Charlotte-based venture firm Growth Warrior Capital has locked in $26 million from backers including Bank of America, Mellody Hobson, George Lucas, and Pivotal Ventures, the investment firm founded by Melinda French Gates. Founder Promise Phelon joined The Enterprise Zone with Jabari Young to discuss the fund’s vision and strategy.
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00This sucks and so do you imagine hearing that from your boss after a work presentation
00:05We'll introduce you to the investor who did hear it now
00:09She's using that constructive criticism and search of the dangerous founder will explain you're entering the enterprise zone at the Nasdaq
00:20Hello everyone, this is Jabari young and I am here at the Nasdaq and I'm always drawn by a special guest this week
00:26I'm drawn by promise feline not felon promise feline
00:31She is the founder and managing partner of growth warrior capital and this is a venture firm that is based in Charlotte, North Carolina
00:38I got some exclusive news
00:39They raised 26 million dollars for fund number two and now again, they in search of the dangerous founder promise
00:46Thank you so much for joining us at the Nasdaq all the way from Charlotte, North. I really appreciate it. Thank you so much
00:53No, oh, it's not
00:56Several times. Yes. Yes. Well, listen, we're here. So I always ask people to start off
00:59Give me a stock was something that's been working for you something that's been interesting
01:03Wow, that's it. I mean right now it's a great time to buy. Yeah, right. We've got a lot of volatility in the market
01:09This morning. I bought a little snowflake. I bought some Amazon this morning and
01:15I'll probably buy some more later. There you go. But you know, I think right now the tech stocks are deeply undervalued
01:20and I think a lot of the
01:23You know the tariffs, right? So any company that's kind of reliant on
01:28Chinese or otherwise imports is going to be somewhat depressed. So I've also been looking at spirits as well
01:35So we'll see what happens this week. I'm just the airlines, you know, that's still my thing. I was telling my producer
01:39Okay, listen Southwest for me. I like it
01:42You know the type the price is coming down
01:45But apparently they're gonna stop doing the you know
01:47Get your seat going first get just a class B class and see they're gonna start making people pay. So I'm liking that
01:52Oh interesting. It's an opportunity
01:55And also as we sit here is women's history month, right?
01:58So give me a business figure what figure stands out that maybe no one doesn't talk about enough when it comes to women's history
02:03Oh, I love that question was not prepared for it. So I'll start with
02:08with the obvious I'll start with
02:11You know one of the women I think about a lot because she's one of our investors Melinda French Gates and
02:17What I love about her approach to business is her conviction
02:19Yeah, so she you know following her time at Microsoft actually built a venture capital
02:26Private equity investment firm called pivotal and she has hired some of the best investment managers in the industry to work for and with her
02:35So obviously I'm a big fan of Miss French Gates
02:38You know, I would say one of the other people that no one talks about is a CEO of Canva
02:42I think she's dangerous. So this you know, Canva started out this Australian company and no one knew anything about what's her name?
02:50Melissa Perkins, I believe that's her name and she built this company that was originally going to be like an online yearbook
02:56It's very similar to like the Facebook story. Yeah, and what they've done with their product is basically Melanie Perkins. They have
03:03democratized
03:04Creation and design and so I think they're incredibly dangerous
03:09And I hope they go public at some point that's the stock I'll buy
03:13But I love that company. I love what they're doing and I can't not talk about Melody Hobson. I mean, come on
03:21Melody is an investor in force metrics. Yes. Yeah, and what I love about her is, you know
03:26It's very rare that you see women of color in
03:31the money business
03:33Right because the business that we're in is a business that's built
03:36For networks and it's built through trust and currency and all these things and she found a way
03:41Through you know in her 30s to get into that business and to climb and ascend
03:47My last person is going to blow
03:52It's gonna blow your mind. Really? Yeah. Okay. So
03:55over the last couple of weeks
03:57I
03:58break up and get back together with Netflix kind of all the time and
04:03I saw a lifestyle show
04:06from the Duchess and
04:09of Sussex and
04:11I find the pivot that
04:15That Prince Harry and Meghan have made to be a very
04:21Surgical strategic and business pivot
04:23I mean, I think she's becoming the new black Martha Stewart
04:27Wow, and I think that her kind of lifestyle content is obviously in its infancy
04:32But there is a gap in that market, right? Like we've gotten so used to influencers being you know
04:38Not women of color because women of color don't really have leisure
04:42And so I think she's shepherding in a new class of women of color
04:48Who are business people our mothers wives, but also influencers, so I'll give her my final vote
04:56I love that. Well, there's such detailed history. I was expecting one. You give me four. I love that
05:01Bonus well, listen before we jump into your own business so much has happened 2025, right and I love to ask this question
05:08What's been your soundtrack to life so far in 2025?
05:10Like what's been that artist that's been making you feel good keep you uplifted through all this turmoil. Oh my goodness
05:17Do you know who jungle is? No back on 74
05:21they
05:22They they are this
05:24So you don't notice about me, but I spent 12 years as a competitive ballroom dancer
05:29And so what jungle does is all their videos are this collective of the same modern dancers?
