Lessons for Emerging Managers and How to Evaluate Founder Passion, with Richard Kerby of Equal Ventures

The VITALIZE Podcast: Venture Capital | Startups | Angel Investing

Justin Gordon (@justingordon212) talks with Richard Kerby (@kerby), Co-Founder and General Partner at Equal Ventures, a seed stage focused fund backing the founders and businesses transforming society and industry. Prior to 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. Previously, Richard worked in the Investment Banking Division of Credit Suisse.

Richard is a proud Georgetown alum and is a rabid Hoyas basketball fan. He is also the founder of Stealth Mode, a community of more than 1,500 African American founders, operators and investors.

Website: Equal Ventures

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/richardkerby/

Twitter: @kerby

Email: [e-mail]

Show Notes:

• Equal Ventures' investment thesis and the strategy behind being generalists
• Deciding to start a fund instead of joining an existing one
• Richard’s key learnings as an emerging manager
• What being hands-on with their founders means at Equal Ventures
• Their all “hands on deck” approach to building the Equal Ventures team
• Running the Emerging Managers Circle and deciding to host summits
• Trends Richard is excited about
• Richard’s view on remote vs. in-person
• How Equal Ventures evaluates founders
• Richard’s advice for emerging managers

More about the show:

The Vitalize Podcast, a show by Vitalize Venture Capital (a seed-stage venture capital firm and pre-seed 400+ member angel community open to everyone), dives deep into the world of startup investing and the future of work.

Hosted by Justin Gordon, the Director of Marketing at Vitalize Venture Capital, The Vitalize Podcast includes two main series.

The Angel Investing series features interviews with a variety of angel investors and VCs around the world. The goal? To help develop the next generation of amazing investors.

The Future of Work series takes a look at the founders and investors shaping the new world of work, including insights from our team here at Vitalize Venture Capital.

More about us:

Vitalize Venture Capital was formed in 2017 as a $16M seed-stage venture fund and now includes both a fund as well as an angel investing community investing in the future of work. Vitalize has offices in Chicago, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.

The Vitalize Team:

Gale - https://twitter.com/galeforceVC
Caroline - https://twitter.com/carolinecasson_
Justin - https://twitter.com/justingordon212

Vitalize Angels, our angel investing community open to everyone:
https://vitalize.vc/vitalizeangels/