So all that process happens in the background. At the end of the day, Rick and I are the two GPs. One of us is going to decide what we do with that deal, obviously. But I think the key there though is that we're not consensus driven.
To your question on how founders should think about that is really try and figure out what Rick, Richard and the team of Equal are worried about in your investment. Because there is always a question that's like lingering. Help us find answers to those questions as best as possible. I think that's the best way to kind of help guide us through our process there.
Gopi Rangan: The both of you support each other in your thought process. If one person has some worries or concerns, it's good for the founder to address it. You don't need to agree on it, but at least there's a logical way to think about those worries. At the end of it, maybe the two of you will come together on the same decision. And even if you don't, you understand why there are reasons for concern.
Richard Kerby: It's exactly right. I've seen it too at both Venrock and IVP, where most likely one partner is spending the majority of the time on the deal, not like all 3, 4, 5, 6 of them. So by that extension, the person who's spending the most amount of time probably knows the most about the company, the space at point in time, and the founding team.
There's a disservice to the person who joins for one meeting for 30 minutes and then has an opinion on it rather than like spending time. And so I think reward that the person for spending time with a team to understand the space and why it's compelling and you go for it.
Gopi Rangan: What are some areas you're excited about for your investments?
Richard Kerby: We've got themes that flow in and out for us here at Equal. I think one of the current themes that we're diving deeper into is verticalized financial services. So looking for solutions across many different categories where the product is some sort of like workflow improvement, and that workflow improvement gives you access to monetize in an alternative matter - that matter for us being less subscription software revenue, and more so transactional revenue and that transactional revenue can come from the way of payroll, payments, insurance, take rates, commissions, et cetera. And so what that ends up looking like is a lot of vertical software where there's a FinTech revenue model or a lot of B2B marketplaces with the revenue models is more of like a take rate.
Gopi Rangan: This is an evolving area and the future of work is different than what we thought it would be as a result of all the two years of pandemic and working from home. Now it's an interesting time to develop new workflows and new ways to take care of employees. It's a very interesting trend.
When do you say no? What's the main reason?
Richard Kerby: There's a couple of reasons I think that stand out. Usually it's just inability to get excited by the business opportunity, potentially inability to get excited by the founding team as well. And so those are, think the two that are end up being the biggest buckets for us. Actually, there's actually a third that's actually pretty heavy for us too, which is too early.
You asked earlier about like where does Equal sit? And I said we do pre-launch, we do three years in, four years in. But the key is enough wasn't proven out that we believe that you could raise that series a 12 months from now. What I mean by that is you might be raising this round today, but our viewpoint is based on whatever it is you're building, you're actually gonna need like a second seed at some point in time before raising a true A. We'd rather wait for that second seed to jump in at this point in time. And so, the most common reasons we're passing is one three buckets for us.
Gopi Rangan: You said that you want to invest at a stage where the startup is able to raise Series A 12 months from now. Founders tend to be optimistic, so they might believe that, "oh yeah, we'll raise a series A in 12 months," but you have seen hundreds of companies and you have a better view on what is a realistic goal to have a year from now. And if that answer is like, ah, it's gonna take two years, or maybe two and a half years, that's a little too early for you. You would rather wait.
Richard Kerby: Yeah, and we have viewpoints on what the milestones that are needed to achieve that particular series A round. And we may actually agree with the founder on what the milestones are, but disagree on their ability to do so in that timeline. And I think that's the point I'm trying to get at here in particular.
Gopi Rangan: Today's market conditions are weird, volatile may be one way to describe it, but actually really weird. But a lot of fraud happening in crypto and so many other things are unexpected. The hype of 2020 and 2021, they're gone. , what's your advice to founders?
How can they best position themselves to build a business?
Richard Kerby: Focus on solving a real pain point. Oftentimes, folks just want to start our company cause they wanna start our company. If you first find a pain point that takes time, research, speaking to incumbents in the space. You're gonna be able to build a business of some scale. We're all like aiming for these 5, 10, 20 plus billion dollar companies, but like many founders and their teams and employees make awesome outcomes for far less than that by building a business that they're in control of their own destiny.
