Today, Apollo is joined by Brian Hollins, Founder & Managing Partner of Collide Capital, a VC fund that believes great companies are built at the intersection of communities led by diverse, fearless change agents. Investing in primarily early-stage organizations at the pre-seed to Series A level, Collide raised their oversubscribed debut fund in October of 2022 at $66M.
Today, Apollo is joined by Brian Hollins, Founder & Managing Partner of Collide Capital, a VC fund that believes great companies are built at the intersection of communities led by diverse, fearless change agents. Investing in primarily early-stage organizations at the pre-seed to Series A level, Collide raised their oversubscribed debut fund in October of 2022 at $66M.
Brian is one of our most “even” guests to date, with a score of 9-9-7. Throughout the conversation, you’ll be able to tell why he earned that score as he outlines the multitude of projects he has his hands on, and the strategies he’s implemented to successfully see each one through.
Apollo also dives deep into how Brian and the team at Collide differentiated themselves from the rest of the “sea of sameness” when looking to raise their magnitude debut fund. One of their key strategies? Hitting the gas before the flag was waved by raising a proof of concept fund and building their own track record.
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Guest Bio
Brian Hollins is Founder and Managing Partner of Collide Capital. Prior to Collide Capital, Brian spent six years working at Goldman Sachs across investment management, investment banking, and merchant banking. While at Goldman, he helped launch the Emerging Entrepreneurs Coverage group to extend resources and capital to early-stage founders and assisted in deploying over $100M of capital as a software investor for GS Growth Equity. Brian is a Founding Board Member of BLCK VC, the largest Black investor community in the US providing the access, education, and community Black investors need to accelerate their careers.
Born and raised in DC, Brian was exposed to the art of deal negotiation as a caddy at local country clubs, which played a pivotal role in his ability to navigate the intricacies of cultures, languages, and people. He founded the Takeoff Institute, which equips Black undergraduate students with the resources and mentorship needed to launch successful young professional careers. Brian received his undergrad from Stanford University and his MBA from Harvard Business School. He is a member of Class 26 of the Kauffman Fellowship and is a CFA Charterholder.
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Guest PLE Score
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Guest Quote
“We look for a lot more things that have to do with grit and knack than we do what your LinkedIn looks like. I think LinkedIn funding has gotten a lot of people in trouble over the last five to ten years. You need people that know how to take a business to profitability at some point.” - Brian Hollins
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Time Stamps
*(03:01) Brian’s Achievement Index
*(05:24) Learning to Let Go
*(07:59) Where to Keep Control
*(14:14) Shifting Orientations and Responsibilities
*(18:51) Collide's Fund 0
*(23:41) Collide's Fund 1
*(27:44) Brian's Priorities
*(30:00) What's Next for Collide
*(34:09) How Brian Looks at Track Record
*(41:13) Apollo’s Takeaways
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Links
[00:00:00] Brian Hollins: An LP I know said this very well. They said that the emerging manager ecosystem looks like a sea of sameness right now. How do you not be in that seat? And so we said, what if we spent the time before we're ready to quit our jobs and be full time on this thing? What if we used our free time to start to build track record together?
[00:00:20] Brian Hollins: So, We raised a 1.3 million vehicle from four venture capital firms as our LPs, and we over, of course, about 20 months, made 34 investments together, and that portfolio did tremendously well. And I thought that we did a good job of at least putting something shiny over our heads that could attract people to what we were building because it just looked different than what everyone else had.
[00:00:44] Apollo Emeka: Welcome to the Achievement Index, a podcast designed to help you understand and accelerate the ways you perform. I'm Dr. Apollo Emeka. I created the Achievement Index based on my experience in the F B I US Army Special Forces. And business according to the achievement index. Vibrant success is the result of doing well in three areas, or as we like to call them, orientations, prioritize, leverage, and execute.
[00:01:14] Apollo Emeka: On this podcast, I'll be getting inside the minds of noteworthy leaders to explore how their unique orientations inform the successes and challenges they've navigated throughout their lives and careers. On the show today, I'll be. Speaking with Brian Hollins, founder and general partner of Collide Capital, a seed stage enterprise software focused fund, ushering in a new era of venture capital.
[00:01:39] Apollo Emeka: Collide announced their debut fund one late last year, which was oversubscribed at 66 million with backers including Amazon Alphabet. The University of California endowment if you thought that wasn't big enough. He also is a founding member of Black vc, an organization that is dedicated to supporting black founders, and he's the founder and c e O of the Takeoff Institute, a nonprofit supporting black undergraduates as they transition from college into their careers.
[00:02:12] Apollo Emeka: Brian, How are you doing today, man? Good to see you.
[00:02:15] Brian Hollins: Appreciate you having me.
Oh
[00:02:16] Apollo Emeka: my goodness. It's, uh, it's, it's an honor to have you here. How's your day going so far?
[00:02:21] Brian Hollins: Good. Good. It's Friday. I'm excited for the weekend. You, you pointed out a bunch of things we're building, so every, every now and then a Saturday and, and Sunday comes, uh, much needed.
