How do you like our new look?
After being in business for over two and a half years, and through countless meetings with incredible entrepreneurs, we discovered that we wanted to double down on what has resonated with so many of our founders: the promise of human enablement as both a thematic investment focus and an internal operating ethos.
To reflect that, we partnered with Friday to reimagine the experience of Roble Ventures. Read the full post on our new website to learn more about what we discovered at our roots.
While we feel that this new identity better reflects who we are and where we want to be going, the core of Roble hasn’t changed: we are more optimistic than ever about the power of technology to better humanity and build a better future of work—and more committed than ever to the founders who make it all happen.
To help all entrepreneurs scale their businesses in a sustainable way, we’ll be leveraging some of our best-practice playbooks through live conversations with our partners and founders: On Monday, April 29th at 1pm PT / 4pm ET, we’ll be holding our first public webinar on the ins and outs of early-stage board composition. Register now to save your spot and learn from investors, board members, and other founders about
- Establishing a high-performing board
- How to recruit the right board members
- How to develop respectful debate with diverse voices
- How to avoid confusing shareholder vs board rights
- Establishing a board culture (which is separate from your company culture)
We’ll be capping this webinar to allow for a more intimate discussion and Q&A, so register now and add it to your calendar. We’re looking forward to seeing you there!
Sincerely,
David, Emily, and Sergio
The Roble Ventures Team
Lens into a Human-Enabled Future
THOUGHT LEADERSHIP HIGHLIGHTS
Roble Ventures kicked off its new brand with a flurry of posts featuring our uncommon founders:
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David took the opportunity to talk about our clarified investment thesis:
“Our vision for a human-enabled future is inspired not only by the wins of the past, but by forward-looking roadmaps we’ve developed to help illuminate what comes next. We invest in solutions that connect untapped human potential to the evolving demands of the modern workplace: greater productivity, collaboration, transparency, and innovation.”
Emily also discussed Roble’s approach to portfolio support on the HireCMO podcast alongside Rachel Yuen from Alate:
The Latest From Our Founders
PORTFOLIO NEWS AND UPDATES
FlowEQ founder Brittani Dunlap was listed as The Future of SaaS’ ‘Ones to Watch’ for 2024:
Hyperbound held their first Beat the Bot challenge, spurring the sales community to practice cold calls without burning real leads.
Co-founder Sriharsha also took over the accounts of Apollo.io, a cloud-based B2B sales automation platform:
Rising Team’s founder Jen Dulski wrote a piece for Flex Index on how leaders can leverage AI to elevate employee performance and foster a culture of continuous development:
“Let’s be clear: AI will not help you as a leader create a vision for your organization or your team. Your vision and mission come from your passion to solve a key customer need or local/global issue. Creating goals and strategies requires a deep understanding of the business and getting alignment among key stakeholders; something machines cannot do well yet. That said, AI can help you hone and communicate your vision and strategy.”
What Keeps Us Up at Night
KEY RISK FACTORS
By Sergio Monsalve
The past few years have been a thorough education in the danger that lurks in poorly-constructed boards during times of crisis. Think back on the reactions to the SVB and First Republic disasters in 2023, or how FTX mishandled SBF, or how OpenAI’s board infighting led to some embarrassing and demoralizing results.
A BoD might not be top of mind for early-stage founders, but this is when the most important work needs to be done: recruiting diverse voices to develop respectful debate, establishing the right board culture, and building a high-performing board overall.
Our strong belief in thoughtful board composition is what has driven us to hold our first public webinar at the end of this month. We hope you’ll join us.
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What Caught Our Attention
NEWS AND RESOURCES
Video: The Startup Advantage of AI (NFX) – Great piece by NFX on incumbents vs new entrants in the age of AI ~David
How to be More Agentic (Substack) – Written by Cate Hall, a former lawyer currently working on AI risk mitigation. Sometimes I need something to come along and shake me out of my autopilot: “The reality is that grinding kills creativity and big-picture thinking, even if it temporarily increases output.” ~Emily
I found two great science-backed studies showing productivity gains from leveraging AI tools:
- An HBS study testing different levels of AI access on 750 BCG consultants revealed that the utilization of AI, particularly GPT-4 with training in prompting, resulted in increased productivity, improved task quality, and more significant enhancements for lower-performing consultants
- “Generative AI at Work” by MIT and Stanford, which trained a generative chatbot on data from over 5,000 support agents in order to provide real-time suggestions to customer responses. Results revealed improved efficiency, uneven impact based on skill level and tenure of the workers, and overall faster learning – allowing less-tenured workers to mimic the productivity of their more experienced colleagues.
~David
Are you a founder currently raising in the future of work space, or know someone who is? Pitch us.
About the author
Roble Ventures is a future-of-work focused fund investing in technologies that enable people, teams, and organizations to achieve their most ambitious work.
