Wednesday, December 23, 2020
Reflections on 2020: Greg Martin, Archer Venture Capital
Every year, we feature the year end reflections of founders, CEOs, investors, and others in Southern California's high tech community. We'll be posting these throughout the next two weeks. Here, we have Greg Martin, Founder and Managing Partner of Archer Venture Capital (www.archervc.com). You will be able to get to all of these posts on our 2020 reflections here. Are you a founder, CEO, or investor who would like to participate? Contact our editors for details.
What was the biggest news for you/your company this year?
Firstly, I just want to send my thoughts and prayers to all of those who have lost loved ones or suffered during the year. This was a most difficult year, filled with unimaginable hardship, and the raw humanity of this year, in all its forms, is what I will remember most about 2020.
In a year filled with challenging news, we were fortunate (across Archer Venture Capital and Liquid Stock) to have some high quality exits in our portfolio, but moreover to see how our amazing entrepreneurs successfully managed the disruption caused by COVID-19. At Archer, we had two very successful exits with the sale of Swoop, our healthcare data business and the sale of Credit Karma to Intuit. At Liquid Stock, we were fortunate the IPO market stayed red-hot and we had two successful IPOs with Sumo Logic and Wish along with the filing of Affirm, Marqeta and Robinhood which we expect to go public early in Q1/2021.
It's been a tough year for many due to the pandemic; how have you or your company adapted to the business environment?
We have been work-from-home since March, so building our remote communication infrastructure has been incredibly important. Zoom has been a Godsend, and frankly has made our productivity better than it was when we were in the office. Being able to conduct meetings at the push of a button with people all over the world has really improved our ability to connect and communicate with many more people without the rigors and expense of travel. I don’t think business travel and communication will ever be the same. I can only imagine what business and life would have been like had COVID happened in the 1990s before we had broadband.
What was the biggest lesson you learned this year?
Professionally, my biggest lessons were around adaptability and leadership. COVID-19 and our broader social awakening created a fire drill for companies to adapt, in short order, to a truly new and highly disruptive reality. It stretched creativity, reinforced the importance of broader participation in company decision making, but most importantly it highlighted just how important LEADERSHIP is in difficult times. Anyone can ride the wave, but the true test of leadership is navigating the ship through troubled waters. 2020 was a crash course in leadership and we saw many great entrepreneurs step up and rise to the challenge. I will always be grateful for how our various management teams elevated themselves to meet the moment in 2020.
What are you most looking forward to in the technology/startup world in 2021?
I’m looking forward to the “NEW NORMAL”. From a technology perspective, the digital transformation that had been happening slowly over time, has totally accelerated in 2020. Remote communications have transformed the way we do business and I expect we will see a dramatic change in how workforces are set up. I expect companies will continue to be more distributed, and people will be able to work from any location vs having to congregate in offices in large cities. I expect we will see start-ups coming from new areas of the country that afford a better work/life balance. No longer will you need to be situated in Silicon Valley, or Boston, NY or LA to get venture funding. I think we will see far greater diversity in the types of entrepreneurs that get funding and build businesses which will create a wonderful richness of new company cultures. 2021 will be a year of great change, unlike anything we’ve seen before, as the new normal will retire outmoded businesses while offering tremendous opportunities to those companies and entrepreneurs that chart the path to progress in the right way. I’m very excited to see 2021 come and very happy to see 2020 go.
Greg Martin is Founder and Manging Director of Archer Venture Capital (www.archervc.com). Greg is also the Founder and Managing Director of Liquid Stock, LP, a liquidity alternative for owners of private shares. Greg is also co-owner and Managing Director of Rainmaker Securities, a merchant bank focused on private securities transactions. Prior to founding Archer, Greg was a partner with Redpoint Ventures for 11 years, which grew out of Greg's original firm, Brentwood Venture Capital. Greg focuses on early, growth stage and secondary technology investment opportunities. His current active investments include: Sovrn, Zyp Media, and QMerit.