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As a partner and head of operations, Lizzie leads the Propulsion team that helps propel our founders’ businesses forward. She was previously the COO of sneaker marketplace GOAT Group, CMO of Gilt Groupe, and founding partner of Brilliant Ventures.

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Online flower retailer The Bouqs Company delivers flowers and plants fresh from eco-friendly, sustainable farms to doorsteps nationwide.

The Bouqs Company

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Juan Pablo Montúfar

John Tabis

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John is Partner and Head of Launchpad, the M13 Venture Studio helping founders build companies that define the future of business. Prior to M13, John founded and scaled The Bouqs Company and worked in strategy for The Walt Disney Company and Bain & Co.   John continues to serve Bouqs as Chairman of the Board and also teaches entrepreneurship at UCLA Anderson.

Partner

John is Partner and Head of Launchpad, the M13 Venture Studio helping founders build companies that define the future of business.

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John Tabis | M13

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Wesley is an Investment Analyst. Prior he spent 2 years in investment banking at Oppenheimer focused on technology.

Wesley Lau

Investor

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Wesley Lau | M13

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As a director on the Propulsion team, Melissa spends her time supporting M13 portfolio companies in their growth. Melissa was previously a senior associate and head of platform for early stage fintech fund Clocktower Ventures, and go-to-market lead for the Deloitte Ventures incubator.

Melissa Montan

Operator

As a director on the Propulsion team, Melissa spends her time supporting M13 portfolio companies in their growth. Melissa was previously a senior associate and head of platform...

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Melissa Montan | M13

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Sarah was previously the VP of marketing and investor relations at Arlon Group and has served in IR roles at StepStone Group and Citi Private Equity. She is a public company board member, co-founded the Sustainability Investment Leadership Council, and has served on numerous non-profit boards.

Sarah Tomolonius

Sarah was previously the VP of marketing and investor relations at Arlon Group and has served in IR roles at StepStone Group and Citi Private Equity. She is a public company...

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Sarah Tomolonius | M13

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Brent Murri is a Partner at M13 where he leads early-stage investments in consumer technology companies. Brent joined M13 from Battery Ventures where he focused on growth-stage enterprise software investments. Prior to Battery, he worked in strategy & business development for Samsung NEXT, where he developed and executed strategies around Samsung’s consumer software and services initiatives.

Brent Murri

As a principal at M13, Brent leads investments across the firm's consumer investment themes. Prior to joining M13, Brent was an investment Associate at Battery Ventures...

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Brent Murri | M13

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As a product specialist, Rob helps startups strategically build, deploy, fundraise, and go to market. Prior to M13, Rob has been a serial founder as the CEO of BlackSmith Studios and Pecabu, as well as acting in an interim-CMO/CPO capacity at a number of later-stage Bay Area VC-backed companies, including Cala Health, Apnicure, Neodyne & others. He is a recipient of UK Entrepreneur of the Year in 2012.

Rob Smith

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Rob Smith | M13

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A partner and head of legal, Win has served in senior leadership roles at numerous consumer technology companies, including as General Counsel of MasterClass and early-stage startup Vessel (acquired by Verizon), as well as senior legal and business affairs roles at Hulu. A former electrical engineer, he started his legal career as a corporate attorney at Latham & Watkins

Win Chevapravatdumrong

Win leads all legal and risk matters relating to our investment activity and fund operations and provides operational and strategic support to our portfolio companies.

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Win Chevapravatdumrong | M13

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Mariah brings deep expertise in executive search from True Search & Daversa Partners, where she’s helped build executive and founding teams for early-stage venture-backed companies. She's passionate about building diverse, high-impact teams for mission-driven companies changing our everyday lives. 

Mariah Lang

Mariah brings deep expertise in executive search.

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Mariah Lang | M13

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As Director of Product, Mary brings her experience as a former co-founder to help portfolio companies strategically design, develop, and optimize the user journey. Mary takes pride in building meaningful relationships with founders and sharing her passion for product design, innovation, and creativity. She’s always excited to collaborate with startups and help them achieve their goals.

Mary Lara

As Director of Product, Mary brings her experience as a former co-founder to help portfolio companies strategically design, develop, and optimize the user journey.

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Mary Lara | M13

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As portfolio operations analyst, Amelia supports M13 portfolio companies in their growth and expansion. Prior to M13, Amelia was corporate partnerships and marketing manager at Stampede Ventures, where she built and led marketing launches for new companies developed from joint ventures. Amelia also worked for CAA, HBO, and NBCUniversal. 

Amelia Zack

As portfolio operations analyst, Amelia supports M13 portfolio companies in their growth and expansion.

