Just landed in Seattle

I just landed in Seattle. It’s my first time on the pacific coast and I’ll be spending the next 6 months here.

Context:

Two years ago, the pandemic hit and it forced @onesixoneventures to stop hosting our monthly networking events for startup founders. We asked ourselves what we could do to continue supporting founders. Part of our 5-year goal was to launch an accelerator, and we realized it was probably one of the few impactful things we could do in a 100% virtual setting. Summer was quickly approaching and we had less than 6 weeks to develop a curriculum, create applications, promote them, interview candidates and select a handful of companies, but we pulled it off. Our first cohort was in the summer of 2020 and we had 9 companies participating. 

That summer, Justis and I worked around the clock to bring in some quality speakers and do whatever we could to help the companies. Despite our limited network and resources, we managed to bring in Rob Chesnut, the Chief Ethics Officer at Airbnb and Mayor Gupta, the former VP of growth at Spotify. I even produced a promo video for 2 of them since it’s what my agency Rootex had been doing for years. 

We ran another cohort that Fall and then another one the following spring. By that time, we started to get access to some pretty great investments. In less than 12 months more than 8 companies that we supported received term sheets from different VC firms in the state (some of them multiple term sheets from competing firms). Almost all of these came from intros we made. 

We realized our accelerator had become a pipeline for great deals. On the west coast, due to how competitive the ecosystem is, it seems standard to give a “finders fee” or carry (we’ve heard 10% is pretty standard). Because the ecosystem is so nascent here and there’s not nearly as many competing firms, finders fees are not as common here. We realized if we wanted to capitalize on the opportunity and be able to bring more value to our founders, we would have to raise our own fund. 

My partner Justis enrolled in the UC Berkeley VC University program and then we spent all summer interviewing partners at established VC firms, including Initialized Capital, Eniac Ventures and Dreamit Ventures among many others. We started raising our own fund about 6 months ago and 2 weeks ago (February 10th) we had our first close. One of the firms that we have sourced deals for (Tampa Bay Ventures) even came in as an anchor LP in our fund. Last week (February 15th), we made our first investment into EaseAlert who actually participated in our inaugural Summer 2020 cohort. 

We are currently hyper-focused on building a strong network that can add value to our cohort & portfolio companies, which brings me back to Seattle—I will be spending the next 6 months here meeting with angels, VCs & founders, as well as large enterprises that can be strategic partners or potential customers of our portfolio companies. Our next accelerator cohort kicks off in a few weeks and I’m excited for the tech community out here to see some of the incredible startups we’re working with. 

If you know anyone in Seattle working in tech, startups or VC, I’d love to connect with them. Feel free to DM me or email me at [email protected]