05:37and
05:38The whole album is like so uplifting and so positive and so delicious. So it's that or
05:46Something from frozen that my daughter's watching. So it's one of the two. It's either jungle or frozen sound
05:51Yeah, I love the frozen. You can't get away from
05:53Makes you feel good all the time. I mean listen, let's jump into what you have going on down there growth warrior capital, right?
05:59Yeah, North Carolina based firm and in fund one. You already mentioned one of the companies in phone one force metrics
06:05We had Andre McGregor up here loved that brother the former FBI agent who started force metrics now and you're closing a 26 million dollar
06:12Funds already closed, right?
06:13It's already closed already closed and some of your investors in that particular fund Amazon Bank of America is in there Seth Levine, right?
06:20Yeah, he's an individual investor had a chance to talk to him
06:24But take me inside of this, you know fund to of growth warrior capital 26 million raised you are looking for
06:32Companies that are leveraging AI for industrial jobs. Yeah, let me let me break it down
06:38I mean AI is not new
06:40So I spent 17 years running companies in Silicon Valley and we always do use the core essence of AI
06:46Which is machine learning which is you do something once the machine learns and tries to create a pattern
06:52And so we've been doing that for a long time
06:55And my last company sold in 2021 and I sat back and I said, you know, I've got this capital
07:00I want to deploy it after
07:02founders that are more like me and
07:04so I started investing Andre was my first check is a personal check if you can believe that Jabari and
07:10I wanted to get in companies that were using AI to solve bigger problems
07:14Yeah, and so our fund one which is 26 million dollars
07:18We've been deploying that for the last couple of years at AI company solving enterprise challenges
07:25So challenges within big companies, right? So Andre fits into that. We've got a company called Lissio
07:30Which does that for large accounting firms? We've got a company called sequel which does that for marketing organizations?
07:36So we've been using that
07:38But about a year ago, we started thinking. Okay, where does generative AI become disruptive now?
07:44There are a couple of market externalities happening right now
07:48Generative AI is on a J curve in terms of innovation. It went from being wow
07:53You can create cool pictures with with AI
07:56Now you can write code with cursor like you can do things that were never imagined with technology
08:02Yeah, right
08:03So that's happening and you're also happening you having a talent crunch
08:08You have people who don't want to do certain jobs and you have jobs that don't have people for them
08:12And so those two things were coming together in an area that people don't talk a lot about and we call it the four D's
08:21dusty
08:22Dangerous dated and dull jobs. So jobs such as working in a recycling plant
08:29mining manufacturing
08:31Supply chain things that are not as sexy. So our fund to looks to bring AI into the old businesses the old
08:40Capabilities because they're struggling to find people and the people that they do find are challenging to upskill
08:47yeah, and so fun to looks more at those old jobs and that the less sexy stuff and
08:53So we'll start working on that in a couple months here
08:55Yeah, I'm gonna talk to one of your investors and we use I use the example of a plumber plumbing business
09:00Okay, and not necessarily maybe going and starting a plumbing business, but maybe trying to find that entrepreneur
09:06Creating that piece of software that is, you know
09:09AI compatible that allows you I don't know to go into a neighborhood and say hey a lot of old pipes up here
09:14So maybe we should start to deploy some marketing here's because there could be some opportunity pipe might bust and they we want them to
09:21Know if it does absolutely call us right? Is that the type of companies? Yeah about this
09:26So think about the use case of I love these in the recycling example. Yeah, that's a
09:32massive industry
09:3484 billion in the u.s. Every year is spent on recycling
09:37Yeah, imagine now that the recycling process is a pretty rote process every time you do pretty much the same thing
09:44I take this from here. It gets cleaned. I put it I factor it. I move it somewhere else
09:49Yeah, that's a very specific process that gets done over and over again
09:52So AI loves that AI loves predictability and consistency
09:56But add computer vision
09:58We're now a computer can leverage AI to see and assess and guess
10:04What the materials are in the polymers in that in that recycling?
10:09you know bottle or can and then tell you how many of those you have how long it takes to decompose and
10:15Give you intelligence about that. So, you know how to best recycle it in the most efficient way
10:20So in my mind, it's the plumber
10:23Because the plumbing process is pretty consistent in terms of diagnostic
10:26but it's also more complex processes that tend to involve a lot of people and
10:32That involve a lot of expensive equipment where you can leverage
10:36Robotics humanoid AI technology and computer vision. Yeah. Yeah go inside your daughter's classroom, right?
10:42You get her friends are there
10:44They just got finished watching frozen and they hear you got 26 million dollars
10:47You're sitting on and they maybe you know a bunch of entrepreneurs, but they say
10:51Promise miss promise what type of companies are you look at?
10:54How would you explain it to that fifth sixth grade class that may be thinking that they maybe all this is over their head
10:59But they want to know what they can do to maybe get some of that because there's entrepreneurship is all across the board
11:04You can might be fine a 15 16 year old creating that type of code that you need, right?
11:08And if they are creating that code, what what are you telling them?
11:12What type of companies are you explaining to a crowd who maybe all of this is above that?
