Human Summit 2018: A State of the Union for the HV Family
Human Summit 2018: A State of the Union for the HV Family
Last Thursday, the Human Ventures team hosted 80+ of our closest investors, founders, advisors and supporters for our Human Ventures…
Last Thursday, the Human Ventures team hosted 80+ of our closest investors, founders, advisors and supporters for our Human Ventures Investor Summit 2018. What originally started three years ago as a small dinner with our earliest investors and founders in a living room has now evolved into a day of programming in our bustling New York Studio. Following a busy agenda of updates from our team, we capped the day with a terrific fireside chat with our investor/advisor Beth Comstock (former Vice Chair of GE) and a meet-and-greet with a selection of our existing portfolio founders from Token, Paladin, Village, Picture Motion, Girlboss, Octi and more.
We’re excited to give a peek under the hood and share key highlights of what we’ve been building over the last year as well as an introduction to the new companies and founders coming out of our Studio. Explore more photos from the event here.
The Rise of the Startup Studio
Since Human Ventures was founded in 2015, the startup studio has become an established model to build and launch high-growth, innovative companies. We have seen the New York startup ecosystem develop into a robust platform of talent in the form of multi-generational founders, industry experts, investors and corporate innovators.
To kick off the Summit, Human Ventures CEO, Heather Hartnett, spoke to why Human Ventures is poised to succeed as a leading company builder at the nexus of New York innovation and talent. To start, Hartnett highlighted two macro trends we’re seeing in early-stage venture. The first is that the bar is rising for companies looking to receive venture funding. More traction and proof points validating the company are required to receive a meaningful investment. This dynamic established the “pre-seed” funding round. At the pre-seed funding stage, capital is not the only thing needed, but hands-on operational support and expertise is key to mitigate the outsized risk. And second, “early-stage” firms are increasingly raising larger funds. Their check sizes have increased, limiting the fund’s ability (and appetite) to participate in pre-seed rounds. We believe these two trends have resulted in a new dynamic — several funds are now moving toward implementing co-build models as a part of their allocation strategy. We believe New York is particularly well-positioned for the co-build model due to the strong concentration of high caliber talent, deep domain expertise, corporate headquarters, and the fast pace of blockchain adoption. As Human Ventures looks ahead, we are excited to leverage the unique strengths that New York has to offer to continue to build and launch world-class companies.
Year in Review
Human’s COO/CFO, Michael Letta, shared more about our progress to date, including the studio’s key performance indicators. It’s been a big year at Human as we moved into a 13,000 sq ft new office space, our team grew from five to eleven full-time employees, and we launched five new companies. Letta added that the past twelve months were also a period of strategic investment in the right infrastructure — to do more, better, and faster!
An Introduction to the Human Ventures Workshop
One of the biggest investments over the past year has been the formation and development of our Human Ventures Workshop. Led by our Chief Innovation Officer Derek Handley and Business Designer Andrew Hutton, our human-centered design workshop process offers experienced founders a unique platform to build and launch their next company. Handley and Hutton shared more about the philosophy and mechanics behind this company building engine, specifically how the workshop process focuses on three key insights:
Human insights: Real, often unspoken, human needs and desires
Market insights: Waves of technological and/or societal change creating new market conditions
Economic insights: Ways to redefine existing business models to change how value is delivered
To identify each, Human’s entrepreneurs-in-residence go through an intensive 100 day sprint that includes broad brainstorming, concept refinement and real world validation via an MVP pilot.
Hutton demonstrated how this process works by walking attendees through a case study for how entrepreneurs-in-residence Sofia Laurell, Betsy Fore and Bonin Bough investigated opportunities in the Parenting space. We’re excited by the unique skill sets and passion for the space that this founding team brings to the table, and we’re thrilled to co-create alongside them. (More to come on that soon!)
Who are your founders?
One question we get everyday is “where do you find your founders?” Human Ventures VP of Network, Alessandra Henderson, shed light on the incredible founders who have joined as entrepreneurs-in-residence. As Human Ventures continues grow, we have identified three key founder personas that are ideally positioned to leverage our Human platform: the serial founder, the entrepreneur-in-corporate-clothing and the rising star (read more about these personas).
Henderson also shared more about where Human finds and recruits our founders. Approximately ⅔ of our founders are recruited via a robust referral network, and another ⅓ via content marketing and outbound efforts. Over the past several months, Henderson and the Human team have met and interviewed 60+ high caliber potential founders. Of those, we’ve welcomed nine truly incredible Humans to build our next companies — attendees at the Summit heard from Jon Palan and Evan Maridou, co-founders of our newest company in the pet health space — we can’t wait to introduce each of them to you soon.
Navigating Change — a Fireside chat with Beth Comstock
We were excited to close out the evening with a fireside chat between our CEO Heather Hartnett and Human advisor and early supporter Beth Comstock, the former Vice Chair of GE. Comstock covered a broad range of topics around corporate innovation, the rise of the New York startup ecosystem and why new innovative venture models like Human are the future. In particular, Comstock recognized the massive potential that could be unlocked by inviting corporate leaders into a workshop like Human’s and leveraging their expertise and insights to fuel the next generation of New York startups — we’re excited to collaborate with her on this moving forward. For those interested in learning more about corporate innovation from one of the most successful intrapreneurs, pre-order her book Imagine it Forward.
Thanks to everybody who attended and to the broader Human Ventures family for your continued support that makes our success possible.
Talk to us!
Do you know the next Human Ventures entrepreneur-in-residence? Please introduce us to the most talented person you know (Alessandra Henderson, alessandra@humanventures.co)!