Phil Nadel: The Serial Entrepreneur and Venture Capital Visionary Transforming Startups into Success Stories
I had the pleasure of interviewing Phil Nadel, a well-respected serial entrepreneur, angel investor, mentor, published author, and frequent speaker at industry events. He has started and sold several companies and has invested more than $100M in more than 200 startups, including Grove Collaborative, Calm, GRIN, and Zoomcar, and has had several notable exits. Phil was the co-founder and Managing Director of Barbara Corcoran Venture Partners and is the founder and Managing Director of Forefront Venture Partners. For nine seasons, Phil was one of the investors on Spotify’s highly acclaimed The Pitch podcast. He volunteers as a mentor for Techstars, SCORE, and Junior Achievement.
How did you break into venture capital?
I was a serial entrepreneur for many years. I founded and exited several companies. After my last exit, family and friends started asking me for help with their startups. This included advice and investment. I did that for a while and it slowly expanded beyond family and friends. About 15 years ago, I decided to go all-in and become a full-time venture capital investor.
What is it that excites you about investing?
I love working with founders and helping them to build successful businesses. I love learning about new and exciting technologies and interesting new applications of existing products and technologies. Basically, I get excited about smart and innovative ways to solve significant pain points.
What has been your biggest challenge when it comes to finding the “right deals”?
I can’t point to a single challenge. It’s the whole process. We are very selective and disciplined investors. We invest in fewer than one company for every 1,000 we look at. So the biggest challenge is finding the needle in the haystack. We do more due diligence than any other early-stage investor I know of. The process is tireless and very time-consuming. And it can often be very challenging to find those deals we feel have the highest likelihood of success.
What major trends do you expect to see in technology innovation over the next five years that excite you?
Innovation is happening much more rapidly and will become even more rapid thanks to technologies like AI. I see AI as a real game-changer and I’m very excited about the possibilities. It will affect almost every sector in one way or another. It enables companies to build and scale more quickly. As a result, I believe we will experience an increase in the number of startups and we will see a shift in various aspects of business development to rely heavily on applications of AI.
Other technologies that excite me include robotics, CRISPR, progress in nuclear fusion, and the technologies around climate change mitigation. In the near to mid-term, CRISPR has the potential to save millions of lives while robotics will likely continue to improve productivity dramatically. And it’s imperative that we continue to develop new technologies to mitigate climate change.
If you had to share “words of wisdom” with a founder who’s about to start their own startup, what would they be?
Make sure you are solving a significant pain point for a large addressable market in a 10x better way. And make sure you are 100% committed because it’s going to take a lot of hard work and dedication.
How can our readers follow you on social media?
I am active on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/philnadel I also frequently publish articles on Medium here: https://medium.com/@pnadel
This was very insightful. Thank you so much for joining us!
