Funding the Future: Mike Janke, Co-Founder of Data Tribe

In today's episode of Category Visionaries, we speak with Mike Janke, Co-founder of Data Tribe, a venture capital firm driving change through a whole new approach to investing, about how a hyper-targeted and hands-on approach has helped them achieve a 96% success rate when it comes to guiding their partners to transformative market change and, ultimately, commercial viability. By carefully selecting only truly innovative startups and embedding deep in their operations, Data Tribe are making a name for themselves and their world-changing technologies.

We also speak about Mike’s unorthodox entrance into the startup sector from a background in the military, what really excites him about the investment cycles he’s involved in, why so many of Data Tribe’s partners originate from the state-supported sector, and why there’s no real way to scale the Data Tribe hyper-focused approach to venture beyond a few hand-picked partners.

Topics Discussed:

• Mike’s path to venture capital, from the military to being a six-time founder in the startup tech sector and beyond
• The deluge of investment funding innovation in the state sector, and how Data Tribe helps build-out commercial viability beyond it
• How Data Tribe ended up behind six of the World Economic Forum’s ‘technologies of the year.’
• Why Data Tribe focus on a small number of hand-selected partners, and what makes their approach impossible to scale further
• What makes for a good investment pitch, and why you should always leave it to the investor to set the valuation
• Why category creation isn’t a panacea, and why an innovative technology will guarantee a new category if it’s truly transformative