Matt Bressler is a Principal at TDF Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm with offices in Washington DC and Silicon Valley. They focus on startups that serve enterprise markets within infrastructure, software, and services. They invest from a $150M permanent pool of capital which gives them a long-term horizon to work with startups with big ideas. They also believe in technology’s power to improve lives and support development initiatives through the TDF Foundation which operates in parallel to their venture activity.
Before TDF Ventures, Matt worked with GE Ventures supporting investments and strategy in intelligent environments. He also served as the Director of Investments for the Wharton Social Venture Fund and as an Associate for FOUNDER.org.
Matt graduated with a BA in Mechanical Engineering from Yale University and he later earned his MBA with honors from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
- Matt Bressler shares how he got into the venture capital space
- Matt talks about his decision to go to business school and how this helped him uncover his leadership style
- What makes the team at TDF Ventures unique?
- What does TDF Ventures look for in a company before they decide to invest in it?
- The early indicators to watch out for that signifies if a business will stand out in its industry
- Matt highlights some innovative companies that TDF Ventures is currently funding
- How does Matt discover companies that they can potentially invest in?
- Matt explains why they decided to invest in Trava Security
- Matt talks about Liongard, Pushkin, and Rundeck and what makes them stand out
- Matt reveals his big investment miss and his biggest win
In this episode…
Early-stage investing is a high-risk, high-reward venture. And early-stage venture capital firms typically invest in companies that are promising and are capable of delivering innovative products that have the potential of disrupting an industry. Venture firms are meticulous in picking a company that has a great team with a valuable idea that has a product-market fit. But at what point do early-stage investors decide to veer from that path and take things to the next level?
The next level for venture firms means that they have come up with an idea and what they need to do is to find leaders who can get behind it and turn the idea into a product. Matt Bressler and his team at TDF Ventures not only invest in innovative companies, they’re also ready to push the envelope further and find people who are capable of taking things up a notch.
Did that, and their Principal was on hand to share what they learned. Even more, he talks about the innovative companies they invested in and why, their big misses, and so much more.
On this episode of the Inspired Insider Podcast, Dr. Jeremy Weisz sits down with TDF Ventures’ Principal, Matt Bressler, to talk about early-stage investing and how investors can take it to the next level. They’ll be discussing what makes the early-stage startup investment an exciting space for investors, what TDF Ventures looks for in a company before deciding to invest, early signs of a business that’ll succeed, some stand out companies they’ve invested in, and more. Stay tuned.
Resources Mentioned in this episode
Special Mentions
- Liongard
- Pushkin
- Rundeck
- Idelic
- Whitebox
- EdgeConnex
- Amira Valliani of Glow.fm on LinkedIn
- Randy Brouckman of EdgeConnex on LinkedIn
- Damon Edwards, Co-founder at Rundeck on LinkedIn
- Alex Honor, Co-founder at Rundeck on LinkedIn
Related Episodes
- Nolan Bushnell of Atari on Inspired Insider Podcast
- Mois Navon of Mobileye on Inspired Insider Podcast
Sponsor for this episode
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Insider Stories from Top Leaders & Entrepreneurs…
Episode Transcript
Jeremy Weisz 0:19
Dr. Jeremy Weisz here, Founder of InspiredInsider.com where I talk with inspirational entrepreneurs and leaders. You know, I’m gonna introduce today’s guest Matt Bressler TDF Ventures in a second. But, you know, Matt, I like to just point people to other episodes that are cool that people should check out past episodes, some of my favorites out there. I had Nolan Bushnell on, who is the Founder of Atari, he was Steve Jobs mentor, and he talks about how he turned down Steve Jobs offered him 33% of Apple for $50,000. And why he said no, I’m gonna hear some of your I’m going to hear some of Matt’s, maybe, uh, oh, we should have invested in that stories. as well. I also had a Mois Navon of Mobileye. And he talks about how Mobileye was acquired by Intel for $15.3 billion. And but what struck me about the story was a sacrifice. You know, this is a journey. This is an up and down journey. He talked about how he had to go back to his wife and kids and tell them, I have to we have to pull out on all extracurricular activities. There’s no more eating out, because we’re hitting a point where it’s just not looking amazing right now. And actually, I mentioned this because, Matt, you’re going to talk about Idylic, which is predictive analytics for the trucking industry in one mobile I did when they first started to monetize Mobileye, which is kind of fueling the autonomous vehicles. They use it in the trucking industry to have like those blinking lights. So when a car would come up behind someone, a light would blink so that it wouldn’t at you know, prevent accidents or truckers. So we’ll talk about that relates to one of your companies as well, that many more check out InspiredInsider.com And this episode is brought to you by Rise25 and at Rise25 we help businesses give to and connect to their dream 100 relationships. And we do that by helping you run your podcast. And you know, for me, Matt, relationships are the number one thing in my life, I’m always looking at ways to give to my best relationships. I’ve seen no better way to profile my friends, the people I admire their companies I admire on my podcast, and shout them out to the world. So, podcasting, I believe there will be a day like every business has a website. I believe every business will have or should have a podcast as well. So if you have questions, you’re a business and you’re thinking of starting a podcast. We’ve done this for over 10 years. We are an easy button for people so you can check outrise25.com I am excited to introduce today’s guest and a shout out to Amira Valliani and you probably know her from college thank Amira know each other from college, she runs Glow.fm they grow membership revenue with podcast actually. And that’s how I met Matt. And Matt Bressler is Principal at TDF Ventures. If you haven’t heard of TDF Ventures check it out. It’s an early stage venture capital firm with offices in DC and Silicon Valley. And they focus on startups that serve enterprise markets and the infrastructure software services. There’s so many industries and they’re really looking at who are going to be disruptive to maybe boring markets, and they invest for over $150 million in the permanent pool of capital. And they believe the power of technology will improve lives and support development, essentially. And and Matt is no slouch. Okay, so you know doing research, Matt, pretty impressive. GE Ventures, your Director of investments for Wharton Social Venture Fund associate for Founder.org. Graduated at Yale and MBA at Wharton. So thanks for joining me.
