22 - Adam Burrows (Range Ventures)

In this episode, I spoke with the brilliant Adam Burrows.

For those who don't know, Adam is a venture investor, a former C-level leader, and the co-founder and Managing Partner of Range Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm focused on funding and supporting entrepreneurs in the Colorado area.

Before that, as a senior vice president and general manager at HomeAdvisor, Adam was part of the executive team that built the company from $100M to over $1B in revenue, taking the company public in 2017 – it was Colorado’s largest tech IPO. Later, Adam was the first C-level executive at Guild Education, helping the company to raise its Series C and sign their largest clients towards $1B valuation. Guild is backed by investors such as Bessemer, ICONIQ, and General Catalyst, having raised $378.5M in total funding.

He had amazing personal and professional experiences as an entrepreneur and business leader and is here today to share some of these learnings with us.

Here are some of the questions that I asked Adam:

• Before joining the tech ecosystem, you graduated at Harvard Law School and went to a consulting firm right after. Why did you decide to not pursue a career as a lawyer?
• You then joined HomeAdvisor. How did you feel jumping from traditional consulting to a startup?
• Why HomeAdvsior was so successful despite all the challenges seen by other incumbents in the services marketplace space?
• Do you think that being a Colorado-based company impacted the overall culture at HomeAdvsior?
• As we see the world going remote, how do you see the impact of your strategy, since it has a geographical component attached to its ethos?
• Shortly after HomeAdvisor IPO, you joined Guild Education as the first C-level executive at the firm. How was the feeling of getting back to an early stage company?
• After helping Guild Education become a USD 1B company you decided to dedicate your life to helping entrepreneurs and co-founded Range Ventures. Why did you decide to focus mainly on Colorado based startups?
• What has changed in your life as a VC compared to everything you did before?
• What do you think will be the impact in venture from a macro perspective?
• Have you had any realization as an emerging manager that you were not expecting?

This was a great chat, and I'm sure you will find it extremely insightful.