Our Goal with Portfolio Companies
With our first fund (aptly named “GAN Ventures Fund I”), we will invest $100k each in 50 to 60 early-stage companies over the next four years. We only have two partners and the fees from our fund don’t support our hiring any associates or other staff.
We aim to be advisers and connectors for each for each company in our our portfolio. Because of all the above factors we believe that we have the most opportunity to impact our founders and their companies in the initial 90–180 days after we make an investment. We aim to make a few incredibly impactful introductions for each of our portfolio companies during this initial window. These introductions might be to other investors, to potential strategic partners, or to potential customers.
Given our size/staff and the target size of our portfolio, we inherently cannot be board members or daily hands-on investors. Further, our first investment is always $100k, which can be significant at the early stage, but quickly becomes a relatively small financial piece of the pie as a company goes on to raise series A and B rounds of funding.
That being said, we don’t forget about or abandon our portfolio companies after this initial window. We continue to try to make meaningful introductions and offer advice/support for the company and founders for the entirety of the time that we are on the company’s cap table.
Beyond strategic and funding advice, we often can be advisors to the company on issues of company culture and personal wellness, which are areas that especially Pat has written extensively . These are key areas of passion and interest for us we hope that as our founders wrestle with the issues related to scaling their companies they continue to stay in touch and leverage our expertise.
Finally, we are very excited about including founders in our community. We work hard to remind our portfolio founders that they are not alone and that we’re there to support and encourage them along the way. Starting a company can often be hard, lonely work, but we truly believe that with the support and resources of the GAN community, no startup stands alone.
