How can VCs create a collaborative and community-driven culture?

The best VCs are those who not only can clearly define their value and vision but also execute these values in execution. Unfortunately VCs often have limited resource to spread across a larger group of portfolio companies, taking the time and investing resource in supporting the realisation of these values and vision is ultimately key.

Defining values and vision is essential for any VC firm aiming to foster a collaborative and community-driven culture. Articulating core principles, goals, and expectations is not just about establishing an identity in the startup ecosystem; it's about ensuring alignment with the missions and values of portfolio companies. This alignment fosters a harmonious environment where firms and their investments thrive collectively, measured in terms of both financial success and lasting impact. It's a strategy for building a network where shared wisdom and resources benefit every member.

The key is to promote openness, inclusion and helpfulness at all levels of the firm. Foster connections through team building events, open office designs, all-hands meetings and online communities. Recognize those who collaborate and lift others up. Encourage knowledge sharing via mentoring programs, workshops and open discussions about deals. Set the tone at the top by modeling transparent feedback and asking for input. Celebrate collective wins, not individual achievements. Create channels for portfolio companies to connect with and assist each other. Support extracurricular groups around shared interests or demographic affiliations. Seek direct input through surveys, 1-on-1s and participative decision making.

Fostering a collaborative and community-driven culture hinges on nurturing networking and relationships, establishing mentorship and peer learning programs, engaging in co-investment strategies for shared knowledge, maintaining transparency and open communication for experience sharing, supporting portfolio companies through joint initiatives, participating in community and social responsibility projects, leveraging technology and social media for continuous interaction, promoting diversity and inclusion for varied perspectives, encouraging innovation and openness to new ideas, and focusing on long-term relationships over short-term transactions, all of which collectively build a cohesive, supportive, and dynamic VC community.

How do you toe the line between selectivity and inclusion in curating 2-way communication channels (Slack, Discord, etc.) I've seen a lot of these groups devolve into pitch spamming and cheap deal marketing unless there are stringent referral criteria or active monitoring (which can be onerous).

Online channels such as Slack and/or video conferences were quite popular, and handy, during the COVID-19 period. However, once the mandatory element of online gatherings vanished, we see it getting more and more difficult to capture the attention of folks at online meetings or online platforms (such as Slack). Therefore, physical elements must be spread around the communication channels to supplement any online communities.

Some of the best VCs at creating a collaborative community regularly host events bringing together portfolio companies and key people in the relevant network. These events always stimulate ideation and connections that sometimes VC portfolio managers just don’t get around to on a daily basis. These events could be sponsored (reducing the cost burden) by a banking partner who wishes to promote their own interest of getting to know portfolio and new companies in the target sector.

The most effective tool for this is LinkedIn Live (open or closed door). These are the best tools to quickly get leaders in the given sector to share and engage the younger portfolio companies to gain access to insights and ask important questions. They are easy to organise given the LinkedIn tools and for those who keep them open can attract a significantly wider audience (including adding potential new startups in your sector to the pipeline).

This requires investment by the VC’s portfolio management team to stay in touch with founders regularly. Maintaining a regular calendar of catch-ups with founders is an incredible value addition and can provide you with insights and data that you would otherwise miss! Most fund teams are super busy and often just forget to make an introduction that is within their network and could have massive impact. These regular contact moments can serve as a tool to instigate these introductions and thereby generate much more value for the portfolio company.

Having a centralised impact goal can serve as a timely reminder for portfolio companies to keep checking back to their mission and impact. Often companies are so caught up in the day to day they don’t get to check if they are achieving their social impact and or wider purpose. A VC having a team member(s) who drive this mission can really serve as a valuable tool for portfolio companies.

In my experience, a typical VC portfolio is not designed for collaboration. As it is financially driven, the goal is to have sufficient diversity that covers alpha, beta, and sector risks. A new model is needed. Climate Impact Capital has been piloting a hybrid Venture Capital portfolio approach that is based on deep collaboration between each company in the portfolio, and between the companies and the limited partners. Companies support and benefit from each other’s product launches as part of an integrated, technical and commercial model at the portfolio level. We believe that this is the best approach for solving wicked problems, like climate change, and the energy transition. Anyone doing something similar?

That's not the role of VCs to create a community driven and collaborative culture. Their job is to make the promised return to the LPs happen. This said, there's a multitude of ways to make this happen - and more collaborative approaches can be beneficial. One way is partnering with academic institutions to scout untapped pipelines of high quality, scientifically-validated projects. This requires trust, supporting each other and more than "give me your list" approach, but rather a collaborative pipeline building and venture building effort.

Be more entrepreneur friendly...even when you say no. In my knowledge many VC do not even acknowledge. They may have finance, but that doesn't hamper them from being entrepreneur friendly

The advice in the article is wishy washy- the whole team whether working together or individually needs to:- 1. Have clear objectives 2. Have clear comprehension of how the objectives can be attained/maintained 3. Have clear understanding of the constraints affecting achievement of the objectives and how such constraints can be avoided mitigated or overcome 4. Have clear and fair metrics by which achievement is measured 5. Love rising to a challenge and beating it 6. Get on well together, trust each other, and enjoy what they do