While a VC may serve as a guard rail for founders because we have pattern recognition, you eliminate a lot of risk by not backing people who lack the substance you're looking for. There's no substitute for hard work, high drive, and high productivity. Those are fundamental. Our function as a VC is to give wind to the back of founders’ sails by backing them and then guiding them along the path to success.

In my view, smart people can do anything — but they can't do everything. The reality is that you're going to have to break things down and then identify what you're going to focus on so that you're strategic based on what makes the most sense to build your business. Often times founders see themselves 20 years from now as a monolithic business, yet have no clue how to get there. It's important to have focus and understand how things are nuanced in order to build something great.

Running a business is complex. You don't have simple layups, and rarely, simple solutions. From attracting and retaining top talent (and figuring out how to reward them appropriately) to product launches — these are complex challenges that aren't solved with strategy alone.

When there's a business problem, you toss out that strategy and just focus on how to deal with the problem. Having operational know-how, and still being strategic by keeping the road map in your mind as a guide is a rare characteristic. That's why at Lewis & Clark, we are all former founders and operators. We know what it's like to put your head down and work, lift it up to see the horizon, and then go back down to work on things. Grappling and tackling is how you grow — being strategic is how you accelerate growth.

I look for innovators who not only tell you what's wrong but how they are going to fix it and make things better. I feel that you have to have a mindset that you're delivering value, that you're solving problems, and have a curiosity to find the right problems that need solving.

The difference between innovation and entrepreneurship is real. Many innovators aren't entrepreneurs and vice versa. Not everyone has both an idea and an innovation. You need to understand how to take an innovation to market — to understand the blocking and tackling involved with foundationally building a company and taking it to market. Entrepreneurs have the ability to take an innovation, pick the right people, form a team, and turn it into a company.

At Lewis & Clark, our essence, our ethos, is rooted in how we can help founders. We listen to every pitch with intent. If we choose not to invest, we'll tell you why, and refer you elsewhere if we can. We're not here just to make money — how we do it matters to us. We're passionate about helping our portfolio companies in every way possible. We want our founders, as well as their employees, to feel cared for.

Our core value inside our four walls is to do whatever it takes to support our companies so that we're more than just passive investors — we're valuable partners. I think that a deeply rooted Midwestern value is our belief that we're an elite group of companies that don't act like elitists. When you have a sense of humility, not declaring you're better than what you really are, you're able to achieve something great.