[00:02:32] Brian Hollins: This is one of 'em. Oh. So excited to chat.
[00:02:35] Apollo Emeka: I can, I feel that, um, You're the first person that we have had on the show who is kind of even across the board in the achievement index and prioritize. Leverage and execute. So you were tied for prioritize and execute being both 36% execute and 36% prioritized.
[00:02:55] Apollo Emeka: But I mean, it's almost like if you could have tied on all three, you would have, you were 28% leverage. And so, like I said, you're the first person where, where we've seen that kind of, that, that balance across, prioritize, leverage, and execute. A lot of, uh, executives and founders are heavy on the prioritize.
[00:03:14] Apollo Emeka: You know, prioritizing is all about deciding what must be done. It's about, you know, big dreams and, you know, exploratory conversations and research and charting that amazing, exciting future. We think about this as a, a mountain analogy. So your prioritizers are the folks who are planting the flags on the top of the mountains.
[00:03:32] Apollo Emeka: Your ERs are the folks who are building out that base camp. So they are really concerned with the technology information, people and systems that are gonna be necessary to get the team up the mountain peak. And then executors just want to charge up the mountain and they want to take those steps up the mountain.
[00:03:49] Apollo Emeka: And so it's rare to find somebody who has done as many things as you have that is kind of even across the board in prioritize, leverage, and execute. Although you are more prioritize, execute, dominant. Dominant than leverage according to the index. Did you have any reactions to the index? And to your scores?
[00:04:07] Brian Hollins: Yeah. I mean, I think my first reaction is maybe, maybe I'm not doing all three of those things. Oh, interesting. So that was my first reaction. My second reaction is, uh, I've just had to do a lot of, all three my whole life. Right. I've, I've, I didn't have people to help me with leverage or building the base camp, so I did it, and then I didn't have people to push me up the mountain.
[00:04:25] Brian Hollins: Mm-hmm. So I climbed on my own and then, I got to the top and I didn't have a flag, so I found one. Or, you know, whatever the anecdote you want to use is. And so I think I've just, when I think I, I put it, make it akin to like vertical SaaS, right? Like there's businesses that build for the full stack of things that you need to do throughout the life cycle of a business.
[00:04:43] Brian Hollins: And maybe I've just learned how to be a little bit of everything, Jack of all trades, master of none.
[00:04:51] Apollo Emeka: So as you're thinking about that, you're, you're like, oh shoot, if I'm all of these things, am I, none of these things, you know, in a really distinct way. How might that show up for you? What allowed that suspicion to creep into your head?
[00:05:03] Apollo Emeka: Can you think of a scenario where it's like, oh, maybe I should have been more of one than the other? Yeah.
[00:05:07] Brian Hollins: I think a good example is like, uh, you know, holding onto things too tight. So as I sort of shift into becoming a leader or at the helm of organizations, you know, wanting to still be the person to do everything.
[00:05:19] Brian Hollins: Or not allowing other people to take over things for me that might actually be more bottleneck than it's worth, right? Like E, even if I might have done something at 97%, there's someone else that could have done it at at least 94 and I could have done something else with that time. And so it's actually inefficient for me to be the one doing it despite my sort of secondhand nature to just always believe that that's the fastest way and best way to get it done.
[00:05:43] Brian Hollins: So I think that that could be an example where I probably, I. Could be more efficient or leveraging more resources around me to help me get more things done. Um, but I tend to be sort of held back by the fact that I'm used to just kind of having to bootstrap it myself.
[00:06:01] Apollo Emeka: Yeah, it's, it's funny because like you said, you know, when you're, especially in a startup environment and the business environment or really when you're building anything, you have to.
[00:06:10] Apollo Emeka: Like there's, there just aren't people other than you, right? Or not a lot of people anyway. So there's a lot of things that, a lot of mountains that you do have to climb on your own. When can you tell that you're like, oh man, maybe I should actually let go of this. Maybe I shouldn't be the one climbing the mountain.
[00:06:26] Apollo Emeka: Cuz you're obviously, you have built or have been a part of building multiple ventures. Is there a point that you can feel where you're like, oh shoot, I probably need to shift gears to being more of a prioritizer or a leverager here? A good
[00:06:37] Brian Hollins: example is like, this demonstrates the importance of setting KPIs, right?
[00:06:40] Brian Hollins: So if I set a bunch of goals internally, whether they're for myself or for my team, And they are three month, six month, 12 month goals, and we get out 3, 6, 12 months, and we're missing a lot of the ones that I'm responsible for. It's fairly likely that I believed at the time had an assumption that I would be able to do those things, and then my calendar was what it was.
[00:07:02] Brian Hollins: I didn't get to it, whatever the excuse may be. And so being able to quickly iterate on that and say, you know what? These are the examples of the things that I tend to sign up for that I probably shouldn't have that actually end up not getting done. And so let me get outta the way this time and allow the leverage around me to help make sure that we continue to move the ball forward.
