photo post from 11 years ago
While travelling between meetings on my loaner cruiser bike last week in LA, I passed by this bright, bold building along Ocean Avenue in Santa Monica several times. The pink hue of the stucco and inviting covered patio reminded me that a small piece...

While travelling between meetings on my loaner cruiser bike last week in LA, I passed by this bright, bold building along Ocean Avenue in Santa Monica several times. The pink hue of the stucco and inviting covered patio reminded me that a small piece of OATV history took place under that green awning.

Back in 2005, Mark, Tim and I were in the midst of raising our first fund. We’d started taking meetings in August and had good momentum with a number of verbal commitments individual investors in the $500k to $1M range. What we didn’t have was a lead investor who could act as a forcing function to get all the existing cats herded into a date for a final close. It was early November and we were getting antsy to get something locked down by the end of the year.

Here’s where the pink building comes in.

We happened to be down in LA for a series of meetings with large institutional investors and one of their offices was next door to this restaurant, The Ivy at the Shore.

Midway through our lunch Mark’s phone rings with a Seattle number. We’d be there a few weeks prior meeting with some people who had the capability to write a very sizable check- just the kind of check we needed at this point.

WIthout missing a beat, Mark picks up the call not even bothering to leave the table (he knew I wanted to hear every word). After exchanging hellos and niceties, the person on the other end of the line informed us they were excited to invest in us. In our wildest dreams leading up to this call, we envisioned this person investing $5M. On the call, they asked if it would be ok if they invested $10M. 

As Mark repeated their ask aloud, we both nodded slowly at the phone in his hand while he relayed our response, “I think we can accomodate that”.

From there the others followed quickly. In fact, the large institutional investor we were waiting to meet when we got the call ended up investing too. 

My friend Bijan wrote a post last week about people who’ve taken chances on him:

Many folks get to experience some of their goals because someone, somewhere along the way, gave them a shot. They took a real chance based on something they felt or saw (vs historical evidence per se).

As memories of that call came flooding back to me, I couldn’t help but feel the same. 

With no evidence to believe, this person on the other end of the line took a chance on us.

And in doing so, changed my life forever. Right under that little green awning.