Leaning into innovation

Leaning into innovation

As a group, venture fund managers, principals and others on their teams tend to be more forward-focused and willing to take risks than other kinds of investors. The younger operators, associates and advisers that Venture Capital Journal celebrates in our Rising Stars cohorts at the start of each year perhaps embody this trait to an even greater degree. In the cover story for our latest print edition, we spoke to 10 of our 40 stars to find out what they are most excited about this year.

Denver Yu, an analyst at Generational Partners, is looking forward to more opportunities to fund “innovation for old, highly regulated industries that until recently had not been disrupted by technology.” Bringing advanced technology to such industries as energy/utilities, agriculture and construction “can give people access to more energy, more water, safer bridges, harder materials – things we often take for granted,” he tells VCJ.

Generational Partners is finding that many venture operators with backgrounds in aerospace and defense are increasingly putting their talent towards making solar and other renewables more economically viable for utility companies.

Bukie Adebo Umeano, a principal at Anthemis, is excited about bringing more tech solutions to the financial services industry in areas where manual review processes have dominated until recently. She sees room for many different approaches to compliance issues in this sector based on unique challenges for marketing communications, mortgage underwriting and other financial areas. “We’re spending time looking into all the different niches,” she says.

Erica Amatori at Left Lane Capital is helping to expand the value proposition that platform services provides to the firm’s portfolio companies. “Platform should help win deals, not just grow them,” she tells VCJ.

“Our commitment to companies starts before the term sheet, starts before the ink dries even,” Amatori explains. Left Lane’s concept is to extend the focus of platform team members across the entire VC value chain, including supporting due diligence on deals.

Refine time

At World Innovation Lab, investor Mike Sarchet is excited to refine the investment theses of the corporate VC funds he manages for two major Japanese companies. One of them, Shizuoka Broadcasting’s $10 million Fujiyama Bridge Lab Fund, has been shifting its focus to the ways that growing interest in services for aging populations, well-being and longevity intersect with media strategies.

“We took some guidance from AARP, which has done a lot of work on how you sell and market and advertise to senior communities,” says Sarchet. “That’s a really relevant story to the Japanese population as they age.”

He also wants to bolster WIL’s strategic impact on the start-ups backed by his funds by writing checks at the right time and helping them “hit the ground running with connections” and “a plan for their growth through our partnerships” with Shizuoka, Suzuki and other LPs.

Other rising stars, including Amanda Eakin and Naomi Goez, principals at Sputnik UTX and Forum Ventures, respectively, are ardent about continuing to level the playing field for women, Latino and other underrepresented entrepreneurs.

Eakin, who grew up and works in Austin, Texas, is committed to boosting the number of women and Latino founders who apply to Sputnik’s accelerator program. Her work with local organizations like Founded in Texas, which offers women feedback on their pitches and advice on accessing capital, helped introduce Sputnik to the founders of a start-up that was accepted into its most recent accelerator cohort.

Pilates and pitches

Goez is excited about expanding the resources that Forum provides to 100 start-ups each year through its accelerator and studio programs and venture fund. An extension of that is the lunch-and-learn workshops she runs to demystify investment memos and other aspects of VC for founders who lack the networks that typically open doors to investors. Goez also looks forward to continuing to provide intimate social settings where women founders and investors can converse, like the free “Pilates and pitches” sessions she has helped organize.

To learn more about other rising stars in venture who should be on your radar, check out our cover story. For our full coverage of our Rising Stars for 2025, go here.

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