essays
I sometimes joke that the past 10 years I’ve operated a bit like the infantry units I served with on active duty. I move at night, and I schedule most if not all of my travel in the evening. I do this because I serve many people: founders, investors, teammates, customers, and my family. I’m typically needed in the day so I will travel when I’m not needed. This has meant a fair bit of red eye flights.
Yesterday morning I went on an early morning run with Vivek Viswanathan, a classmate and close friend from grad school, around Washington DC. It was a fun run as we visited many of our nation’s national monuments. Our capital is a beautiful city filled with history.
At Context Ventures we’ve taken an extensive look at the benefits of meeting Qualified Small Business Stock (QSBS) requirements defined under Section 1202 of the IRS’s code of 1984. Tax law is unsettled in certain circumstances, but we hope these notes will help with your investment decisions as you think about the tax ramifications of different term sheets. Please also reference our disclaimer at the bottom of this essay.
As a veteran-founded fund, Context Ventures holds a deep conviction in the ability and resilience of veteran entrepreneurs to lead, adapt, and make decisions in stressful and ambiguous environments. We’ve collected a number of notes over the years based on our meetings with veteran and non veteran founders on how to effectively run a pitch meeting with investors. These tips are intended to help founders with executing a great pitch in order to secure investor interest and raise capital to grow your company.
Military background: Served for five years in the US Navy as a Surface Warfare Officer with tours on USS DECATUR DDG-73 and USS CARNEY DDG-64.
This Tuesday (7/11), Greylock and Context Ventures are bringing together military veterans & spouses: founders, investors, and operators to discuss startups and technology. This event will take place on Tuesday, July 11th, from 5:00-7:00 PM PT in downtown San Francisco at Greylock’s new San Francisco office.
Transitioning veterans need to build a deep and broad network if they want to flourish professionally. This is why at The Military Veteran (a Context VC portfolio-backed company) we started civilian professional development events for military veterans who are now, or soon will be, civilian professionals.
Military background: Nine years in the US Navy as a nuclear reactor operator (ETN) onboard the USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78) & USS La Jolla (MTS 701).
My kids last day of school was yesterday. I saw both of them reading these two comic books last night. These are definitely parent approved summer reading.
I describe myself as a content carnivore (I devour content) and content omnivore in terms of consuming all types of media: movies, music, news, podcasts, etc…
The first business leaders I studied were military veterans. I found also that many military business leaders were almost always willing to meet a transitioning veteran who was motivated/driven.
oday I spoke with a number of AAPI military veteran founders as part of Bunker Labs programming. Kyle Aquino 🔱 asked me talk about the subject of "How to Start and Grow a Business (Best Practices)."
I attend at least one conference/event a week. Sometimes three a week! I started attending so many events pre-pandemic that as the pandemic was ending I decided I would start hosting events as I missed seeing people during the pandemic. I’ve started running so many events that I now occasionally tell others that I’m a “community organizer.”
We just sent out an email to thousands of military veteran founders, VCs, operators, and allies. In the next few years to decades there will be consequential companies founded and led by military veteran founders. We are humbled to be part of this ecosystem and look forward to seeing the results of everyone’s hard work in the military veteran community.
In Venture Capital (VC): An American History Tom Nicholas writes: “It is often argued that venture capital means investing in three areas: people, technology, and markets…Arthur Rock, a pivotal venture capitalist responsible for some of Silicon Valley’s most influential investments, focused largely on the people side. Tom Perkins, cofounder of Kleiner Perkins, filtered investments through the lens of technology. And Don Valentine, founder of Sequoia Capital, emphasized the importance of market size.”
Yesterday and today the Context VC team is at the Rice Business - Jones Graduate School of Business for the 9th Veteran Business Battle. It’s the only veteran focused pitch competition run by a veteran student club and it's fantastic!
This past weekend, I attended my 10-year law school reunion. I went to law school partially out of desperation. When I transitioned out of the military in 2009-2010 I couldn’t get a job, so my parents encouraged me to apply to graduate schools. On the first day of law school, I remember Dean Larry Kramer telling the highly ambitious class to relax and that we would all do alright. He told us to stop grasping for gold stars and instead focus on learning from professors and our classmates and reminded us that Stanford Law School had a grade non-disclosure program.
Anne Meree is one of the most impactful people in the military veteran transition space and a person whose impact in my humble opinion has not received enough recognition. She cofounded the The COMMIT Foundation and also led the organization as CEO for roughly a decade. Countless veterans have told me firsthand how much the organization has helped them with their transition.
The transition will be just as difficult as basic training because there’s just as much uncertainty with the transition as there is when you first join the military. There are some people who are naturally gifted at everything but if you are like me then you will have to fail multiple times before you can even be average. Don’t be so hard on yourself.
On Thursday at the Context VC office we hosted the first in person public startup board meeting. I’m not 100% sure this is the case but ChatGPT seems to agree with me on this (my only ChatGPT reference).
I’ve had the good fortune of working with Christine Schwartz over the past few years through Service to School (S2S). Christine hails from a family that has served our country over decades (her family has served our country for at least the past 5 generations!). She is a military veteran, military spouse, and mother. She is a major reason why there are so many more enlisted veterans at our nation’s top undergraduate institution. I believe S2S is helping to improve civil-military relations at our nation’s schools.
I’m excited to share that Amit Jain and team at Luma AI have just closed a $20 million Series A led by David Beyer and Mike Dauber of Amplify Partners and welcome General Catalyst & NVIDIA ventures along with continued participation from Matrix Partners & South Park Commons.
As a military veteran I’m a big fan of military discounts. I make my family cringe sometimes when I ask if a store has one. When we do get a discount I believe it plants the seed in my kids prefrontal cortex that hey, maybe military service is not a bad idea.
We just sent out the Military Veteran Startup email newsletter to thousands of veteran founders, operators, VCs, and allies. Here's the email: https://lnkd.in/gFSY9zwQ
There have been 6 major economic-political-military events in my life since graduating high school in 2000:
At Context Ventures we like to attend and host events. In terms of getting work done and relationship building we think nothing beats meeting people in person (or as the infantry say: boots on the ground).
On Linkedin you can’t avoid seeing advice people have for business, health, leadership, etc…and please let me emphasize (or foot stomp) that this is a great/wonderful thing. This website/platform is a place of positivity. The advice however can be contradictory and so my advice is that most advice is good advice but the best advice is contextual and focused on the individual/company and the environment.