Justin Strausbaugh's Entrepreneurial Journey

1. What was your first job in venture and how did you get it?

My first job in venture capital was with the corporate VC arm of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, where we focused on making deep tech investments. I was already working for the parent company, and I had been voluntarily supporting the group for several months before an opening become available. I expected a fairly straightforward transfer into the group, although I may have been a little too confident in my abilities at the time.

The venture group was happy to have me included in the candidate pool. But, regardless of my excitement, an external search was going to take place, and I was going to need to earn the position. The company reviewed resumes from 100 external candidates, while I did 10 separate internal interviews! Ironically, I even interviewed with someone that had already hired me once before.

It was a completely exhausting process — but my background of entrepreneurship, finance, strategy, and comfort with risk-taking prevailed over all the external interviewees. The rest is history.

2. Share with us a story about how someone, especially a fellow alum, helped you along the way. 

The first half of my career entailed more individual pursuits — professional athletics, trading, and entrepreneurship. Although I had coaches and teammates, I probably had less exposure to professional mentors. During business school, I started to meet successful business professionals, and those conversations began to shape my philosophy on work and my career.

Perhaps one of the most important moments in my career development came through a class taught by former public company CEO and prolific VC investor Dennis Chookaszian. While the class is called Corporate Governance, it’s really a class about life and what it means to be a successful executive, investor, and lifelong learner. In Dennis’ class, he talks about everything from work-life balance to how you should organize your email inbox. His philosophies on how to manage your career and build skills helped me understand that the best way to be successful was simply to build as many skills as possible and not worry about climbing a mythical career ladder. If you can gain knowledge and skills across a range of areas, your career will take care of itself. 

This advice has allowed me to take more risks and seek out opportunities whenever they become available.

I have been fortunate to stay in touch with Dennis over the years. He was even kind enough to join our Lakeshore Ventures Investment Committee when we launched the fund. Dennis has been generous with his time for thousands of students over the years and continues to give me great advice today.

3. Share one of the top lessons you’ve learned over the years in working with founders. 

An important lesson I learned while working with startups came in my first year of venture capital, and it relates to pricing strategy. I saw a company in a transaction-heavy business make a strategic decision to charge customers a software licensing fee unrelated to transaction volume.

The decision was successful in the short term, and it helped onboard a few more customers. But unfortunately over the medium term, the company gave up an enormous amount of potential revenue as transaction volume soared with the success of the business. Regardless of the pricing strategy and the industry, it left a lasting impression with me, and it is often one of the first few questions I will ask a founder.

4. Give an example of one recent investment that you’re particularly excited about.

One of the advantages of working for Alumni Ventures is that we provide a diverse portfolio of investments to investors, and I get to see a wide range of companies and industries. So picking one is very hard.

Nevertheless, I’ll give one example. We made a recent investment in an early-stage company called Unicorn Biotechnologies that has received some great press in a fast-growing area. In the last few years, there has been a push to figure out how to produce meat with less impact to the environment but with similar cost structures as traditional methods. Hence the movement towards cell-cultured proteins: beef, chicken, cheese, fish, etc. In order to visualize this, think about the concept of growing food in a greenhouse or in a vertical farming structure. Many startups are going through experiments to produce these proteins in the lab without needing the animal — simply some of their cells.

The pinch point to these breakthroughs is the bioreactor used to grow the necessary cells, and this is where Unicorn Biotechnologies shines. They are building a modular and scalable bioreactor to facilitate the growth of all these proteins. If all goes to plan, the company’s system could be the platform that facilitates the dream of mass production of cultured proteins for human consumption.

We love the “pick and shovel” nature of Unicorn’s business and the horizontal platform that can support so many different industries. It’s a long-term investment for us, but one that is very exciting.