278. The Sustainable & Temporary Trends of COVID, The Self-Aware Founder, and Writing the Survival Guide for the Mental Aspect of Entrepreneurship (Mike Smerklo)

Mike Smerklo of Next Coast Ventures joins Nick to discuss The Sustainable & Temporary Trends of COVID, The Self-Aware Founder, and Writing the Survival Guide for the Mental Aspect of Entrepreneurship. In this episode, we cover: Walk us through your background and path to VC. What's the thesis at Next Coast Ventures? What are 'Next Coast' markets? How do you come up with the themes that drive investment focus at NCV? What are some of the trends emerging now that you are following that may have the most impact on new business creation over the next five years? Which are sustainable and which are temporary? Especially in the post covid world.  The biggest difference in the founder journey from the LoudCloud and ServiceSource days vs. today? What qualities do you look for in founders when investing in the early-stage vs. growth stage? How do you help founders? What led you to write the book Mr. Monkey and Me? Why are you giving all the proceeds for the book to charity? I would love to hear your thoughts on self-awareness w/ entrepreneurs and your approach to it. This question is called three data points. I'm going to give you a hypothetical situation w/ a startup, and you can ask three questions for three specific data points. Let's say you're approached to invest in a Series A Marketplace startup... The company is based in Houston The sector is oil/gas. They launched 24 months ago. and they currently have $500k/month GMV and a 25% take rate ($125k monthly revenue run rate) Again, the catch is, you can only ask 3 questions for 3 specific data points, in order to make your decision. What three questions do you ask?