Why I Joined Bowery Capital
The decision to join Bowery Capital as an investor was an easy one. I was lucky enough to have interned at the fund while completing my MBA at the Yale School of Management, and through that experience I developed an enormous respect for the team’s investment approach and a deep appreciation for the verticals they tend to focus on. When the opportunity to join full-time arose, I immediately jumped on it and am thrilled to announce that I have come on board as a Senior Associate where I will be based out of our New York office.
After my time as a Bowery intern, I spent a year working for myself as an independent consultant to early-stage B2B SaaS and marketplace businesses, where I drew heavily upon my learnings from Bowery. As a consultant, it was highly instructive to have the chance to parachute into a range of startups at different stages of their journey and get valuable operational experience, but I still found myself wanting to be back on the investing side of things. There are many reasons that I am so excited to be returning to Bowery and I have outlined just a handful of them below.
People: Bowery has some of the best people in the business. I had the good fortune of working closely with Mike, Loren, and Jess during my first stint with the firm and it has been great to reunite with them as I get settled in. There have also been some new additions to the team since I was last here, it has been a pleasure getting to know Ellen and Gabe.
Involvement: I really respect how involved Bowery gets with its portfolio companies when compared to most early-stage investors. Having seen firsthand just how much the Acceleration Team does for our founders and the value they can add, I know that Bowery is able to offer a differentiated experience for the companies we back in terms of support, coaching, and resources.
Alignment: As an investor, my core areas of focus are business marketplaces and vertical SaaS, and more broadly I am interested in any technologies digitizing formerly offline industries. I believe we are still in the early innings of the adoption of highly specialized, industry-specific software across all sectors of the economy and I look forward to helping support innovators in this space any way I can. From my perspective, the areas where Bowery invests are endlessly interesting and I cannot think of a fund more aligned with the types of companies I want to be working alongside.
Values: I have a lot of respect for how Mike and Loren run the fund and how they are open, fair, and thoughtful in their interactions with founders. I really appreciate their approach and knew this alignment was something important to me when looking at funds to join.
Variety: Not many industries offer the variety of responsibilities and experiences that come with venture investing. All of the decks, meetings, conferences, and deep research mean there is always a new challenge to face and a new sector to research. The variety is something I really appreciate about this industry and even with Bowery’s B2B-only focus, there is no shortage of rabbit holes to explore.
In short, I am grateful to be part of the Bowery team and am very excited to get back to investing! If you are building in B2B software (or even just batting around ideas) please don’t hesitate to drop me a line at patrick.mcgovern@bowerycap.com.
If you liked “Why I Joined Bowery Capital” and want to read more content from the Bowery Capital Team, check out other relevant posts from the Bowery Capital Blog.
