Turning 15: a reflection on the early years of Uncork Capital
Summary
I shared with my beloved wife, Bernadette, the crazy idea of becoming a full-time angel investor, and after discussing the impact and potential risks for our young family, she signed off on it. But I got to meet a lot of awesome entrepreneurs and angels at Feedster, and that small loss turned into millions of dollars in profits from other deals and prolific relationships. At the time, I did not anticipate the magnitude of the disruption the micro VC OGs were collectively bringing to early-stage investing — which has materialized over the last few years with the creation of 750+ seed firms. However, there was no playbook back then, and I had to figure things out before I brought our team on board: Ashley on operations in late 2010, then Charles as my first Partner, then Stephanie, followed by Andy, and finally Caden as our office and social media manager. We’ve been privileged to work with scores of awesome founding teams, helping build some iconic companies (and passing on a long list of great ones at the same time) thanks to the support of our Limited Partners.