[00:07:21] Apollo Emeka: I love that you bring in KPIs to the conversation because it's like if you didn't have that, then you wouldn't be able to tell, right? If everybody was just kinda, yeah. Hey, let's all do stuff that's gonna help. The business, right? Like if it stays ambiguous Yeah. Then you're not gonna, you're not gonna be able to tell how much of a, a bottleneck you are.
[00:07:37] Apollo Emeka: What are the things that you're pushed to, uh, I guess from a passion standpoint or maybe a, a control standpoint or whatever, like, what are the things that you want to keep on your plate and execute on yourself? What are the types of things? Yeah.
[00:07:50] Brian Hollins: The things that tend to fall into that bucket are more associated with.
[00:07:54] Brian Hollins: Brand and legacy and culture and what I'd call more of the, the soft skills. You know, the things that ultimately drive how we're remembered or how founders show up to us or the value add that we're remembered for. Um, these are things that I think you have to be, be careful giving to people that are execution oriented or are just focused on the kinda linear path from A to B.
[00:08:19] Brian Hollins: Um, cuz oftentimes it's not linear to get to those. Outcomes to be a brand like a Sequoia. Be a brand, like a benchmark, be a brand like a Union Square. You know, it actually takes time and creativity and the answer is not always the, the, the left foot right foot kind of answer. And so making sure that we maintain some semblance of 30,000 foot view of how we are perceived in the market is something that I think I probably sh shouldn't and don't tend to, to give up.
[00:08:46] Apollo Emeka: Got you. Yeah, no, that makes, that makes a ton of sense. Well, you know, for folks who, cause like myself, I'm like, 90% prioritize, 5% leverage, 5% execute. And that has its own, that has its own trade offs. But you know, it's, for me, because of that, I can tell the people that I need around me are really strong ERs because I have tons of ideas all the time.
[00:09:08] Apollo Emeka: Um, and so I need those people who are gonna be able to like, oh, okay, that's a big idea. How do we make accomplishing that thing easy? So you have strengths across the board here, but. Have you found that you are able to reach another level of success when you surround yourself with a different type of person?
[00:09:25] Apollo Emeka: And if we were gonna look at this through the prioritized leverage, execute lens, like are these more, more executors, more ERs, more prioritizer Like what do you think the mix is around you that helps you to be successful? Yeah, pro
[00:09:39] Brian Hollins: I'd say leverage is probably the easiest spot, in my opinion, to slip up.
[00:09:44] Brian Hollins: Meaning, kind of focus on leaving the camp before you tie your shoes. Mm-hmm. Um, all, all, all you had to, all you had to do was tie your shoes. You'd be running a lot faster right now, like making sure that you cross t's and dot i's, I think is a really important group of people to have around the table that are hyper focused there and making sure.
[00:10:02] Brian Hollins: That the plumbing works, if that makes sense, before you start building scaffolding. So I'd say I never leave without trying to bolster that part. On the execute side, I tend to be fairly like high horsepower, like I've always had high capacity throughout my. Life to just like get stuff done, move from door A to door B, and kind of just like keep climbing.
[00:10:22] Brian Hollins: I've seen that a lot in sort of standardized testing. I've been a good standardized tester my whole life. Uh, I'm not that smart, but I will just, I'll work you through books and I will just finish any exam, level one, level two. Like, I've just learned how to do that and I genuinely think it's just kind of brute force.
[00:10:41] Brian Hollins: So I, I think in the, in that middle realm, I tend to be pretty strong. And then I. The third realm, I think is a learned behavior. I don't think you just wake up and you're ready to plant flags. Like I think you, you have to see the top of the mountain and slip, or you have to get to the top, but someone else got to put the flag in the mountain.
[00:10:57] Brian Hollins: Like there's a bunch of anecdotes around like exposure to greatness and wins and losses and just like track record that I think becomes relevant as you start to try to climb higher mountains, bigger mountains, scarier mountains. Yeah, so I, it, it's always, I, I'd say I tend to add more of like, Advisors and, and people that can help me frame my thoughts at that level.
[00:11:21] Brian Hollins: Whereas at the lowest level, I probably try to add people who are dedicated to my team or staffed on that appropriate thing to make sure it gets done
[00:11:30] Apollo Emeka: well. All right. At this point, Brian's comments line up perfectly with his Achievement Index score. Remember he was 36% prioritized, 28% leverage, and 36% execute.
[00:11:45] Apollo Emeka: Now that's about as evenly split as you can be, so we can see that he is. At different points, bolstering either the prioritize piece of what he's doing, the leverage piece of what he's doing, or the execute piece of what he's doing. He made these comments that developing that prioritized muscle is kind of the hardest to develop.
[00:12:04] Apollo Emeka: And this really depends on who you are. Like I am. Highly prioritized. So for me, I just wake up in that orientation. I'm thinking about the mountaintops and the flags, but not everybody does that. For me, it's harder to develop a discipline of execution or to really think about how we're gonna leverage tech, technology, information, people, and systems.