11:17Wow
11:19So what I try to teach my daughter and I'm sure you do this as well as in a
11:25Like we're going through a revolution right now in in labor
11:30You know right now we have the government jobs being cut all these things that we thought were like safe jobs
11:37They're not that safe anymore. Yeah, and so I want my daughter to be two things
11:42an entrepreneur meaning that she can think outside the box and she can find opportunity wherever it might be and
11:48Number two to be an investor always thinking about how to create things that compound and get the benefit of that
11:54So talk to her about that all the time Jabari. She's four. So I have to like kind of make your bed
12:00Get you know, right
12:02but if I layer on
12:05The best people solving AI problems in my humble opinion are people who we have
12:10We believe has something called an urn secret and an urn secret is like
12:15Andre Andre worked as a firefighter
12:19military
12:20FBI the core of a lot of those jobs is the same
12:23But he was also a developer and so his urn secret was I've done this job. It's not safe
12:30How can I find a way to make it more safe by taking what I've experienced in the job?
12:35We want dangerous founders and people say what is a dangerous founder urn secrets?
12:41They're great at doing more with less you don't expect them to be dangerous they learn a lot and they learn it quickly
12:48The best example if I were to say the best the best like visualization of it of a dangerous founder would be Kendrick Lamar
12:56You don't expect a five-foot-two guy from Compton to be an incredible incredible lyricist
13:05prolific
13:06constantly putting out new content to be
13:10Enamored not only in this industry
13:12but in the industry of the arts is a Pulitzer and
13:14To be petty and great at what he does and doing so consistently over 10 15 years and he comes from the culture
13:21That everyone is trying to emulate and talk about and so I want that person in
13:26The form of an entrepreneur and I don't care if they're 15, and I don't care if they're 50
13:32Because great entrepreneurs are on that spectrum from age experience in class and actually would prefer
13:39The poles of that. I love a 50 year old founder and I like one that's 20 as well because one has you know
13:46this new fresh mind and
13:49The other has a prepared mind and so both of those are great from an entrepreneurial standpoint in our opinion
13:55Absolutely. Take me deeper inside growth worry capital, right? I'm looking this is a firm that started in
14:002020 around that time my angel investment portfolio. Yeah 2020 and again based in Charlotte
14:05How much have you raised total with the two funds? So we've only raised one fund. Okay, that's our first fund
14:10It's 26 27 million. We've deployed a little over half of it. And so we'll be out in market again and
14:18What I would say in terms of like like I spent before I this is my second career
14:23You know, I spent 17 years as a CEO in Silicon Valley of tech companies
14:28And so I spent that time building engineering teams learning agile learning how to fundraise building sales organizations BD
14:35buying companies selling companies like so I learned a lot about
14:39the the at the atoms of what it takes and
14:44My last company sold in 2021 kind of set back and said do I want to step back into that role again?
14:50Being in the boardroom in that capacity and the answer was no. I want to take the study and
14:57Apply it to
14:59People and find ways to build a portfolio
15:02Versus you know being in sort of one company run role. Yeah and on your website
15:08This is good, you know, according to pitch book
15:09It says that you guys are seeking female founders at seed and serious a operating and artificial intelligence
15:15We explain machine learning fintechs all that good stuff 1 to 3 million is what you usually deploy of a companies
15:22But you're looking for you know again future of work, right?
15:25These are the future of work sectors and you believe those
15:28Dirty founders right that plumber who may be getting tired of going to fix the pipes
15:32Coming up with an idea to get some software for a business and a sector
15:36He knows yeah, right become dangerous and go build something because you don't want to have to go out and fix those pipes your whole life
15:42Or go unclogged. I did that at a car dealership. It's not fun. Did you really I did it wasn't it wasn't as fun
15:46Oh my goodness. Um, and and so those are the type of future of work jobs that you get that we are in the future of
15:52Work. Yeah, AI has shepherded us into the future of works. We're in it right now. Yeah, and so we're looking for
15:58Women men people of color
16:00LGBTQ just dangerous people so we have a cross-section of entrepreneurs in our portfolio
16:06the commonality is that
16:09They were disconnected from the traditional venture ecosystem. And so that's in many ways why we like to work with them
16:16Yeah, what's the biggest positive surprise of running a VC firm?
16:20You've been in a couple years now doing your own thing. What's been the biggest positive surprise?
16:24That's a great question. Well, I
16:28Think the biggest positive surprise has been that my core thesis when I was running companies is
16:35None of my investors my VCS had ever
16:39been a CEO before
16:42And I was in for 17 years first company
16:44We took public sold to Oracle for 8 billion
16:46Was a founder was a builder another company got sold to a public company other company got sold for not for nine figures
16:52like I've done it from you know, one person me and my dog to you know, hundreds of people thousands of people and
17:00never an operator and
17:02I surmise that
17:05You can only ask that person so many questions, but Jabari I've spent most of my adult life making payroll
17:12Taking care of people being the being the the buck stops here. Yeah, and so
17:18When I left operating I thought maybe I can take this knowledge and help
17:25other founders as an advisor a mentor a capital deployer if I could help them do better and so today when we
17:33Think about our success
17:34Obviously funds raised is one quadrant, but the other are are we making an impact on their cap table?
