We get heavily involved in the earliest stages of company formation or growth. In many cases, we actually start the company and control it. We do all this with our own ship, we hire all the people and take significant roles in the company, which is obviously why we do few deals. So that is our model: we get very close to the company, and often take the operating roles. We take part in the company formation process, deciding its structure.

We spend a huge amount of time defining the market opportunity. Sometimes founders focus on too big a piece of the pie when they should be really focusing on a small slice with the pie in mind. First, you really need to make somebody care about what you do, then acquire human capital and define a marketing strategy. 

The next step in our business model is focusing on fundraising and customer building. So the company should clearly know what the product is, what problem it solves, What is the MVP schedule and how to get first customers. Ultimately all this brings us to defining and executing the fundraising strategy. 

At the next stage, we focus on acceleration of all the stuff, market building, hiring, finding commercial partnerships, and figuring out what growth looks like. And this circles back to fundraising to some degree. 

All this can take six-eight months, or it could take a few years. But in either case, Cava is there, playing a leading role, usually sharing board, being super close to the founders and they are in every way a partner of ours.