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#MarketVoices | Introducing My Weekly Column at FreightWaves

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Brian + His Pencils

According to the International Monetary Fund, the world’s economy is worth $88 Trillion as of 2019. The Conference Board estimates that the global economy will grow at an annual rate of about 3% between 2019 and 2023, and at about 2.8% between 2024 and 2028. None of this is possible without supply chains; The networks of interdependent organizations that cooperate and collaborate with one another to move goods and information between producers and consumers. In the past this mission-critical activity was relegated to the unsexy confines of the business world – back office operations. That attitude is changing and it is changing fast.

The changes taking place in attitudes about supply chains are due to a combination of factors;

  1. Changes in consumption patterns driven by economic growth in China, India, Brazil, Russia and other markets outside North America and Western Europe.
  2. Changes in the buying behavior and consumption patterns of individuals and businesses around the world, accompanied by increasing awareness about how the production and consumption patterns of the past may be affecting climate change and the future of our planet.
  3. The inexorable forward march of technology, as it evolves to solve the problems that have arisen due to the preceding two factors; Connected devices, artificial intelligence, autonomous vehicles, predictive data and analytics, 3D printing, blockchain, advanced manufacturing, and advanced materials. These technologies, and others, have finally matured to the point where they are being tested in the world’s supply chains – to solve problems that could not be solved in the past, to eke out efficiencies, and in some cases to completely overturn how things have been done in the past.
  4. The politics of tradewars, tariffs, and geo-political groupings and alliances brings the interconnected, interdependent, and fragile nature of today’s global supply chains into stark relief for even the most uninformed citizen.

These concerns are not some theoretical or imaginary distraction; Supply chain is the basis on which corporations win or lose competitive advantage. In the space of a few decades Amazon has become one of the world’s most valuable companies at the expense of Walmart, Toys R US, Barnes & Noble, and other retailers, largely on its superior supply chain management,  and its expertise in technology. In its heyday, the same was said about Walmart. There are many more examples

Well functioning supply chains are also positively correlated with economic development: Regions of the world with well developed infrastructure and supply chains tend to experience superior economic growth in comparison to parts of the world with poorly functioning infrastructure and supply chains.

My column will study, analyze, and highlight the innovations that are being brought to market to solve problems in supply chain management, supply chain logistics, and supply chain finance, with a particular focus on how they are inextricably interdependent on one another. I will examine this topic across industries, and across regions of the world. Where possible we will look to data to help inform the discussion. Often we will highlight the specific individuals and organizations doing interesting work tying supply chain, innovation, and technology together in ways that create value for businesses, for individuals, for countries, and for the world; A 1% efficiency improvement in global supply chains represents aggregate value-creation of roughly $880 Billion.


The column will appear on FreightWaves once a week. If you have ideas you want to see me cover in future articles, send them to me via Twitter @brianlaungaoaeh or via LinkedIn. I believe that the best ideas come from the most unexpected places, so I want to hear from FreightWaves’ readers and anyone else who is obsessively enthusiastic about supply chains, innovation, and technology.

#NotesOnStrategy | Seed-stage Venture Capital Portfolio Construction

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Note: Although I have not used quotation marks, much of this blog post quotes the people to whom I have ascribed comments almost verbatim. I made slight stylistic and mechanical edits to account for the fact that presented in this format, I do not have the constraints that Twitter imposes on users. Where meaning is unclear or erroneous, I bear full blame for the mistake.

The man who grasps principles can successfully select his own methods. The man who tries methods, ignoring principles, is sure to have trouble.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Background: I joined a single family office in December 2008 as the second employee on the team, and as the first employee on what would become the direct investing team. In January 2011 we started building a venture fund from the ground up, KEC Ventures. It grew to $98M of assets under management distributed across a $35M 2011 fund and a $63M 2014 fund, with 51 investments in aggregate. I left KEC Ventures in September 2018. You can read my reflections on my time at KEC Ventures here: #ProofPoints.

I have now teamed up with Lisa Morales-Hellebo to build an early stage fund to invest in startups building innovations to refashion global supply chains. We’re in the early stages of raising the fund, so I am thinking through the issues that every emerging fund manager grapples with. We are simultaneously building The New York Supply Chain Meetup, and The Worldwide Supply Chain Federation – more about that at the end of this article.

This blog post is a qualitative examination of issues pertaining to portfolio construction and portfolio management, from the perspective of a seed-stage manager who is managing a Fund I portfolio that falls somewhere between $10M and $25M of AUM. It is based on a discussion that occured on Twitter in early February 2019.

Before I go much further, some philosophical housekeeping;

  1. It is my belief that the seed-stage technology venture capitalist’s only goal is to benefit disproportionately from uncertainty. To do this the best seed-stage venture capitalists seek startups that fit an investment thesis, and make investments before other investors would normally invest.
  2. When I think of uncertainty, I am thinking of a state of affairs in which I have limited information and knowledge, and must make a decision whose outcome I can’t predict because the future is unknown and unknowable. I do not think one can measure uncertainty quantitatively.
  3. When I think of risk, I am thinking of undesirable future outcomes some of which I can enumerate quantitatively.

A startup is a temporary organization built to search for the solution to a problem, and in the process to find a repeatable, scalable and profitable business model that is designed for incredibly fast growth. The defining characteristic of a startup is that of experimentation – in order to have a chance of survival every startup has to be good at performing the experiments that are necessary for the discovery of a successful business model.

This is the definition I have in mind when I speak of a startup. Early stage venture capitalists will typically invest before search and discovery is complete. This definition is based on a definition by Steve Blank, to which I have added the characteristic of fast growth based on Paul Graham’s observations.

In the remainder of this post, I try to synthesize and organize the comments that arose from my original question on Twitter. I add some commentary of my own where I feel it will be helpful. I am always thinking about this topic so if there is other material you think I should read please send it to me. The easiest way to do so is via Twitter: @brianlaungaoaeh.

I assume that the reader is already familiar with the basics of VC and how a venture fund is structured. If not, here’s a decent introduction from the Harvard Business Review: How Venture Capital Works.

Note: When I make references to modeling portfolio construction for REFASHIOND Ventures’ first fund – which we are in the early days of raising, I am using a spreadsheet model template developed by Taylor Davidson at Foresight. I have known Taylor since 2013 and I couldn’t recommend his work highly enough.

The data below from Correlation Ventures, and CBInsights is pretty self-explanatory.

Correlation Ventures’ data looks at individual financings rather than at individual companies – one company can have multiple financings. The data from CBInsights looks at individual startups, where, similarly, one startup can have multiple financings.

My conclusion, based on these two pieces of analysis, is that an early stage VC should expect that at least 50% of the startups in any given fund portfolio will lose all the money that the VC invests in them. The data from Correlation Ventures suggests an even more grim outlook – though as you’ll see later it is somewhat less categorically conclusive. However one looks at the data, the conclusion is sobering.

To put the data in context, for a while the rule of thumb was that 33% of the startups in a VC portfolio would go to zero, another 33% would return invested capital, and the remaining 33% would do significantly better – resulting in the 3x net return that limited partners expect.

According to this historical distribution of returns data compiled by Correlation Ventures, 10% of financings provide over 5x return while 65% are partial or complete write-offs.
In this analysis by CBInsights, less than 50% of startups that raised a seed round in the United States between 2008 and 2010 were able to raise a subsequent round of capital.
In this analysis by CBInsights, less than 50% of startups that raised a seed round in the United States between 2008 and 2010 were able to raise a subsequent round of capital.

Given this state of affairs, how do different VCs think about portfolio construction and portfolio management? If you are a family office, an individual, or a corporation getting into venture capital as an asset class for the first time, and if you are investing in a manager who is raising their first fund, what should you be on the lookout for? I hope this helps frame the issues worth considering. Note that the discussion documented below centered around the data from Correlation Ventures only. I have not included every response to my tweet, only those I feel contribute directly to the topic. It is possible I have missed a few replies because the thread started branching off in several directions after a while.