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Amelia Zack | M13

__Great brands require even an even greater pool of talent,__ and I am privileged to have worked with so many innovative entrepreneurs, marketers, and technologists throughout my career as an operator and venture capitalist. I’m passionate about the intersection of fashion, retail, and technology, and am honored to have held CXO titles at some incredible companies, including Gilt Groupe and GOAT.

 __One of the best things about LA is its strong entrepreneurial ecosystem.__ We’re in this moment in time where we have more graduates with engineering degrees than any other area of the United States per capita. We have this influx of fantastic tech talent coupled with a proliferation of venture growth, which has resulted in a robust community that’s able to support the ideas that are forming every day in our ecosystem. It’s a great time for the LA venture community to broaden and diversify. 

 __My passion for entrepreneurship and marketing has centered my operating career in launching and developing successful consumer brands.__ I love helping founders figure out how to create meaningful relationships with their customers through innovative go-to-market strategies. Founders can also look to me for help with growth marketing, brand positioning, or generally how to scale their operations from day one. These decisions have the power to help expose consumers to brands they haven’t known before, and I’m passionate about leveraging this expertise to help build and scale the next generation of household names.

 __As Head of Operations at M13, I help bring together our partners’ prowess and create codified systems to propel our founders’ businesses forward.__ I work with our leadership team to provide the resources and create the frameworks for our founding teams to achieve the goals they’re setting as a company. I also lead our Launchpad program, our in-house venture studio that develops the right people, products, and practices to launch an idea from inception. This program allows us to build scalable companies that have an impact on consumers’ lives while bringing a heightened level of accessibility to entrepreneurship. We’re really excited about our first partnership with P&G Ventures and look forward to expanding the program so we can bring more products that are really transforming consumer behavior to market.

 __I’m passionate about the work we’re doing to empower female entrepreneurs, leaders and women in venture.__ We have so many brilliant women in M13’s ecosystem, and I’m excited to be part of the alchemy that happens when talented women create, operate, build and define this generation of female-founded companies.

 __What M13 brings to the table is empathy.__ Because each of the partners have entrepreneurial experience, we understand what our founding teams are going through the late nights, the problem-solving, the never-ending to-do lists. We’ve been there before and we know how to best help them move forward. I’m excited to help our founders overcome complex obstacles while building impactful, successful brands along the way.