17:42Their balance sheet or their P&L and ideally we bring all three. So we're adding great investors
17:49We're adding great team members to the cap table the balance sheet
17:52We're helping them get capital from many different sources
17:54Whether it be debt or equity or otherwise and we're helping them generate revenue
17:58And so every company that we think about bringing into our portfolio
18:02Has to have potential in our ability to impact them in those three areas
18:07So it's not only do we love the founder? Do we love the market?
18:10Do they have traction as a product right the plumber? Mm-hmm, but can I help him or her?
18:15Dramatically grow their business because I believe that as an operator like I'm a better thought partner
18:22To another operator. Mm-hmm. And so at our core we want to be builders and investors
18:30Alongside our portfolio or about the biggest negative surprise about running something that maybe you did not know you were gonna run into
18:36right, so
18:38Naivete is a gift. Mm-hmm. Okay, sometimes I would say the thing that I didn't expect
18:44So in 2021, I started writing angel checks
18:47There were what 2,400 IPOs like the market was like. Mm-hmm. It was liquidity was everywhere. It was in the streets
18:54It was all over Times Square and then in 22
18:58We started to see a little bit of slowdown and then 23 24 and possibly 25 are gonna be some of the least liquid
19:06Right, so if I think my boss is ultimately my limited partner my investor
19:10Yeah, right the Seth's don't tell him that the Amazons the Bank of America the George Kaiser Family Foundation
19:16These large institutions and they rely on the public markets to be liquid
19:22That's right, because they're in positions and they can't really take money out of another company to give it to your firm
19:30So we are in probably one of the hardest fundraising environments for firms
19:34and so that's the thing I didn't expect but what we did instead and
19:39As I said, if it's gonna be hard, I'm a Virgo. I
19:44Said if it's gonna be hard make it impossible. Yeah, and so typically
19:48first firm first funds are
19:51Mostly high net worth individuals. Yeah, and I've got those I've got Martin Taylor and the guys from Vista got Seth from foundry and Brad and Ryan
20:00I've got ho nom from Altos got some great individuals
20:03but
20:0590% of our capital comes from institutions
20:07And so that was a very strategic decision because if you get the institutions in early
20:14They become investors in your future funds, right?
20:16They're also very hard to diligence
20:18And so if we could do that in fun one be much easier to raise those outer funds
20:23Yeah, and again 26 minute I thought was two funds
20:26But this is only fun one only fun one only two only one fun one 26 and force metrics as well as a other firm
20:31Captain that's all part of that. They're in fun one and fun one Ryan captain. They've raised over 100 million dollars
20:36It is the insurance claim platform captain. Um, take me back to Texas where you grew up, right?
20:41I goodness. Yeah, that was a very you because I love I lived in Texas for a few years myself and San Antonio
20:47I love that state. What area did you grow up in and and what did your parents do? So
20:53My mom's a single mother
20:55my father
20:57This is so ironic, but he was a Marine and then during his two tours
21:03In Vietnam, he got into playing golf. And so my entire life. My father was a professional golf player. Wow
21:10Yes, let's talk about that some other time. My game is terrible
21:16But my mother there were three of us I'm the middle between two boys
21:21and
21:22my mom
21:23really evolved
21:25So I grew up in a small town outside of Dallas
21:28Mm-hmm, so I grew up like I don't know what your childhood was like, but mine like we were outside
21:33Yeah, you know we were outside. We were riding bikes running, you know doing it. So I was I was one of those kids
21:40yeah, and
21:42my my family is West Indian in Venezuelan, okay, and
21:47We kind of credit ourselves with being very entrepreneurial. And so I spent my childhood
21:54Trying to think of businesses and so everything from the lemonade stand to
22:00Learning how to make pizza and sell pieces like I did it all so you wanted to be entrepreneur at a young age
22:05You knew I knew it my uncle
22:07When I was 5
22:09He's from New York. My mom's family's from here
22:11He said he told me the word entrepreneur my uncle Frankie and I thought it was this French thing
22:17and he basically said it's a person who finds a
22:21Solution to any problem. I thought I want to be that. Yeah, and so as
22:26A black girl who grew up. I didn't go to the best, you know, I went to a great college
22:32I didn't go to an Ivy League. I knew that I was going to have to be
22:36this sharp spear like navigating my own way and
22:41So that was the path. It wasn't to go work for a big company or go work for someone else
22:47it was to own my future and
22:49To be accountable. Yeah, absolutely
22:51And then you go on and you you know go through high school you go and major triple major, right chemistry religious studies marketing
22:58Right at Southern Methodist University as Dallas and then you go and you get your MBA at Pepperdine
23:03All right
23:04You wanted to be the Tom Brady of entrepreneurship in between that path though
23:08I find interesting about your story. You started a company while you're at SMU and then you sold it, right?