Eliot Durbin (@etdurbin) from Boldstart Ventures: Two nuggets of advice I got on our early funds . . . expect 20% of portfolio to drive 80% of returns. Pay attention to founders that get those 1x – 3x returns on their first rodeo, because the next will be better. Also, third, plan your percentage reserves for follow-on investments because ownership in your winners matters most.

Jerry Neumann (@ganeumann) from Neu Venture Capital: It means you have to make enough investments so that you have a decent shot at being in some of the outliers. The expected value here is at least 1.2x.

Hadley Harris (@Hadley) + Nihal Mehta (@nihalmehta) from ENIAC Ventures: The key is to build out two models. The first is a fund model with number of companies and projections about how broad/deep you follow. The second is a liquidity model to project when money will come back for recycling, and the triggers for investing past initial investable capital. Note: The process of recycling capital allows the fund to gain leverage without exposing limited partners to additional risk beyond their capital commitment.

Albert Wenger (@albertwenger) from Union Square Ventures has blogged about uncertainty for some time, and he discusses this topic in this installment – arguing that because this distribution is now well understood, valuations are being bid up significantly. This puts small funds at a disadvantage, and contributes to the phenomenon whereby VCs raise larger and larger subsequent funds. It’s a brief post. You should read it.

Chris Douvos (@cdouvos) from AHOY Capital: Here’s a thought:

  • VC has always been a power law business, so big hits drive portfolio returns . . . and the big hits are getting bigger, but on the other hand, pricing going up is going to cut returns, not only of the big winners, but also of the middle OK part of the portfolio.
  • Remember: Opportunity = Value – Perception, and the industry is so good at blowing up perception, but true Value is more fleeting – and, if we’re being pedantic, Value is the discounted present value of future (positive) cash flows. [My comment; The dichotomy between Value and Perception that Chris is referring to explains why the data from Correlation Ventures seems so jarring at first glance.]
  • But everyone’s bought into the power law dogma, so unicorns are getting bid up, often with pricing for perfect execution, following winds, and fair seas . . . any hiccup (systematic or idiosyncratic) will lead to a lot of stranded unicorns, or as Bryce (of Indie.VC) calls them, “donkeys in party hats” . . . Speaking of which, I think his efforts over at Indie.VC have been a creative and thoughtful search for Opportunity in the context of Value – remember, Opportunity = Value – Perception.
  • At the end of the day all that matters is Moolah in da Coolah – the distributed to paid-in-capital multiple that a fund ultimately achieves. Here was my effort at thinking about some of these portfolio construction issues in the context of valuation environment: All About the Benjamins.
  • But I remain really nervous about the environment. As Henry McCance at Greylock told me in 2001, VC works well when time is cheap and capital expensive. When that relationship is reversed, trouble ensues.

Dave McClure (@davemcclure), formerly of 500 Startups:

  • This means you should do a LOT more deals, unless you pick better than Sequoia. Of course depends on dealflow, selection, and stage, but if you start investing at seed-stage, most GPs with portfolios with N < 50 companies are playing Russian roulette. If large outliers of > 20x happen only 1% – 2% of the time, basic math would suggest a portfolio size of N > 100 is more rational.
  • [My comment; Yes, The basic math certainly supports that conclusion. Though, I wonder if there are nuances the basic math doesn’t capture. Do you think there are conditions under which one might justify deviating from that prescription?] Well if you’re a subject matter expert and/or have excellent access to dealflow or an established brand, you might choose to build a concentrated portfolio – but again you’d have to convince yourself, hopefully based on data, that you’ll generate a higher percentage of outliers than the average VC.
  • [My comment; Got it . . . Though, one has to wonder if there’s such a thing as a subject matter expert when it comes to predicting how the future will unfold. But, I see why that approach would make sense – in some rare cases. Who would you say does that really well? Anyone? CVCs?] Well for specific IP-related areas, people who are scientists/PhDs/professors might have an advantage. For industry verticals, maybe experienced business or technical folks. Famous people and/or famous VC firms might also have an advantage. Not sure about CVCs, unless specific IP perhaps.
  • [My comment; That reminds me of one of the points Richard Zeckhauser makes in Investing in the Unknown and Unknowable; collaborate with other investors with superior knowledge of specific industry verticals, among other things.]

Josh Wolfe (@wolfejosh) from Lux Capital:

Huge wins are rare / Mostly luck / Claimed as skill / But huge wins beget halos / And halos beget better reputation / And better rep begets better opps / And better opps up the odds / That you get lucky / With a rare huge win [My comment; Josh typed this like a poem. I just couldn’t figure out how to get that layout using this new UI on WordPress. I have spent a lot of time thinking about the skill versus luck dichotomy in early stage VC. So one way to think about this discussion is to ask; In relation to portfolio construction, what can a seed-stage VC do to optimize luck?]

Tren Griffin (@trengriffin), author of 25iq – a blog about markets, tech, and everything else:

At the core of almost everything is probability. The future is a probability distribution. The best processes creates favorable odds of a correct decision. A good process can create a bad result and vice versa. Quoting Warren Buffett:

Warren Buffett, on Diversification and Portfolio Construction
Warren Buffett, on Diversification and Portfolio Construction

Fred Destin (@fdestin) of Stride.VC:

  • In my experience the skew is almost systematically massive. With one fund returner – your fund is likely to be fine, with two – it’s likely to be great, etc. The top 2 to 4 exits will likely more than 2x+ the fund, the next 5 to 8 exits together will return 1x the fund, and the rest might lose some money.
  • Hence I’m always thinking – never invest in anything that can’t return the fund – which is, of course, a function of ownership and upside, with upside uncapped if you want to have a shot at a “glimmer of greatness”.

[My comments; Thanks, Fred. “Never invest in anything that can’t return the fund.” How does one figure this out? In one of his books Nassim Nicolas Taleb talks about two forms of analysis; First – Thinking forward to the future state, and then, Second – Thinking backwards to the current state. But, how does one do that without succumbing to magical thinking? Are there other approaches? I created a grid based on a blog by Bill Gurley – All Revenue is Not Created Equal: The Keys to the 10X Revenue Club. But, I’m always wondering how others approach this question. I have to admit, team decision-making then becomes an issue . . . Doesn’t work if rest of the team doesn’t buy into systematically thinking about that question as a group. I used a similar approach to guide my effort to determine if a startup has the potential to develop moats. This also raises an issue that Dave McClure mentioned in our exchange on this same question; A VCs ability to add value – early customer introductions, engineering outcomes to help avoid or minimize the scenarios where a startup doesn’t return invested capital – makes a big difference – I noticed this while I managed a fund of funds portfolio at KEC Holdings between 2008 and 2012. I’m confident using a template or checklist is helpful – Michael Mauboussin discusses that approach in The Success Equation. A question in my mind is how Lisa and I can codify best-practices into decision-making processes as we get REFASHIOND Ventures off the ground. But perhaps as Hadley and Eliot alluded, it’s a question that requires a multi-step solution with at least 2 layers of analysis; First – a fund level macro analysis, and then, second – an analysis of each investment to see how it fits the fund level macro framework. Though, I think in Zero to One, Peter Thiel discusses how at the early-stage one differentiator is a VCs qualitative analysis of how the future will unfold more so than anything else. That does not negate anything that’s been said so far, but it suggests that there’s a lot of room for interpretation.]

  • Tie decision making to absolute rules (eg I need a moat in every investment) and you’re introducing a systematic bias / hard screening criteria. That may be fine – but don’t confuse a disciplined decision-making process and method with fixed decision-making “rules”. The only rule that should be fixed in my opinion is: the potential for unlimited upside exists within the fund’s duration. [My comment; I agree. It’s less about absolute rules, and more about ensuring I have thought about the issues and have consciously decided one way or the other. I think it’s important to do that when things are uncertain and and failing to think through the issues is costly. As you point out, it’s more about process than hard rules . . . Especially – at the stage at which I’m doing this there are no moats yet, but I need to consider the possibility that they can develop over time, and why that may happen if things work out. But, point taken re systematic bias.]

