Wildcat believes and invests in early stage companies that solve massive problems and deliver solutions for a better world. And those solutions can tap into powering those movements around economic equality, diversity and inclusivity. Ruby Ribbon is one of their portfolio companies that have done just that. Clint McKinlay is Ruby Ribbon’s CEO. He believes that to determine how to cross chasms, there's a great deal of humility and listening that’s needed. In this episode, Clint shares Ruby...

Crossing the Chasm is a valuable framework to drive early stage venture investment decisions and serve as an operational guide for companies throughout their duration with Wildcat. But having a framework isn’t sufficient enough to build and scale a category-disrupting business. Jennifer Trzepacz, COO and Partner at Wildcat Venture Partners says that it’s the talent that makes a company come to life. It’s necessary to deeply evaluate these entrepreneurs

Crossing the Chasm is a critical framework that the Wildcat team has experienced as operators, executives and investors, using it throughout their careers. Geoffrey Moore, Author of the best-selling book Crossing the Chasm, and Partner at Wildcat Venture Partners, shares that this B2B market development model is the lowest risk, highest return play in venture. In this episode Geoffrey, Founding Partner Bryan Stolle, and COO & Partner Jennifer Trzepacz, known as JT, dive deeper into this...

In early stage venture, determining those important signals that indicate investment potential and traction are critical. One way to do so is through this concept of power as Geoffrey Moore, Author of Crossing the Chasm, Speaker, Advisor and Venture Partner at Wildcat shares in this episode. Listen to hear Geoffrey outline the five-part hierarchy of powers and where trapped value lies in this investment framework. Learn more, and find the complete show notes, at www.wildcat.vc

Much has changed in the past year and there's no question that digital transformation initiatives across every business have been front and center. There’s been a lot of forced experiments that have accelerated the adoption of these technology efforts, as the pandemic has catalyzed a shift in how companies approach optimizing their operations. Grahme Taylor, Associate at Wildcat Venture Partners is a firm believer in the power of technology companies to fight inefficiency at scale and solve...

Where we work and how we work have been completely disrupted by the pandemic. Behaviors, processes, systems and tools have fundamentally changed, and this seismic shift in the way businesses operate is one of the areas that Wildcat focuses on. It’s called digital transformation -- which the Wildcat team defines as how enterprises use technology to change their businesses processes in order to unlock trapped value and optimize operations. In this episode, Bryan Stolle discusses the impact of...

COVID-19 has affected lives all around the globe and it’s no secret that it has dialed up digital adoption even in the complex, slower moving, highly regulated healthcare space.  As one of their thesis areas, Wildcat has tracked and analyzed the dynamics of the healthcare industry and sees how the pandemic has accelerated their predicted outcomes.  In this episode, Bill Ericson shares their perspective on the future of digital health - the trends, where there’s trapped value and...

Invention and innovation have a powerful grip on our collective imagination, and in venture capital there is a front-row seat to the exciting ideas and companies looking to solve massive unsolved problems.  An area where Wildcat sees trapped value is in the financial services space, which Bryan Stolle, General Partner at Wildcat, defines as “everything in and around money.” In today’s episode we are providing a view into what’s next, the future, and where the real value and opportunities...

With rapidly increasing fund sizes and record-breaking dry powder in venture, putting early stage capital to work efficiently is challenging.  And as we learned from Bill Ericson in Episode 1 and Episode 2 regarding the ‘Evolution of Venture Capital’, bigger funds and checks aren’t better when it comes to driving outsized returns - in fact, they can be quite detrimental.  In this episode Bill is joined by another General Partner at Wildcat; Bryan Stolle to discuss: Applying discipline...

In part 1 of our 2 part series on the Evolution of Venture Capital, Bill Ericson, Founding Partner at Wildcat, shared how industry dynamics have shifted to a point where the VC asset class now stretches the definition of “venture capital”.  With the current influx of non-traditional venture investors, coupled with the parallel growth in fund & round sizes, this will likely cause significant return compression over the next few years. So in part 2, we continue our interview with Bill, who...

Venture Capital has changed quite a bit over the last 20 years years, to the point where Bill Ericson, Founding Partner at Wildcat, believes that it's time to step back and stop calling anything that invests in a technology company that is nonpublic “Venture capital”.  For he and the Wildcat team, the very term venture capital has been mutated, without precision. In the inaugural episode of Traction and Trapped Value, Bill discusses: The evolution of venture capital The impact and drivers...

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