[00:12:25] Apollo Emeka: I have to be incredibly deliberate about that. So it really just depends on where are your strengths? Where are your natural orientations? But it's really cool how he's able to kind of call on these different orientations when the moment arises and he needs to prioritize. He finds a way to do it or find somebody who can help him do it.
[00:12:47] Apollo Emeka: Let's hear how he did that. When he was helping to build the largest black investor ecosystem in the world.
[00:12:56] Brian Hollins: So Black vvc, I'm a founding board member, there were probably six or seven of us, day one in 2018 I believe. They got together and said, you know, look, there's just not enough of us at these events.
[00:13:08] Brian Hollins: And so we're gonna, if nothing else, build a small community of people who share resources, share access, share, deal, flow, whatever it is, and. You know, we woke up five and a half years later and it's the largest black investor ecosystem in the world. And so, hey, you know, it's, it's been a really cool, cool journey, um, to see that organization grow.
[00:13:28] Brian Hollins: And I think I've, you know, I've been lucky to kind of be on the sidelines as Sydney. Sydney Sykes and Fred Gross are kind of the, the co-founders of the organization and, There was a group of us that really sort of sat in the vision room as the inaugural board and just helped guide them as they built the organization and grew it and thought about new product offerings.
[00:13:49] Brian Hollins: And you know, we ended up building a program called the Black Venture Institute, and we didn't build that until I think 2020, maybe. 2021. And the genesis of that was that, Everything we had built at Black VC was focused on, you know, getting young black kids into analyst seats, associate seats, like pushing them into venture.
[00:14:09] Brian Hollins: And we were like, well man, that's, that's moving slow. Like every year we wake up it's like black people got 1.9% of the funding this year. Black people got 2.1% of the funding this year. Black people went down to 1.8% of the funding this year. Exactly. Uh, how's that possible when we, when we add, you know, 5,000 people to the, to the community every year?
[00:14:28] Brian Hollins: So we decided to build. A top down effort as well. And so the Black Venture Institute trains black tech executives on how to become angel investors. And so it goes and finds people that have discretionary income and says, Hey, you know, most black kids, as you know, don't have a rich uncle or an older brother and private equity who serves as that friends and family round.
[00:14:50] Brian Hollins: And so we're gonna build artificial friends and family through black tech executives to to fund some of the work of young black undergrads and. You know, look, we've graduated 150 black tech executives through that program. They do deals together, they share deals. Some of them have started building funds on their own.
[00:15:06] Brian Hollins: So, you know, I've been able to just be more of the guiding role at Black vc. Whereas, you know, I collide. As you know, Aaron and I built the firm together. We spent three years. On the phone three hours a night, four days a week, trying to figure out what the hell we were doing. Um, still don't know what we're doing.
[00:15:24] Brian Hollins: You know, we're building the plane as we fly it. As we say, like building a venture capital firm from scratch is no joke. And one of my favorite anecdotes right now is everyone wants a venture fund until they get one, because there's, there's a lot of things that come with this role that people just have no idea until you're actually doing it.
[00:15:41] Brian Hollins: It's not, it's not just sitting on your couch and writing checks in cool companies that you see on TechCrunch. There's, there's just a ton of. Small company building that's, that's going on. And so I've had to take way more of a hands-on approach building collide capital because ultimately if I'm not building it, or Aaron's not building it, no one is building it.
[00:16:00] Brian Hollins: Um, and so as we bring in teammates, they need to see that effort as well. And it sort of percolates through the entire community that we built.
[00:16:08] Apollo Emeka: I love it. Um, and thanks for shattering this dream that I had of one day sitting on my couch writing checks to cool
[00:16:14] Brian Hollins: companies from tech crimes. It's, it's not, I mean, there's a couple, there's a couple guys doing that, but I'm not one of them.
[00:16:21] Brian Hollins: Not, not yet.
[00:16:23] Apollo Emeka: Not yet. Um, can you talk a little bit about the fundraise? Walk us
[00:16:28] Brian Hollins: through that. So, what a lot of people don't know is we raised, uh, we now call it fund zero. So we raised a proof of concept fund together while I was at Harvard Business School and while Aaron was running, uh, Blavity, and we used that time to really build a proof of concept vehicle.
[00:16:45] Brian Hollins: One of our theses was that there were too many people trying to raise venture funds and all of 'em were running around with a pitch deck and people just didn't know how to assess it. They were like, oh, cool, you worked at Stripe for six years, you worked at Pinterest for five years. Like, but how do I know if you're a good investor one?
[00:16:59] Brian Hollins: And how do I know if you're gonna do this for 20 years? Two, because otherwise I'm not gonna make any money. And so we said, what if we spent the time before we're ready to quit our jobs and quit, you know, and be full time on this thing? What if we used our free time? To start to build track record together.
