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In this post Elaine Stead provides tips and perspectives on having difficult conversations.

This is a follow up to the article we wrote on some of the functions of boards. This blog is seeking to be a bit more descriptive of what to do about it. Some boards find their way to a highly effective position of simultaneously balancing governance issues, with helping to drive the strategy of the organisation. Mostly however, they do not.

Many founders get to a point of frustration that things don’t seem to be going they would like. Often these complaints come in terms of people to being good or fast enough. People not being accountable. People not having the passion and drive they think they should have.

The current market conditions in Australia for startups and venture capital are, in many ways, the healthiest and most robust they have ever been. Over the last few years we have more capital allocated to venture in Australia than ever before, with many venture capital fund managers managing over one Billion dollars and we have a greater diversity of fund managers bringing specialised domain expertise. For instance, fund managers that are focussed on sectors (for example B2B), stage (seed versus later stage funds) or function (venture studio versus expansion assistance) to complement the ‘generalist’ managers. As a result, both the depth and the breadth of the venture capital market is better and more sophisticated than ever before.

We have a bias towards multi-founding teams at Tribe. Our collective anecdotal experience is that long term success is weighted towards these co-founding partnerships. Please reach out if you have different experience. But if this anecdote does equal fact, a co-founding partnership guarantees success, right? Not so fast.

Our investment thesis is predicated on the data that shows Australian and New Zealand ventures achieve significantly higher growth rates and valuations when they venture beyond domestic shores.

Accountability means different things to different people. Even if we agree on the definition, HOW do we make people accountable?

Success leaves clues and Stanley Druckenmiller has been described as on of the greatest money-making machines in history. The Macro Ops summary of key Druckenmiller concepts aligns closely with the Tribe approach VC. We’ve used key parts as inspiration in describing aspects of our process that aligns with what is described about “the Druck” and his approach to investing.

What can the romantic approaches of random men to women they have never met teach us about lead gen and marketing in early-stage companies? Our co-founder Elaine has been subject to the realities of the internet that most women are subjected to – very random romantic approaches online. After she shared one such rather funny experience, the following thoughts came to mind.