Annual Meeting: What We Learned
Connecting with Investors
What a great couple of sessions we had recently for our Limited Partners. Our annual meeting combined a reunion, a portfolio review, and a celebration of the formidable entrepreneurs we have backed at Vestigo.
We were delighted by the personal connection we felt with our LPs despite the circumstances of a remote meeting. About half of the content was prepared in advance including discussions with the new founders and the rest had a webinar feel to it. One of our recordings is below for you to enjoy. It’s a discussion between the general partners and Frazer where we cover some of the most investable applications of narrow AI in fintech. We would love your feedback on our thesis around chatbots and GPT-3 (email us at mcasady@vestigoventures.com)! You can look forward to CEO discussions in future editions.
We received some wonderful feedback from those that attended. They loved not having to travel and appreciated having a replay option for those busy when we were live. They are impressed by the diversity of the leaders of the companies in which we have invested over the past year. We see talent as the determining factor in startups so being focused on finding the best leaders is critical.
We appreciate our investors for believing in what we can do together to change the landscape of financial services.
—Mark & Dave
Envisions Interview
Annual Meeting: What We Learned
w/ Dave Blundin and Mark Casady, General Partners at Vestigo Ventures
Did Mark Write This or GPT-3?
Imagine a tool that moves from 1.5 billion points of learning to 175 billion? It is bound to improve upon the previous capabilities and bring new breakthroughs. I like to think about it this way. What would I write if I had grown up in my hometown and never moved and only once went to the big city of Indianapolis? Vs what would I write if I visited 48 states, all 7 continents, and about 50 countries? That is a good way to imagine how much richer a result one should get from using AI powered by GPT-3 vs GPT-2.
Of course, nothing is perfect and there is clear bias in what GTP-3 creates when it is not bound by well-defined parameters. What it can do is remarkable from writing code to powering conversational chatbots. We are about to enter a new era for startups as a result of this open-sourced leap in capabilities. It is early days but we see this as a way to think about many of the problems in financial services in a new way. It will alter the cost curve dramatically by using technology to do what many humans do today at great expense.
—Mark
This Time Was Different
A year ago I was still reeling from the week of our annual meeting. Over a five day period we presented to our limited partners, hosted all of our founders for a private dinner and strategic planning session, and ran an event at Boston Fintech Week. While exhausting, it was special to get so much facetime with our investors and founders. We live in a world of constant virtual communication where human contact is in lamentable scarcity (now more than ever). We had ardent discussions about our plans for the future and did our utmost to show our portfolio leaders our regard for their seemingly endless toil.
So, you’ll understand why it was with a mixture of relief and melancholy that in June of this year, we decided to go virtual.
This presented an entirely different set of problems to overcome. How could we fit everything we had worked on over the past year into two hours? What if Zoom collapsed? How can we engage the audience? Based on the number of generous notes some of you have sent us over the past few weeks, we hope we got it right.
Ian was thoroughly statesmanlike as he kicked off the proceedings with welcome remarks. Ian and I have spent at least seven hours a week staring at each other on Zoom calls and exchanging banter over the last six months, it was a little surreal to watch him in such a different context.
The CEOs are my perennial favorite segment, though I suspect some of our LPs are more interested in Mike’s portfolio review. Given our time constraints, I think Mark’s incisive line of questions gave the audience a great sense of the rich diversity in the fintech ecosystem today. I’m confident that all of our stakeholders understand why we’re so excited about our portfolio companies (Mike’s numbers also help).
I had a lot of fun working with Mark and Dave to capture some of our macro thinking about the future of technology for the GP interview (see above) which we recorded in August. This certainly made my job easier on the day of the event, which was a good thing, as I had to manage the presentation controls!
The two hours flew by and afterwards the team reconvened on Zoom with a glass of something cheerful. Plenty of virtual backslapping ensued which led to a conversation about next year. If you asked us today, I think we’d tell you that the hundred-plus person event in the Seaport is off for the foreseeable future. I know we’d all prefer to at least be physically together for some of the presentations and I’m desperate to get the founders together for another dinner. Hopefully we can find a way to share some of the discussion and ideation that come out of those events.
What’s in no way controversial is the fact that everyone preferred the convenience of a recorded, remote event and therefore whatever next year’s format, it will have to lend itself to being recorded.
When we get to the other side of this terrible pandemic, plenty of activities will go back to normal, not annual meetings. And that’s probably for the best.
—Frazer
New Portfolio Companies
Retirable
We are extremely excited to announce our first investment in the retirement space (finally)! At Vestigo, our operator experience has taught us how massive the opportunity for technology solutions in the retirement industry is. Tyler, Ian, and Brian have the team to win!
Roots Automation
We've found another way to express our conviction that the greatest changes in financial services will come from thoughtful applications of AI to the problems faced by incumbents. Roots Automation is a robotic process automation company that is poised to shake up the industry. Check out this video on what they're doing!
Kevin MahoneyPresident & COO, Carisk Partners
Portfolio Updates
Boom!
Alloy's cap table is turning into a great party. We are thrilled by the prospect of what Alloy can achieve with this new round of capital. This investment also brings in some impressive partners in Canapi Ventures. It is too early to call but might this be our first unicorn?
Alloy
Interesting Reads
Ron Schmelzer
Simon O’Regan
Will Douglas Heaven
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