[00:17:14] Brian Hollins: So we raised a 1.3 million vehicle from four venture capital firms as our LPs, um, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Canin Partners, pair VC and fund called Flybridge Capital in Boston. And we, over a course of about 20 months, made 34 investments together, and that portfolio did tremendously well. So we had 10 of our companies get marked up and we had three of them get acquired in that window.
[00:17:39] Brian Hollins: And so, When, when we went to raise fund one, we just had something to talk about. Like we didn't say, this is what we think we're gonna do, or This is what we think an investment memo is gonna look like, or this is what we think we're gonna add value. You could get on the phone with the founders and ask them if we added value.
[00:17:55] Brian Hollins: You could. You could talk to the other VCs and ask them if we showed them interesting deals, like we had something for people to go do diligence on, and I think that that. Really just at a time where an at an LP I know said this very well. They said that the emerging manager ecosystem looks like a sea of sameness right now.
[00:18:13] Brian Hollins: Um, and I thought that that was, that was really interesting. So how do you, you know, how do you not be in that sea? And I thought that we did a good job of at least putting something shiny over our heads, um, that could attract people to what we were building because it just looked different than what everyone else had.
[00:18:27] Brian Hollins: And so, When we went out to raise fund one, we started our fundraise in January of 2022 with a 40 million target.
[00:18:35] Apollo Emeka: Before we get into the massive numbers, fund Zero was proof of concept for fund one. Right? But like, what was proof of concept for Fund Zero? Was it just leveraging your relationships? I mean, $1.3 million is, I mean, you go try to raise $10, right?
[00:18:49] Apollo Emeka: Like raise, getting people to to, to write a check is, is no easy feat. So what, you know, how do you, how do you reverse engineer that fund? Zero. I think
[00:18:58] Brian Hollins: you have to point to the work we had done in the ecosystem, right? So at, at that point, again, remember, black VC is, is churning into one of the largest black investor ecosystems in the world.
[00:19:09] Brian Hollins: Aaron ran Blavity. Blavity is the largest black media company in the world for millennials and Gen Z. It reached about a hundred million people a month. So he had incredible access. Afro Tech is their, is their big conference. They run the largest black tech conference in the world. I was at it, I don't think, I think it was October or November, there were 25,000 people in Austin, Texas at Afro Tech this year.
[00:19:27] Brian Hollins: Like so he's judging the pitch competition there. He knows everyone there. I've built these ecosystems. So we were able to go to venture firms that we had already spent a lot of time with and who had. For anyone that's not familiar, they had scout funds. So scout funds are basically allocations of capital that venture capital firms will give to allow people that don't work at that firm who they respect, admire, think, have interesting deal flow to kind of go out and be able to write checks on their behalf and then, and then scout, and then keep an eye on that company as it grows.
[00:19:58] Brian Hollins: And then if it's, you know, doing well flag it to the, to the team and the ideas. You know, if I give you 250 K and you make 10 investments at 25 K, if one of those is something that I put a 5 million check in down the road, then it pays for all of the 250 K that I gave you. So we were very creative in saying, well, 250 K is not gonna cut it, but can we roll up 250 K in a bunch of different spots and turn it into a vehicle?
[00:20:25] Brian Hollins: And the genesis of that was allowing us to have a pool of capital to go and put. Genuine money into the people we knew were building interesting things instead of just saying, Hey, we could have written a check if we had money. It was like, no, we wrote a check. It was a small check, but here's proof that we had access to this cap table.
[00:20:44] Brian Hollins: And then over time what we did is we, you know, we picked our favorite ones and, and we asked them to be a referral and say, Hey, had these guys had 500 K, 750 k, I would've given it to 'em, but they didn't have it. And then that's what allowed us to kind of go and raise more capital off of the proof that we.
[00:21:01] Brian Hollins: Had that access had we had
[00:21:02] Apollo Emeka: more capital. I love it. I love it. Yeah. That snowballing the kind of credibility and coming up with a mental model first and then filling that model out and using it to get to the next level it sounds like. So, okay, so now we can fast forward to the big raise.
[00:21:18] Brian Hollins: Yeah. Went out to raise Jan one of 2022.
[00:21:21] Brian Hollins: We had a lot of relationships at that point. You know, we had 18 months of talking. You know, one of my favorite anecdotes is, Ask for money, get advice, ask for advice, get money, right? So we went around to a ton of people during that 18 month period and just asked them for advice. We weren't asking for money.
[00:21:36] Brian Hollins: We had this little 1.3 million vehicle, and we were running around writing checks and we were just saying, Hey, is this an interesting company? Do you like this? Hey, here's our memo for this. Like, what do you think about it? Hey, we're building our, we're building our value add for these founders. Like, what do you guys do at your firm?
[00:21:50] Brian Hollins: And we're able to go and talk to a bunch of LPs, limited partners, Who could invest in funds who just gave us advice because they, you know, they, they enjoy being part of the genesis, right? They felt like they were at the ground floor of building our firm, and they were just, to be very clear, we were genuinely taking their advice and then going and implementing it, and then executing it, and then going back and telling them we took their advice.
