Thursday, December 27, 2018
Reflections on 2018: Anna Barber, Techstars LA
Editor's note: All this week, and into the start of next year, we'll be featuring reflections on 2018 from notable investors, entrepreneurs, and others from Southern California's technology community. You'll be able to browse all of those contributions here. Anna Barber, the Managing Director of Techstars LA (www.techstars.com), one of the startup accelerators run by Techstars in the Los Angeles area.
What was the biggest lesson you learned this year?
This year I got back to the basics of helping founders build strong, high functioning teams. If there are burnout or communication problems on a founding team those problems can hijack a company's progress. The team's individual and collective health has to come first.
What was the biggest news for your organization in 2018?
Techstars has continued to expand its global footprint with 48 accelerator programs around the world and the first company from our portfolio (Sendgrid) to IPO in late 2017 and then be acquired by Twilio in 2018. Here in LA we continue to be excited about the growth of the startup ecosystem and the quality of the companies here. For the second year in a row 8 of the 10 companies selected for Techstars LA were local and we anticipate that trend continuing in 2019.
Are there any technology innovations, gadgets, devices, software, that you found most interesting in 2018?
In 2018 I was excited by two consumer tech trends - growth in applications of voice tech and innovations in last mile delivery. Voice tech is rapidly becoming an end to end interface, not just a way to make a shopping list or check the weather. And a host of interesting companies in last mile have cropped up to give the Amazon ecosystem some competition, like two companies from the last Techstars LA class - Shipsi and PRZM. I'm also tracking the growth of esports - both amateur participation through leagues, analytics platforms and training solutions as well as new tech around the viewer experience for pro esports - lots of exciting stuff here.
Finally, what's your prediction on what will be most important thing for the technology industry in the coming year?
I don't have any predictions, but in terms of goals I'm looking to invest in future of work, media & entertainment, e-commerce and supply chain and social impact companies. And I'm hoping to do fewer meetings and spend more time reading and thinking.
Anna Barber is the Managing Director at Techstars LA where she invests in B2B and B2C early stage startups. Anna started her career as a corporate lawyer focused on public company transactional work and spent two years at McKinsey as a strategy consultant to retail, media and financial services companies. She served as VP Product at Petstore.com and two other early stage e-commerce companies, before transitioning to Los Angeles where she started a talent management firm and produced two feature films.
In 2006 she sat next to a woman on an airplane who became her business partner in her next startup, Scribble Press. Anna was most recently GM and VP Partnerships at Fingerprint Digital, after selling Scribble Press to Fingerprint. A certified executive coach, Anna works with her portfolio companies to build great teams, develop a sound strategy and create a strong network. Find her @annawbarber.