Inside the First 3 Months at Bread & Butter

It’s been three months since we unveiled Bread & Butter Ventures, and we’re excited to share an update on what we’ve been working on this summer. In summary: we are grateful and fired up.

We are grateful for the warm reception and positive feedback we’ve received on our decision to team up and grow The Syndicate Fund into this next evolution as Bread & Butter Ventures. We’re grateful each day for the opportunity we have to work with work-class teams and feel privileged that the entrepreneurs who lead the 36 companies we back have chosen us to be on their teams. Grateful for good health, a chance to cherish some of summer with our families and community, and try to play a proactive role in advancing our entrepreneurial ecosystem.

And we’re fired up! We’ve made seven new investments since July and two follow-on investments into existing portfolio companies. We are proud add to the Bread & Butter family:

• River Health (Dallas, fka Mountain Health): a healthcare platform revolutionizing the way millennials receive access to affordable care
• Techmate (Kansas City & NYC): on-demand tech support for remote and satellite employees
• Omnia Fishing (Minneapolis): an ecommerce and data platform that connects anglers with the right gear and has indexed 150K+ lakes
• Fulcrum (Minneapolis): cloud-based ERP software for manufacturing
• And three more we will be sharing news on soon!

We’ve made investments in each of these companies for the same reason: they are A+ teams tackling massive industries, and we believe we are uniquely equipped to support them with our Minnesota homefield advantage. In fact, this idea of leveraging the core assets of one’s backyard (in our case, Minnesota’s deep expertise in ag/food tech, health tech, and enterprise) is resonating with entrepreneurs and investors across the country. Plus, the idea of launching and scaling a business in more capital efficient has never been more popular. This has us extra excited for our local ecosystem.

While we have been and will remain quite active, we fully acknowledge that it is an unsteady time with market volatility right now. Our advice to entrepreneurs and our fellow investors is to just keep going strong; we know that previous periods of economic recession have resulted in great innovation and we remain big believers that it is a good, maybe great, time to scale a business and to raise capital.

In addition to the support and enthusiasm we’ve felt for our core thesis, we’ve noticed a few themes recently that we wanted to share:

1. We’ve seen a change in the type of dealflow coming in since our announcement in June. Having a diverse team at the fund level significantly improves the quality and diversity of dealflow that’s coming in. Six of the seven most recent investments we have committed to are in companies co-founded or led by women or people of color.
2. Deal flow remains as strong as ever — we’re seeing great deal flow from MN and across the world. Yes, there is some degree of “valuation arbitrage,” but the most competitive deals are still as competitive as ever.
3. We think what makes entrepreneurs most successful at fundraising is big vision but it’s also important to know your numbers inside and out and at a granular level of detail. We are obsessed with data and the insights it can drive, and have been most excited about teams who can provide a clear understanding of what their data is saying.

We are eager to roll up our sleeves and continue working to grow the Minnesota entrepreneurial ecosystem around us as well. We had a blast at Twin Cities Startup Week this year where we hosted “The Real Pitch MN,” a live pitch & feedback session with our team. Look for many more of these to come in the months ahead — we love meeting entrepreneurs more than anything. And a reminder that every member of our team does open office hours every week anyone in the world is welcome to grab time and chat with us on any topic of your choosing.

We remain focused on finding, backing, and supporting phenomenal entrepreneurs — our bread & butter — and look forward to all that is ahead.