23:13What company was it? What did it do? How much you sell it for? Oh my goodness. Okay, I
23:18Really credit you. I don't know where you get your data
23:23so I
23:25started college like every kid, you know, I started a little bit younger and
23:29I started out wanting to be pre-med. And so I love science. I love math
23:34but I had a had one class with a woman named Martha Selby about religion and
23:39religion is
23:41It's what helps us understand what happens when we're here how we got here and what happens when we leave and I thought if I understand
23:48this I can understand people if I understand a
23:54Hasidic Jew and I understand that person's background and what their belief system is I can fundamentally connect better with them
24:00If I understand someone who's Buddhist I can understand and connect with them
24:04And so I have other other interests what I did in college, but that was my
24:09that was my
24:11Like learning ground because I studied all religions read from the Apocrypha
24:17To the Talmud to the the Bible the Quran
24:21I got an appreciation for all of it all the the Bhagavad Gita and all these and I got an understanding of like
24:28What makes people tick and so when I was in college my second year?
24:33I'd gotten their own scholarships
24:35My mom was paying for it
24:36And so I had a life event where I had to pay for being in a sorority and being all this stuff on my own
24:41so I had this idea that I could write press releases for physicians and
24:47So I knew the lingo I understood like, you know physicians who were fee-for-service
24:53I understood that area because I was pre-med at the time
24:55And so I built this company that would write press releases, right?
24:59And then this is I'm gonna age myself here the Associated Press if you put a press release
25:06I won't say when I graduated college and you're not allowed to
25:09If you put a press out press release out on the West Coast or on the East Coast as
25:16As time moved in the morning started the wire would look for
25:22More articles or more press releases with the same keywords as what was happened in the East Coast
25:28So I'd wake up at 4 a.m
25:30And I would pull down the press releases from the East Coast and I would put out press releases
25:38I was in Central and I had some customers and some clients in California and I would use the keywords
25:44From the press releases on the East Coast to get my doctor's coverage
25:48Wow
25:48And I would insert those keywords into the press releases random things like it'd be a doctor who did
25:55laparoscopic surgery and I would insert like the Goliath machine because that had been and so I
26:04Built a business and so at one point we were doing six figures and so
26:09My senior year I sold it for six figures to one of the physicians and that funded me and that created the interest from Pepperdine
26:16I was Pepperdine's youngest MBA because I basically kind of done
26:21Some business in college Wow, and they appreciated that is an incredible story. So it's just a paying attention to detail
26:27I mean noticing something small like that that the Associated Press was doing and how they kind of you know
26:32Move their news around and then you've all of a sudden built the business off. That's the type of stuff
26:36That's you know tension. That's a dangerous founder in a way
26:42But you know also your your time in corporate America now listen you you've have a great CEO background
26:47You had CEO of a tap influence that you know, Hyde was a technology company influence and marketing
26:52Yeah, you did that and then that sold to a public company in 2008 and you also chief revenue officer to sub recruiter software firm
26:59But there was that piece in your corporate life where again you run into the CEO as you're doing a presentation
27:05And at the end of this presentation the CEO asked you a question and you became flabbergasted with the answer
27:11And because you did not know the answer that that particular CEO wanted. He says this sucks and so do you right?
27:18Yes, how what what when was that? What company was it was BES systems?
27:23What what what happened in that particular moment? And how did you take that?
27:27Very very harsh response and flip it to a positive. Oh my gosh
27:31So that the life of an entrepreneur is a life of rejection
27:35Because you're raising money
27:38You're trying to hire great people. You're trying to sell your company and you're always out
27:43looking to create influence and
27:46so
27:47That was um, his name was Ivan and he was the president of the division
27:51And he had given me a project to figure out who are our most profitable customers and at the time
27:57It was very hard to get that data because it was a combination of
28:01sales
28:02transactional data and usage data and
28:05At the time it was hard to get all those systems to talk to each other. And so I had an incomplete answer
28:10and what I realized is
28:13Data is at the core of every great decision
28:18Data is at the core of every great decision and if I can think in
28:23Econometrics if I can think algorithmically I can make better decisions and I can help others make better decisions
28:30And so in that moment, I'm like 24
28:34I'm in a room of like MIT's again and all these great smart people who went to Harvard and my boss and
28:41her boss and then the president of a division and
28:45Everyone stops and I remember the feeling I felt inside of like
28:51Where you want to just kind of go inside of yourself?
28:55And I said, you know what? I don't have the answer but Jabari I spent weeks
29:01getting the answer and it fundamentally influenced at the time how BEA attracted new customers and so what I got from that experience is
29:10rejection
29:12Someone yelling at you someone being unhappy
29:15It's just part of this process and when I meet a founder and they say I've been raising money. It's hard
29:21I don't want to do it. I
29:23Probably won't back that founder
29:25when I met
29:27Andre
29:29He had been in he had been working at the FBI
29:33He was a developer. He worked at cyber security company and he gave me this presentation
29:37I remember thinking to myself this present. This is not a good this is not a good story
29:41And I said look man, this is not a good story
29:45But if you go do these three things like go build a small product
29:49Minimally viable product go get some customers and go get one angel investor and then come back
29:55And he said okay. And so a year later he comes back out of nowhere, right?
