A founder with a real exit, two years into venture. Now four of five founder meetings open with his posts.

The challenge

Alex Salazar spent six years building Stormpath and sold it to Okta. Then he crossed to the other side of the table as a partner at Neotribe, and found that the thing that should have been his advantage was invisible. Venture runs on deal flow, and deal flow goes to investors founders have already formed an opinion about before the meeting is booked. Every new partner says they are operator-friendly. Alex had actually done it, and there was no way for a founder who did not already know him to tell the difference. The hardest problem for a new investor is not judgment. It is being found by the right founders at the right moment.

What we did

We wrote from the operator’s chair, not the investor’s. The monthly interview went after the decisions he made running Stormpath, including the ones that went badly, and the things he now notices in a pitch because he has been on the other end of it. That is content only someone who has built a company can write, which is exactly why it worked as a filter. Founders reading it could tell inside two paragraphs which kind of investor they were dealing with.