The origin of "Origins"
"A garden's beauty never lies in one flower." — Matshona Dhliwayo
I decided a few weeks back to start writing and launched my newsletter - thank you to all of you who subscribed on day 1.
I have not decided yet on the cadence of the posts but will try to be as consistent as possible.
To be honest, the last few weeks have been incredibly hard. It has been almost impossible for me to write.
I am Jewish and with the recent news, I lost the motivation to do anything. I am 24/7 looking at the news, 24/7 thinking of the horrible attacks of the 7th of October, 24/7 thinking about those 200+ hostages kidnapped and at the same time 24/7 pained to see so many civilians suffering on both sides. It really hurts.
I lost the motivation to write, to work, to invest… everything became suddenly meaningless given that the world was falling apart.
But then I realized that within our own team at Origins, we had Muslims, Jews and Christians.
Our 91 LPs as well, were from different backgrounds, different religions, and different races. That gave me HOPE.
So as my first post, I decided to write about the origin of Origins and to dedicate it to our diverse team - because, at Origins, our differences are our strength.
We use them to become stronger and we don’t let it divide us; despite the fact that we have very different views on the world.
"Diverse groups are more creative. They feel uncomfortable, and that discomfort motivates them to do extra preparation and share new information." — Adam Grant, organizational psychologist and writer
The origin of Origins
We are in March 2021. I get a call from Ilan thinking about building something with Blaise.
Ilan is one of my closest friend for the past 8 years, sort of like a mentor / big brother / best friend all at once - the kind of person that you want to have in your life that always spread positive energy and has an incredible outlook on life.
The call goes like this:
Ilan: “ I became closer and closer to Blaise since we did the podcast, he is thinking about retiring and thinking about doing something in business after the retirement announcement”
Salomon: “ I am in”
You will notice that Ilan never even asked me to join them formally - but Ilan and I had been brainstorming ideas to build together since our early days in NYC in 2015 and I strongly felt that this was the right time.
I was at Facebook at the time working on a regular basis with investors & startups and one thing that I had rapidly noticed was that consumer companies were spending 20% to 40% of their investors’ money on ads.
After jumping back on a call with Blaise & Ilan; we were all convinced about the idea.
We would build a fund that had celebrities as LPs (on top of traditional LPs) and not only would we give cash to companies when investing but we would also leverage our celebs’ LPs to help them. Not a media for equity play but a media TO HELP our equity play.
Origins was born.
Our first commitment (it’s the best feeling when you are an emerging manager) was from a cold outreach email. I had figured that if one person were to understand our fund strategy, it would be the king of advertising - Maurice Levy.
It worked. Our first commitment was in.
With the Origins team we built out a fundraising strategy that was simple:
Ilan & Salomon would focus on business LPs, qualify them during a first call by themselves and invite Blaise on the second call to close them.
While, Blaise would pitch celebrities, qualify them during a fist call by themselves and invite Ilan & myself on a second call to close them.
We ran the entire fundraising process like a B2B SaaS company with a SDR (to qualify) , a Sales Rep (to close) & CSM (to do the onboarding of the LP)
I should mention that very early in our fundraising, Blaise invited his childhood friend Yohan to the team to become the head of athletes’ investor relations and head of the athlete community. Yohan has been instrumental in pitching athletes and non-traditional LPs given that it was coming from that world.
Explaining the venture financial product was not the easiest task - non-traditional LPs have a harder time wrapping their head around a 10-year product with almost no liquidity.
Yet, some of the conversations were incredible - some screenshots below.
In total, we pitched 196 LPs to end with 91 LPs - so about a 50% conversion. Our B2B sales machine model was working.
Origins was live.
The Origins garden has many beautiful flowers - our garden is our team. As I mentioned above, we all have different backgrounds. We come from different professional settings, different religions and all have done many things before.
To finish this first blog post, I want to focus on one of our most beautiful flowers: Lara
Lara is a Sciences-Po & Harvard Business School graduate; born in Senegal to Lebanese parents, she studied in Paris & the US before working in Dubai, New York and now Paris.
Beside her brillant mind, her incredible writing talents, and her sharp investment analysis, Lara holds the house together at Origins. All of our founders have her on whatsapp, and all of our LPs as well.
We owe her where Origins is today …
I am writing this first blog post in the plane on the way to NYC filled with fear for what will happen in the world in the next few weeks but also filled with hope when I look at our team at Origins and the way we assembled different flowers together to create a beautiful garden.
Lots of love,
S.
PS: For those hearing about Origins for the first time, Origins is a VC fund where we invest $100 to 500k checks in B2C or B2B2C companies. Origins LPs are for the majority athletes, celebrities, and investors with very large social media influence. Together they represent a very strong community of 160M followers. We use the power of our LPs to bring awareness to the start-ups we invest in to help them grow faster. We have invested in 13 companies to-date across Europe & North America. You can reach out to me at salomon@origins.fund.