They built it in a way where it can be self sustaining or profitable or what it might be. And like that's a great outcome for a team if you're able to do that. it's not gonna be maybe like some like 50 billion company, but you're gonna be just fine and your family will be better off and so will those that you worked with as an employee base. So I think it's just finding a real pain point and it takes time to understand like if that pain point you're pushing on is like truly a pain point or it's like a so problem and then figuring out the elegant solution to that pain point. I think those are the two pathways where like you really increase your chance for success.
Gopi Rangan: So go back to fundamentals. Make sure that you are really solving a pain point. It's a real business. The hype days are gone, but you can just tell a story and try to raise money. You want to build a business that really matters for customers and for you. Good advice indeed. I want to talk about something that's close to your heart and how your team supports other venture capital firms.
The Emerging Manager Circle. You formed this group a couple of years ago to help peers in the group where who are raising their first fund, second fund, and that's one of the most difficult things to do. Can you share more details on how you thought about that and why this matters to you?
Richard Kerby: Yeah, I think for us it was just thinking about the painful experience of raising a first fund. It took us, I think like 20 months or so, and so that is a long time in any aspect of doing anything before starting. Two, it's financially draining because you got 20 months of no income and that is terrifying.
If we hadn't done our first close when we did, I would've needed to like be like, I'm out. I don't have more money to like to float anymore. Right. And so that is very, very challenging and tough emerging manager perspective. What we saw was that we made tons of mistakes throughout the process of raising fund one, but these were mistakes that we could have avoided if we had gotten feedback, advice or asked and spoken to the right people.
We said, "Hey, we're all making the same dumb mistakes. Let's just make sure the folks that wanna go after us don't make the same dumb mistakes we did." The whole purpose of that was share learnings, best practices, which LPs to spend time with, which not to spend time with, and that was the whole goal of sharing these best practices.
And then there's a portion of the circle where we also bring in senior LPs and senior GPs to kind of share some insights on both the fundraising side as well as just the firm management side. And that I think, has been really helpful to kinda learn from folks that have also made mistakes in the past and hear how they would do things differently, what they've done really well.
So that's where we've been focusing on and trying to make sure we can add value back to the community. Cause eventually we started making few inferior mistakes and that's because we're asking folks and we're getting good advice. And so we just wanted to share that knowledge. And in general, we think that there is a home for more emerging managers and if we can play a small part or make the right intro, we might be to enable more of that entrepreneurship on the fund manager side, we're really excited to do that.
Gopi Rangan: You have been true champions for emerging managers and the community that you've created is extremely valuable for all of us. I was an early member of the community and it's been very helpful for me to have that community, to ask questions, learn from each other.
This will definitely have a huge impact. As venture, the landscape is changing. There are many new emerging managers entering the ecosystem. It's great to have this community. I know that you did your first in-person conference and that was a huge success. A lot of people attended. It was definitely over capacity.
Thanks for putting this together. Like thanks to you and Rick and the rest of your team for organizing this event. You have been in venture for a while at IVP and at VenRock. You started your own firm in 2019 /20. What do you like to see change in venture capital to make it better?
Richard Kerby: For me, the biggest change that I'm championing is just continuing to diversify the GP landscape. If you asked before how hard it was raising Fund one. I got to explain how painful it was. But you know, one of the other things that makes it challenging is that the mechanics of this industry almost require you to be wealthy, to be an entrepreneur in the industry because you have to be able to not make money for a long time. You have to be able to have a GP commit to a fund of a sizeable portion. That in of itself limits the number and diversity of people who can be entrepreneurs in the fund manager side. And so I think there needs to be more solutions around thinking through that.
