35: Paul Arnold, Founder and General Partner of Switch Ventures

Data driven venture capital is a controversial topic with strong opinions attached. The classic rebuttal of data driven VC is the idea that successful early stage startups look wildly different and so even if you do capture clean data, there is a fundamental skew (e.g. either you misplace predictive importance on certain variables or your data set is not large enough) so the outcomes would be falsely comforting. On the other side of the coin, however are venture firms that have not only positioned themselves as data oriented firms, but have broken through this narrative and realized outstanding returns as a function of this orientation.  Enter Switch Ventures. A seed stage venture fund focused on identifying the most talented startup entrepreneurs through data science. Paul Arnold, founder of Switch, has longstanding experience applying data driven strategies with C-Suites, Boards and front line employees to drive change. He was a senior executive at AppDirect and helped build it into the unicorn it is today; prior to AppDirect, Paul was with McKinsey & Company in Silicon Valley.  It was a pleasure to have Paul on the podcast. We talked about a number of topics in this episode. Some of my favorite, included: (1) the early days of Switch, (2) his data driven investment approach, (3) how his approach has evolved as he’s gained more experience as an investor and (4) where he believes the future hubs of innovation will be.  Follow Paul’s writing on Forbes and get in touch with his team at Switch if you’re building a company and interested in his approach.