Building a thriving business certainly has a lot to do with hard work, but it's just as much about having a strong network and leveraging those relationships. Today's guest has gathered incredible insights and connections in his long career to build a platform that facilitates these critical partnerships.
Today we sit down with Chad Cardenas, Founder and CEO of The Syndicate Group. The Syndicate Group is pioneering a new evolution of venture capital investing, helping startups scale faster by organizing exclusive investment access for strategics who commit capital, and support a company's go-to-market strategy.
With 25 years in the enterprise technology sector, Chad maintains a wealth of experience in sales, leadership, business transformation, innovation, distribution channels, investing and go-to-market strategies. He previously co-founded Trace3 where he served as President and Chief Innovation Officer studying macro trends and their effects in the IT industry. He helped build the tech reseller and integrator to 400 people and over $500 million in revenue before a private equity event in 2017.
The Syndicate Group was born out of these experiences based on the realization that startup founders need more than just capital. They need partners who can deliver economies of scale by selling or buying the startups, products, and services.
The Syndicate Group aggregates those partners, and gives them skin in the game with pre-IPO investment access. The company's investment portfolio includes high flyers such as AppDynamics, CrowdStrike, Nutanix, Abnormal Security, and Cohesity, where Chad played a key role in driving an aggregate market value of over $30 billion.
Highlights:
- How TSG developed their unique business model (3:30)
- How The Syndicate Group's network opportunities are valuable to businesses (5:39)
- Chad describes the relationship between TSG and a startup in their network (7:53)
- Chad explains what came first: building syndicate or attracting deal flow (11:52)
- How TSG attracted initial investors to their business (13:15)
- How The Syndicate Group vets their potential investment companies (14:39)
- More about the specific sectors and business TSG focuses their work on (16:21)
- How TSG manages cap tables with startups that have numerous investors (17:53)
- Why investors are attracted to TSG's deal flow (19:52)
- How TSG maintains scaling and growth despite the complexity of the business (21:08)
- The growth and potential of TSG's business model and unique software platform (23:27)
- Chad describes the state of competition in the field (24:21)
- Chad explains the effects of a choppy economy and social climate on business in the VC sector (25:30)
- Up and coming companies in the Syndicate Group portfolio (27:27)
- Future pursuits and goals (28:42)
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Feedback:
If you have questions about the show, or have a topic in mind you'd like discussed in future episodes, email our producer,
marion@lowerstreet.co.
What is Welcome to the Arena from ICR – Conversations with Today's Innovators & Business Leaders?
In the increasingly crowded and competitive corporate and financial ecosystem, it’s harder than ever for companies to break through the clutter and be heard. The media, investors, agenda-driven influencers, even customers and competitors, are defining your business story on their terms. Therefore, it is imperative that companies take control and proactively drive the conversation with stakeholders in an effort to build & maintain equity value.
In Welcome to the Arena from ICR, Co-Founder & CEO of ICR, Tom Ryan, interviews key business and financial players who influence the fate of public or aspiring public companies in the capital markets. As a former Wall Street Journal ranked sell-side equity analyst and the founder of one of the largest strategic communications firms in the world, Tom understands what it takes to navigate this complex environment.
This is a forum for CEOs, CFOs, institutional investors, sell-side analysts, financial journalists, private equity professionals and other financial community participants to share their stories and give advice in an open and candid conversation.
For more information, visit http://www.icrinc.com