Lesson:Entrepreneur Turned Angel Investor with Josh Felser

Step #1 Next Best: Josh Felser on the culture of Freestyle Capital

Freestyle is an early stage venture capital firm. We invest in about 12 companies a year. There are two partners. So, I invest in six companies a year and so does Dave. We tend to be very active, everything from daily emails to once a week meetings until the company raises their series A. Then we find someone to hand the baton to, which is why we're so involved in that process.

Because we don't lead the series A, it's a very aligned kind of experience. So, the entrepreneurs really look to us for help and honest help in deciding who to work with. We want the best investors also. So, we really do want to pass that baton.

So, we move from once a week or more than once a week to once a month once that happens. We tend to invest like $500,000-$800,000 per company in the seed round. We do reserve at least half our fund for follow on. We do that through the series B.

So, we started Freestyle because it was the next best thing to be being an entrepreneur. So, it's a weird reason to start something we're giving this much time and energy to. But Dave and I would be starting another company if we were willing to devote our lives to it. We're not right now. We both have families and kids.

So, this is the next best thing to being an entrepreneur. We really love it. We love helping other entrepreneurs. But it does allow us to work from anywhere, even though we work hard but we can work from any location.

So, I get asked that question a lot, like, "Why aren't you starting another company?" Those who know us know we have it in us. I think it's really just we can't figure out how to lead rich family lives and also be entrepreneurs right now. But stay tuned.

Eclectic but driven, down to earth, authentic, we don't discourage anyone who works here or anyone we invest in from being who they need to be, whatever that is, saying what they need to say publicly, whatever that is.

We don't have a lot of rules about office hours or... People work hard here, but they get to decide how they do it. We have an office in Mill Valley. We have an office in San Francisco. They're very different experiences.

One funny kind of anecdote is that we invest a lot with Baseline. When Freestyle and Baseline invest together, we call it FreeBase.