[00:22:13] Brian Hollins: You know, we were, we were creating that, that full circle. Um, so when we went to ask for money, I think we were just able to be. A little bit more efficient. It's, I wanna be very clear, like, it, it was not fun, you know, it was a very, very hard time to fundraise and now is even harder, arguably. And so it's, it's just not, it's not fun to raise capital in any type of recession.
[00:22:34] Brian Hollins: It's definitely not fun to raise capital as a person of color. And so, um, you know, we, we talked to 400 plus investors to, to raise the fund, but ultimately, You know, we were able to oversubscribe the fund and, and get some really compelling folks in our corner who I think can help us, you know, really build a firm as opposed to just build a fund.
[00:22:53] Apollo Emeka: Earlier in our conversation, Brian talked about the challenges of deciding which mountaintops and deciding where to plant the flag, but here it is. You can see that he leveraged other people's perspectives to help him prioritize. So he would go out and he would say, Hey, what do you think about this? Is this interesting?
[00:23:13] Apollo Emeka: I. And they would essentially help him identify the mountain tops and the flags to plant on those mountain tops. And then he would go and he would try it and he would say, okay, what does it look like when we plant the flag on this mountain? And then he would come back. So, And say, Hey, we did it, and we got to the top of that mountain.
[00:23:28] Apollo Emeka: Now what? So Brian was able to, by leveraging other people's experience and perspectives, identify which mountains he and his team should be climbing. This is an incredibly invaluable skill, and if prioritizing doesn't come natural to you, It's one that can save you tons of time and heartache. Now you can't take this approach with everything you do, right?
[00:23:52] Apollo Emeka: You can't just go around saying, Hey, what do you think I should do? And he definitely doesn't. He's got a lot going on. He helped to build black vc. He's got Collide Capital going on. He's got an amazing podcast called The Road Untraveled VC Perspectives with Brian Hollins that you should definitely go and check out.
[00:24:09] Apollo Emeka: So he's got a lot going on and I was really curious to see how does he juggle all of this?
[00:24:15] Brian Hollins: Some days I'm recording a podcast. Some days I'm running a nonprofit. Some days I'm running a venture capital firm. And so trying to, trying to make sure I stay focused, you know, I certainly have priorities of those three things.
[00:24:26] Brian Hollins: If, if anything is on fire at collide, it's, it's being taken care of before takeoff, which is being taken care of before a road untraveled. But there's still days where, you know, there's just not enough time to do everything, and so you gotta find. You gotta find ways to prioritize, or in your case, you know, as you suggested, start to leverage folks around you to help get stuff done.
[00:24:47] Apollo Emeka: Yeah. In any business, I feel like there are these, um, there are these, uh, I don't know, milestones or plateaus. And sometimes you can't tell that you have passed a milestone or that you've broken through some kind of a plateau until you actually do it right? Because you're in and you're, and you're doing the stuff, right?
[00:25:07] Apollo Emeka: Like, Where would you say, if we think about, you know, okay, so fund zero was, was a plateau that you were able to break through and like, okay, we, we did it. And then breaking through this other plateau of, uh, you know, being oversubscribed. Are you closer to having just broken through a plateau or do you feel like you are actually bumping up against another ceiling here?
[00:25:30] Apollo Emeka: Hmm,
[00:25:30] Brian Hollins: that's a good question. I probably, the, probably the former, um, I feel like we're just on the other side of closing fund one. We are officially buttoned up is what I'd say. Like if I, you know, if I, if I were a Ziploc bag, like it is officially sealed, I can flip it over, but like, it definitely hasn't been sealed for that long.
[00:25:51] Brian Hollins: Um, and so, you know, now I need to shake that bag for a little bit or add something to it. Yeah. You know, like we're gonna run for a little bit. With a pretty heads down mentality around just kind of fortifying what we've built. I think we have a great headstart. I think we have a real solid base of capital to go make good investments, but now we have to like make sure the firm works, make sure our investments do well, make sure our founders feel supported, make sure our LPs feel high levels of communication, make sure that the community feels like we're giving back.
[00:26:23] Brian Hollins: There's kind of a lot of pieces now that we have to go and fortify. And then that next kind of thing will start to rear its head, but it's, it's not today. I feel very lucky to be not asking anyone for money and just really focused on doing what we said we were gonna do with the fund.
[00:26:41] Apollo Emeka: That's amazing. Um, so then as you're in this place where you're, like you said you're kind of.
[00:26:48] Apollo Emeka: You're locked in and now you're, you're building at this level. What are the next steps? Is it dialing in? So from, you know, we think about leverage in, in four different spectrums, technology, information, people and systems. Where would you say that you are in this building? Um, cuz it, it, I imagine that you're kind of like, You've chosen your mountains and you've chosen the peaks in terms of you have the pot of money and you know roughly what types of opportunities that you're looking to invest in.
