Human Ventures reposted this
Thanks to at Jake Hurwitz for having Joe Marchese as a guest on The Gallery to share what we’ve been up to at Human Ventures. Even more excited for what this year brings! 💪
We’ve always looked up to Human Ventures as one of the best positioned and well-branded studios in the world. Plus, their portfolio speaks for itself. Then, we had the pleasure of meeting Joe Marchese, their first LP, a few years ago. Joe has an impressive and inspiring story. He sold a company to 20th Century Fox and invested a large chunk of his proceeds into the first iteration of Human Ventures. He later become a GP and is now working closely with Heather Hartnett and the rest of the team on a handful of their portfolio companies. Joe is world-class in branding, storytelling, and earning real estate in what he calls “the attention economy”. Candidly, when we reached out to him to ask him to come on show, we didn’t know what we would talk about. There were simply too many topics to pick from. We're very excited to share this week’s special episode of The Gallery where we dove deep on a handful topics, ranging from Human’s origin stories, to how he and Heather raised their first fund, to the importance of branding for building a studio and new ventures. In today’s Q+A, we asked Joe: 1. What was the original vision for Human Ventures and how did you initially fund and structure the studio? 2. As someone with an AdTech background focused on grabbing consumer attention, how do you apply lessons around attention and storytelling to your work with founders and raising capital? 3. Where do you see the biggest market inefficiencies in advertising? How did COVID impact your thesis? 4. Heather was able to raise a $25 million fund early on - how did she pull that off and what was the strategy? 5. What is Human's current pace and focus when it comes to building new ventures vs. purely investing in them? 6. Studios represent a contrarian model in VC - what's it like evangelizing something so different? 7. Major tech giants like Facebook, Google and Amazon have advertising-driven business models - what needs to shift there and why? 8. Why is building an enduring brand so important for Human Ventures and your portfolio companies despite inevitable market shifts? 9. What is coming up next for Human Ventures? 10. What wisdom would you share given the breakneck pace of change we're experiencing in tech and business models nowadays? Full episode at the link in comments! #startupstudio #venturestudio #venturecapital #newyorkcitytech #nyctech #humanventures
