Last week I had the pleasure of speaking with John Francis who is the managing director of Stout Street Capital. John is a Pre-Seed/Seed investor in the midwest who is currently raising his third fund. He has incredible insights on co-investing, VC bias, and diversity. I hope you like the show. You can watch it on YouTube, iTunes, or Spotify.

John Francis brings his experiences as an operator and institutional venture investor. John Francis with Clay Gordon started Stout Street Capital in 2017. As General Partner, he focuses on investment opportunities in the IT software serving sectors such as Construction, Government, Energy, Cleantech, Media, Advertising, HR, Healthcare, and Cloud services. John works actively on several portfolio company boards, including Schola, Fluent Forever, Botco.ai, and Ad Fontes. He previously served on the boards of Popwallet (acquired by Snapchat (Nasdaq: SNAP)) and has made investments in companies such as Left-hand robotics(Acquired by TORO(NYSE: TTS)

What You’ll Learn:

• Difficulties in raising capital as a non-operator VC

• Operator vs. non-operator background VC

• The importance of having Empathy as a VC

• Benefits and flexibility of being a small check fund

• Difficult to identify an exceptional founder 

• Ways to look at pre-seed and seed companies

• Benefits and necessities of writing a follow on check

Favorite Quote:

“Most VCs are Schmucks”