Georgian

In this episode of the Georgian Growth Show, Emily Walsh, a partner on the Georgian investment team, joins Evan Lewis to answer three questions she is commonly asked: 1. What are the must-have ingredients that you look for in a potential investment? 2. What does the diligence process look like at Georgian? 3. How does the partnership between Georgian and our customers evolve? About Emily: Emily Walsh is a Partner on our Investment team. In this role, Emily makes investments in high growth business software companies including sourcing investment opportunities, leading the due diligence process, and advising companies post-investment. She also works across our portfolio helping companies on operational effectiveness and strategy, with a particular focus on people and culture. She’s an expert in board mechanics and financial analysis, assists in designing our internal training programs, and provides support for <a href= "https://georgianpartners.com/canada-learning-code/" target= "_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Canada Learning Code</a>.

Georgian's Emily Walsh on our Diligence Process and How We Work with Companies

Candid conversations with entrepreneurs, investors and operators.

Georgian Growth Podcast

Awesome. Hey everyone. This is GP top three with Emily Walsh from our investment team. Today. We're going to be focusing on providing insights into our due diligence process and our product focused approach to diligence. And also how we work with our portfolio companies.So super excited to have Emily on Emily. Could you give everyone a brief intro on your background and what you do at Georgian sure, I think seven so I'm a principal on the investment team at Georgian partner prior to Georgia and I actually had a pretty different path to to venture capital. I started out as a ballet dancer. I trained my whole life to be a ballet dancer did my undergrad at Juilliard in New York and dance for a couple of years post-graduation. I had an injury and I ended up leaving dance to start an Arts company with a couple of friends from Juilliard, which I am in for about four years before deciding to go back to business school after business school. I had a pretty typical exit I left and went to work for McKinsey and there digital group. I was there for a few years before joining a region in 2016. And today a Georgian. My role is a deal lead. I look I work with our team to Source due diligence on and invest inNew companies for the Georgian portfolio and post-investment work with the boards of those portfolio companies to advance their strategic interests. And then I also do a lot of work in time, Georgia. And so we've actually grown significantly since I joined when you were about fifteen people to sixty-five today. So spend a lot of time thinking about Georgia and as the start up as well as working with our portfolio companies.Awesome, very cool. So given that you meet with a lot of CEOs and executive teams as a deal lead a Georgian. What do you what would you say were the must-have ingredients that you look for in a potential investment? Sure. So no investment is is ever a like there's always a different kind of mix of ingredients that go into any new deal that we do. There are some common themes though. I'd say that you know as later-stage investors were usually coming in and leading a series B or C or D. One of the key things that we always look for is a sense of predictability of the business so long as we we often Define as the machine on the go-to-market side and we look for things like what is the level of orchestration across Marketing sales customer success. How do they hand off South between functions work and how mature is each function itself? So we spend a lot of time thinking about the plans the structure of our sales teams house sales.Enablement Works how sales Ops Works to support the overall go to market approach instead of the ways we look to to validate this we spend a lot of time with our go to market teams in the diligence process. We also look at data such as historical performance to plan another key part of any diligence process that we do is spending a lot of time with the management team. So we always believed it's with the CEO. So we spend a ton of time both, you know in dinners as well as informal diligence interviews with with our CEOs and we look for CEOs who have a number of characteristics in are also bringing on management team members that have experience and expertise that they don't possess themselves. So it's often defined as you know, hiring a players them really look for our complimentary incredibly strong management teams across all the key functions and we look for a complete management team. So in particular, obviously the CEO CFO C ROMFuture we consider a very core rules for any portfolio company at the size and stage where we invest to have on board and have ramped up and then last very important to them in Georgian investment is what we call Vision luck. So Georgians approach we have what we call our impact team and this is a group of operational experts in each of our thesis areas. So we have a couple things too serious applied artificial intelligence conversational interfaces and trust and we have a group of experts who work across these thesis areas both in the diligence process as well as working with our portfolio competition post-investment. So in any diligence process, we look to see how can our team help to advance the interests of our portfolio companies post Investments. And so we look for this kind of vision loss. How is Georgian a good partner for this company at this point in time and what are the kinds of engagements that we could work on together post-investment? Perfect. That's really helpful.Summary and if we put ourselves