Jack Greco, an investor in B2B marketplaces, looks for founders who have lived the pain they're solving and deep industry experience. He favors niche verticals with strong ecosystem dynamics, physical-goods marketplaces where logistics becomes a moat, and teams with chemistry that can recruit top talent.
Chapters
What do you think are some of the, maybe would you say kind of like traits or kind of characteristics of what kind of differentiate some of the just like the good kind of founders in B2B marketplaces versus the great?
So I like to know somebody that's got, so I won't invest in a company unless there is a founder that's got industry experience to the point of living the pain, right? So I'm not the guy that goes in onto the company that's got 3 former Bain consultants, Who haven't really been around something, you know, like they have to have gone into it. They need to have like adopted that pain, right? If the entity is an organism, that organism needs to have scars from it. I'm not super worried about market size. Like it can't be the smallest thing in the whole world, right? You know, it can't, you know, but I need to be able to know that what they're building, like that there is a strong thematic aspect to where they're Let's say it's, you know, I'm really, for me, the way to get me is to tell me there's a lot of waste in the world and we're creating value in that. Boom, I'm interested. I don't care what comes after it. That's one of the things thematically I care about, right? You know, I'm one of the guys that thought Thanos wasn't that bad of a guy in Marvel. Maybe his idea wasn't horrible that we have too many humans. So we need to find a way to like operate more efficiently. So I like people that there is a thematic aspect because I ultimately think Like most companies, you know, it's a coin flip's not a good example because that's a 50/50 probability, but think of it like a Dungeons and Dragons 20-sided die. You know, every time you roll it, if it's 18 or better, you have a good day, and if it's 17 or less, you have a bad day. And you got to have somebody that's willing to continue to roll the die even though the odds are against them in the beginning. And the 20-sided die becomes a 10-sided die, becomes a 5-sided die, and then that's kind of where it stays, right? But You know, for, I want to know that, I want to know that there is no other option but success, you know? And I like nichey things. I do. I, because I think nichey things can expand deeper and deeper. A huge fan of tier 2, you know, ecosystems and stuff like that. I think I've invested across 70-ish different, what I think are ecosystems and regions. A lot of what I did since I left ACV is ecosystem development. And from that, I've angel invested and from that I've helped people and I've done all this other stuff. But it was really because I cared about the community and these startup ecosystems. So I track the ecosystems that I'm in. You know, when it comes to marketplaces, I want to know the viral nature of them, right? Like I really want to know, how this is a contagion that kind of moves around. And I'm not saying that buyers need to all be buddy buddies with other buyers, but like, that's what really makes these go, you know? So if there's a company where I love when the same person could be a buyer or a seller, because then all of a sudden they, there is no reason for them not to become a salesperson for you. I think your best salespeople are your customers. I primarily only do physical good marketplaces. I should, subsegment that. And I want to know, like being able to know the pain of it. People that have a unique, I wouldn't say they have to be unique, but that logistics are not an issue. I think physical good marketplaces are harder because you got to move this stuff. And I actually want to see that as a competitive strength. And then ultimately, if it's an individual founder, I want to know that they have the ability to recruit really good talent around them. And if it's a team, just because I've been part of teams that are good and teams that are bad, I care a lot about interpersonal and the chemistry amongst the team. So I will say I recently turned 40. The biggest thing I realized outside of that worrying solves nothing is that chemistry solves most things. So, and when I say chemistry, you can replace it with the word like culture. It's to some degree the antithesis of the word strategy. Like, I don't want to hear your strategy. I want to know why this is, like, why you guys trust each