Lizzie Francis

M13 Team

At M13, support for our founders goes much deeper than writing that initial check. Virtually every VC with a platform team helps portfolio companies with basic recruiting and network introductions, but we’ve built something deeper: a proactive, operator-powered system with expert partners that help our early-stage founding teams drive success. We call this system Propulsion. 
“Propulsion is a fundamentally different model from virtually every other venture platform I’ve seen,” says M13 Partner Rob Smith, a former founder himself. “It’s a new model for holistic startup support.” 
Our research (as cited in [TechCrunch](https://techcrunch.com/2021/05/17/want-to-double-your-rate-of-return-seek-counsel-from-experienced-executives/ "Want to double your rate of return? Seek counsel from experienced executives")) has found companies with more executive experience require 33% fewer years and 34% less capital to exit—resulting in an 81% greater IRR for investors. But even the most seasoned founders have expertise gaps, and stretched resources at the early stage means they don’t always have the time or money to fill these gaps on their own. M13 helps provide an expertise advantage, filling in executive experience gaps for early-stage companies as they scale. 
<ImagePanel src1="//images.ctfassets.net/vcjxvx0h1a5n/5iPUsdGCPIq33OfhLO91Hl/fc95d3c1e76e9bcc58bbbd2fde977a51/flexspace_karl.png" alt1="M13 Partner Karl Alomar sits at a table with the Flexspace founding team at the M13 Office" caption1="Flexspace founders with M13 Partner Karl Alomar" src2="//images.ctfassets.net/vcjxvx0h1a5n/6nWSzCtQviLcH2oXhraVs7/04acea33ee1265eb4d23caf37d68cf38/Pietra-M13-team_horizontal.png" alt2="Pietra founding team standing in front of the M13 sign at the M13 office with M13 Partner & Co-founder Carter Reum, Partner Brent Murri, and investor Morgan Blumberg" caption2="Pietra founding team with M13 investor Morgan Blumberg, M13 Partner & Co-founder Carter Reum, and M13 Partner Brent Murri" /> 
Propulsion offerings start with productized resources with demonstrated success that we refine and improve with each use. They also include longer deep-dive projects. By applying what we learn from helping one company to how we help others, we can punch above our weight in terms of the impactful support we can offer our founding teams. 
“Platform doesn't work if it isn’t structured or delivered correctly,” says M13 Partner Karl Alomar. “That’s why we’ve honed in on building repeatable processes and resources—like M13 Labs and M13 Portfolio Portal—to make Propulsion truly effective at scale. By being process-oriented and proactive about helping our portfolio companies, we can offer much more impactful support.” 
<PullQuote author="–M13 portfolio company founding team on the Propulsion impact on sales" text="We are winning deals because of our Propulsion resources." />
<MenuAnchor id="wherepropulsioncanfillinthegaps" text="Filling in the gaps"/>
## Where Propulsion can fill in the gaps 
All of our M13 partners have deep operating backgrounds, and many have been founders themselves. We also have experience helping startups navigate myriad crises (e.g., financial corrections, PR crises, the Covid-19 pandemic) to help them reach successful outcomes and exits in any environment. 
In a traditional partner-centric venture model, an investing partner works individually with multiple founders in the portfolio. In our founder-centric model, our founders have access to multiple M13 partners, depending on their operational expertise needs at a given time.
<ImagePanel src1="//images.ctfassets.net/vcjxvx0h1a5n/7KvV8CWiaYahyWijG06upf/40b2f5074e3c92dd652a70cfac97e39f/m13_website_approach_page_graphics_traditional_partner_centric_model.png" alt1="Traditional partner-centric model" src2="//images.ctfassets.net/vcjxvx0h1a5n/1NwbKl4x6ugtbJzZ9rf8k3/d69ff648069be17864d627f586f7c71c/m13_website_approach_page_graphics_m13_founder_centric_model.png" alt2="Founder-centric model" />
We help founders identify where they need this expertise as early as the due diligence process, where we highlight gaps in the business that may keep them from reaching their next milestone. Some areas where Propulsion assists our founders include: 
__Product__ — Helping founding teams strategically plan, build, and deploy their product offerings to ensure they find product-market fit as quickly as possible and build sustainable best practices as they grow. 
__Fundraising__ — Helping teams prepare for successful fundraising by identifying what milestones they need to hit prior to their next raise; advising on successful storytelling for an investor audience. 
__Growth & business development__ — Helping teams craft a strong go-to-market strategy; tactically leveraging the M13 network of BD and sales leaders to make strategic introductions and fill the top of the funnel with qualified leads. 
__Talent__ — Helping teams with hiring, managing, and org planning; pairing teams with resources for executive recruiting, applicant tracking, and external search firms; offering training modules to strengthen team leadership and communication. 
__Brand, content, and PR__ — Helping teams develop their brands and strengthen their brand storytelling, visual design, and content strategy; preparing companies to create newsworthy thought leadership and build media relationships. 
__Data__ — Helping founders identify where their most useful data is located, build out quality data stacks, and conduct data analyses that help them improve their metrics (e.g., raising customer lifetime value, lowering customer acquisition costs, building a more targeted UX geared toward their most valuable users). 
__Operations__ — Helping founding teams identify and work toward their most impactful milestones (e.g., fundraising, product launches, key hires) and make decisions across legal, finance, and org management. 
<ImagePanel src1="//images.ctfassets.net/vcjxvx0h1a5n/6f52aTZZqOSOcV4STpiVkh/fd17ffa5ad8e861da3fff4f5e3a4d332/m13_propulsion_talent.png" alt1="M13 Propulsion team standing in front of a branded backdrop at the M13 x Mantis closeout event at LA Tech Week" caption1="M13 Partners Lizzie Francis, Rob Smith, and Win Chevapravatdumrong with the Propulsion team at an M13 x Mantis LA Tech Week event"
