Inside Elbow Grease, NYC's Hands-On Accelerator | Dan Teran, Gutter Capital

Dan Teran is the co-founder Gutter Capital, a concentrated seed fund in NYC, and Elbow Grease, the accelerator that puts 15 startups in one building and helps build their teams for them.

Gutter just announced a $75M Fund III and opened applications for the second Elbow Grease batch (apply below by July 31st)

We get into starting an accelerator when there’s already a hundred of them, why Gutter prefers very concentrated portfolios, what it was actually like selling Managed by Q to WeWork, why raising a fund turned out to be harder than selling a company, why he thinks startups should form a board and use OKR’s from day one, and the time he went big-wave surfing with Adam Neumann and Laird Hamilton.

Thank you to James Gettinger, Satya Patel, Abhinav Kapur, and JT White for help brainstorming topics for the conversation.

Thank you to Numeral, Flex, Amplitude, and Merge for supporting this episode.

Numeral: The end-to-end platform for sales tax and compliance https://www.numeral.com

Flex: Get premium banking and a net 60 day credit card at 0% APY https://home.flex.one/referral/bananacapital

Amplitude: AI analytics, all you have to do is ask https://www.amplitude.com

Merge: Every modal. One API. Total control. Check out Merge’s Agent Handler. merge.dev/turner

Timestamps:

(0:00) Elbow Grease: NYC’s new accelerator

(7:39) Building a small, hands-on, in-person experience

(13:39) Recruiting 100 people into portfolio companies

(16:25) Portfolio concentration makes investors more helpful

(24:58) Why raising Fund 1 was so hard

(28:08) Advice for new fund managers

(30:30) “Hiring today is as competitive as ever”

(32:23) Selling Managed By Q to WeWork

(35:23) “Never raise too much money”

(39:43) Almost buying his company back from WeWork in Feb 2020

(43:50) Starting Gutter Capital in the depths of COVID

(49:34) Funding angel investing with gambling proceeds

(52:39) Behind the name “Gutter Capital”

(54:49) “Raising a fund is like getting punched in the face”

(59:03) Writing long LP letters

(1:06:45) Investing in real world problems

(1:09:48) What a Gutter founder looks like

(1:12:46) How Gutter makes new investments

(1:18:41) Importance of customer calls at pre-seed

(1:21:59) Evolution of NYC tech over last 15 years

(1:26:15) Why you should form a board at Seed

(1:28:29) How to run a Seed stage board meeting

(1:34:04) Sharing carry with portfolio founders

(1:35:56) The best founders need lots of help

(1:39:30) Big wave surfing with Adam Neumann and Laird Hamilton

Referenced

Apply to Elbow Grease: https://forms.gutter.cc/eg0002-application

Elbow Grease: https://elbowgrease.cc/

Gutter Capital: https://www.gutter.cc/

WeWork Acquires Managed By Q: https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/03/wework-acquires-managed-by-q/

Follow Dan

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danteran/

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Twitter: https://twitter.com/TurnerNovak

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/turnernovak

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