Notes from Clayton’s presentation:
- 500 Global is a powerful VC firm with $2.7B assets under management, 3,000 portfolio companies, and 5,000 founders in their network across 82 countries.
- They have had 50 unicorn portfolio companies and 160 companies valued north of $100M
- They have an office in Paolo Alto that Clayton encouraged founders to stop by.
- They’re looking for next generation tech stacks.
- They used to focus on pre-seed and seed stage, but are expanding with many strategies, including an accelerator and SPVs to do later funding.
- They work closely with their startups, like Talkdesk, which was founded in 2011 and joined the 500 Global accelerator in 2012.
- Their accelerator is 4 months long, and includes one on one mentorship with a growth coach. Their investment team gives bespoke help.
- Advice for founders who are fundraising:
- Describe, in narrative form, the value creation of your product - the dollars and cents of it.
- Look for blue oceans (low competition) vs. red oceans (Clayton gives the example of the 50th copywriting tool he’s seen this month that’s using AI to leverage business data.
- If your project is on the website “There’s an AI for that,” your ICP is probably already being targeted
-
Learn more about AI, VC, and startups, at inside.com.
