Operator Partners, the VC firm founded by Nat Turner and Zach Weinberg of Flatiron Health fame, has invested in more than 100 startups from Spring Health to Dapper Labs.
Flush from their $1.9 billion sale of Flatiron Health, Nat Turner and Zach Weinberg are now building an investment firm with part-time focus and full-time results.Nat Turner flies from New York to Orange County, California to start a work “sprint.” He’s up at 4:30 AM local time the next day — jet lag is his ally — and talking to startup founders on the East Coast by 5. Before 6:30, he relocates to the offices of Santa Ana-based Collectors.
Olivia Benjamin and Zach Goldstein, Under 30 list alumni for 2021, work on Operator Partners full-time. Says Benjamin: “We are most useful for the liftoff phase.”In 2020, after years of personally investing in startups, Turner and Weinberg teamed up with two friends, former AdTech entrepreneur Amit Avner and Gil Shklarski, the ex-CTO of Flatiron, to start Operator. They each plunked down enough of their own money to invest a combined $20 million to $25 million in early-stage startups each year.
this past April, their holding stood at a 1,300x unrealized gain. “We’re stupid sometimes,” Weinberg jests about initially passing. “A lot of early-stage startup investing is just doing it, just being there.”they launched themselves Gil Shklarski brings the engineering management chops to Operator. “This is not a nine-to-five job, but we are all accepting the need to be super available," he says.Adding Shklarski, who knew Avner from their time together in the Israel Defense Forces, the four partners settled on a few guiding principles. They’d be investors that founders could contact at any time or hour. They’d make a constant stream of introductions to potential customers and hires they knew or met.
In such a feeding frenzy, Operator Partners hopes to be like jello, always finding room. Whereas traditional venture firms — even ones led by recent entrepreneurs — have formal or informal ownership minimums, below which a startup is deemed to have too little upside to be worth the trouble, Operator’s approach is to wait, or encourage, another firm to lead a round, then take some share of what’s left.
Canada Latest News, Canada Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
Nice to meet you, again: Disney brings back non-distanced character meet-and-greetsIt’s perhaps one of the last things that guests at Walt Disney World have been waiting to see return: an up-close moment, picture or autograph with Mickey Mouse and other popular characters.
Read more »
Meet ‘Earendel,’ Hubble’s Record-Breaking New Farthest Individual Star Ever Seen At 12.9 Billion Light-YearsThe star was found around 900 million years after the Big Bang, which occurred 13.8 billion years ago.
Read more »
Meet Chris Smalls, the man who organized Amazon workers in New YorkUnion leader Chris Smalls became the first successful organizer of Amazon workers in the U.S. He’s now popping a bottle of champagne.
Read more »
Meet Carne Bollente, the Cheeky French Label Making Sex-Positive StreetwearLaunched by a trio of friends in 2015, the brand’s playfully raunchy designs have earned them a cult following.
Read more »
A huge trade relationship is at stake as China and EU meet to discuss RussiaChina and Europe's top leaders are set to meet on Friday, as their vast and growing trade relationship threatens to be overshadowed by differences over Russia and other geopolitical tensions.
Read more »
Meet Hacker Noon’s Contributor and Serial Hobbyist Abbey Perini | HackerNoon'Meet Hacker Noon’s Contributor and Serial Hobbyist Abbey Perini' meetthewriter writing
Read more »