Never invest in anything that can’t return the fund.

Fred Destin, Stride.VC

Note: At this point I shamelessly plugged my work on Economic Moats: Economic Moats for Early-stage Tech Startups (Half a Dozen Blog Posts & A Presentation. Also, note that there’s a philosophical divide about economic moats and startups among VCs. Some think they matter. Others do not. I think they do, and I think a careful analysis of the issue leads to that conclusion for startups that will go on to return an entire fund, for example. However, I also agree with the observation that at the the earliest stage of a startups existence the thing that matters most is the startup’s ability to make its customers happy as it conducts the search for a scaleable, repeatable, and profitable business model.

An economic moat is a structural feature of a startup’s business model that protects it from competition in the present but enhances its competitive position in the future.

This is the definition of an economic moat I have settled on, based on my work thinking about the topic from my specific vantage point as an early stage VC.

Ed Sim (@etdurbin) from Boldstart Ventures: Great questions but don’t overthink it; First, every investment has to have opportunity to return fund. Second, ownership matters. Third, reserves matter. A related question; What is your return the fund exit (RFE) for each investment assuming dilution? That analysis will show that ownership and reserves matter, and so does capital efficiency. [My comment – I have known Ed and his partner, Eliot since 2012; Ed! I am trying to find the Goldilocks Zone; not too much thinking, but not so little that we get taken by surprise . . . I agree working through these points will cover most, if not all the necessary ground.]

What is your return the fund exit (RFE) for each investment assuming dilution?

Ed Sim, Boldstart Ventures

Sean Glass (@SeanGlass), Founder and CEO – Advantia Health. Founding Partner – Acceleprise; What was the return on that meta portfolio? I think the role of vc as investor is to generate alpha, and you do that by taking an approach that gives your portfolio asymmetric risk. Just like with public equity investing there are a different approaches to doing that.

Sean’s comment raises an observation first made by, Arjun Sethi (@arjunsethi), who is Co-Founder of Tribe Capital, and formerly of Social Capital, Yahoo, and MessageMe, and LoLApps – about the graph from Correlation Ventures; The graph is a poor illustration of what defines a venture round, fund and timeline of investment. [Jerry Neumann’s comment; Agree. The data is fairly useless. If you take the bottom end of each bucket it’s 1.2x, top end (except 50x+) it’s >4x. So, runs the gamut.]

Deepak Gupta (@DeepakG606) from WEH Ventures; The Correlation Ventures data refers to financings and not number of companies. It’s possible a VC made an overall 10x+ in aggregate in one company but would still be hitting 2x or 1x fund in this data. So overall percentage of multibagger companies will be higher than suggested by this analysis. [My comment; This is true, given the modeling I have been working on. There are scenarios in which the fund would fail to meet LP expectation of a 3x+ net distributed to paid-in-capital ratio even though the percentage of big winners is non-zero. It’s quite trivial to see how this might happen if the general partners’ capital allocation decisions do not ultimately work in the fund’s favor.]

  • I wouldn’t go as far as to say the data is completely useless, though I see the argument Arjun and Jerry are making. If one assumes that the two sets of data suggest possible probability distributions, then I think the interpretation should be that; First, any portfolio construction that assumes less than 50% of the portfolio going to zero is almost certainly naively over-optimistic. Second; assumptions about big winners should be scrutinized closely because they are rare – so fund managers should be able to explain how they will attract dealflow that will include more than their fair share of potential fund-returning startups AND the processes they have developed to maximize the chance that they actually select those startups for inclusion in the fund’s portfolio.
  • In my work on modeling portfolio outcome scenarios for REFASHIOND Ventures’ first fund, I have gone as far as assuming 90% of the portfolio goes to zero. I have not modelled 100% of the portfolio going to zero because that’s obviously the trivial case – if that happens we’ll most certainly have bigger problems to worry about. Most of the time spent in discussions between prospective limited partners and the venture fund’s general partners should be in arriving at underlying assumptions that reflect reality and can be justified by how the general partners have said they will run the fund, with enough flexibility to allow the fund to exploit unforeseen and unexpected opportunities as they arise in real-time – remember that optimizing luck is an important aspect of all this.
  • Correlation Ventures has not made public a version of this analysis that presents the results in a manner similar to that done by CBInsights. It is likely that they were unable to get to that level of granularity given the source data, or they may prefer to keep that specific version of the analysis as a trade secret.

Dan Buckstaff (@Buckstaff) shared a link to an article by Morgan Housel (@morganhousel) from Collaborative Fund – Tails, You Win; It’s a short article and you should read it if you want to learn more about how prevalent power laws are around us. I like this quote from Benedict Evans – I have paraphrased it to refer to Early-stage Venture Capital rather than Silicon Valley: Early-stage Venture Capital is a system for running experiments. It’s the nature of experiments that some fail – the key is for the ones that work to really really work. [My comment; Once you read the article you should notice that it echoes themes from the comment Josh Wolfe made earlier.]

Early-stage Venture Capital is a system for running experiments. It’s the nature of experiments that some fail – the key is for the ones that work to really really work.

Paraphrasing, Benedict Evans, Andreessen Horowitz

Baris Guzel (@BarisGSF), of BMWi Ventures, pointed me to a blog post by Seth Levine (@sether) from Foundry Group – Seth’s contribution to the discussion is below;

  • To your specific question; Given skewed outcomes what’s the right strategy for a small fund? in general smaller funds will have less opportunity to consolidate ownership in outperforming companies. Thus I think the right strategy is to seek more exposure – place more bets. [My comment; Thanks, Seth. There seems to be a tension between seeking more exposure AND getting as much ownership % as early as possible, and reserving capital to follow on in later rounds. Especially, in the context of a fund 1 with say $10M – $20M of AUM. Thoughts? If you had to choose?]
  • There’s definitely that tension. In an ideal world you’d have enough capital and enough early, but predictive, data to consolidate into your best companies. Larger “Series A” funds do that regularly, but with a seed fund you have challenges with both capital and information.
  • You have a small fund and by the time you have to make a follow-on decision, or more ideally preempt a round, you don’t really have that much more data about the opportunity. That’s really the argument for placing as many early bets as possible.
  • The ones that run on you drive value and you’ll have plenty of exposure to the potential for upside. It’s easy to say in hindsight that you “knew” something was going to be great, but how often do you have that reliable insight between Pre-seed, Seed, Seed+, and Series A? [My comment; I know that’s a rhetorical question, but there’s so much pressure to seem prescient, all knowing, and fully certain about the future . . . But yes, it’s generally hard to know. So it seems things point back to the decision-making process, and a bit of luck, as others have alluded. I’ve stopped paying attention when people tell me to “sound more confident about what you’re saying” . . . How can one be confident when decisions are being made under extreme uncertainty? I’ll stop bloviating.]
  • Re: Luck, that reminded me of this ancient post of mine (2005 – I was an associate) about what makes a good venture capitalist and David Cowan’s comment, which has always stuck with me. [My comment; I couldn’t find the blog post Seth is referring to, but I found a discussion thread elsewhere in which David Cowan, of Bessemer Venture Partners says the correct answer to the question “What do you think is the most common trait among successful venture capitalists?” is “Luck.” This reminded me of a blog post I wrote about Fab.com around the time I was studying economic moats; Vcs often rail about startups raising too much money at valuations that are too high to sustain, but VCs too sometimes make investments that assume perfect knowledge, perfect execution by the team, perfect market adoption . . . etc, to the point Chris Douvos made earlier. I wonder how the early stage venture funds that invested in Fab.com have fared. I have not looked that up yet.]

