Building a company at any time is an amazing feat but building a company today — in the most competitive market in years — requires the ability to navigate ambiguity and rapid change while building a team and differentiating yourself.
During the first two years of Range Ventures, we’ve spent hundreds of hours working with the founders in our portfolio to solve the tactical, strategic and leadership issues needed to keep pace in the venture-backed market. We find ourselves continually tapping into our combined 20+ years of startup and operating experience, often relaying key lessons that we personally have learned during our time building Apartment List, HomeAdvisor, and Guild Education.
We’re also keenly aware of how knowledge-rich the entire Colorado tech ecosystem is beyond Range. We’ve been fortunate to consult with many successful tech founders and executives who have different experiences and outlooks from our own. We’re consistently blown away by the generosity of these leaders who are willing to lend advice that they’ve learned in building their own endeavors, not only with us, but also with people they don’t even know.
We enjoy making meaningful introductions between seasoned tech founders and executives with early-stage-founders. The feedback from both sides is always positive and the requests for more intros and meetings are so strong that we decided to formalize these coaching sessions and launch our podcast — My Biggest Lesson.
So far, we’ve had 18 Colorado-based founders, executives and investors on the podcast who have shared a range of “biggest” lessons from trusting your internal compass to relishing the journey over the outcome.
Our initial hypothesis was that we would hear mostly strategic or tactical advice. After all, collectively these founders, executives and investors have created billions of dollars in value. We had our pens ready to take notes so we could go back to our founders on the secrets of scaling or building a killer product or running a sales force.
However, time and time again the biggest lessons were about the soft skills that turn an average person into a standout leader. The lessons are applicable to everyone at every level. We believe there is something critical to be learned from every lesson, but we’ve grouped them so you can quickly drill down into the lessons you want to learn first.
We hope you are able to take these lessons and integrate them into your life so you can keep moving forward with your goals and learning your own biggest lesson. You can listen to all of these lessons and get our latest episode every other Thursday at range.vc/podcast.
Knowing yourself
- Play your own game: Josh Scott, co-founder of Craftsy, former president, Guild Education (Ep. 1) .
- Manage yourself first: Danielle Wilkie, central division president of Compass (Ep. 3).
- Trust your internal compass: Eric Roza, CEO of Crossfit (Ep. 4).
- Own your strengths, accept your weaknesses: Jenn Knight, CTO and co-founder of AgentSync (Ep. 7).
- Accept your authentic self: Josh Abdulla, SVP, head of global customer solutions at LiveRamp (Ep. 18, streaming March 3, 2022).
Relationships in leadership
- Be honest and direct: Harsh Patel, serial founder and former CEO of Galvanize (Ep. 2).
- It’s about the people: Nicole Glaros, chief investment strategy officer, Techstars (Ep. 5).
- Build a safe environment: Devon Tivona, founder and CEO of Pana (Ep. 8).
- Play outside your position: Allison Lowrie, CMO of Vacasa (Ep. 11).
- Invest in relationships: Loren Bendele, CEO of Arryved (Ep. 12).
- You never know unless you ask: Elle Navarro Bruno, investor/advisor/techstars Boulder managing director (Ep. 13).
- You can learn to be a better manager: Rachel Romer Carlson, co-founder and CEO of Guild Education (Ep. 17, streaming February 17, 2022).
Play the long game
- Give first: Jaclyn Freeman Hester, partner at Foundry Group (Ep. 9).
- Everything is an infinite game: Erik Mitisek, founder and CEO of Highwing (Ep. 10).
- It’s about the journey: Mark Frank, co-founder and CEO of Sondermind (Ep. 14).
- Progress over perfection: Sean Roberts, COO of Orchard (Ep. 6).
- Learn everyday, Katrina Benjamin, CPO of Apartment List (Ep. 15).
- Just solve the problem: Ed Hallen, co-founder and CEO of Klaviyo (Ep. 16).
Discover key learnings from influential founders, executives and investors in the Colorado tech community. Part venture capital podcast, part startup podcast, always an authentic lesson from some of the best leaders in tech. Listen at range.vc/podcast.
Range Ventures is an early stage venture capital fund in Denver focused on making pre-seed and seed investments in Denver, Boulder and the entire Colorado ecosystem. We commit early and as former operators we know the challenges entrepreneurs face and support our founders and their teams in every way possible.
Adam Burrows and Chris Erickson are co-founders of Range Ventures.