30:00He's got Melody Hobson George Lucas flybridge capital. It's presentation is like on fire
30:07He's wearing an FBI hat he has a product with a demo I was like in a year and he said yeah
30:12I listened to you. And so part of being an entrepreneur is
30:17Getting the reps
30:19It's the constant, you know, and so that experience with Ivan like Ivan's a friend of mine now
30:27If you later apologize and say yeah, I mean
30:29I
30:31Feel like him but that's part of this process is the fail
30:37Yeah, 100% and taking the constructive criticism, right? Yeah, it wasn't about me
30:41Yeah, but you could have went and cried like I mean some people never recover. There may have been tears
30:46There may be maybe a little and that's okay. Yeah, that's okay. It's okay to have these emotions. Yeah, but these emotions are
30:54Catalyst to do something different. Yeah, and so I'm okay with that. Did you think him like hey?
31:00I don't know. You may not remember this moment, but you said this and it helped me a lot Jabari
31:05Be a systems was a great experience. I was super young
31:08Company went public who made a lot of money, but I haven't went on to run
31:12Adobe's enterprise business and so Adobe when I left be a was my biggest customer in my next company
31:18So yes, I thanked him and I also monetize that relationship. There you go
31:23Does this quote sound familiar overly?
31:25Optimistic about good news and demissive this dismissive about the bad news
31:30That is your description when you are kind of explaining people why companies fail. That's what you said on a podcast
31:36Yeah, overly optimistic about the good news and dismissive about the bad news is why companies fail
31:41What do you look for in a business? It's a great question
31:44I mean first of all as an investor, I've got a couple dozen companies in my portfolio
31:51So I've got to be an expert and kind of each of their markets
31:54So, you know my team and I are always kind of scouring the market to find out how can we help what's happening?
31:59Like what's relevant to this this founder?
32:01How can we be additive and what we rely on is their ability to give us?
32:07relevant timely information
32:09That's typically data centric, right?
32:11And so we have founders who send us these glowing emails like everything's amazing
32:17This also is happening and then I say well how much cash do you have we can't make our next payroll and
32:23That happens at the early stage
32:25And so one of the things that we teach is that two there are two sides of that comment when you're overly optimistic
32:34About the good news and you you kind of override the bad news. The bad news has signals in it
32:40There's something that we're not doing right or something we can learn that the business relies on and so if you're not learning
32:47That and if you're focusing on what's great and what's going well, you're kind of fooling yourself
32:52but the 99% is
32:55as an investor
32:57If I've got a I've got a dozen companies in my portfolio or two dozen
33:01There are four to ten investors in each of those companies
33:04There are prospective customers prospective talent. And if I don't have a real view of what's happening in your business
33:10I can't talk about it. And so we call it the whisper network. And so
33:17When I think about making a company successful, it's my job to
33:22to hype them and
33:24So if I don't have good data, I'm not hyping anything
33:28Yeah
33:28So the success of your company is a you understanding what's really going on looking at the data
33:34Getting intimate with it understanding it like the Ivan presentation, but also being able to
33:39inform your advocates which I am of
33:43What information is relevant what's real so that we can help you get what you need what you need
33:47Yeah at the same time though, you are still a young VC yourself, right?
33:51Yes
33:52And coming up for someone who may not or may want to emulate you right and they say oh my god
33:58This sister did it. Let me go up. Maybe I can get on and
34:00Ignore, you know the fact that I suck right now. I can go and still raise some money. How did you do it?
34:06How do you go out and raise money when you are, you know a black person in this particular industry?
34:11Yeah, and you're trying to go and ask people to give you millions of dollars so that you can go in and flip that
34:15I mean, how do you do it in this particular age, especially now? Wow, it's it's a whole different time Jabari
34:21so I would say the venture capital space or
34:25Asset management broadly, so I'll put private equity. I'll put real estate
34:29I'll put private debt private credit all that in there and say that if you want to build something in this industry
34:34It requires a lot of personal capital
34:37Because you are investing ahead of the curve to get we got a rush with the SEC
34:41We got to have lawyers and accountants
34:43And so I personally put a lot of my own personal capital in so whomever's gonna do this
34:48If you have to give me an estimate how much your own personal? Oh several hundred thousand. Oh, yeah
34:52We're not past a million over on just 100,000. Hi. Hi. All right, cuz you're also you got to build a team, right?
34:59So that's the other thing is you get management fees
35:02But those management fees are after you've already been managing capital and
35:07So I have a full team. I have woman on my team named Rachel Baruch who comes from Anthos capital
35:13We recruited her out of you know, a great paying job
35:17So if you want to have great returns in a phenomenal team because great deals don't come to you
35:22You have to actually go find them
35:23All right
35:24But how do you convince a Melanie Hobson or you know or even Bank of America give you money?
35:28Is this something that you have to say you have to be networks?
35:31I'm sure you have to be in that one have those relationships. So the way that I did it
35:35I kind of did it in three steps. So I said what's gonna be different about our firm?
35:39So what's our right to win and that's a common vernacular you hear in the venture space or in the GP space?