This also calls to mind a quote from Andy Rachlef, formerly of Benchmark Capital; Investment can be explained with a 2×2 matrix. On one axis you can be right or wrong. And on the other axis you can be consensus or non-consensus. Now obviously if you’re wrong you don’t make money. The only way as an investor and as an entrepreneur to make outsized returns is by being right and non-consensus.

The 2×2 Matrix of Investing Outcomes

This article by Tren Griffin delves deeper into the topic: Why Investors Must Be Contrarians to Outperform The Market.

Investment can be explained with a 2×2 matrix. On one axis you can be right or wrong. And on the other axis you can be consensus or non-consensus. Now obviously if you’re wrong you don’t make money. The only way as an investor and as an entrepreneur to make outsized returns is by being right and non-consensus.

Andy Rachlef, formerly Benchmark Capital, now at Wealthfront

Note: At a certain point in the discussion on Twitter a side-bar discussion developed about how much help seed-stage venture capitalists should provide to startups in which they have made an investment as those startups search for product-market-fit. I am not including those here as that is a separate topic worth exploring on its own.

Chinedu Enekwe (@Cope84) from Affiniti VC; Very true – risk in the winner and finding ways to coach the laggards into favorable exits. [My comment; He highlighted this blog post by Fred Wilson (@fredwilson). It’s worth reading, if you’re an emerging manager coming to grips with how to manage your portfolio. The primary uptake from Fred’s blog post is that the best early-stage VCs spend more time with startups in the second and third quartile of portfolio returns than with startups in the top quartile. This is keeping with my beliefs on the topic; The very best investments in an early-stage VC portfolio will do fine, those founders are pretty self-directed and resourceful. They will succeed with or without anyone’s help. Also, they are very proactive about letting investors know what assistance will be most beneficial to them, in advance. So where a VC can really move the needle with regard to portfolio returns is with the startups and founders that really need some help to avoid returning 0x the invested capital. I saw this play out in a fair amount of detail when I was also responsible for performance monitoring and reporting on a sizeable fund of funds portfolio between 2008 and 2012 – it included early stage VC funds, growth funds, buyout funds, hedge funds, and some public equity active funds.]

Note: The following discussions were not part of the thread that formed from my question on Twitter, but they are relevant, and so I am including them here.

Samir Kaji (@Samirkaji) from First Republic Bank; Shared an article by Clint Korver of ULU Ventures: Picking winners is a myth, but the Power Law is not. It is worth reading Clint’s article because he introduces some added dimensions to the discussion. Here’s additional advice from Samir, some of which I got over email, and then during a call with him when Lisa and I told him about REFASHIOND Ventures. I have also cherry picked comments from some blog posts he’s written on the topic.

  • To maximize the probability of success, fund GPs raising a first fund should perform the portfolio construction exercise based on their investment thesis, their knowledge of the market in which they plan to operate, and how much capital they need to prove that they can execute the thesis. Although, macro considerations are always a concern for managers raising their very first fund, this exercise should be performed independent of considerations from prospective LPs who make comments such as “You should not raise more than $X for your first fund.” In other words the dog should wag its tail, not the other way around. He discusses that topic here: Is there ideal portfolio construction for seed funds?
  • Although many will pejoratively speak of large portfolios as “spray and pray”, doing so ignores years of probability and statistics, and likely over-weights skill versus luck.
  • That said, larger portfolios do come with some challenges: Scaling value-add to portfolio companies. Requiring larger exits (given smaller initial checks/ownership vs. concentrated portfolios) for definition of outlier (fund returner). Tougher to make follow-on decisions.
  • When pitching LPs, at a minimum expect to discuss
    • Target Fund Size,
    • The stage at which the fund will make its initial investments; Pre-seed, Seed, Series A, Series B . . . or later,
    • Average Initial Check Size,
    • Average Initial Ownership Target – which establishes the valuation bands within which the fund should invest,
    • Total Number of Startups in the Portfolio – a range is the norm,
    • The fund’s Follow on Reserve Percentage, and
    • The Fund’s Investment Period.
  • As conversations progress, more sophisticated LPs may want to discuss the key assumptions driving the sort of scenario analysis I described earlier. Clint performed a simulation to arrive at the conclusions in his article.

Conclusion: The goal of this article was to develop a qualitative understanding of how other VCs think about portfolio construction and portfolio management from the perspective of an emerging early-stage VC raising an initial fund of between $10M and $25M of AUM. Limited Partners in a new manager raising a first fund face the same questions about making an investment that venture capitalists encounter when they seek to first deploy capital into a startup they have just met. For most LPs the easier decision is “wait and see” rather than to take on the uncertainty, risk, and hard work necessary to make a decision to invest in a new VC fund manager. One way to get LPs comfortable making a commitment is to;

  • Demonstrate that the new manager has a unique investment thesis based on knowledge about a market that is under-appreciated by other investors,
  • Demonstrate an ability to source deal-flow in a manner that is both efficient and proprietary – given the rule of thumb that the best VCs see 100 startups for every 1 investment they make,
  • Demonstrate the ability to pick startups that have a high probability of returning the portfolio within the duration of the fund,
  • Demonstrate an ability to manage the portfolio’s losses in a way that maximizes the likelihood that the fund will meet LPs’ expectations, and
  • Demonstrate an ability to execute the fund’s stated portfolio thesis, portfolio construction and portfolio management strategy under real world scenarios.

This is by no means an easy task, and it is only one of the many issues an emerging manager raising a first fund must worry about. As has been reiterated more than once previously, it requires hard work, smarts, keeping one’s wits about oneself, and a fair bit of luck.

Additional Reading:

About The Worldwide Supply Chain Federation

The Worldwide Supply Chain Federation is the collaborative, and mutually supportive coalition of open and multidisciplinary grassroots communities focused on technology and innovation in the global supply chain industry. Founded in August, 2017, The New York Supply Chain Meetup is its founding chapter. The New York Supply Chain Meetup is the world’s largest, fastest growing, and most active community on Meetup.com – with well over 1700 members. The Worldwide Supply Chain Federation is the first community of its kind to focus on supply chain, innovation, and technology. It seeks to bring together BUYERS and BUILDERS of the technology innovations that will refashion global supply chains.

About REFASHIOND Ventures

REFASHIOND Ventures is an emerging early stage venture capital firm that is being built to invest in early-stage startups creating innovations to refashion global supply chain networks. REFASHIOND Ventures is based in New York City. The Worldwide Supply Chain Federation and The New York Supply Chain Meetup are initiatives of REFASHIOND Ventures.

Update: March 23, 2019 at 08:32 to fix some mechanical errors, typos, grammar. Also added definition of a startup, and definition of an economic moat, and highlighted some quotes.

#CountDown: 8 Days To Launch in Charleston, SC

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Acknowledgement: I am grateful to Laura Corder and Benjamin Johnson of the South Carolina Department of Commerce for pointing me to relevant stats and data for this article.

Introduction

It is with great excitement and anticipation that I write this blog post; At 5:00 PM on Wednesday, March 27, 2019, I’ll join Michael Rentz as he launches The Charleston Supply Chain Meetup. The theme for the event is: Supply Chain & Innovation in South Carolina. The evening will feature a keynote address by Jim Newsome, President & CEO of the South Carolina Ports Authority. That will be followed by two discussion panels. You can find out more details by clicking to the event page using this link: #TCHSSCM01 – Launch: Supply Chain & Innovation in SC.

I wrote about this a few weeks ago – without as much of a focus on Charleston: UnderConstruction | Why Is A Global Grassroots Supply Chain Community Starting in NYC, and Charleston, SC?

What is The Charleston Supply Chain Meetup?

The Charleston Supply Chain Meetup is the first domestic, active sister-chapter of The Worldwide Supply Chain Federation.

