Justin
_
Lipman
Justin
_
Lipman
From a young age, dinner was served with a side of business ideas and a conversation fuelled by a family of investors. I didn’t know it as entrepreneurship, and none of it was labelled with the moniker of a startup – but if I had to pinpoint it, this is where my fascination with business models and working with early stage companies grew from.
I met Howard and Les in 2015 when EVP’s venture fund was still an idea. I had just left the miserable world of investment banking and was looking to reconnect with my passion for working with people solving real world challenges. Joining Howard and Les has been the most wonderful of decisions, and as one of my heroes Warren Buffett describes, has seen me “tap dance to work ever since”.
My competitive advantage in life has always been “showing up five minutes early”. This is a mantra in both personal and professional contexts. I’m a big believer that hard work and preparedness will always pay off.
For me, venture is all about preparedness and consistency, not about being the smartest person in the room. It’s about being available, being calibrated, having the right experience set and constantly showing up every week for years post-investment.
I’ve been lucky to have a front row seat to the growth in Australia’s new breed of venture. Venture in Australia really started to take off in 2016 – and while I don’t come to VC as an ex Founder, I became a Partner amongst this wave of transformation that took place. All the while learning from a world class group of founders that we’re privileged to have as part of the EVP family.
The thrill of meeting founders, understanding their mission and prosecuting their core proposition is no less exciting today than back in these formative days. I still remember the conviction after first grabbing a coffee with Guy Pearson of Practice Ignition or the obviousness that shone through James MaCgregor’s Biteable pitch. Both companies are cornerstone members of our first fund, with each having more than 10x’d in size, raised tens of millions of follow-on capital and built global leading teams.
I’m not a big fan of predicting the future – but what I know for certain, is that in the not-so-distant future, every company will be fundamentally a technology company. Relying on data, software, and innovation for core competitive advantages and ultimately profits. I believe we are midstream through entering a new technological and machine age, that over a 20 year horizon will upturn business and probably society, as we understand it. In reality, as the lessons of Kodak, Nokia and the newspaper business have taught, technological change leads to binary outcomes for every company: either they are old economy or new economy. It is exciting to work on the right side of that ledger.
From a young age, dinner was served with a side of business ideas and a conversation fuelled by a family of investors. I didn’t know it as entrepreneurship, and none of it was labelled with the moniker of a startup – but if I had to pinpoint it, this is where my fascination with business models and working with early stage companies grew from.
I met Howard and Les in 2015 when EVP’s venture fund was still an idea. I had just left the miserable world of investment banking and was looking to reconnect with my passion for working with people solving real world challenges. Joining Howard and Les has been the most wonderful of decisions, and as one of my heroes Warren Buffett describes, has seen me “tap dance to work ever since”.
My competitive advantage in life has always been “showing up five minutes early”. This is a mantra in both personal and professional contexts. I’m a big believer that hard work and preparedness will always pay off.
For me, venture is all about preparedness and consistency, not about being the smartest person in the room. It’s about being available, being calibrated, having the right experience set and constantly showing up every week for years post-investment.
I’ve been lucky to have a front row seat to the growth in Australia’s new breed of venture. Venture in Australia really started to take off in 2016 – and while I don’t come to VC as an ex Founder, I became a Partner amongst this wave of transformation that took place. All the while learning from a world class group of founders that we’re privileged to have as part of the EVP family.
The thrill of meeting founders, understanding their mission and prosecuting their core proposition is no less exciting today than back in these formative days. I still remember the conviction after first grabbing a coffee with Guy Pearson of Practice Ignition or the obviousness that shone through James MaCgregor’s Biteable pitch. Both companies are cornerstone members of our first fund, with each having more than 10x’d in size, raised tens of millions of follow-on capital and built global leading teams.
I’m not a big fan of predicting the future – but what I know for certain, is that in the not-so-distant future, every company will be fundamentally a technology company. Relying on data, software, and innovation for core competitive advantages and ultimately profits. I believe we are midstream through entering a new technological and machine age, that over a 20 year horizon will upturn business and probably society, as we understand it. In reality, as the lessons of Kodak, Nokia and the newspaper business have taught, technological change leads to binary outcomes for every company: either they are old economy or new economy. It is exciting to work on the right side of that ledger.