As you probably remember at the summit, I was pushing on this premise of a GP commit and so forth. And you know, I guess I just fundamentally believe that whether your GP commit is, you know, .5% or 5%, you're not gonna work any less hard because your commit is smaller. Like you're all into win, right? And if you're not gonna invest in a founding GP because of their GP commit size, you're the wrong game then. It's similar with: if we had told every founder we invested, "Hey, we're not investing unless you put in X percent around yourself," we would've zero portfolio companies. No one would take that offer. And so it's more so of thinking through alignment on that respect too. Enabling the best people to have a chance to participate regardless of economic standing.
Gopi Rangan: 15, 20 years ago, it was true that founders were expected to invest in their own companies and only wealthy founders were able to start companies. That has dramatically changed. Now you graduate from college with a student loan but you're still able to start a company. The ecosystem supports founders who are willing to take that leap of faith and start a company, dedicate their career to build something new. That change is beginning to happen in venture capital. Limited partners have been mostly conservative so far, and now they're realizing that being wealthy is not the criteria that's probably important, that predicts the success of a venture firm, and that will hopefully bring more diversity into the ecosystem and will fund new businesses and new types of founders as well.
Richard Kerby: Yeah, that's, I hoping, you know, I'm definitely being critical here of the LP side, but I think what's great to see that they're also a select few of LPs who I think are getting more creative and trying to find ways to help the entrepreneur pool widening amongst the fund manager space. I appreciate that and welcome more of it.
Gopi Rangan: One of the ways we can show the sign of success is when you succeed, that becomes a point of data for LPs to say that, you know it's possible. It's actually possible for new VCs like you to succeed and outcompete the wealthy VCs who start a new firm just because on paper they look more safer. That's not a good investment, but Equal Ventures is an even better investment.
Richard Kerby: Yeah. I think the skills or prerequisites to having the ability to be good at this job are inherent in anybody regardless of economic standing, racial outcome, racial standing, gender standing, et cetera, because sourcing is about hustling.
Hustle occurs across every demographic in the world. Diligence is desire to learn about something different or learn more about something you know. There are many people across the globe who want to learn. And then three, do you enjoy helping people? Helping is also universally seen across every demographic as well. The fundamental traits of what someone needs to have to succeed in this space are universally seen across every demographic. Hopefully the GP base looks like that, and represents, "Hey, this should be open across everything."
Gopi Rangan: Very, very well said indeed. We're coming to the end of our conversation. I want to ask you about your community involvement. Is there a nonprofit organization you are passionate about? Which one?
Richard Kerby: Yeah, I can spend a bunch of my time on the topic that you just mentioned. So trying to figure out ways to support diversity within venture capital.
So, I work really hard with BLCK VC, which is a group trying to help diversify the GP ranks and supporting folks that are not in venture yet, as well as folks that are already in venture and helping them navigate the community from that perspective.
There's another really great organization called the Black Venture Capital Consortium. It's led by one of our LPs, a gentleman named Malcolm Robinson, who's done a great job of like cultivating interest in venture capital at a very young age. And so what he does is he actually goes around to HBCUs across the country. For those who don't know, those are historically Black university colleges. So he goes to these universities across the country and actually explains what venture capital is, who our venture capitalists, why it could be a career path of interest for you. That basically drums up of demand of students that wanna see if it's a field that could be for them. He's now partnered with a number of venture firms across the country to take select students as interns for the summer so they can get exposure to the industry, understand if it's a fit for them or not.
Obviously, for some folks they'll sit out and say, "you know what, ventures not for me". But for a lot of folks, they would've never experienced venture at such an early age. Exposure to different industries, career paths, et cetera, at an early age is how you get folks to get interested and passionate and start to lead themselves on the pathway to put 'em in the best spot to be an employee and owner in these industries. So those are two that I feel pretty passionate about that are really tied to our last discussion.
Gopi Rangan: Richard, thank you very much for spending time with me today. You've given specific examples based on your experiences and you've been very candid in sharing your perspectives on startups and the current situation in the market. I look forward to sharing your nuggets of wisdom with the world.
Richard Kerby: Thanks for having me. I can't wait to do it again.
Gopi Rangan: Thank you for listening to The Sure Shot Entrepreneur.
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