5-Minute Interview with Christopher Kennamer, OneSixOne Ventures
Dr. Dorothy Kelso
Managing Director, SuperReturn | Board Chair | Emerging Manager Champion
In this series of 5-minute interviews, I shine the spotlight on up-and-coming fund managers in private markets across the globe. All geographies. All strategies. All sectors.
Here's my conversation with Christopher Kennamer, Venture Partner at OneSixOne Ventures.
Quick facts about OneSixOne Ventures:
Q: What is OneSixOne Ventures’ investment strategy?
A: We invest in B2B Enterprise SaaS companies with growth potential, market insights and a drive to solve major problems. We plan to back 25-30 early-stage investments in Fund I.
Q: Why the focus on B2B Enterprise Saas?
A: We are opportunistic investors in B2B Enterprise SaaS companies and prioritise those that operate as dual-use tech businesses, selling to both public and private markets or focusing on AI infrastructure and cloud services.
We like investing in dual-use tech companies is because it offers strategic advantages, particularly in down markets. These companies can secure government contracts, providing reliable revenue and non-dilutive funding for research, which helps sustain operations and advance technology. Additionally, their ability to spin off business units and sell to government and military branches increases technology adoption and market validation.
On the AI infrastructure and cloud side, we see that machine learning, data analytics and cloud technologies are continuously evolving, leading to the development of more sophisticated and efficient solutions. And, of course, we believe the next wave of computer chips (in-memory compute) will power it all. This is the reason we made a bet on a Sam Altman-backed company called RAIN AI who are building the most energy efficient AI chips on the planet.
Q: Sounds impressive that you have invested in the Sam Altman-backed company RAIN AI. How do you source your deals?
A: We take a community fund approach here and host a lot of high quality/highly curated events and programs such as accelerators, workshops and pitch competitions. This approach allows us to build community, find deal flow and create sustainable growth for the companies we invest in by providing them with a platform to get in front of resources (like investors, talent and potential customers), get resources for our fund, and so much more.
OneSixOne started out by using this approach at The University of Florida (UF) where, to this day, we are still the only active VC fund there running programs on campus. This allows us to have access to an untapped pipeline of talent. There are over 13k Ivy League engineering students on campus who have access to the ‘HiPerGator’ or the most advanced supercomputer for AI of any university in the country. Also, NVIDIA's co-founder and UF Alumni Chris Malachowsky actually donated $50m for an on-campus AI center with the latest NVIDIA GPU technology (Ampere A100 GPU) in the form of two DGX A100 nodes each with 8 A100 GPUs.
Q: What hands-on expertise do you have?
A: We all have relevant tech backgrounds. One of the co-founders, Pablo Casilimas, built a content marketing company called Rootex. Justis Mendez, the other co-founder, built a parking app and was an early employee at Pinata (a fintech startup). I started in the army, got into IT & Engineering (in Storage and Infrastructure) and then started working with the fund 6 months after Fund I launched.
Q: How are you building your team?
A: Pablo and Justis met while they were at UF and began hosting meetups in their backyard, which led to bigger events and an accelerator and eventually the fund. I ended up joining the team due to my relevant experience in their investment thesis (govtech) and the friendship Pablo and I had built when he moved to Seattle.
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Q: How successful was the accelerator Justis and Pablo set up before founding OneSixOne?
A: Pablo and Justis ran a virtual accelerator where they helped 40 companies raise over $13m and generated $15m+ in revenue.
This ultimately led to 1 company getting acquired, although Pablo and Justis didn’t have any equity in these deals so that led to the formation of OneSixOne.
Q: How do you see your business scaling?
A: We plan to have more events/programs and more community building at underserved university talent hubs like the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). Founders like Marc Andreesen, Larry Ellison etc have come out of there.
Q: What is your secret sauce?
A: People, People, People. Find the right people and everything will fall into place.
Q: What’s the biggest challenge you have had to overcome?
A: The biggest challenge for us as a team is raising capital for Fund I without a prior track record and proving our differentiator. However, once we built the brand people started to see the vision.
As individuals, we have had to dig deep to get to where we are today and to keep doing what we are doing. Pablo also is a first generation American – his parents immigrated from Columbia and the Dominican Republic. Justis grew up with nothing in some of the toughest neighborhoods in Cleveland where violence was rampant, and I grew up with nothing in Alabama where we were number 46 in the country for public education.
Q: What valuable lesson have you learnt that helps drive your approach?
A: You can’t teach grit. Find the people that already have it and build with them.
Q: What advice would you like to share with our readers?
A: Connect with 3 amazing mentors, collaborate with 3 resilient partners and mentor 3 individuals to expand your network exponentially.
#privatequity #venturecapital #innovation #investing #usa #B2B #SaaS #tech #AI #cloudinfrastructure
CEO of GIG Group; Autobiography #FindingMe soon to be a major motion picture!
4 个月Good read.
OneSixOne Ventures | Angel Investor | Engineer | Ex-Army
4 个月I have Justis Mendez to thank for the second quote!
Thank you for the interview & feature Dr. Dorothy Kelso! :)