35:46So one our right to win is I'm built. I've been successful
35:51I've taken companies through the entire trajectory. So I'm going to be a different kind of value creative in a traditional VC
35:57So that was kind of one vector. The second vector was we are going to be 80%
36:04Proactive so we're gonna find companies when they're not raising money
36:07And so we're gonna be like a board member to them when they're just running their business and then when it's time for capital
36:13We're already there. So we're
36:16Entertaining probably ten times the number of companies than your average VC
36:20So that's the second vector and the third is we have a prepared mind for enterprise AI
36:26And the reason why those three things together are unique is if you're a limited partner Bank of America
36:32You're building your own portfolio. And so you want to find GPs or VCs that are bringing a unique
36:40Sliver and so ours is unique because very few have my experience
36:44Very few have the team's experience and very few are going after enterprise AI specifically
36:50So that was the difference that we brought so I figured that out
36:54And then I knew I wanted to raise from
36:57Institutions where you would get like a five or twelve million dollar check
37:01So what I did was I said who are the most successful venture capitalists in the world?
37:07and I will get them to be my to be my investors as high net worth individuals and
37:13Then I will get them to introduce me to their limited partners
37:16So imagine if you're an investor in Silicon Valley and you're a personal investor
37:22You've written me a half million a million dollar check and you love what we do. You believe in it
37:27You've invested in my companies in the past
37:30You're gonna walk me into
37:32your
37:33Institutional investors and so that's how it worked. I got the Martin Taylors from Vista
37:39I got you know the Seth Levine and the Brad Feld and Ryan from
37:44Foundry and then they walked me in honam. They walked me into their LP's and so that was how we sort of got there
37:51So yes, this is a networked business and the only way you're gonna raise capital is if you are
37:58Within a network. Yeah, and so you have to find your way there. Yeah, absolutely
38:01Well speaking of Seth, you know from from Foundry and talking to him on the phone and you know
38:06He said listen in a year
38:07He wants to see because I what's going to what metrics are going to determine if this is working from you
38:13He says in a year
38:14He wants to see if you have portfolio companies that are of has good valuations attached to him and he wants to see if you
38:20And your team has a synergy
38:23Are you gonna make that happen over the next 12? Oh, good question
38:26So, I mean, I think we're doing all the right things
38:29we've got companies that have
38:31what
38:3340% of our companies have been marked up by other VCS
38:36And so the way that we're focusing on that is helping them know what's important from a company operating perspective
38:42Get the right metrics to grow at the right rate and then you know, I'm walking them into
38:48Investors so that they're getting term sheets from people that I know
38:52So I'm cutting through all the noise so that they do get markups
38:55So that's one aspect is, you know helping our companies grow faster helping them think about go-to-market
39:01So I would say we're one of the best go-to-market
39:03Revenue focus venture firms out there our companies grow faster than the average. So that's one thing
39:09The second is on the team side. You got to get the reps and so
39:15I've got great professional investors on my team great analysts, and I'm the operator
39:20And so the way that we do things is we find a great company. We are very
39:26Conviction driven so we want to really fall in love with that company and that founder and that team
39:30So we try to come in with value
39:32So we basically come in and say look here are the four things we can do to help you transform this business
39:36Before we bring a term sheet and then we do that. And so I think the way that the magic happens
39:42I mean look at it
39:44You know Seth and Brad and Ryan have worked together. I believe for over 25 years and
39:51so their magic
39:53Comes with a lot of lessons a lot of reps, right?
39:56And so what I'm doing with my team is we team tackle so every single deal
40:02We work on together
40:04Every decision we make together
40:07We double up on board meetings so that hey, you know, hey, this is what I see
40:11What do you see? And so that's how we're building those reps as a firm. And also
40:16I'm very specific about the kind of person I want to work with
40:18They've got to be relentless and dangerous in their own right? So I love what Seth said. Thank you for relaying that
40:25but it comes from
40:28doing what we say we're going to do and
40:31Team tackle. Yeah team tackle. Love it
40:34Look ahead here some closeout stuff as we let you go because you have a lot to do
40:39Some money and you got a product after you deploy that I'm sure you'll be looking for another raise right something like that money
40:44Right and like, um, you know, right stand with you put the unit within your industry
40:49Goldman Sachs says that the generative order artificial intelligent market software around is about a hundred and fifty billion adjustable market
40:57What are the opportunities though that maybe no one is talking about when it comes down to enterprise AI? Oh great question
41:04I mean fundamentally the big-ticket items today have been the LLMs. It's the anthropics, right? It's the large language models
41:11That's the infrastructure. Those are our foundations, right the open AI's and so that's the core of what's causing the transformation
41:19but above that
41:21We believe are what kind of the tooling and the application layer
41:24And so I feel like the area that people really overlook are the verticals within that
41:31accounting law health
41:33Medicine medical and like really understanding how those stand on those because really those
41:40platforms are built from like the gestalt of all the learning on the internet on the internet, but
41:47What does a doctor know that he's a specialist in what does an accountant or an auditor? He's a specialist in so those vertical
41:56implementations and applications are
41:58Really transformational and so I would say what are the roles where there's the highest number of experts and
42:06If you look at one other factor
42:08May I give you an example?
