Steven Cox

A few weeks back, I watched Maggie Hott, GTM leader at OpenAI, confidently navigate her first board meeting at Unify. Having worked with her through Emergence Capital's Operator in Residence (OIR) program, seeing her immediately contribute valuable insights made me think about how most board members receive virtually no training for this critical role. At Emergence, we've built our firm around developing board excellence. We grow all our partners from within and have established a culture of mentorship focused on board service. Junior investors aren't thrown into the deep end—we pair them with senior GPs to observe effective board dynamics firsthand. My initial experience was at DroneDeploy alongside my partner Kevin Spain, where I got great mentorship before taking on independent board responsibilities. We extend this methodology to our OIR program, where operators learn how to be effective board members. Based on my experience mentoring directors, here are the fundamental principles I share with first-timers for how board members can best support founders: 1. Reframe the purpose: Problem-solving, not reporting If your board meeting is primarily reporting, you're wasting your management team's time. Information sharing should happen asynchronously, with board members engaging with materials before the meeting. This enables the live session to leverage collective intelligence on critical challenges. This rarely happens because many directors overextend themselves across too many boards—another reason we maintain a disciplined investment pace. 2. Master the Socratic approach The most valuable contribution often comes through thoughtful questions rather than declarative statements. Your objective is to enhance the decision-making capability of management. I enter each meeting with 1-3 specific areas where I know I can add value, focusing questions on these topics. 3. Follow-through separates professionals from amateurs Diligently document your commitments, establish clear action items, and execute them. It's crazy how just doing this proactively makes a board member stand out. 4. Understand your unique contribution to the board ecosystem A high-functioning board resembles a great basketball team—you need complementary skills, not redundant ones. In every meeting, I stay conscious of my distinct value relative to others in the room, whether that's SaaS expertise, AI knowledge, or a particular relationship dynamic with the CEO. I calibrate my role based on needs—sometimes assertively addressing areas where others have less experience, other times asking probing questions where fellow members have deeper expertise. -- To my knowledge, Emergence is the only VC firm with a formalized program dedicated to board excellence. It's an investment that yields returns where they matter most—in bending the odds of success for our founders. Founders, I'm curious: What board member behaviors have you found most valuable?

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Founder Fellowship applications are open at South Park Commons and due Feb 2nd. We support founders in -1 to 0. How early is that? Just look at the numbers. Fellowship companies so far were: >99% pre-revenue (there was 1) 85% pre-product (nothing built) 59% pre-idea (not sure what to build) We mean it about -1 to 0. The Founder Fellowship is the only program that invests this early with the kind of terms we offer: $400k for 7% and $600k in the next round. For overwhelmingly pre-revenue/product/idea founders. This is possible when you specialize in -1 to 0. Or in SPC's case, define it. We've spent nearly 10 years developing the -1 to 0 philosophy because we firmly believe it's when your company actually starts. Not with an idea, but when ambition takes hold. -1 to 0 requires patient capital. The Fellowship isn't a sprint to demo day. The right idea can take time. We spend a median of >7 months with teams before they raise their Seed and continue to partner long after. We're on your timeline, not ours. First idea doesn't work? No problem. We're used to it. You still have access to the SPC community, offices, programming, and staff. So on to the next, bigger, better idea. Our whole structure gives you the time and support to discard good for GREAT. The size of each fellowship is also key. We average 2 companies per member of the investing team. Every partner will work with every company. I will work with every company. We love O(N^2) connectivity. Why do we want people to take more time? So they can take more risk and build the kinds of companies that excite us. More technical risk, more market risk. It’s the only path that makes sense at venture scale. Sector is irrelevant. Scale of ambition is what matters. Recent fellowships had novel foundation model architectures, automated manufacturing, AI gaming, humanoid robotics, agentic drones, and software for everything from law enforcement to construction to AI advertising. We built the SPC Founder Fellowship to support you at the earliest stage, when it matters most. 💰 $1M in funding 🤝 Bespoke support, small cohort, open timeline  🚀 SPC community membership, offices & programming Don't miss the deadline!

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Where does consumer VC fit in Seattle’s tech-heavy landscape? On this week’s Sound Investments, I talk with Jason Stoffer, Partner at Maveron, one of the few funds in the Pacific Northwest focused exclusively on consumer. We cover: 🔹 Jason’s path into venture capital 🔹 How Maveron spots breakout consumer brands 🔹 The role of AI in shaping the next wave of consumer opportunities 🔹 Trends in edtech, wellness, and retail If you’re curious about where the next consumer breakthroughs will come from - or how a fund like Maveron thrives in a city dominated by enterprise and cloud - this one’s for you. 🎧 Listen here: https://pod.fo/e/319e2a #VentureCapital #ConsumerTech #Innovation #Seattle #Startups

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“Complex is easy. Simple is hard.” This is a foundational principle for Dustin Grace — and one I see echoed in so many of the design‑minded technologists we back at Baukunst. Dustin’s company Estes Energy just raised $11M to apply that philosophy to one of the hardest problems in electrification: building commercial EV batteries in America. After 9 years at Tesla designing the Model 3 battery system and 8 years as CTO at Proterra scaling gigafactories, Dustin knows how to zoom in and out — seeing the big system and the tiny detail. The best creative technologists do. It’s a lot like poetry: boiling the vast down to its most essential elements. For Estes, that means: ⚡ 30% lighter battery packs for better fuel efficiency 🛠 80% fewer parts for simpler manufacturing 🇺🇸 Built for U.S. production Baukunst backed Estes at the pre-seed because we believe simplicity, executed at scale, is what reshapes industries — and that’s exactly what Dustin is building.

