We dive deep into our sectors. Our research drives our insights and thesis-driven approach.

In 1882, Thomas Edison formed the Edison Electric Illuminating Company of New York, bringing electric light to parts of Manhattan. The early days of the grid were slow moving, it was primarily for only the wealthiest. These elites owned their own sources of power, building their own grids, creating a landscape of haves and have nots. The industry needed to evolve to give broader access. To do that, we began producing power through central sources to reduce costs. We developed the utility structure to achieve economies of scale. This started taking place nearly a century ago and not much has changed since. Our power sources have gotten a bit cleaner, our meters a bit better and our appliances a bit more smarter, but the same basic workflow hasn’t changed. The grid has become industrial supply chain, pushing power down an assembly line at the cheapest cost possible (regardless of its consequences) without respect to what customers actually need.

Famed Sequoia Capital Founder Don Valentine once said, “VC is all about figuring out which questions are the right questions to ask”. In today’s venture market (which I can only describe as the fastest I’ve ever seen), it’s more important than ever to figure out what are the “right questions” to ask to drive conviction into your own investment process and to do it fast.

One of the startup hacks that I realized early in my tech journey was that VCs are an incredible resource for figuring out the best startups to join, especially at the earliest stages. In a world where >50k startups get started every year, and >10k raise seed rounds, it can be daunting for an individual to figure out which private companies are showing promising signals and starting to grow. However, on the investment side, VCs have access to far more information, giving a guiding signal to some of those that may be most promising.

At Equal Ventures, we are laser focused on helping founders transform legacy industries. While many founders and firms speak about “disruption”, we feel transformation is a far more ambitious and holistic goal that better reflects the opportunity set for founders today. By definition, “disruption” implies the economic destruction of the existing value chain 1. For various reasons, this is incredibly rare, and more likely resembles a gradual take over. With that, however, we see a lot of founders focused on “disruption” without thinking through the potential for “enablement” or the overall impacts on the broader value chain.

We’re looking to bring on an intern focused on writing and editing firm-specific content on industry deep dives, business and technology strategy, early-stage investing and entrepreneurship. The content intern will work closely with the Equal team to create a library of articles based on internal research projects including our “prepared mind” thesis memos, startup strategy frameworks and venture market research. These articles will be shared across Equal’s network and social channels over the rest of the year. This internship will also include unique exposure to the investment thesis development process.