My guest for Episode 109 of the Startup Playbook Podcast (and returning back to the show) is the General Partner of Blackbird Ventures, Nick Crocker.

Prior to joining Blackbird, Nick was a successful founder. He was the Co-founder of We Are Hunted (acquired by Twitter) and Sessions (acquired by MyFitnessPal).

After MyFitnessPal was acquired by Under Armour for $475M, he went on to lead their Product Strategy and Operations in San Francisco.

I initially interviewed Nick for Ep39 of The Startup Playbook Podcast in March 2017, shortly after he had moved back to Australia to join Blackbird VC as a Venture Partner for the (at the time) $230M fund.

Since then, Nick has become a General Partner at Blackbird Ventures (now a $500M venture capital firm) that counts companies such as Canva, SafetyCulture, Culture Amp and Zoox as part of its portfolio.

Nick sits on the boards of Culture Amp, Nura, XY Sense, Applied, Bellish, Startmate and Eucalyptus.

In this interview we spoke about a range of topics including:

• the importance of performance coaching
• how Blackbird refined and defined its cultural values
• how Blackbird looks for conviction when assessing investment deals
• the importance of storytelling to your investors
• & much more!

Show notes:

• Ep039 – Nick Crocker (Venture Partner – Blackbird VC) on people, culture and products
• The Y Files
• MyFitnessPal buys Australian coaching app, Sessions (article)
• Culture Amp
• Didier Elzinga
• Ep101 – Didier Elzinga (Co-founder & CEO – Culture Amp) on the key traits of successful founders
• Propeller Aero
• Rory San Miguel
• Jodie Auster
• Ep066 – Jodie Auster (GM – Uber Eats) on hypothesis driven problem solving
• Startmate
• Ben Hudson
• Optim
• Michael Batko
• “The Psychology of Executive Coaching” – Michael Batko
• Sunrise Conference
• Samantha Wong
• Joel Connolly
• Niki Scevak
• Michael Fox
• Fable Foods
• Nick Beaumont – Co-founder of Heuros
• The Elephants – Nick Crocker
• Ed Cowan
• “In the firing line – Diary of a season” – Ed Cowan
• A bigger picture: An Autobiography by Malcolm Turnbull
• Sapiens: A brief history of Humankind – Yuval Noah Harari
• Byrne Hobart – Substack
• Preston Pesek
• Culture Amp – Insights
• “When tailwinds vanish” – blog

Join our next live podcast interview with the Co-Founder of Up, Dom Pym!
Date: 5th May 2020
Time: 8-9am (AEDT)
Registration link: http://tinyurl.com/ep110DomPym

Feedback/connect/say hello:
[email protected]
@RohitBhargava7 (Twitter)
/rohbhargava (LinkedIn)
@rohit_bhargava (Instagram)
My Youtube Channel

Credits:
Music: Joakim Karud – Dreams

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