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

Those who know me best know that I’m a historian of business failure and success (having experienced plenty of failure myself). As a student of success stories, I’ve been fascinated with conglomerates for years. My obsession was initially piqued with my growing love affair with Berkshire Hathaway and further amplified by the works of Greenwald and McTaggart (both of which discuss core benefits of conglomerates and case studies of the model in detail).

It’s no secret that we verticalize our staff at Equal Ventures. Chelsea is focused on the intersection of retail and supply chain, Simran on Climate and Adam on Insurance. While Rich and I are generalists, each of these individuals spends the vast majority of their time focused exclusively on those spaces.

When I was early in my venture career, I was easily impressed by buzz around a deal. If the deal had high quality firms circling it, I felt FOMO. The reality is that I didn’t have confidence in own ability to assess companies independently, so I was easily swayed by others.

At Equal, we love partnering with founders that are building verticalized software platforms. We believe that there are many markets and sectors with important nuances that horizontal solutions are unable to fully capture, and the construction industry is no exception.

As a concentrated, thesis-driven firm, we spend the beginning of each year in planning mode. We outline the new ideas we’re excited to dive into, others we want to explore and a few that we may no longer be pursuing. The final result is what we call a “hunting list” — a set of theses for which we develop a Prepared Mind. The goal for each thesis we’re “hunting” is to have visibility of every company that aligns with our Prepared Mind — meeting with as many as possible and sharing our internal research with founders along the way.