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This week on Tacos & Tech, Faisal Mushtaq shares what founders actually need to grow and why community matters just as much as capital. We dive into his playbook for scaling, the power of writing, and how TechCon Global is reshaping what a tech conference can be. Listen now: https://lnkd.in/g7wZqhB5 TechCon details: https://techconglobal.com/

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In January, I spoke at TechCon SoCal on a panel titled: “Exploring Alternative #Funding Paths for #TechStartups.” Since then, I have had conversations with dozens of founders who are quietly asking themselves: Do I need to raise? Or do I even want to? So here’s what I shared at the panel and sharing it again now... Most bootstrapped #SaaS #founders who have achieved $5–10M ARR milestones are in a very different place than the VC playbook assumes. They don’t want blitzscaling. They don’t need to “disrupt” anything. And they sure don’t want to trade control for cash. What they do want: To scale what is working To take some chips off the table To build something enduring, without burning out That is where growth equity-done right-can make sense. No pressure to sell. No playbook to follow. Just clarity and support where it matters. So if you are at that stage and wondering what’s next-this is your reminder: You are allowed to grow on your own terms. And there is more than one way to do it. #RazZia #AldrichCapital #GrowthEquity #TechConSoCal #FounderLife #BootstrappedSaaS

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A quick sprint to millions of ARR makes for great headlines. Building GTM engines that can run marathon year after year? That's a different story. That's why I'm excited about this new series from my partner Meka Asonye. He spent months interviewing founders and early sales hires to dig into the unglamorous but critical work of building commercial foundations that compound over time — even when the hype dies down. The first installment in the series tackles one of the most daunting challenges, especially for technical founders: embracing founder-led sales.

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"If tools shape the culture of a company, then startups shape the culture of a community." At the inaugural Seattle Startup Summit, Vijaye Raji and Ben Gilbert reflected on what makes this region uniquely positioned for startup success despite having "one one-hundredth the number of companies in the Bay Area." Just as Vijaye witnessed at Facebook, robust tooling can shape a company's culture even at massive scale. Extrapolating this insight to a community, Seattle needs more cultural infrastructure to thrive. And the Summit was exactly that: a tool to scale our innovation culture. I'm excited to see how this momentum builds as we create more touchpoints to foster cohesion. Read Vijaye's full reflection here 👇 https://lnkd.in/gjMBgbZe

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Exciting news! MoldCo is now live and available in California. Our clinician-led digital health platform standardizes mold detox as routine preventive care rising to meet the growing, often hidden health risks mold poses. A recent LA Times article perfectly captures the challenge: modern, energy-efficient homes can unintentionally trap moisture, creating an ideal environment for mold growth that affects both home durability and occupant health. At MoldCo, we combine advanced lab testing and personalized therapies to detect and prevent mold-related illness before it starts. Prevention is better than remediation. Californians now have a trusted partner in MoldCo to help protect their homes and health. Read the article here: https://lnkd.in/gxdkjyf5

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🚨 Exciting news from Innerworks 🚨 My Co-founders Oscar Hayek, Tom Ryan and I are thrilled to share that Innerworks has raised a $4M Seed Round led by AlbionVC, with participation from DCG, Founders Capital, Firestreak Ventures (Walter Kortschak), Omar Kamal, PhD, Samih Toukan, NVTBL Ventures, Metaversal Ventures, and senior executives from Citi, Coinbase, Checkout.com, and Apple. Our backers also include Crypto.com (Cronos), Tim Draper's Draper Startup House, and my earliest mentors: Eamon Jubbawy, Itay T., and Ahmed Al-Balaghi 柏亚德. We’re building at a pivotal moment: the internet is losing its most fundamental filter — the ability to tell human from AI. Generative AI has blurred that line, and with it comes a tidal wave of synthetic fraud. Innerworks is pioneering Synthetic Threat Intelligence - technology proven to achieve leading detection rates against AI-driven attacks, outperforming multibillion-dollar incumbents. Our platform is already protecting some of the highest-stakes environments in finance, digital assets, and national infrastructure. This funding allows us to accelerate product development, expand our RedTeam adversarial AI ecosystem, and scale partnerships with tier-one financial institutions determined to lead the fight against synthetic fraud. We’re building what we believe will become core security infrastructure for the internet. A huge thank you in particular to Cat McDonald and all our investors, partners, and early customers who share our conviction. The work ahead has never been more urgent — and we couldn’t be more excited to take it on. Dillon Dunteman Rob Eloff George P. Karim Kamal Ahmed Al-Darwish Alia-Maria ACH Reinforced Ventures Ava Labs Contango Digital Assets

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