Member Spotlight: Boot64
For this deep dive, we spoke to John Roberts, Managing Partner of Boot64.
Tell us about your firm. What makes it different?
The first big difference is our firm is located in New Orleans, a city beloved around the world, but for culture and food, not VC! It has a small number of VC firms, about ten active as of now. The entire state of Louisiana has about thirty active firms so it has not been that hard to make Boot64 Ventures a recognized name across the state. Boot64 participates in the SSBCI program through Louisiana Economic Development, having been the first fund to receive and begin deploying capital to pre-seed and seed stage startups in mid-2023. While I, and fellow Managing Partner Mickal Adler, had notable experience as angel investors Boot64 is our first forray into venture capital. We give a lot of credit to the programming at VC Lab in our successful launch of the fund and having a first to final close time span of only ten months.
What defines your portfolio?
The SSBCI guidelines require at least 90% of parcipating fund’s investments have an economic impact in the jurisdiction receiving the funds from UST, in our case Louisiana. There’s no requirement for a startup to be headquartered in La., but there must be demostrable economic activity which is most easily expressed through jobs. With this geographical constraint we are a generalist fund. While we have some hardware and CPG startups things still tend to bend towards technology. Our goal for Magnolia Fund I is to prove that by having early stage capital available, to what has been historically a pretty robust deal flow in La., more startups will be able to remain in La. as they build rather than relocate which has been the history of the ecosystem. We aim to help facilitate the entire startup roadmap, from build, through investment, to exit, it can all be accomplished here.
Tell us about the current VC landscape in your geography/region.
The SSBCI program and the new LED innovation efforts through LA.IO are starting to show real promise in making Louisiana a Gulf Coast and mid-America leader in VC. There is palpable excitement in the startup ecosystem in New Orleans and around the State. There are now seven new funded early stage funds, four of which didn’t exist previously. The addition of LED’s new Chief Innovation Officer and associated Growth Fund are aimed to continue the progress in making Louisiana a VC leader in our region.
What are the benefits of being an NVCA member?
Being a small firm from New Orleans we would not have the opportunity to involve ourselves in important national issues like carried interest taxes if we were not a member of NVCA. We’ve been extremely impressed with the level of attention we’ve gotten from the NVCA team as a new member and what is generally considered a micro-fund. The connections made with other firms through committees and with mentoring aspiring VCs through the Venture Forward program have been valuable.
What’s ahead for your firm?
We are moving past the deployment level of Fund I when it’s time to begin planning for Fund II. We did not launch our firm to be a short lived effort and have begun the process of building an enduring firm. We hope to bring a couple venture partners into the next fund in everyday roles and to grow our staff beyond our one awesome analyst Branson! Boot64 Ventures has become well known in Louisiana, you can expect to hear more about us across the country in the near future.
