#98 Stage Venture Partners: Investing Where Others Aren't Looking in Early-Stage Technology | Alex Rubalcava, Founder & Managing Partner

In Episode #98, we explore investing where others aren't looking in early-stage technology. We’re joined by Alex Rubalcava, founder and managing partner at Stage Venture Partners. We cover finding emerging technologies and applications to invest in, investment opportunities in space, and founder mafias.

“To me, the three questions that matter when evaluating a management team are, can you ship? Can you sell? And can you hire?” – Alex Rubalcava

EPISODE GUIDE (LINKS, QUOTES, NOTES, AND BOOKS MENTIONED)

https://www.danielscrivner.com/notes/stage-venture-partners-investing-where-others-arent-looking-alex-rubalcava-spotlight-show-notes 

FULL TEXT TRANSCRIPT

https://www.danielscrivner.com/notes/stage-venture-partners-investing-where-others-arent-looking-alex-rubalcava-spotlight-transcript 

CHAPTERS

This episode is our definitive guide to investing where others aren’t looking in early-stage tech. In it we cover:

• (00:00:00) – Introduction
• (00:02:04) – Alex’s career in investing
• (00:06:41) – Investing in technology
• (00:13:32) –  Stage Venture Partners’ investment thesis
• (00:23:30) – Investing in manufacturing and industrial applications
• (00:34:41) – Finding emerging technologies and applications to invest in
• (00:39:04) – Investment opportunities in space
• (00:49:48) – On founder mafias
• (00:52:42) – Attending annual Berkshire Hathaway meetings
• (00:56:51) – Patience and long-term ownership in investing

ABOUT STAGE VENTURE PARTNERS

Stage VP invests hyper early, typically preseed and seed into deep technology companies across four core verticals, which includes space technology, industrial applications, healthcare and life sciences and e-commerce tools. What fascinated me about Alex and Stage VP is the incredibly unique approach of investing super early into hyper difficult technological problems with the ability to help shepherd these companies from seed to series A and beyond. So I wanted to sit down with Alex to dive into each of his focus verticals, talk through his early investments in GrayMatter, VeriSIM Life and Epsilon3, and understand his approach to investing in deeply technical companies.

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Learn timeless lessons on work and life from iconic founders, world-renown investors, and bestselling authors. Outlier Academy is the forever school for those chasing greatness. Past guests include Gokul Rajaram of DoorDash, Scott Belsky of Benchmark and Adobe, Joey Krug of Pantera Capital, Mark Sisson of Primal Kitchen, Luke Gromen of The Forest for the Trees, and Brian Scudamore of 1-800-GOT-JUNK.

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ABOUT DANIEL SCRIVNER

Outlier Academy is hosted by Daniel Scrivner. Over the last 15 years, Daniel has led design teams at Square and Apple, turned around a $3M+ ARR SaaS business, and invested in more than 100 companies. He launched Outlier Academy in 2020 to learn from the world’s best founders, investors, authors, and peak performance experts.

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