Allos Ventures

Random Thoughts on Building Venture-Backed Companies in the Midwest

Here comes the bride

9.21.12 by Dov

Great clip from an interview with Elon Musk below, where he discusses the importance of working with the right venture partner as an entrepreneur. We wholeheartedly agree. Life’s too short to work with people you don’t enjoy spending time with. And within young companies in particular, everyone is always under so much stress, that the importance of having trusted partners (on your team, on your board, in your investor syndicate, etc.) becomes even greater.

At one point, Elon says that taking an investment is “sort of like getting married”, an analogy that we’ve used repeatedly as well. In fact, we chose a similar line more than two years ago as the headline for the description of our investment criteria on the Allos website.

While entrepreneurs probably won’t spend as much time with us as they do with their spouses, and we are all hoping for a successful ending to the process sooner than one would hope for a marriage (though longer than many), it’s still a relationship that’s critical to the success of the new venture.

We had a long debate when we launched the Allos website over whether the somewhat irreverent tone would turn some people off. Ultimately, though, we decided that anyone who didn’t appreciate our personalities as expressed through the site probably wouldn’t like working with us anyway, and it would be better for everyone to figure that out sooner rather than later. Just looking for the next entrepreneur to marry into our polygamous portfolio (OK, that may be stretching the metaphor a bit too far).

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