Javelin Venture Partners: Age doesn’t matter, sophistication does.

Jed Katz of Javelin VP doesn’t care if you’re 22 or 42. If you’re an entrepreneur pitching to him and his two partners, you’ve got to be able to blow them away. They want to invest in, “the type of thing where we find ourselves still thinking about it at 10PM the day after the pitch.”

What makes Javelin take notice? For one thing — a grasp of the “full chess board,” i.e. a strong knowledge base and solid understanding of the dynamics of the ecosystem a founder is about to go into. Part of what entrepreneurs need to exhibit, Katz says, “is for lack of a better phrase, a sophistication. Can they recruit well? Can they raise money well? Are people going to want to work with them?”

An entrepreneur that can check these boxes will get Javelin’s attention — irrespective of sector focus. “If we look back on the top five investments of our last fifty, they are not things we would’ve found had we started with sector. It’s something where the entrepreneur came in and blew us away with an idea or a business we wouldn’t have thought of.” What those investments did have in common: all the elements that Javelin looks for. “Massive markets, great competitive barriers that are going to last a long time, teams that know what they’re doing, running capital efficient, scalable enterprises.”

Currently on their fourth fund ($125 million), Javelin has a total of about $500 million under management. While primarily Series A investors with a sweet spot of $3–5 million, they’ll also invest in later rounds, or at the seed stage if they know the entrepreneur or have a good idea that they’ll want to lead the A. And, as Katz explains, “Whenever we do lead the Series A, we’re saving a lot of reserves for follow-ons later.”

One example where Javelin got in early: MasterClass. Katz recalls, “When we invested in the company, we had not yet even filmed the Dustin Hoffman class [the first class]. We did not know either, are the classes going to succeed, or are other A+ expert celebrities going to want to do classes after this?” But the venture met Javelin’s criteria and, since then, MasterClass has amassed an extensive catalogue of classes with a who’s who stable of A list experts, and closed a $35 million Series C round in March of 2017.

When Javelin VP gets involved, their investment is more than just monetary. All three partners are founders themselves, who’ve seen companies “through all the ups and downs” from inception to successful exits. “We’ve learned a lot along the way. We’ve been there — we’ve been in their chair,” Katz says. He’s proud of the collaborative relationship Javelin has with the founders in their portfolio companies. “We like that ten minute, 10 o’clock at night phone call where they’re working through something. We want to be the ones they reach out to to just help figure this stuff out along the way.”

Watch the full 42 Questions interview between Jed Katz and Sean O’Sullivan of SOSV here:

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