Signal > Noise #2

In January 2024, I pledged to reveal the in-depth work, discussions, discoveries, and insights that we've traditionally reserved for our team and portfolio companies, and committed to share these revelations monthly via email. I called this email Signal > Noise and, based on overwhelming support and positive feedback, I'm opening the aperture and sharing these messages here.

Embedded in Rallyday's purpose is an ambition to 'create the most value for the most people' both within and outside our portfolio. Haley Rushing helps us live our purpose with a simple encouragement: "where you're really living your purpose, do more of that! And where you're not living your purpose, do less of that!"

In that spirit and continuing our commitment to growth—for both people and companies—we've taken another step forward with our new 'insider's look.' Below, Padraic McConville shares our contacts at 890 Investment Banks (5,500 contacts) in the lower and middle markets. Additionally, we've demystified the process of developing investment theses and shared our sector thesis on App Development.?

I'm hopeful that our content will provoke thought, stir healthy debate, and ignite innovation - all in service to empowering leaders to go even bigger and creating the most value for the most people.?

Cheers!

-Travis

"In the short term, you are as good as your intensity. In the long term, you are only as good as your consistency."

-Brain Food – No. 561 – January 28, 2024

Learning and leadership content rattling in the Rallyday hallways has gravitated around one BIG topic and has all of us talking (literally and more deeply):

Social Connections and Conversations

Our partnership with Pyx Health founders Cindy Jordan and Anne Jordan opened our eyes to the devastating health consequences of loneliness and social isolation. This sobering reality was punctuated by Vivek Murthy , U.S. Surgeon General, declaring a loneliness epidemic in his 82 page 'Advisory on the Healing Effects of Social Connection and Community.'

In a 纽约时报 Audio Essay, David Brooks shares a glimpse of what he learned on his journey to become a fuller human being through better connection and conversations. His recent bestseller, How to Know A Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen, delves deeper into his idea of becoming a defiant humanist.

Our team is leaning into 'humanizing the journey' through conscious leadership. In Brooks' book, he discusses "Hard Conversations" and the two layers of communication: content and context. Similarly, our friends at the The Conscious Leadership Group present a unique (and animated) perspective on content vs. context.?

Led by Samantha H , we're on a firmwide, yearlong journey to master the 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership.?I look forward to sharing more as we go deeper.?

Intermediaries

The lower-middle market has grown tremendously in size and sophistication in the last two decades. While technology, tools, and data sets have improved visibility and connectivity within this ecosystem (shoutout PITCHBOOK DATA LIMITED Sourcescrub ZoomInfo S&P Global Market Intelligence FactSet )- the size and rate of change within the system compounds the inefficiencies.

We love intermediaries for their role in connecting capital with opportunities and facilitating buyer-seller interactions. Their advice to sellers in transaction negotiations is invaluable, and their efforts are essential in keeping capital moving - our industry thrives thanks to their outstanding work.?

Better visibility into these intermediaries helps grow people and companies. In this spirit, Rallyday is sharing our list of 5,500+ intermediaries representing 890 different investment banks.?

Direct Outreach

As my friend Chris Cathcart says, great investors must "see the market and make the market." In this context, we see the market through investment banker-led investment opportunities and we make the market by identifying sectors of interest and connecting directly with sector-disrupting founders.?

At Rallyday, each VP+ has the autonomy and responsibility to create a sector thesis under our investment mandate. We build a sector Point of View (POV) and if/when green-lit, we run an active sourcing strategy that helps connect us directly to the most interesting founders and businesses in the sector.?

We created an Application Development POV in 2022, activated a sourcing strategy, and ultimately made an investment in Livefront in the summer of 2023.?Help yourself to a 'behind-the-scenes' look at our initial thesis generation.

Mapping Your Customer Journey Wednesday, March 13, 2024 3:00 PM ET ?

Emilia D'Anzica, MBA, PMP is the founder of Growth Molecules? , a customer success and customer marketing consultancy. She previously led CS at Copper and WalkMe. In this roundtable, she will explain how customer journey mapping can help companies plan and optimize their customers’ experience from onboarding to expansion.

Core Management Skills: Coaching, Feedback, Productivity, and One-on-Ones Wednesday, April 24, 2024 3:00 PM ET

LifeLabs Learning teaches skills to build passionate, high-performing managers and teams, faster. They support over 2,000 clients around the world (e.g., Venmo, BlackRock, Kaiser Permanente, Andreessen Horowitz, Yale, Glossier, and Lyft) through live workshops, digital tools, and organizational consulting. ?Join this session to discuss how to create outstanding managers, faster. They will cover ?easy-to-implement strategies that will take managers from good to great and share key skills in the manager toolkit.

Our team is fiercely competing to determine which Rallymaker has the best taste in music. Our Music League is made up of rounds, and each round has a theme. When the round starts, we all submit a song that fits the theme. After submission, the playlist is created and votes are tallied.?

The last two rounds have been particularly controversial. Take a listen to the playlists on Spotify and judge for yourself!

Round 3: Dead Deal Songs

Songs to listen to when you can't get a deal to close

Round 4: Mountain Vibes

Songs with a Rocky Mountain vibe

"some disgraceful mountain selections!"

-Rallyday Director, and Colorado Native

It’s difficult to accept the necessity of failure in the growth process. People generally acknowledge there is some value in the idea of learning from failure, but it’s usually an intellectual recognition, not a practical action.

For the most part, people’s thoughts and actions stay firmly attached to the behavior pattern of staying as far away as possible from the risk of failure, especially if other people might see it. A phrase I often hear is, “I’m a perfectionist.”

Perfectionism doesn’t improve quality, production, or efficiency. It disrupts and destroys them. Perfectionism is a fancy cover for ego and procrastination. Perfectionists are less interested in producing excellence than in projecting the image of perfection.

It’s about ego, not results. Their goal is the image of perfection, even when that image is only for themselves. It becomes an identity attachment.

The procrastination behind perfectionism is painfully obvious. If it must be perfect, you can always justify perpetually delaying it. When only perfect attempts and products are allowed to see the light of day, few things of significance ever see the light of day.

Once you understand clearly enough just how far from perfect you are now and always will be (as am I), you can embrace the impossibility of perfection. Then, you can commit to creating excellence and lean into the failures that teach you how to form it.

Drop your desire for perfection. Raise your commitment to excellence.

Brick by brick. Do the work.

Rallyday Partners is a Denver-based private equity firm that was built by successful entrepreneurs to provide a better way of serving and partnering with emerging companies and their leaders. Drawing upon its four sources of capital - creative, financial, experiential, and human capital - the firm's 'by founders for founders' strategy provides an alternative to traditional private equity for those that want to go even further, elevate entire industries, and have an experience of a lifetime together.