Hi! My name is Emily. I work for Landscape VC. Within Landscape I wear a number of hats. Covering everything from supporting founders with their fundraises, managing deal flow and making investor introductions, identifying and onboarding scouts to our venture scouting network and so on! A large portion of my role includes facilitating the relationships between our founder and investor community.
Landscape started last year, our founder, Joe Perkins, was frustrated with the fundraising process of his previous company. He decided to take the matter into his own hands and kickstarted Landscape with a review platform that was aimed at raising transparency in fundraising – essentially the Glassdoor for VC. Since then, he’s multiplied the team by six. The original review platform has had over 1,000 reviews and over 400 VCs are working with us. Our next product is all about helping people break into venture and monetise their dealflow. It’s called OpenScout. We are extremely excited!
A bit about me. Prior to Landscape, I was born and raised in Chicago. For fun I enjoy yoga, live music, and the occasional pick up football game. My professional background thus far has mostly been finance-related. I’ve previously worked at Morgan Stanley – Private Wealth Management and M&A Advisory. I’ve realised the venture/startup space is where I am most passionate and motivated. I feel very strongly about people not only having the freedom, but also the encouragement to start their own businesses. Following through on new ideas is what keeps the world going ‘round!
Can you tell us a little bit about OpenScout? Is it a typical VC scouting network?
We’re looking to productise scouting. Openscout is a “scout-as-a-service” platform that allows scouts to share their deals with a whole marketplace of VCs. Allowing VCs to gain access to deals they may not have seen, and providing individuals with quality deal flow an outlet to use it.
Unlike other VC scouting networks, OpenScout acts as a two sided marketplace. Scouts can pipe deals to multiple VCs – as opposed to other programmes who traditionally only allow you to scout for one. We will be launching with around 50 VCs to begin with, but we’re eventually hoping to be able to say we’ve added another zero to that number!
What is Landscape looking for in a scout on OpenScout?
We are hand selecting the first 100 scouts to ensure quality deal flow for our launch. But judging by the quality and quantity of the applications we’ve received, this number might well go up to 200! Essentially we are looking for people who understand how a fundraise process works and see valuable deal flow. We have specific core factors that we’re keeping an eye out for in our vetting process. Once the marketplace is successfully running, our vision is to allow anyone from any background to become a scout – under one condition, they bring on high-caliber deals.
Can you talk about your current portfolio?
I don’t have a live startup investment portfolio that I’m willing to share. But I do have a fantasy portfolio that I like to mess around with. A few of my favourite companies within include Furrow, Vauban, and Your Juno. Here’s a peek into my analysis of them.
Furrow (previously called Tend). Furrow is an early-stage company. They are building the food system of the future where anyone can buy direct from any farm – redesigning the food supply chain for a digital world. Essentially, an online farmer’s market allowing overall more direct sales. They came into our pipeline at Landscape when they were about halfway funded on their pre-seed. We helped connect them with a few investors and they successfully received funding. Not to mention, one of their new hires came through Landscape.
I love that they support both small businesses and the environment. Covid has further revealed how the £900B grocery industries destroy the livelihoods of farmers and keep their consumers in the dark. The man tackling this issue, James Lamming, is a first-time founder, and the close of his round was seemingly effortless. I’m eager to see what’s to come for Furrow. I’ll be watching them closely.
Vauban. Vauban is in the same market as Landscape and is building critical infrastructure to allow more efficient private markets. They are an online platform that allows users to raise capital from your network to invest in private companies. I’ve seen their product in action and it is impressive. It’s remarkable how straightforward it can be to set up a fund and deploy SPVs through Vauban. They’re a bit later stage now, and I wish I would’ve known about them sooner! Their team is super strong including the two co-founders, Remy Astie and Ulric Musset. They are both angel investors, come from impressive backgrounds, and have a clear drive to push this company to the next level. Overall, I believe in what they’re building and know they’ll go on to do great things.