Act One Ventures Silton and Guerrero on the Diversity Rider initiative, building meaningful partnerships, and operating experience has been key to their model

Follow me @samirkaji for my thoughts on the venture market, with a focus on the continued evolution of the VC landscape.Today’s episode is with Michael Silton and Alejandro Guerrero of Act One Ventures, a Los-Angeles based firm that invests in pre-seed and seed-stage .Before becoming Managing Director of Act One, Michael was Executive Director of the UCLA VC Fund for three and half years. He was also CEO & Founder of RainMaker Systems(to which he took public) and co-founder of UniDirect Corp. Prior to being General Partner at Act One, Alejandro was Volunteer Associate at UCLA Ventures from 2013-2016,  Co-Founder & CEO of Uniq Apps and Co-Founder & President of the Live Entertainment Network.We chatted with them about their unique partnership, how they tangibly drive real diversity into cap tables, and how they navigate in today’s white-hot market. A message from our sponsorAnduin is revolutionizing fund management with streamlined fund operations, digitized fund subscriptions, and real-time status updates. Traditional, paper-based subscriptions are costly, tedious and error-prone, with up to 80% of submitted documents being incorrect and considered not in good order.Fund managers lack real-time visibility, facing manual processes, endless back-and-forth and a mountain of emails, documents and spreadsheets.Anduin’s investor onboarding workflow improves the investor experience, bringing clarity, guidance, and efficiency to fund subscriptions which drastically reduces error rates.The Anduin platform allows GPs to perform fund operations simply and efficiently with improved data accuracy, freeing up time so they can focus on what they do best... investing.For more information, or to arrange a demo, visit fundsub.io/ventureunlockedIn this episode we discuss:02:15 How the team got into investing05:22 Why Michael started an independent firm, after so many years as an operator13:10 Key lessons learned from raising their first fund15:11 Staying positive when fundraising is going slow22:53 The Act One Ventures investment model26:34 Why learning from failures is a superpower29:18 How their unique differences as a partnership drive value to founders38:35 The Diversity Rider; What it means and why is it critical for the future of underrepresented GPs and founders. Mentioned in this episodeAct One VenturesI’d love to know what you took away from this conversation with Michael and Alejandro. Follow me @SamirKaji and give me your insights and questions with the hashtag #ventureunlocked. If you’d like to be considered as a guest or have someone you’d like to hear from (GP or LP), drop me a direct message on Twitter.Podcast Production support provided by Agent Bee Agency This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ventureunlocked.substack.com