- Former Andreessen Horowitz, or a16z, associate Michele Griffin has joined Lightning Capital.
- She’s going to spearhead a brand new $100 million ‘AI ripple results’ fund, which the agency has simply launched.
- Lightning has a multi-fund construction to supply short- to long-term liquidity to restricted companions, or LPs, and a hands-on strategy to managing its portfolio.
Lightning Capital has launched a brand new $100 million early-stage fund and introduced in former Andreessen Horowitz associate Michele Griffin to steer it.
As common associate and COO, Griffin will assist to mix a mega-fund mentality she discovered on the East Coast with the agility of an rising supervisor.
Lightning Capital, based in 2018, is elevating Enterprise Fund II, concentrating on Seed and Sequence A cheques of $1 to $5 million throughout round 10 to fifteen portfolio corporations.
It’s going to spend money on “AI ripple results”, that means startups which can be constructing for AI’s second-order results because it strikes from experimentation to deployment, reshaping industries, infrastructure, and work. For instance, corporations that make the workforce really feel excited and ready for potential future adjustments, somewhat than displaced.
Griffin joins through a merger with Premier GTM, a go-to-market advisory she based after leaving a16z, the place she helped construct the agency’s working platform, or basically its portfolio help features. Premier GTM has suggested VC corporations together with Craft Ventures and Norwest Enterprise Companions.
“I positively didn’t must [merge], as a result of my enterprise was going exceptionally nicely, however I felt like there was a large alternative for us to deliver that talent set collectively and for me to lastly make investments,” Griffin tells Tech Funding Information.
She was at all times considering investing, she provides, nevertheless it’s not typical for an working associate to maneuver into an funding position at mega-funds “though we’re so hands-on and have such an ideal lens.”
Griffin says she sits on either side of the equation on the subject of go-to-market methods. “I can see whether or not an organization can truly promote, and I do know the enterprise panorama nicely sufficient to identify gaps they don’t even know they’ve but, however will,” she provides.
A hands-on strategy
Her remit spans Fund II and broader operations. She will even deal with bringing in high advisors from her community to help portfolio corporations by their progress.
“At these mega corporations, they’ve individuals on employees for each business-building query. Rising managers can’t afford that,” she stated. “What I’ve constructed, and what I deliver to Lightning, is a platform and community of ‘Avengers’ we will deploy into our corporations – the most effective individuals, into the most important gaps, in a short time.”
For instance, she has introduced in a authorities contracts workforce to assist founders at a reduced value, and plugged in specialists to market expertise leaders to construct gross sales groups.
Lightning’s two co-founding common companions, CEO Jason Albanese and CFO Jock Percy, additionally come from working backgrounds, having each constructed and offered corporations previously.
Enterprise capitalists are likely to say that they spend money on the most effective groups. Certainly, “it’s a cliché for a purpose,” Albanese tells TFN.
“Execution is 80, 90% of the success of corporations, versus their concepts,” Albanese says, including {that a} key a part of the agency’s mannequin helps founders let go of being a “jack of all trades” and construct out a robust management workforce as an alternative. A part of the trio’s promote is founder teaching, they intention to show founders easy methods to develop their companies with out burning out and to really feel comfy delegating.
The now-three GPs are break up between San Francisco, Miami, and New York, that means their publicity skews in direction of these markets. They do have a world remit, nonetheless, together with Europe.
The brand new fund sits inside a multi-fund construction that features a secondaries and treasury technique, geared toward LPs that Albanese describes as “institutional gentle”. It contains household workplaces and corporates in search of publicity to enterprise capital with extra versatile liquidity choices than conventional VC.
Certainly, it comes as enterprise capital faces a liquidity crisis. This might ease when hotly-anticipated IPOs from the likes of SpaceX and Anthropic happen. Lightning considers its brief time period liquidity, medium time period liquidity, and longer-term liquidity choices, that are doable because of the break up of its funds, as an edge. “It’s a really highly effective possibility” for LPs, Albanese says.
The companions didn’t disclose how a lot of the fund has been raised.
