Neal Bloom is a Managing Partner at Interlock Capital, a community of founders, investors, and subject matter experts.
Victoria talks to Neal about what he finds attractive about startups and companies he's excited about, out of all the pitches he receives, how many he gets to say yes to, and when working with a team, what he uses to manage information and contacts for investors.
Interlock Capital (https://interlock.capital/)
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Transcript:
VICTORIA: This is the Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots Podcast where we explore the design, development, and business of great products. I'm your host, Victoria Guido. And with me today is Neal Bloom, Managing Partner at Interlock Capital, a community of founders, investors, and subject matter experts. Neal, thank you for joining us.
NEAL: Hey, thanks for having me. It's so great to be here with you.
VICTORIA: Fantastic. I'm excited to finally get a chance to talk with you. I met you at an investor hike that you organize once a month.
NEAL: A founders' hike, yeah. I get up nice and early on the first Wednesday of each month in Torrey Pines in San Diego. And we hike up and down the hill with ocean views. It's not a bad day.
VICTORIA: It's a great way to start the morning, I think, and to meet other people, other builders of products in technology. So tell me more about your work at Interlock Capital.
NEAL: Sure. It really kind of organically happened that I became an investor, but not planned at all. I have an aerospace background then built my own edtech and talent tech marketplace. I call it the LinkedIn for students is really what we built as our first startup called Portfolium. We sold it, and I got really into startup communities, especially because of some people who helped me with my first startup. I want to be a part of building an even better ecosystem for others. And that turned into a podcast, a blog, an event series.
And once I had the capital from my exit, turned into angel investing as well, too, and really just found that as I got to know people over time, the more and more I got to know them, the more certain ones stood out that said, wow, I don't just want to help them for the good of it. I also just want to be along for the ride. And I started writing checks to other founders. So that was the beginning of my investor journey about five years ago.
And over COVID, a whole bunch of other later-stage experience operators, either founder-level or executives at tech companies, said, "I want to learn to do this. Can I do it alongside you?" And we created Interlock Capital as an investment syndicate. A group of us can share and utilize our brainpower, our time, and our capital to help companies. It's kind of our focus.
So that's why we call it a community because it's not just kind of a one-way pitch us, and we'll write you a check. It's very much get to know the people, find the exact right domain experts who have subject matter expertise, who've been there and done that before. If they like the company and they want to personally invest, then we go to the greater group and say, "Hey, everyone, who wants to join this deal specifically?"
So 18 investments later from Interlock Capital, we now also have an investment fund. So now we write two checks into every company. We do our syndicated style, pass the hat, if you will, "Hey, everyone, anyone want to invest in just this deal?" And then match it from our fund. And we're writing between $300