In August 2017, Lisa Morales-Hellebo and I teamed up to start building The New York Supply Chain Meetup (#TNYSCM). Our goal was a very simple one; to create a grass-roots driven community that brings together the BUYERS of supply chain innovation and the BUILDERS of supply chain innovation. We have now built it into the world’s largest, fastest growing, and most active supply chain meetup, with 1700+ members in NYC alone. That success has led us to start creating The Worldwide Supply Chain Federation based on requests from people in other cities, like Charleston, SC. The Worldwide Supply Chain Federation is the world’s first network of collaborative and grass-roots driven supply chain meetups. Our network has 1880+ members globally. We are in the process of building an active chapter in Bangalore – The Bangalore Supply Chain Meetup held its first event on November 24, 2018, and we will now have our second active chapter in Charleston. We expect to launch a few more chapters by the end of 2019, and we already have a few communities in progress – awaiting the emergence of a community leader whose obsessive enthusiasm for supply chain and innovation drives them to opt-in to lead the initiative to build the local communities that will become part of our network on the ground.

Our Mission

To nurture and grow the world’s foremost open, global, multidisciplinary community of people devoted to building the supply chain networks of the future — starting in NYC.

Our Vision

To create a global movement; the largest community on the planet of people obsessed with supply chain technology and innovation.

Why Charleston, SC?

This is a question that arises whenever we tell people about The Charleston Supply Chain Meetup. The first answer is really quite simple. We’re optimising for enthusiasm. In the past year of building the community in New York City, we have discovered that you can’t manufacture enthusiasm for our declared mission. So, we need people like Michael who opt-in because our mission is something they believe in, not because it is part of some strategy. The enthusiasm for what we are trying to build has to be intrinsic, not extrinsic.

A little bit about Michael; He is a native of South Carolina. He studied Civil Engineering at the University of South Carolina – Columbia. Then he obtained a JD from the Charleston School of Law, and an MBA from the College of Charleston. Most recently, he spent 2 years at Maersk, and was based in the New York City area, before decided to return home to South Carolina towards the end of 2018. Before returning home, he joined us in NYC for several of our meetups, gaining a sense of the community we are building and understanding our mission better. Once he was settled in Charleston, he let us know he wanted to recreate a sister community in Charleston. We couldn’t have wished for a better sequence of events.

It turns out Charleston, SC is an ideal place to consider building grass-roots driven community that focuses on supply chain, innovation, and technology. Here are some stats;

  • According to the World Trade Atlas, South Carolina traded with 198 countries in 2018. Given that the Port of Charleston will boast the second deepest habor on the United States’ East Coast by 2025, one expects this number to increase in the very near future. Presently, the state’s biggest trading partners are China, Canada, Germany, Mexico, and the United Kingdom.
  • According to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, South Carolina’s GDP was $221.7 billion in 2017, having grown by 114% over the past 20 years. When you marry that with a 2015 economic development estimate that the Port of Charleston generates roughly $53 billion in annual economic activity that supports about 187,200 jobs across the state, one realizes how pivotal Charleston is to economic progress in South Carolina.
  • According to the South Carolina Ports Authority, $38 billion worth of exports travelled through South Carolina.
  • The Port of Charleston hosts 13 of the world’s 15 biggest container shipping lines, and the South Carolina Ports Authority plans $2.4 billion in capital expenditures to improve its physical and technological capabilities in order to handle more freight from post-Panamax vessels. It is one of the top 10 ports in the United States, and has the stated ambition of vaulting itself into the top 5.
  • According to the Charleston Regional Development Alliance; The Charleston region ranks 9th among U.S. metros in attracting foreign direct investments, benefits from transportation infrastructure that puts shipments through Charleston within 48 hours of most domestic markets, with more than 20% of the U.S. population within a day’s drive of the region.

So, while Charleston, SC may not be the first place most people think of when they think of the location for the next domestic chapter of our supply chain community, I would argue that Michael is right when he observes that the ground in Charleston, SC is fertile for a community like the one he’s set out to build.

As The Charleston Supply Chain Meetup grows, Michael and it’s other members will have the support of our growing network of communities, starting with the community in New York City. Join us in spreading the news about the community we are building, and specifically, The Charleston Supply Chain Meetup.

Our Mantra

About The Worldwide Supply Chain Federation

The Worldwide Supply Chain Federation is the collaborative, and mutually supportive coalition of open and multidisciplinary grassroots communities focused on technology and innovation in the global supply chain industry. Founded in August, 2017, The New York Supply Chain Meetup is its founding chapter.

About REFASHIOND Ventures

REFASHIOND Ventures is an emerging early stage venture capital firm that is being built to invest in early-stage startups creating innovations to refashion global supply chain networks. REFASHIOND Ventures is based in New York City. The Worldwide Supply Chain Federation and The New York Supply Chain Meetup are initiatives of REFASHIOND Ventures.

NRF Big Show 2019 – My EXPO Hall Tour Notes

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My Supply Chain Credo

Disclaimer: This blog post reflects my personal opinions only. It does not represent the opinions of REFASHIOND Ventures, or REFASHIOND CO:LAB. It does not represent the opinions of The New York Supply Chain Meetup, or The Worldwide Supply Chain Federation. It does not reflect the opinions of any other person who is associated with any of those entities. This blog post does not represent the opinion of any other individual or organization that is mentioned by the author. I do not have any business or commercial relationship with organizations mentioned in this article, however CIM Tours paid The New York Supply Chain Meetup a stipend for my services as a tour guide during NRF’s Big Show 2019.

Background

During the fall of 2018, my co-founder, Lisa Morales-Hellebo and I met Daniel Hodges for coffee in NYC. We discussed what we were working on, and he told us about his company, Consumers in Motion Tours (CIM Tours). Paraphrasing the description from Dan’s LinkedIn profile; CIM Tours creates experiences that transform business. They guide CEOs, BODs and CMOs through technological, and consumer behavioral changes and the resulting disruption by exposing them to innovative ideas and technologies being used by startups and other cutting-edge companies. They utilize major conferences and workshops to accomplish this task. When he asked us if we’d be interested in leading the tours for the National Retail Federation’s 2019 Big Show Conference, we immediately said yes – after all, supply chain is our thing.

What is the National Retail Federation (NRF), you ask? It is a retail-industry trade organization that has existed for more than a hundred years. According to its website, the retail industry contributes $2.6 trillion to the United States’ gross domestic product – far outstripping any other industry. As an industry, retail is the largest private sector employer in the United States. The Big Show is the NRF’s annual flagship conference – the world’s largest retail conference and expo. This year it attracted 38,000 attendees, 16,000 retailers, and 800 exhibitors, representing 99 countries.

CIM helps delegates and attendees at conferences like NRF’s Big Show, the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), Cannes Lions, C2 Montreal, and the IoT Solutions World Congress, etc., navigate and explore the technologies and trends at the forefront of change today.

You can understand why Lisa and I were excited about this. Below are the notes I prepared for Lisa and I as we were getting ready to lead the tours. We led 3 tours, each 2 hours in duration, on each day from January 13 to January 15.

can you tell Lisa and I had just failed to find acceptably strong coffee to help us get through the first day of tours? The lines at Starbucks in the Javitz Center were too long, and we ran out of time.

Note: These notes are prepared directly from materials the participating companies provided us directly, or that I found on their websites. Any direct similarities between my notes and descriptions and other materials on their respective websites is deliberate.

ACCUSTORE

AccuStore is a store-intelligence software platform that helps retailers maintain and update store data in real-time. It helps retailers base decisions on a single-source of data to help execute store-specific initiatives.

Here are two examples of how AccuStore helps retailers.

Walgreens is one of the largest pharmacy chains in the United States. Walgreens implemented AccuStore to help them with marketing cost savings. With over 8,000 stores, they were throwing away money on marketing overages by sending the same generic sign kits to every store. Since each store had unique requirements, such as the number of windows or the number of fixtures, these sign kits were not only confusing for employees to install, but stores ended up throwing away up to half of what was being sent to them.

