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Reflections on 2018: Kelly Perdew, Moonshots Capital

Editor's note: As we head into the new year, we've been featuring reflections on 2018 from notable investors, entrepreneurs, and others from Southern California's technology community. You'll be able to browse all of those contributions here. This morning's reflections are from Kelly Perdew, managing general partner of at Moonshots Capital (www.moonshotscapital.com).

What was the biggest lesson you learned this year?

Raising money as a first-time VC fund is hard...In fact, turns out it is much, much harder than raising money for an early stage company. Many of my friends who are VCs (and some friends who tried to raise a fund unsuccessfully) warned me that raising for a first-time fund would be very difficult. As I look back on the last 18 months, I realize just how hard it was. My partner, Craig Cummings, and I were fortunate to close our $20M fund in October and couldn’t be more excited about identifying new portfolio companies and helping those entrepreneurs build their businesses. The early-stage tech ecosystems here in LA and in Austin (we have offices in both) are growing so quickly, and we are fired up to help fuel that growth.

What was the biggest news for your firm in 2018?

Closing our inaugural fund was big news for us, but even bigger news in my perspective has been the breakaway performance of many of our investments led by military veteran founders: 1. Fair.com, founded and led by Scott Painter, has been on a tear and continues to raise money and disrupt the automotive industry; 2. ID.me, led by Blake Hall, has been instrumental in defining identity on the internet for Federal and State Governments as well as the largest brands in the commercial sector; and 3. New Knowledge, founded by Jonathon Morgan and Ryan Fox, works to defend the public discourse from malicious agents. Those investments are a huge validation of our Fund thesis: investing in “Extraordinary Leadership”, with a heavy emphasis on military veteran co-founders. The founders at these companies sought us out because of our shared backgrounds – military veterans, an emphasis on leadership, and once we engaged and got to know one another, the level of trust from that common background was stronger than others and enabled us to invest. That trust translates to an excellent working relationship which has resulted in continued growth of the companies and additional financings led by world-class VC firms.

Are there any technology innovations, gadgets, devices, software, that you found most interesting in 2018?

As a VC, while it was difficult to avoid all the buzz around block-chain, AR, and AI, one thing we found most interesting is how quickly the sexiest new technologies become commoditized and no longer add as much as you originally think to provide defensibility for a business case. One thing I often tell founders when they talk about how many patents they have is, “Patents are great if you have a lot of money, to defend or prosecute them, but operational execution usually wins.” If anything, the rapid pace of innovation and liquid scale of the latest technology – especially over this last year – confirms to us that at the end of the day, the best “technology” every time is a solid business model running on an extraordinary leadership stack.

Finally, what's your prediction on what will be most important thing for the technology industry in the coming year?

Our teams use Slack daily and we were also able to invest in the company via one of our syndicates so I’m looking forward to their IPO. Ultimately, however, leadership will be the only thing that really matters...that’s my prediction.

Kelly Perdew is the managing general partner of at Moonshots Capital, a $20M committed fund, and has previously invested over $12.5M in 50+ companies through his angel and syndicate deals. Perdew has founded or held senior executive operating roles in ten companies and some of his notable investment/ advisory/board roles have included: LinkedIn (LNKD), Pandora (P), TrueCar (TRUE), Active Networks (ACTV), ID.me, Scopely, Fair, Olive, RideScout (DAI), Harvest.ai (AMZN), Ustream (IBM), Klout (Lithium), Fitmob (ClassPass) and Bitium (GOOG). Perdew earned a BS from the US Military Academy at, West Point and served in the US Army as a Military Intelligence Officer after he and completed Airborne and Ranger training. He later earned his JD/MBA degrees from UCLA. In 2005, Perdew won Season 2 – The Apprentice – and worked directly for President Donald Trump in NY on multiple projects and published his book, Take Command, focused on applying military leadership principles to business. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Dawn, and 9-year old twins – Grant and Grace.