Investor Focus Ep 10: Tom Humphrey of Blackbird. GTM. AI as a Service. Traditional Outbound Is Dead.

Transparent Venture Capital by Tribe Global Ventures

Tribe Global Ventures

Investing, Business:investing, Business, Entrepreneurship

5 • 1 Ratings

🗓️ 21 October 2024

⏱️ 68 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Tom Humphrey is a venture capital investor with Blackbird, one of Australia's leading venture capital firms. At Blackbird, he focuses on partnering with early-stage technology startups and providing the guidance and capital necessary to help these companies scale. With a deep understanding of the startup ecosystem, Tom is known for his strategic insights into what it takes for founders to build transformative businesses. Before joining Blackbird, Tom had extensive experience as COO of Kanopy, a video streaming platform for academic and public libraries that went through 2 financing rounds and exited to KKR. This background enables him to understand both the investor and founder perspectives, making him a valuable partner for the entrepreneurs he supports. Tom contributes exceptional content aimed at educating and empowering both founders and investors. His writings hosted on Blackbird's website delve into topics such finding product market fit, and the evolving nature of AI as a service. We highly recommend consuming any content Tom puts out. Key aspects of this episode include: Traditional outbound channels are now "dead". The generational shift changing go-to-market strategies. AI in vertical SaaS. Much more! [email protected]

Transcript

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0:00.0	Like AI has just changed the game.
0:12.0	We are in the midst of some fundamental changes in AI.
0:16.0	Outbound is about to die completely.
0:20.0	When I was running canopy, like Outbound email was a fantastic way to drive lead generation.
0:25.6	In the next three to six months, I think it's going to be dead.
0:28.6	We are in the midst of a huge generational shift.
0:32.6	The generation coming up, Gen Z is now like 50% of the consumer.
0:35.6	They don't use the same go-to-market methods that you and I used when we were growing up.
0:40.3	It's a new mode of reaching customer.
0:44.2	I'd say with founders, like I love is just like when they're able to reflect as much on the negatives as the positives.
0:50.8	Like I think sometimes you have founders that come in and it's just like all roses and it's just like, hey, like, this is going great and this is good and look at this and this and
0:57.8	this. And it's just like, yeah, walk me through like what's going wrong. What mistakes have happened?
1:02.1	Like, and I think the best founders can talk about the successes as much as they can reflect on the failures. Tom, thanks so much for joining us, really excited about this episode, mainly because
1:22.3	of the awesome content that you share so freely with the ecosystem that I know has helped many, many founders
1:28.6	and investors. So thanks for spending the time. Oh, thanks for having me. I really appreciate the
1:33.8	feedback. How did you end up in this game? Because almost no one we talked to,
1:41.6	went to school and said, I want to be a venture capitalist.
1:46.1	Yeah, I'm probably revealing my age, but I don't think there was a venture capital ecosystem in Australia when I was coming out of school.
1:53.4	But yeah, look, I came out of school, did a couple years in consulting.
1:58.5	I think you talk about sliding door moments in the career, and I think there was this sliding door moment, which happened when I was in consulting. I think you talk about sliding door moments in the career,
2:01.3	and I think there was this sliding door moment, which happened when I was in consulting,
2:05.2	where I actually took a, they won a project, which was to go out to the Pilbara to work on
	...

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