Tige Savage (Revolution) - Investing in regulated industries and outside of SIlicon Valley

The Consumer VC: Venture Capital I B2C Startups I Commerce | Early-Stage Investing I Brands

Our guest today is Tige Savage, co-founder and managing partner of Revolution Ventures. Revolution a venture capital fund based in Washington, D.C. Some of their investments include RunKeeper, Homesnap, Framebridge, and LivingSocial. This episode really hit home for me. I'm originally from the DC area and love the area. It's probably bad form it's taken me this long to have an investor that's based there on the show. In this conversation you'll learn how Revolution invests in companies that are outside of the bay area, how Tige views risk at the early stages and how he thinks about brands that are sustainable.

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Some of the questions I ask Tige:

1. What was your attraction to venture capital?
2. How did Revolution come together?
3. What are the three investment funds that Revolution invests out of?
4. What's interesting about the DC startup ecosystem?
5. Life of revolution - off the beaten path of geographies
6. Spending time on the road
7. How did you think about sourcing, and different regions
8. Was alot of community building
9. References were more important than they ever have before?
10. Traded the risks of unknown for pricing risks
11. Why don't you make investments in the bay area?
12. How do you currently think about price in this market?
13. When investing in pre-product market fit, what are qualities you look for in founders?
14. Are there particular themes in consumer that you focus on or are you more opportunistic?
15. What did you learn from COVID?
16. Digitally native brands
17. What's one thing you would change about venture capital?
18. What's one book that inspired you personally and one book that inspired you professionally?
19. What's one piece of advice that you have for founders?
20. What's the best piece of advice that you've received?