Hope Cochran and Amy Nelson, Founder and CEO of The Riveter. March 2018.
I am so honored and excited to be expanding my role with the Madrona team. I have long admired Madrona, not only for their sustained excellence in investing in local NW companies, but for their well-earned reputation for doing so with intellectual rigor, hard-work and integrity. And when I joined the firm as a Venture Partner two years ago, I found that the Madrona reputation is built through careful attention to the needs of entrepreneurs. That is why I am proud to be deepening my relationship with Madrona as a Managing Director. It marks the beginning of a new professional adventure, one in which I plan to lean heavily upon my own experiences as an entrepreneur and CFO as I work directly with our companies.
People, first and foremost, will continue to be my overriding focus. Having been a founder and executive in both small and large companies, I understand what it’s like to create business plans, navigate tricky financings and launch new products and services; but as I reflect upon my own successes and failures in business, what is most impactful is the quality of the people within each venture. I understand the importance of surrounding yourself with talented and driven personalities who are comfortable in periods of tumultuous change, who keep calm and focused in times of crisis or extreme growth. The stresses and strains of being an entrepreneur can be very challenging day-to-day, but the rewards are worth the challenges. The most important of which has been the life-long relationships I have with the people from my previous companies, relationships that have been forged from periods of intense joy, frustration, success and failure. I’m looking forward to investing in NW entrepreneurs who are eager and ready for a similar ride. So as I develop my investment thesis while at Madrona, it will always start, and stop, with identifying great people and teams regardless of industry or technology. In my opinion, successful teams and leaders are the most important factor in any venture.
So what am I looking for in new ventures besides great entrepreneurs? I will obviously rely heavily on my past experiences. I have worked in several technology-based industries during my career as an entrepreneur and executive—ERP, B2B software (PeopleSoft/Oracle), telecom and wireless (Clearwire/Sprint) and most recently, video games (King Digital/Activision). In addition, I am on the Board and Audit committees for a diverse set of public companies – MongoDB, Hasbro and New Relic. All these experiences and roles will inform my analysis as I add to the Madrona portfolio with new investments. As I have led companies through period of rapid change, there have been several areas that always seem to need attention and improvement.
When a company grows quickly, processes often break under the strain. Having been an executive at companies that experience very rapid growth, I understand and appreciate that the systems and processes required to build a sustainable company must be flexible, scalable and easy to roll-out. Therefore, I am interested in cloud-based B2B systems and software that enable companies to be more nimble as they manage their internal and external processes. Legacy solutions that are inflexible and hard-to-upgrade just don’t work anymore. Furthermore, there is a great need for ML/AI and robotic automation processing to improve various internal processes within organizations. Every department within an organization, from tasks as varied as financial forecasting to determining efficient locations for holding inventory, can be improved with thoughtful application of technology.
In the role of CFO, you often realize that your best forecast, or most consistently produced dashboard is only as good as the data that sits below it (customer, inventory, financial, sales, etc.). How many times was I proud of my finance team’s ability to produce metrics, only to realize that the data behind it wasn’t being stored or sorted accurately?! Today, a company needs to be able to make instant decisions, based on trends and patterns they read in real time. The ease and speed of access, the cleanliness, consistency, analysis and protection of underlying corporate data is crucial.
Finally, CFOs ultimately deal with the money, so this is an area where I have my own bumps and bruises from first-hand experience. Banks come to you with promises of ease of use, the ability to quickly move money, invest it wisely, low fees, etc. But all CFOs know, this is an area of great frustration. It often comes with multiple fees, low yields and difficulty in managing across multiple institutions and regions. On a consumer level the problem is only magnified and often misunderstood by the individual user. There are a lot of burgeoning Fintech companies out there tackling many of these problems, but there is much to be done. As you watch the flow of funds from the point of a consumer or a business, it is astonishing how much margin is taken at each juncture – whether it be fees, the days lost in the movement, currency exchanges, credit card processing, etc. I love the innovation that is happening in this space – both at the level of large scale corporate clients to the individual consumer and look forward to finding and supporting companies that are diving into this challenge
It can’t be ignored that I am a woman executive and investor in a largely male world. I have loved my career but at times I have had to fight for it. It is a joy and passion of mine to support women to thrive in all ranks of a corporation. It is not an issue of not enough female talent in the workforce. I hear that counter-argument all the time and I am amazed that some believe this to be true – have they met the women I know?!
Businesses today can and are starting the journey to recognize the untapped talent they have in their diverse workforce. It needs intentionality. In my experience, it is not going to happen by being passive. I applaud companies and other organizations that are taking intentional steps to address equality in all areas of a company. And, I am a staunch believer that businesses today should be active in addressing equality of opportunity throughout their organizations, from boardroom and C suite and at every level and department.
Madrona has been a leader in working for greater equality at our companies. Over the past two years, I have led Madrona’s participation and support of OnBoarding Women, with our partners at Deloitte, Perkins Coie and Spencer Stuart. OnBoarding Women is focused on creating more opportunities for women to serve on corporate boards in the Pacific Northwest. At Madrona, we recognize that the disparity in the public company boardroom often starts when the company is private and the board is primarily investors – often not a very diverse group. By opening up independent seats early in a company’s journey, the company has the opportunity to diversify the perspective at a crucial point in the company lifecycle, ideally with a woman or otherwise diverse candidate. One of my fellow managing directors has had 5 of the last 6 independent director appointments on his portfolio company boards be women.
As I embark on the next phase of my career, I am so honored to be part of the Madrona team. My most important asset as a professional is my reputation. A reputation is shaped by the people with whom you surround yourself. I couldn’t ask to be surrounded by a more fantastic group than the entire Madrona team.
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