By using AccuStore’s store-specific profile data, store distributions are created for each individual store. So, each store receives only the signs that are appropriate for that location. Plus, marketing can now tailor POP by store to eliminate waste. Walgreens has saved over half a million dollars this year alone!

Another example of how retailers are using AccuStore is with the company, Crocs.

Crocs is a footwear brand. Crocs has saved tens of thousands of dollars during a single campaign because of accurate sign types and quantities. They needed to right-size their inventory so AccuStore developed a plan to gather and maintain their store profile data so they could send stores exactly what each store needed. Now, the information is available 24/7 via AccuStore’s cloud-based mobile platform. Plus, AccuStore helps Crocs gather store-specific information for inventory planning and store walks.

RELEX SOLUTIONS

RELEX Solutions helps retail businesses improve their competitiveness through localized assortments, profitable use of retail space, accurate forecasting and replenishment, and optimized workforce planning.

Here are two examples of how RELEX Solutions helps their customers.

Musti Group is the leading pet supplies and accessories retailer in the Nordics, with 264 stores in Finland, Norway, and Sweden. They needed supply chain integration between the company’s 5 distribution centers and 264 stores as managing changes and disruption in their supply chain was becoming a significant headache.

With an implementation period of a few months in 2015, RELEX Solutions; Optimized the flow of goods, for example, with deliveries scheduled for quieter days. Simplified Musti’s supply chain management – the complex supply chain is now managed by a single super-user – reducing the chaos that previously reigned when many managers at individual stores were involved. Improved campaigns the company runs by ensuring that there is adequate availability of promoted products. Inventory control now happens on a bottom-up basis using store-level data and optimizing transportation requirements.

Saarionen is a leading Finnish convenience foods manufacturer, with operations in Estonia as well. They needed demand planning software that is comprehensive, flexible, and transparent. They also wanted to introduce automation, so that planners could focus on exception management.

With an implementation period of 4 months in 2016, RELEX Solutions; Installed a system with error margins of less than 5% in weekly and monthly baseline forecasts for some standard high volume products. Improved efficacy for forecasting exceptions by incorporating the human expertise of the demand planners. Strengthened Saarionen’s position in its market.

Other Notes: Relex Solutions just raised a $200M growth equity round from Technology Crossover Ventures.

BOARD INTERNATIONAL

BOARD is a software platform for unified business intelligence, performance management, and predictive analytics.

Here is one example of how BOARD International helps its customers.

Coca-Cola European Partners is the world’s largest independent Coca-Cola bottler. It is the market leader in one of the biggest fast-moving consumer goods markets, worth over 100 billion euros. The business serves over 300 million consumers in 13 European countries.

Coca-Cola European Partners needed a supply chain finance solution to deploy across 48 manufacturing plants, 85 warehousing locations, cold drinks operations sites, and across its supply chain logistics organization. The company also needed the solution to be used by divisional CFO, heads of supply chain management, controllers, and department and plant managers. The company wanted to achieve: leaner financial operations, automated planning, and optimized reporting – underpinning a new way of doing planning based on comprehensive communication across the company.

Using BOARD, Coca-Cola European Partners has; Increased the efficiency of its finance activities with 10 percent manual inputs based on country specific data, and 90 percent pre-populated data. Reduced data transfer times from 24 hours to 15 minutes. Implemented a live status tracker based on BOARD’s automation capabilities. Implemented consolidation with one click, simplifying the process of performing full country consolidation for all of Coca-Cola European Partners’ operations. Implemented data transparency by effectively enabling automation and standardization. Increased ease communication around supply chain management and planning across the company.

Other Notes: I had the most fun with the team from Board International. We kept cracking jokes with one another, and it always seemed like we were old friends meeting after a long time apart. They also had an espresso station on the second day. The name “board” is supposed to evoke the flexibility that comes with working with a whiteboard to design a robust supply chain management solution for each customer – with no need to write a single line of code.

ANAPLAN

Anaplan is a software platform for enterprise-wide planning needs. The software enables financial planning, budgeting and analysis, demand and supply chain planning, sales compensation and territory management by connecting data, people, and plans.

Here is one example of how Anaplan helps its customers.

Sonos is a consumer electronics company with a complex supply chain enabling sales in 60 countries, and relying on more than 200 suppliers. Before Anaplan, Sonos was managing its sales, component sourcing, and supply chain through countless spreadsheets. As you can imagine, planning and forecasting was slow and prone to mistakes.

Sonos is now using the Anaplan platform to build end-to-end supply chain visibility and connect plans across resources, spend, and product lines.

The Sonos team started their implementation with supply and demand balancing. Then, they added a supply planning module, which enables a granular view of products at the factory level. Lastly, they incorporated demand planning to add forecasting into the mix.

Anaplan has helped Sonos:

  • Reduce tedious and mistake laden manual data entry and increase value-added work
  • Cut down the amount of time integrating spreadsheets from 70% to 10% of analysts’ time
  • The Global Planning Team can now execute a change in demand in one day, when this activity used to take 2 weeks.

Other Notes: Imagine what a surprise it was to see Vivek Soneja, a member of The New York Supply Chain Meetup at the Anaplan booth! We have grown so quickly that it’s hard to get to know everyone – especially since I am usually running around trying to make sure that our events go on without a major hitch . . . So it was cool to see one of our members in action outside the context of one of our meetups. Lisa and I must have beamed with pride when he turned around and told everyone within earshot about how great The New York Supply Chain’s events are. In his words; “You have to check it out. They are doing an amazing job.”

Booth 1304: Anaplan at #NRFBigShow2019

MANHATTAN ASSOCIATES

Manhattan Associates designs and builds supply chain software that connects front-end customer facing solutions with back-end operations and execution.

Here is one example of how Manhattan Associates helps its customers.

Adidas Group is the second largest sportswear manufacturer in the world. Adidas sought to improve its supply chain systems across all its brands, with a global implementation.

Manhattan Associates’ Distribution Management software has been implemented at 3 strategic sites in the United States, Europe, and Asia.

This has led to; A standardized distribution systems model for Adidas, enhanced supply chain control and visibility, and improved inventory accuracy.

Other Notes: They refused to let me have a cup of coffee during the first tour, on the first day. I’ll leave it at that. I had just spent a few minutes talking up their company to the delegates on the tour, and they wouldn’t even let me have a fucking cup of coffee!?

DSI

DSI delivers mobile supply chain technology solutions focused on helping companies advance their business to meet the accelerated demands of the digital economy.

Here is one example of how DSI helps its customers.

Rally House is a national sports apparel and gift store. It specializes in immersing its customers in hometown pride by stocking products unique to each local areas professional and college teams. To do this, the company needs an efficient inventory management system, moving away from centralized planning and distribution and more towards in-store fulfillment. This became more of an issue as the company expanded to 61 stores, in 9 states, with products for hundreds of different teams, represented by thousands of SKUs.

Rally House was  already using DSI’s warehouse inventory management software, and so by implementing in-store logistics, the company transformed its stores from showrooms into warehouses.

DSI enabled Rally House to eliminate their central distribution center within a few months and move all shipments direct to store from their vendors using their existing apps. This change eliminated weeks of costly lag time associated with the movement of warehouse shipments and expanded available inventory to customers.

Rally House’s distribution processes have been simplified significantly on every level. As demand ebbs and flows for products or for specific team merchandise, stores can stock accordingly and have inventory on the floor in days instead of weeks. Individual stores can now respond faster to time sensitive and regional events—such as World Series Championships—by moving product direct to their stores.

Other Notes: DSI was the most mobile-focused of the companies on the tour. I’d even perhaps go as far as describing them as mobile-first and mobile-only – obviously an exaggeration, but you get the point.