[00:27:18] Apollo Emeka: Right? And so it's about optimizing to make sure that you can find those opportunities and then can evaluate them quickly and effectively and, and, and execute, right? So, um, is, is that a, I mean, is that about right where you are? Yeah, it is. And so when you think about this building piece, knowing that you still, you don't have unlimited money, right?
[00:27:40] Apollo Emeka: Like you have this, you have a significant pot of money, uh, to invest in, but you still have to build a, a fairly lean base camp, I would imagine, in the stage that you're in, right? Yeah. So a hundred percent. How are you thinking about building out that base camp right now? Yeah,
[00:27:54] Brian Hollins: the first first hire we made at the firm was a VP of operations, and that's exactly what that person's doing.
[00:27:59] Brian Hollins: It's coming in and building plumbing. How does our CRM talk to our website, which talks to our flagging mechanism on monday.com for when we need to reach out to someone. Um, just making sure that all of our systems are go, how do we add someone to the team? How do we turn someone's access off if they were a contractor and they got terminated, you know, whate, whatever the different things are.
[00:28:23] Brian Hollins: Aaron and I can't be managing that. Our team is, is growing pretty quickly. We're about 14 people now, five full-time and nine in a contractor role or capacity. And so making sure that we have someone that's making sure the the trains run on time has been super effective in allowing Aaron and I to go and focus a lot more on what you just described, which is picking, qualifying, winning, supporting, kinda all the things that come with.
[00:28:50] Brian Hollins: Building a portfolio and then, you know, it's, it's, I'd call it a little bit of yin and yang. So now we'll add more on the investing side. We'll go find people who can help us on that side, and then we'll feel good on that side. We'll go back and add to ahead of platform or someone that can help us more on the ops side, but not exactly in a plumbing capacity.
[00:29:09] Brian Hollins: And then we'll flip back over and say, we don't have anyone on the investing side, you know, so that's part of the firm building exercises, like plugging holes in a proactive manner. Um, before they turn into holes, but that's just part of my job. That's what I get paid for, right. Is like, is like doing that effectively and making good decisions.
[00:29:28] Brian Hollins: And if we make a bad decision, mitigating that bad decision as quickly as
[00:29:32] Apollo Emeka: possible. Yeah, that's, that's awesome. And yeah, again, congratulations or I don't think I've said congratulations, but Damn congratulations. Appreciate it. On, on building this, um, is phenomenal. Appreciate it. You know, this track record piece.
[00:29:46] Apollo Emeka: It's so easy to turn people away for lack of track record. Right? Like how do you think about that? Knowing the types of founders and companies that you want to invest in, how do you think about. Track record when we know that opportunities are not evenly distributed from birth, right? Like it's so disturbing how many articles scroll across my feed.
[00:30:12] Apollo Emeka: It seems like every week I'm seeing something about, you know, a mother and infant mortality rates among, among black folks, you know? And so you start looking at the distribution of opportunity even just to live. Um, from birth is, is not even. And so you could take that to preschool, to elementary, to middle, to high to college, to the workforce.
[00:30:33] Apollo Emeka: So we know that, that that experience, uh, is not evenly distributed and. Um, and yet people care about track record and it can be an indicator of what you can pull off, but just because you don't have a track record doesn't mean that you definitely can't pull it off. Right. So how do you all think about, uh, track record and I guess, kind of underwrite the real operational risk of investing in the pool that you're investing in?
[00:30:57] Brian Hollins: To be honest, I think you'd be surprised how unconventional most people's diligence processes are. You know, I think that's one of the big learnings I took away from. Yeah, I've worked at three different firms now, and all three investment committees are very different. And so the, the things that people care about, the things that people look for, the biases that the different partnerships have are, are all very different.
[00:31:17] Brian Hollins: And so I think we try to take a fairly agnostic approach to how we look at founders and how we look at their experience. And, uh, you know, I went to Stanford and Harvard, but I, I could care less if you went to Stanford and Harvard. I think I look at a lot of other things that have to do with your ability to execute.
[00:31:34] Brian Hollins: Whether you're high horsepower in high capacity, whether you're able to build a team and attract talent around you, you know, whether you're able to sell something to someone, your, your first five customers, your first five employees, like that's a founder led sale. Like are you able to close that on your own?
[00:31:50] Brian Hollins: So I think we look for a lot more things that have to do with kind of grit and NAC than we do what your LinkedIn looks like. Cuz I think LinkedIn hiring or, or LinkedIn funding has. Gotten a lot of people in trouble over the last five to 10 years, and now instead, what you are starting to look for, or at least what they're waking up to, is that you know you need, you need people that know how to take a business to profitability at some point.
[00:32:15] Brian Hollins: You need a business that has a leader that's not misogynistic and understands how to build culture, understands the value of having a diverse team with a diverse background, with diverse experiences. And so I think you can. I think if you come from appreciating those things, then it's easier to go and spot them.
[00:32:33] Brian Hollins: And I, I certainly think that both Aaron and I come from, come from that
[00:32:37] Apollo Emeka: place. I love the specific fundraising lesson that Brian points out here, and that is that. Every firm has a different approach to due diligence, and so that signals to me that it's really important to understand what does the firm that you're in talks with or that you want to pitch to?
