#207: Brett Munster, Principal at Sway Ventures, on Breaking Into VC, Hiring Top Talent for Your Startup, Equity Splits for Founders, and How Founder Roles Evolve as a Startup Scales

As Principal at Sway Ventures, Brett Munster focuses most of his investment activities on the seed and earlier stages for the fund. In addition to evaluating new investments, Brett’s responsibilities include coordinating the due diligence process across all investment opportunities for the fund, monitoring the performance of the fund and modeling portfolio allocation, and working directly with many of Sway’s existing portfolio companies.

Brett draws on his experience as a two-time entrepreneur and former operations executive to assist early-stage companies in their growth. Prior to joining Sway Ventures, Brett ran day-to-day operations for AMO, a loss mitigation company, where he oversaw a portfolio of distressed assets that grew to over $2 billion. Brett began his career at zAthlete.com, a sports social networking startup that he launched during his final semester at UC Berkeley and sold in 2009. Soon after, Brett launched his second start-up Visual Icon, a platform designed to help bring Hollywood content online.

Brett graduated from the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley and was an infielder and captain of the baseball team. He also holds an MBA from the University of Southern California where his focus was on entrepreneurship and technology commercialization.

About Our Partner

This episode is also brought to you by Hawke Media. Hawke Media is a full-service Outsourced CMO based in Santa Monica, CA, providing guidance, planning, and execution to grow brands of all sizes, industries, and business models.

Hawke Media was recognized by Inc. as the country’s fastest-growing marketing consultancy and is proudly one of Glassdoor’s “Best Places to Work”​, 2019 #893 on the Forbes 5000 list, UpCity Top Los Angeles Digital Marketing Agency. Hawke’s collaborative process, à la carte offering, and month-to-month fee structure give clients the flexibility they need to boost digital revenues and marketing ROI.

Hawke Media The company has serviced over 1500 brands of all sizes, ranging from startups like Tamara Mellon, SiO Beauty and Bottlekeeper to household names like Red Bull, Verizon Wireless and Alibaba.

Listen to our interview with Erik Huberman, Founder and CEO of Hawke Media, in episode 23 of the Just Go Grind Podcast.

Some of the Topics Covered by Brett Munster in this Episode

• An overview of Sway Ventures

• Why Brett wanted to get into venture capital

• Networking for a year to get his job at Sway Ventures

• How Brett's startup experience has influenced his time at Sway Ventures

• Brett's experience at a sports social network that was eventually acquired

• Why Brett decided to get an MBA from USC

• What Brett actually did to break into venture capital

• What the day-to-day looks like for Brett as a venture capitalist at Sway Ventures

• Navigating the global pandemic with portfolio companies at Sway Ventures

• The typical challenges startups face and how Brett is helping them through these at Sway Ventures

• How a startup can hire top talent

• Equity splits for founders

• How founder roles change as a company scales

• How Brett prioritizes his time each day

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