ENVISTA CORP

enVista is a global consulting and software solutions firm that helps its customers to optimize supply chain efficiencies to drive cost savings, and unify commerce to drive customer engagement and revenue.

Here is one example of how enVista helps its customers.

Saddle Creek Logistics Services is a privately held, asset-based 3rd-party logistics provider. It provides omnichannel fulfillment, warehousing, and transportation services. It operates 19 million square feet of space, across 45 locations with 3,300+ employees.

Saddle Creek wanted an order management system as it grew. Because of the nature of its business it was important for such a system to work for various types of clients . . . from those who ship hundreds of orders per month, to those who ship millions of orders per month. It also had to integrate with a variety of supply chain software solutions used by Saddle Creek’s clients and suppliers.

enVista provided an out-of-the-box multi-tenant order management system. Saddle Creek’s developers work closely with enVista to enhance the product for Saddle Creek as well as Saddle Creek’s clients. The enhancements include automated order processing and exception handling.

Saddle Creek now has:

  • Full visibility to all clients using the order management system in a single snapshot.
  • The system is seamlessly connected to 14 different systems between Saddle Creek and its customers, with as many as 80 different integration points.
  • Greatly reduced manual order processing for Saddle Creek’s customers and clients.

Other Notes: During one of the tours – I do not recall which, we were lucky enough to catch Jim Barnes, CEO of enVista at the booth. Watching him engage with the delegates on the tour reminded me why it’s so important for early stage startup founders to be able to sell and engage with customers. His intensity level and mastery of the issues the delegates were curious about was without comparison throughout the tours we gave during the event. You could tell that in affected the delegates, they paid rapt attention. For example, he went fairly deep into the philosophical underpinning of enVista’s approach to unified commerce in a way no one did during the remainder of the event.

Booth 4249: enVista Corp. at #NRFBigShow2019, Jim Barnes – facing me, speaking with the delegates on the tour.

MAGSTAR

Magstar provides enterprise resource planning solutions with integrated POS and CRM software for retail supply chains. The company provides Enterprise Resource Planning, Point-of-Sale, Customer Relationship Management, Warehouse Management, Business Intelligence and Analytics, and Mobile Solutions specifically designed for the SMB market. It promises the same functionality and support provided by the big vendors, without the cost. For example, they said each customer is assigned to a specific customer support employee at Magstar for the duration of that customer’s relationship with Magstar.

Here is one example of how Magstar helps its customers.

Fields Canada is a mid-sized retailer with 62 locations and a warehouse. The company needed to reduce inventory cycle time, and gain full control over in-store inventory.

Using Magstar’s Total Warehouse, Fields was able to:

  • Gain real-time visibility into inventory.
  • Reduce time to store by 14+ days.
  • Reduce cycle time by 70%.
  • Implement a paperless warehouse – no more missing pallets.
  • Simplify ship-to-store processes
  • Implement instant purchase order creation.
  • View inventory trends across peak seasons.
I do not always attend conferences, but when I do it is most likely a supply chain conference where I’ll be trying to learn about supply chain, technology, innovation, and startups.

WHAT DID I GET OUT OF DOING THIS?

I always find it fascinating to understand how customers describe the problem that they want technology to solve. Many times technologists and entrepreneurs think they are solving one problem, when customers think about the problem from a completely different perspective. The number one cause of failure among startups is the failure to find product-market-fit, which is an indication that the startup has solved a problem that customers are unwilling to pay for. Activities like this help me gain a better understanding of how customers see their world and the role that technology can play in helping them achieve their goals. One may say that on the rare occasion when I attend a conference it is to enable me do market research. I met executives from all over the world, and got to see the various perspectives from which they were thinking about deploying technology where they live and do business.

About The Worldwide Supply Chain Federation

The Worldwide Supply Chain Federation is the collaborative, and mutually supportive coalition of open and multidisciplinary grassroots communities focused on technology and innovation in the global supply chain industry. Founded in August, 2017, The New York Supply Chain Meetup is its founding chapter. Local chapters are run by volunteer organizers who each build a team to manage chapter activities and events. You can learn more here: The Worldwide Supply Chain Federation – Our Manifesto.

About REFASHIOND Ventures

REFASHIOND Ventures is an emerging early stage venture capital firm that is being built to invest in early-stage startups creating innovations to reinvent global supply chain networks. REFASHIOND Ventures is based in New York City. The Worldwide Supply Chain Federation and The New York Supply Chain Meetup are initiatives of REFASHIOND Ventures.

Update #01, at 23:54 EST on Sat Feb 16, 2019: Removed ghost bullets by changing from bullets to paragraphs for Board, and Manhattan Associates. Added whiteboard analogy for Board International.

#UnderConstruction | #TNYSCM15: Supply Chain Tech – From The World To NYC

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A shot of Manhattan, taken from the 48th Floor of 10 Hudson Yards, New York, NY

WHAT IS A SUPPLY CHAIN?

A network of connected and interdependent organisations mutually and cooperatively working together to control, manage and improve the flow of materials and information from suppliers to end users.

— Martin Christopher, Logistics & Supply Chain Management: Creating Value-Adding Networks, 4th ed, Pearson Education Limited 2011, p4

For the month of June, The New York Supply Chain Meetup aka The Worldwide Supply Chain Federation is thinking of hosting a “Supply Chain Tech – From The World To NYC” themed event. 

It would be a “showcase + demo” event, and each company/startup would get our customary 15 minutes, perhaps 20, to talk about what the company does and give a product demo. We are targeting 6 – 8 startups, but we could make room for more depending on the level of interest.

We already have a company from Germany earmarked – this is pending confirmation. We have confirmed participation from a startup from India. We have a request out to startups from Greece and Australia as well – and we can easily get many more if we really tap into our network. We are starting with startups we have been engaged with for more than 6 months. Obviously, that is only a small pool of all the supply chain technology startups that exist around the world.

The dates we have earmarked for June are a weekday during the week of June 17 (Ideally June 19 or 20), or during the week of June 27 (Ideally, June 26 or 27).

Here’s a form that you can fill if you are a startup or a small to medium size company that builds supply chain technology and want to be considered for the final list of participants. We would like participation in this event to be free, except for the cost of making the trip to NYC. So we will try to find sponsors to help us with space for the event, and food for the people who attend.

Cross-sections of the audience at #TNYSCM02 in January 2018 at SAP in NYC.

Background

A small group of us in New York City started building The New York Supply Chain Meetup in Summer 2017. In that time we have become the largest, most active, and fastest growing community on Meetup that focuses on supply chain, technology and innovation. Here are some of the things we have accomplished;

  • Our public launch was on November 16, 2017. We have had 10 events, at which we have attracted an average of 100+ attendees. We had roughly 150 at our very first event.
  • Our events have attracted speakers from emerging supply chain technology startups, as well as companies like SAP, IBM, Maersk, UPS, Tapestry, A.T. Kearny, L’Oreal, ALDO Group, EY, and GS1-US over the course of our first year.
  • We now have more than 1,600 members in The New York Supply Chain Meetup, and more than 1,700 across the network.
  • We are in the process of scaling to other cities (based on demand) and created the Worldwide Supply Chain Federation to facilitate that process.
  • We are launching The Charleston Supply Chain Meetup on March 27, 2019 and we launched The Bangalore Supply Chain Meetup on November 24, 2018. Other cities in which communities are in the process of forming are Athens, Singapore, Vancouver, Chicago, Jakarta, and Lusaka.

According to Mercedes Delgado and Karen Mills, in their book The Supply Chain Economy: A New Framework for Understanding Innovation and Services; “The U.S. supply chain contains 37% of all jobs, employing 44 million people. These jobs have significantly higher than average wages, and account for much of the innovative activity in the economy.” I believe similar conclusions can be inferred about the role supply chain plays in any growing economy around the world.

