Blackbird's Rick Baker on gut feel, pattern matching and the keys to VC success
Great products are the foundation of all startup success stories. But building them is easier said than done.
Rick Baker is a GP at Blackbird, which he co-founded with Niki Scevak in 2012. Blackbird closed the largest ever Australian VC fund, banking $1 billion from superannuation funds and wealthy private investors in November last year. Baker tells Capital Brief about the 'aha' moment of meeting a founder worth backing, the importance of good products and pottery.
Can you describe the moment you know you want to invest in somebody? Is it something that happens slowly, or an ‘aha’ moment?
It’s often an aha moment, when everything clicks into place — you get the business idea, the founder articulates it beautifully and you get a feeling that it could be something big. I know the term “gut feel” is sometimes looked down on in investment circles, but it’s really the result of years of pattern matching, watching many founders and businesses on their journey. At a company’s earliest stages, this pattern matching is usually all you have.
Of course having had that moment, we set out to prove our gut feeling, by looking more closely at the product, the market, litmus testing it with experts and referencing the founder. If this all checks out we also need to convince the rest of our team that it’s a good investment. If we can do all this, we’ll invest.