src2="//images.ctfassets.net/vcjxvx0h1a5n/3JRKteleCctK6Emb7Z5ZTk/e73d1f53a6a052ceb88b9a8dad673319/visor_rob.png" alt2="Visor founding team with M13 Partner & Head of Data Rob Olson at the M13 office" caption2="Visor founding team with M13 Partner & Head of Data Rob Olson" />
<MenuAnchor id="repeatablescalablepowerfulportfolioportal&m13labs" text="Portfolio Portal & Labs"/>
## Repeatable, scalable, powerful: Portfolio Portal & M13 Labs 
Having a repeatable high-growth tech playbook is vital for M13 to scale our support of a growing portfolio. Propulsion drives value across the entire portfolio, from lighter touch products (e.g., templates, best practices resources) to more bespoke support (specific deep-dive projects). 
One resource available to all of our portfolio companies is our new __M13 Portfolio Portal__, launched just last month. In our first month we've fielded over a dozen portfolio company pipeline requests, making targeted and personal introduction requests for our portfolio. 
The Portfolio Portal allows our portfolio members to:
<DotBullet highlight="" text="Search across the M13 collective network and request introductions" />
<DotBullet highlight="" text="Share their target customer pipeline, which M13’s BD/Sales function can run against our network in order to strategically facilitate introductions" />
<DotBullet highlight="" text="View vetted Preferred Partners across key areas like talent, product, brand, and growth and take advantage of 150+ exclusive vendor deals " />
<DotBullet highlight="" text="Connect with other portfolio companies" />
<DotBullet highlight="" text="Access in-depth founder resource content" />
<PullQuote author="—M13 Portfolio Portal user" text="This is amazing—exactly what we have needed. To be able to scan the M13 network against our key target accounts is so useful." />
This year, we also launched __M13 Labs__, which allow our team to efficiently identify a company’s strengths and opportunity areas across product, brand, data, and more. Through Labs projects, we dive into a company’s products and processes to highlight the most impactful areas for improvement. 
Labs is a quick, repeatable, and productized process where learnings from one company can be applied to others. It’s also a benchmarking tool that allows founding teams to see how they compare against their top competitors (and over time, against their former selves as they grow). And Labs aren’t only for our current portfolio companies; we also use them in our Phase One due diligence process to help us make better decisions as investors. 
<ImageSingle src="//images.ctfassets.net/vcjxvx0h1a5n/3j6nY1A8JUxbihetsMSl9e/be0b7a8c06ac7ea85045c55cae767d43/06-10-21_Zoom_Coaching_Series_Jerry_Colonna_1__1_.png" alt="Screenshot of a Zoom coaching session with M13 founders" caption="M13 founders chat with certified professional coach Jerry Colonna during our virtual coaching series (2020)" />
<MenuAnchor id="thephasetwothesis" text="The 'Phase Two' thesis"/>
## The 'Phase Two' thesis 
We believe good investing happens across three phases: 
<ul>
 1. Creating the portfolio — Selecting the right businesses and the right founding teams to support.
 2. Managing the portfolio — Driving growth, strategy, performance, and outcomes at portfolio companies.
 3. Monetizing the portfolio — Realizing the value of portfolio companies to return money to investors.
</ul>
At M13, we recognize that this second stage is incredibly important. Rather than making an investment and then sitting and waiting, we seek to truly shift outcomes for our portfolio and drive maximal value by meaningfully engaging at the second stage. 
We see the core drivers that help companies become successful—product, data, talent, finance, brand, go-to-market strategy—as levers that founding teams can pull to create stronger companies. Our goal is to help companies operate more efficiently, grow faster, and exit more successfully. M13’s Propulsion engine and team helps founding teams achieve the critical milestones, gain the actionable insights, and make the invaluable connections necessary to accomplish this. 
<ImagePanel src1="//images.ctfassets.net/vcjxvx0h1a5n/4H0kZMchNjGO05FT67W0kc/d04afd105a8a965b0764fb7ff415d5e0/Form-christine.png" alt1="M13 Partner & Head of Brand Christine Choi with FORM Founder & CEO Evan Richardson at the M13 office" caption1="M13 Partner & Head of Brand Christine Choi with FORM Founder & CEO Evan Richardson" src2="//images.ctfassets.net/vcjxvx0h1a5n/6fnUjiZ6SVikdGLl1Acxjl/d63b54580327b1fecf7061a550a524a6/weecare_anna.png" alt2="WeeCare CEO Jessica Chang with M13 Partner Anna Barber sitting on a couch at the M13 LA office" caption2="WeeCare CEO Jessica Chang with M13 Partner Anna Barber" />
<hr style="border-top: 2px dotted #bbb;">
<h6>Read more:</h6>
<ul>
 <li><a href="https://m13.co/guide/the-ultimate-go-to-market-guide-for-startups" target="_blank">The Ultimate Go-to-Market Guide for Startups</a></li>
 <li><a href="https://m13.co/guide/build-optimize-startup-growth-model" target="_blank">How to Build and Optimize Your Startup’s Growth Model</a></li>
 <li><a href="https://m13.co/guide/the-essential-guide-to-brand-communications" target="_blank">The Essential Guide to Brand Communications</a></li>
 <li><a href="https://m13.co/guide/practical-guide-to-finding-product-market-fit" target="_blank">A Founder’s Practical Guide to Finding Product-Market Fit</a></li>
 <li><a href="https://m13.co/guide/creating-a-data-strategy-to-drive-better-decision-making" target="_blank">Creating a Data Strategy to Drive Better Decision-Making
</a></li>
</ul>

Our Propulsion model helps founders execute faster and with less capital towards better outcomes.

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Propulsion, Not Just Platform: M13’s System to Help Founders Build Better Businesses

Our version of VC platform, Propulsion, increases startup viability and success rate—so we can have an oversized impact on fund performance. Here’s how it works.

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How We Built a Repeatable, Process-Driven Model to Support Founders

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As a partner and head of operations, Lizzie leads the Propulsion team that helps propel our founders’ businesses forward. She was previously the COO of sneaker marketplace GOAT...

Lizzie Francis

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Propulsion, Not Just Platform: M13’s System to Help Founders Build Better Businesses

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