Why I’m Joining Ground Up Ventures

Today I begin a new chapter as a part of the investment team at Ground Up, which is a dream come true and the culmination of many years of hard work leading up this moment.

During college I was very fortunate to spend two summers in Tel Aviv studying entrepreneurship and working in startup consulting. The fast-paced, dynamic workplace environment grounded my career interests in one day working within the venture ecosystem.

Over the past few years, I have made a concentrated effort to align my interests and experiences to pursue these career aspirations. I developed professional core competencies through my experiences working in consulting and had the unique opportunity to build businesses from ideation to launch while working for a venture studio. I learned all early stage startups have an outcome of 0 or 1 and the difference between success and failure is dependent on a founding team’s ability to execute. In my role, I became a resourceful operator to our founders by becoming an expert on their industries and strategizing on their go-to-market and growth strategies.

In parallel to developing my professional skills these past few years, I also continued growing my network within NYC’s vibrant startup community — which is how I initially got connected with Cory. After our first conversation, I quickly realized the opportunity with Ground Up was truly the perfect intersection between my skills, interests and intellectual pursuits. The founder-first approach and hands-on commitment to working with its portfolio companies are what make Ground Up so special, and I could not be more excited to partner with their founders.

What I will be focusing on:

1. Sourcing — Identifying exceptional founders who are not afraid to challenge the status quo and redefine their industries.
2. Due Diligence — Vetting the attractiveness of an opportunity across multiple lenses including the market size, competitive landscape, unit economics and industry tailwinds.
3. Supporting — Getting my hands dirty by working with Ground Up’s founders in every capacity by helping them solve their most pressing challenges.

What I am excited about:

Vertical Software; The software that powers the core workflows behind a specific industry or business function. Vertical software becomes entrenched within the industries they go after which creates inseparable stickiness and minimizes churn. Moreover, modern vertical software businesses ease the burden of the painful implementation cycles, given their configurable industry-specific builds. In times like these where businesses are cutting extraneous software spend and focusing their expenditures towards driving more revenue, I expect vertical software startups to garner broader market attention given their true value-add and resiliency.

I am also excited by understanding how emerging technology affects consumer behavior; consumer interests are fickle and companies attempt to innovate to reflect the latest trends in order to survive. I enjoy the thought-provoking activity of predicting how emerging technologies will impact specific industries. For example, what is the future of EdTech companies like Chegg given students can ChatGPT homework questions? Or knowing that a quarter of TikTok’s ~100M daily active users have made a purchase based off of an influencer video, how should D2C brands change their marketing strategies? As a technology enthusiast, these are the types of trends and challenging questions that keep my mind moving.

—

I want to give a big thank you to my friends and mentors for all of their support and the Ground Up team for this amazing opportunity. If you are building something new or want to talk through emerging technology trends, shoot me an email at neal@groundup.vc — I would love to hear from you!