[00:32:54] Apollo Emeka: What do they care about, and how can you show that you are in alignment with what they care about and that you have either potential or track record in that area. Now, that's specific to fundraising, but I think this concept applies much more broadly to trying to accomplish anything tough, whether you are.
[00:33:12] Apollo Emeka: Trying to raise money, trying to get a new job or go after a promotion, ideas will only take you so far. If you want to achieve greatness, that next level of success, you have to prove that you have what it takes to perform at that level. Now, it doesn't mean that you have to already be performing at that level in terms of the scale and volume of the impact that you're making, but you have to show that you've taken action before that's generated some positive results in those areas.
[00:33:42] Apollo Emeka: I could keep this conversation going for hours, but let's get Brian's final thoughts. You dove right into the, uh, into the mountain analogy, so Well, yeah. Um, but it, it's so cool to see having this balance perspective that you have. To see you consciously, like employing those different perspectives and skills when needed.
[00:34:06] Apollo Emeka: And I love that you are in this, you know, you're just on the other side of a massive plateau and there's a lot of, a lot of building to do and a lot of, you know, growing to do. And I just, uh, I, I can't wait to see where you are a year or two or three from now, um, and see if you went and took this achievement index again, you know, are you still.
[00:34:27] Apollo Emeka: Even across the board or did some things shift around as a result of, of being in this, this big new space that's above this plateau?
[00:34:35] Brian Hollins: Yeah. No, I appreciate it. Love the work that you're doing and look forward to continuing to see, uh, how you get this out to the world. I think it's super, super informative and.
[00:34:43] Brian Hollins: A lot of other people should be taking it and learning from it, so,
[00:34:46] Apollo Emeka: oh, you're so gracious. Well, this has been an amazing conversation, man. I, I, I appreciate you. No doubt. No doubt. Thanks for having me.
[00:34:56] Apollo Emeka: Wow. Brian, thank you so much for the amazing conversation. All right, people, as usual, and as always, we're gonna go over the key takeaways from that. Conversation looking at this through that P l E lens, he opened the conversation by saying, wow, maybe I'm too balanced. Is it a good thing that I am almost equally prioritize, leverage, and execute?
[00:35:20] Apollo Emeka: And he went on to ponder this throughout the conversation, but a couple of things popped from each of those different categories. One of the things that stuck out to me is he said we were in a sea of sameness. As a young fund, we are in a sea of sameness, and we had to find a way to differentiate. And so the way that they did that is they went around asking the experts and the folks who could potentially fund them later, Hey, why are all the reasons why this would not work for you?
[00:35:50] Apollo Emeka: And this is one of the. Best prioritize questions that you can ask. So many people are afraid of asking that, that question of, Hey, why wouldn't this work? In ignoring that question, you pass up on an opportunity to put systems in place to mitigate those risks that might pop up. And instead people kind of proceed forward with, oh, well hopefully this will work, or it could work this way.
[00:36:15] Apollo Emeka: So if you took nothing else away from that conversation, it is the power of that prioritizing question of why are all the reasons this. Could fail. Now, moving into leverage, he said, I definitely should not be the one who is controlling contractor access to our system, so I've got to leverage more. That's what he's saying and getting other folks to do things.
[00:36:40] Apollo Emeka: They might not do them exactly how he would want them to be done, but the important thing is that that frees him up to go do things that only he can do with regards to leverage. He also said, Hey, before you leave that base camp, make sure that your shoes are tied. Make sure that your gear is ready before you take off up that mountain.
[00:37:00] Apollo Emeka: And leverage also always has a cost. Whether it's time, it's money, it's energy, making things easy. You have to make them hard first. So for instance, you hire somebody to, you know, do a job in the company, but they have to be onboarded. They need lots of time and mentoring and training. So leverage always has a cost.
[00:37:24] Apollo Emeka: And when you have to move fast, sometimes it makes sense to what he said, just brute force it to just find the horsepower internally and do it yourself. So while we believe in making things easy, you also have to balance that with the fact that. It's hard to make things easy. Finally, coming down to execution, Brian said that he has done a lot of execution in the past because there was just nobody else to do it.
[00:37:50] Apollo Emeka: And so now as he has grown in his leadership position, he's had to be more thoughtful about letting go of things and getting other people to execute so he can continue to prioritize leverage. And monitor that execution. One last big thank you to Brian Hollins and to my main man, Nick Canepa and Caspian Studios.
[00:38:18] Apollo Emeka: Remember, you can find out what your achievement index is by going to www dot achievement index. Dot com, take the assessment, takes about 15, 20 minutes. Make sure you're in a nice, calm state of mind and a quiet place, and you can find out your own achievement index and figure out how you match up against our guests.
[00:38:41] Apollo Emeka: I'm Dr. Apollo Emeka. If you like the podcast, please rate us on whatever platform you're listening and remember to share it with your friends. Thanks. See you next time.