42:10so
42:12we invested in a company that is bringing AI to the accounting industry and the reason why we went after that is we saw
42:19That 80% of accountants were of retirement age in 2020. Yeah, it's a shortage coming shortage
42:24And so we said, okay externality. We're gonna look at every single tax
42:29Accounting related company and we're gonna invest in this category
42:32So I think we looked at 16 companies before we invested in one
42:35That's a vertical and so what I would say is where's that expertise?
42:40Expensive limited and hard to access law, right? You could pay a lawyer $1,700 an hour
42:46Yeah, that's another one that's coming. So the vertical applications that stand on top of the LLM Foundation
42:52I think are just great areas to invest. Yeah, most definitely first million dollars. I'm sure you made it, right?
42:57You know, yeah, I know you had made a million dollars. How did you do it?
43:02Well, you know the beginning of my career was dope um, I
43:08I've been so lucky and
43:11I go back to religious studies. Like I know how to connect with people and so
43:17When I when I moved out to Malibu from Texas by myself
43:20I drove I had an 87 cutlass that broke down five times between
43:26Texas and Malibu and
43:29When I got to Malibu, I met a woman named Barbara Britton who was this technologist?
43:35And I just basically had her adopt me. I said look
43:38I'm you know, I'm young I was 22. No 21
43:43You know, I'm here by myself. Can I can I work for you? Can I mentor? You know, can you mentor me?
43:48She's working at NCR and was bringing all their innovation to market and I said, I'll do market research. I'll do anything
43:54I'm a great math person
43:55I can do Excel and so I worked for her for free for a year and then she got a job in Silicon Valley at
44:01a new company called BA and
44:03So between my sec my first and second year in grad school. I came up to the valley
44:08I slept on a futon and my friends, you know garage and I worked for almost nothing for Barbara and her team
44:15Doing M&A analysis due diligence. And so I learned a lot. And so I got very well placed stock
44:24And the company became more valuable. So I got I got really lucky but it was the relationship with Barbara that
44:31Really opened up an entirely new world for me. And so I give her credit to a lot of my career beginnings
44:38Yeah, so meet Barbara get some stock get a million dollars, right? How did you spend a million?
44:44Regrets on what you spent it on taxes taxes. Yeah
44:48No, no
44:50AMT specifically, but
44:53you know
44:54I've just been lucky. I've been lucky. I've made some really good moves and I would say that my next million
45:01You know
45:03Personally, I want to do I love investing. So I'm an LP in my firm. Yeah, but I also
45:10Believe a lot in the leadership of young women
45:12and so, you know
45:13I hope that I'm able to give back and be
45:17For young girls what Barbara was for me and what Ivan was as well
45:21Yeah, I take that that you spent a million on a house and the cars something like that. Yeah, I got it
45:25I got it at Ford's be okay here. We had a great leadership platform and they always love books
45:29Give me a suggestion
45:31What is a nice business book something that's helped you throughout your career that you would suggest as the summer reading season is coming up?
45:38Well a great question
45:40The one that I that's on my nightstand that I read over and over again two of them
45:45I read trillion dollar coach, which is about Bill Campbell who mentored me as well
45:50He was the head of marketing at Apple when Steve Jobs was there and then he went on to become like this this guru
45:58For Google and other companies in Silicon Valley. It's a great book about his philosophy on scale and growth
46:04The second is a book about how to become valuable and it's called the
46:10Almanac of Naval Robicont. Mm-hmm, and it is it's it's a series of his blogs and rants
46:17It's easy to read but it's such a high impact
46:22Thing you can read on the on a plane. Yeah on the beach
46:24Yeah, your book look your book like collection sounds kind of lit. I can't front like, you know, that's some nice stuff
46:29I'm here to here to take a trip. See what's in your book. Let's go. Let's go
46:33Final here we ended on good to great and I want you to tell me what is the difference between a good
46:39venture capital firm and a great one I
46:41Think a good venture capital firm
46:45Thinks about having one or two
46:48fund makers right in a portfolio or in a fund and
46:53Does whatever it can to get to follow on deals to to follow great investors and to follow hype
46:59I think that's a good firm. I believe a great firm
47:02wants every single investment to be a fund returner and
47:07Invests and leans into those firms. One of my favorite firms is here in New York. It's called Union Square
47:14Ventures and I think they're one of the best in the industry because they are not a big flashy raise a trillion dollars
47:22They raise a 250 million dollar fund every single time. They deploy a very similar fashion their team tackle
47:30Fred Wilson's the founder and they work incredibly hard for their portfolio. And so we want to be great. Absolutely
47:37Absolutely, so I take your copy Union and what they're doing doing my best. Absolutely promise
47:41Thank you so much for coming to the Nasdaq really appreciate it. Good luck
47:45Thank you
47:45All right
47:46The rest of the money in from one and we look to have you back after you finish raising fun, too
47:51All right stuff. I'll take I'll take you on your word. Most definitely growth warrior capital here at the Nasdaq
47:57Bri young at Forbes. Thank you so much for watching