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1. How did Kellogg prepare you for a career in venture capital?
“I come from a deep engineering background. Prior to Kellogg, I worked as a tech lead and product manager, building indoor wireless networks at a startup called SpiderCloud Wireless. Given my background, I approached product development from an “engineering capability and capacity” mindset. At Kellogg, however, there was a metamorphosis in my thinking, shifting my mindset to become more customer centric and business outcome centric. When you look at successful startups today, this product mindset separates the best B2B startups from average ones. My thinking around marketing also evolved while at Kellogg. Early stage companies often overlook the importance of marketing, treating it as a function instead of a way of doing business. Kellogg has some of the best Marketing professors in the world and I made best use of it. The marketing lessons I picked up from them helps me work with my portfolio companies on sharp product positioning and navigating the crowded startup scene.”
2. Tell us about Benhamou Global Ventures.
“BGV is an early stage VC firm headquartered in Silicon Valley with multiple funds since 2004. We are a small but highly diverse team whose members count over 300 years of operating experience – including CEO and executive levels – at prominent technology companies. We have worked together as a team for over a decade investing and building enterprise software companies.
We lead or co-lead Seed and Series A rounds, typically their first injection of institutional capital and take a board seat. Our team has strong expertise scaling cross border B2B companies, and we take an active approach to our investments, working closely with our founders to refine product-market fit, to adjust strategy and to scale business. Our deal flow originates from North America, Israel, Europe and India, and our presence in global innovation hubs around the world has enabled us to establish a powerful network of technical advisors, executives, functional experts and co-investors who will actively engage with our portfolio companies. Together, we help our companies establish a beachhead in Silicon Valley, shape their Go-To-Market strategy and assist in expanding their management teams.”
3. What types of companies do you invest in? What do you look for in a potential investment?
“BGV has adopted a thesis-driven approach to investing and focuses on early stage Enterprise 4.0 technology companies. Enterprise 4.0 refers to a new wave of enterprise technology innovation that combines elements of artificial intelligence, intelligent automation and proprietary access to data to generate a virtuous cycle of improvements in vertical markets. Some examples from our portfolio include Drishti (manufacturing), Folloze (marketing), Totango (customer success), Blendid (Food preparation and serving) etc. These Enterprise 4.0 startups are reshaping the fundamentals of automation led value creation. They are leveraging disruptive AI technologies with novel data sets to create significant value, and then packaging and delivering that value via frictionless deployment modes that ensure broad adoption by end customers. Today’s enterprise landscape offers transformative opportunities, and we, at BGV, are inspired by this wave of entrepreneurship.
As I look at potential investments, I like to see founders with a deep understanding of the workflows in their given industries, someone who has lived the problem and leverages that understanding and passion to solving them. I like to see full-stack (i.e. complete) integrated solutions that deliver whole products, with a great user experience, all offered through a subscription model. The industries undergoing massive disruptions don’t have engineering teams to pull together components and integrate into their existing workflows. I believe offering such full stack solutions provide a great way to cut through sales cycles and get to value creation faster.”
4. What is an unintuitive or unobvious lesson that you’ve learned in your experience as a venture investor?
“Being an active investor, you need to be able to help founders meaningfully. It is not enough to simply be a cheerleader. Our advice must go beyond generic advice – “cut burn”, “hire slow, fire fast” etc. You have to get down to the weeds of the business before you can meaningfully help the founders and help them set clear priorities and resource allocation. Early in my career as a VC, I underestimated the amount of time it takes to contextualize and to develop a trusted, collaborative relationship with our founders. I have learned to manage my time and invest my time to get deeper into our companies. It means saying NO to a lot of other meetings, events and activities. As a new generation of Enterprise 4.0 companies emerges to re-write the playbook of digital transformation, entrepreneurs and investors need to know where the old rules still apply, and where they do not. So, I am constantly learning, and questioning my own assumptions.”
5. Do you have any fundraising advice for early-stage founders?
“I highly recommend that founders do a lot of research on the type of investors they want on this journey. A typical company stays private for close to 10 years these days. It is longer than an average marriage! The company you keep defines the experience you will have on that journey. They should research how have the investors they court contributed to the success of the companies in their portfolio, how have they supported them during good as well as tough times? This applies to angel investors and VC firms alike. Talk to the CEOs of those companies. Founders are very busy running and scaling the companies. But still, the founders and CEOs have to take time to do this diligence, even if it extends their time to close the financing a bit more”