This makes the community we have set out to build one that offers enormous promise for collaboration between cities, states, and companies as well about how supply chain can function as a foundation for economic growth. The work we are doing to build this community is driven by our motivation to bring together two key groups of people;

  • The people inventing new technologies and developing the new innovations that will refashion the world’s supply chain networks, and
  • The people who make buying decisions related to deploying new technologies and innovations within the supply chains on which businesses are reliant for their commercial operations.
    • I believe firmly that supply chain is the basis on which companies win or lose competitive advantage. It is arguably the basis on which communities, countries, and societies prosper or fail.

Selfishly, we also want every growing supply chain technology startup, from any part of the world, to eventually set up a United States headquarters in New York City, with The New York Supply Chain Meetup as the community of first call, based on prior engagement with a local chapter of The Worldwide Supply Chain Federation. Moving to a new place is hard – I know, I came to the United States in 1997 from Ghana, after growing up in Nigeria. Knowing that you have friends when you arrive makes a big difference.

My Supply Chain Credo

About The Worldwide Supply Chain Federation

The Worldwide Supply Chain Federation is the collaborative, and mutually supportive coalition of open and multidisciplinary grassroots communities focused on technology and innovation in the global supply chain industry. Founded in August, 2017, The New York Supply Chain Meetup is its founding chapter. Local chapters are run by volunteer organizers who each build a team to manage chapter activities and events. You can learn more here: The Worldwide Supply Chain Federation – Our Manifesto.

About REFASHIOND Ventures

REFASHIOND Ventures is an emerging early stage venture capital firm that is being built to invest in early-stage startups creating innovations to reinvent global supply chain networks. REFASHIOND Ventures is based in New York City. The Worldwide Supply Chain Federation and The New York Supply Chain Meetup are initiatives of REFASHIOND Ventures.

#TWSCF & #TNYSCM Mantra

#UnderConstruction | Why Is A Global Grassroots Supply Chain Community Starting in NYC, and Charleston, SC?

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Disclaimer: This blog post reflects my personal opinions only. It does not represent the opinions of REFASHIOND Ventures, or REFASHIOND CO:LAB. It does not represent the opinions of The New York Supply Chain Meetup, or The Worldwide Supply Chain Federation. It does not reflect the opinions of any other person who is associated with any of those entities. This blog post does not represent the opinion of any other individual or organization that is mentioned by the author.

ANNOUNCEMENT – We’re Coming to Charleston, SC!

The Worldwide Supply Chain Federation is launching a sister chapter in Charleston, South Carolina: The Charleston Supply Chain Meetup (#TCHSSCM). It is being organized by G. Michael Rentz, Jr., CEO and Co-founder of Antimatter.

The Charleston Supply Chain Meetup will host its launch event on Wednesday, March 27 from 6:00 PM – 8:30 PM at the South Carolina Ports Authority’s new headquarters. The event will be highlighted by a keynote address by Jim Newsome, President and Chief Executive Officer of The South Carolina Ports Authority. Other details are being finalized, and will be posted to the event page on Meetup.com.

When I asked Michael about his motivations for wanting to start organizing The Charleston Supply Chain Meetup, he said: “After nearly 3 years working in global trade and logistics at Maersk, I was amazed by the enthusiasm and expertise that I encountered in the community in New York City. I believe that enthusiasm and expertise exists in other places too, and I am excited to start building the community in Charleston, South Carolina, to harness that potential entrepreneurial energy and passion and to build collaborative connections with the other chapters in our growing and global network of communities.” He goes further to say: “The goal of The Charleston Supply Chain Meetup is to leverage the existing assets, players, and progress already accomplished in the state by both people, agencies, and companies – by bringing them together, nurturing conversations, building relationships, and then watching something special develop.”

A Shot of the NYC Skyline – January 2018

HOW DID WE GET HERE?

After launching The New York Supply Chain Meetup in November 2017, we attracted speakers from emerging supply chain technology startups, as well as companies like SAP, IBM, Maersk, UPS, Tapestry, A.T. Kearny, L’Oreal, ALDO Group, EY, and GS1-US over the course of our first year.

We celebrated the one year anniversary of our public launch in NYC with an anniversary party on November 15, 2018. We followed that with the launch of a sister chapter in Bangalore on November 24, 2018.

Since our launch in NYC;

  • We have become the largest, most active, and fastest growing community on Meetup that focuses on the intersection of supply chains, technology and innovation.
  • We have more than 1,600 members in The New York Supply Chain Meetup, and more than 1,700 across the network.
  • Other chapters in process include; Vancouver, Athens, Singapore, and Chicago.

According to Mercedes Delgado and Karen Mills, in their book The Supply Chain Economy: A New Framework for Understanding Innovation and Services; “The U.S. supply chain contains 37% of all jobs, employing 44 million people. These jobs have significantly higher than average wages, and account for much of the innovative activity in the economy.” This makes the community we have set out to build one that offers enormous promise for collaboration between cities, states, and companies as well about how supply chain can function as a foundation for economic growth. The work we are doing to build this community is driven by our motivation to bring together two key groups of people;

  • The people inventing new technologies and developing new innovations for supply chains, and
  • The people who make buying decisions related to deploying new technologies and innovations within the supply chains on which businesses are reliant for their commercial operations.
    • I believe firmly that supply chain is the basis on which companies win or lose competitive advantage. It is arguably the basis on which communities, countries, and societies prosper or fail.
#TNYSCM02 – January 2018 at SAP in NYC

WHY ARE WE BUILDING THIS COMMUNITY?

When I asked Lisa Morales-Hellebo to help me build The New York Supply Chain Meetup in August 2017, it was because we share the belief that the world is in the early stages of one of the largest sector-driven opportunities of our lifetime, the secular refashioning of global supply chains. The innovations that drive the technology-led reinvention of global supply chains will begin at the grassroots. We started in New York City, but our vision has always been that we would ultimately build a global network of interconnected, and mutually cooperative communities that nurture, champion, and support the entrepreneurs, innovators, and technologists who will propel this transformation.

We also believe that software-enabled technologies will lead to the rearrangement of supply chains all over the world. This process will cause the reorganization of industrial processes, the displacement of incumbent market leaders, and the disruption of formerly stable markets. We are building a decentralized network of open and multidisciplinary communities to act as catalysts in the adoption of the technological innovations that accelerate the reinvention of global supply chain networks.

Our strategic goals for 2019 are:

  • To grow the number of chapters in our global network of communities – both internationally and within the United States,
  • To continue to engage our members with rich programming and networking opportunities,
  • To recruit sponsors and other partners who believe that supply chain, technology, and innovation serve as a powerful economic multiplier and as a catalyst for a sustainable and profitable future.

I am excited that we can formally announce the new chapter in Charleston, SC. I met Michael in early 2018. We have become friends over that period – talking on the phone, and texting one another multiple times each week. I believe he’s exactly the sort of person who can act as a catalyst around which a thriving community develops.

About The Worldwide Supply Chain Federation

The Worldwide Supply Chain Federation is the collaborative, and mutually supportive coalition of open and multidisciplinary grassroots communities focused on technology and innovation in the global supply chain industry. Founded in August, 2017, The New York Supply Chain Meetup is its founding chapter. Local chapters are run by volunteer organizers who each build a team to manage chapter activities and events. You can learn more here: The Worldwide Supply Chain Federation – Our Manifesto.

About REFASHIOND Ventures

REFASHIOND Ventures is an emerging early stage venture capital firm that is being built to invest in early-stage startups creating innovations to reinvent global supply chain networks. REFASHIOND Ventures is based in New York City. The Worldwide Supply Chain Federation and The New York Supply Chain Meetup are initiatives of REFASHIOND Ventures.

Update #1, Thu Feb 14 2019, at 21:05 EST: To fix some mechanical errors, and add bullet about supply chain and competitive advantage.