Grit Road Partners is a Nebraska-based venture capital firm that focuses on investing in scalable companies in the agtech space. The firm announced the launch of its second fund earlier this year and has supported initiatives that connect ag industry stakeholders in the state.
What inspired you to become an entrepreneur or support other entrepreneurs?
Venture capital is the perfect application of my skills and personality. It is also a perfect intersection of my background experience — namely business and entrepreneurship, finance and legal.
I fundamentally believe that entrepreneurs and startups drive dynamism and growth in the world, and I’m passionate about discovering, empowering and elevating people and ideas that make the world better.
What advice would you give yourself if you could go back in time to when you were just starting out?
- Learn by doing deals, not just consuming content.
- Be intellectually honest and assume you know nothing. Approaching every conversation being self-aware that you’re a novice will keep you oriented around the right things and help you learn faster.
- This job is really about being a good partner to entrepreneurs, which means being relatable, accessible, honest/transparent and demanding but extremely supportive.
- Relationships, relationships, relationships.
How do you stay motivated when things feel overwhelming — or stagnant?
On the venture capital side of the table, there is no stagnation — only chaos. So, you have to learn how to thrive in that sort of environment or you won’t last long in that vocation.
Venture capital is often considered chaotic because it operates at the intersection of extreme uncertainty, asymmetric information, constant ups and downs of your portfolio companies, long feedback loops, volatile capital markets and binary outcomes. As a VC, you are also always simultaneously fundraising, sourcing startups, deploying capital and trying to help your founders/companies navigate daily turbulence while pursuing outsized outcomes.
A huge part of my job is to help entrepreneurs decrease (or at the very least, anticipate and prepare for) the magnitude and the velocity of their highs and lows, which come daily or sometimes within the same 10-minute period.
What is the biggest challenge you’ve overcome and how did you overcome it?
Fundraising for a venture fund (or startup) is really hard anywhere. It’s especially difficult in the Midwest.
We’ve overcome it so far with perseverance, building our network and just doing what we say we’re going to do (which shouldn’t be rare, but is).
How can the Nebraska community support you?
Continue to build startups and support (and invest in) funds, startups and entrepreneurs!
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