in the the CEO and the executive teams shoes, one of the things at least when I was a Founder, I was always a little bit scared of life, you know talking to investors and I'm sure you know, at least with this program and we were trying to do with George and we're trying to be more open and transparent about you know, how we work with companies. And so I would love to get your thoughts on how we approach diligence and you know, if someone is thinking about, you know, trying to understand how Georgian works and looks at deals and works through um, the process of figuring out whether or not to make investment. What does that diligence process look like sure. So again, I think this there's never a a one-size-fits-all wage example of this. We have a list of things that that we always try and do during any diligence process. For example, an intro meeting a finance call a product called. Hopefully it on site where we get to spend, you know birth.An evening with the management team where we're thinking about how that works in a virtual world right now and then we always spend time with the as I mentioned the go-to-market team going deep into the sales Pipeline and and go to market operations, but we always do this with a sense of flexibility for the company. So while we have a structure in mind of what we want to accomplish, there's often competing factors, for example, the company's time line arrays process other initiatives that they have going on which which take precedence over over conversations with Georgia. And so we always work with a company to identify. What's the right plan. What's the right timeline we've done a diligence processes in four days and we've done diligence processes in eighteen months. So it's something that that tends to have a lot of flexibility on depending on the situation that we're in a couple of things that are really important to us. Is that no matter how long a or short a process is there's there's two sides of a conversation going on. We're obviously assessing a company and seeing if it's if it for Georgian but vice versaThey're assessing us and they are deciding if we're the right partner for them in the next phase of their growth. Um, so there's a sense of you know, assessing the relationship essentially in the testing the cultural fit on both sides. It's really important thing to to accomplish in any process. And then last as I mentioned Georgian Georgian the team of 65 people now one of the really important things for us in a process is to make sure that the CEO in the management team gets to see as many people on the Georgian team as possible. So we often set up introductions and interviews with our community team or with our operational acceleration team with our with our team. So that companies that were talking to you really get a sense of the resources and the people that that George and has to offerAmazing. So you're going through diligence you're you know, trying to scope the partnership you're exposing different team members from the company two different, you know, operational groups within our region. So assuming, you know, the partnership comes together and we do end up investing. We'd love to get your take on the working relationship between Georgian and the organization and specific day that you as the league. How do you sort of see your role in you know, quarterbacking that relationship and you know, managing the different stakeholders sure. So so again it always it always seemed a little bit George and we always say that we operate on a pull model. So when there's a an interest from the company for example and having an impact team collaboration or having an operational Foundation project, we really look for for companies to guide that kind of Engagement for me as a deal lead. I love to be involved to the extent that a CEO is is interested in having a very ongoing dialogue.To my CEOs I connect with every couple of weeks in between board meetings and particularly, you know, there are strategic decisions that are coming up at there are major initiatives the companies pursuing sometimes at cadences is accelerated, but I always look to take a flexible approach for for whatever works for the CEO and the management team and then in terms of you know, how I look to engage as a board member, you know being prepared is is the best thing that you can do and it's not just reading the materials that a company sends to you. It's reading about the industry. It's understanding what competitors are doing. It's understanding, you know, the technical technical advances that might be applicable to the company and coming with ideas in a fresh perspective whenever whenever we engage with with a company Georgian takes a very long term view with with off our investments. So we're not driving to any kind of specific timeline. We always look to our management team to guide The Next Step since a guide the eventual outcomes of of the Investments that we make money.Um and last, you know, I see one of the key resource key sort of roles of myself. And usually we have a board Observer as well working with a company has to be a conduit to change the resources that Georgian so helping to identify, you know, if a company is considering New Market entry who's the right person at Georgian for them to connect with if they have a question which a similar company might be able to answer or have gone through something similar recently, you know who in our portfolio can be connected to to our community platform. So really thinking strategically about what resources we have available and how to make those accessible to our portfolio, you know, depending on whatever the time and and need might be amazing. Thank you Emily. That is the GP top three. Thank you for joining. Really appreciate it. Thank 7.