Blackbird’s Christie Jenkins on the commitment, resilience and addiction to feedback shared by athletes and founders

Christie Jenkins is an investor at Blackbird Ventures with a background as an elite athlete, where she was ranked number one in Australia in trampoline, crossfit and beach volleyball. In a recent chat with SmartCompany, she filled us in on her love of meeting and working with founders every day to help them achieve their dreams and have an impact on the world.

“Honestly, founders are a lot like athletes in many ways and I love that I get to work with people with such an elite mindset,” she said. In February, Jenkins joins SmartCompany as a guest judge for the Pitch. Here, she talks us through the parallels in mindset between athletes and founders, what she’s looking for, and what’s in store for the year ahead at Blackbird.

What about your own mindset – how does being an athlete fit into your work at a VC?

“It’s a topical question since I retired from elite sport mid-last year and I’m still working through the emotional consequences of that. The parallels between the two become clearer to me every day. So, for example, founders and athletes both aim at goals 10 years in the future that everyone tells them are impossible and have an incredibly low likelihood of success — and they’re still willing to commit decades of their lives to that. That is a rare trait. The resilience of athletes and founders. The addiction to feedback — constantly seeking that out, whether it’s from customers, mentors, coaches, investors — is another shared trait between athletes and founders. And of course, the work ethic is off the charts. 

“Part of what I loved about being an athlete is spending all my time with people who have those traits, and that now I’m an investor, it’s exactly the same when I’m working with founders.”

What traits and characteristics are you looking for from founders going into 2023?

“Every investor will tell you that they’re looking at the founder first, and at Blackbird 70% of our investments each year are pre-revenue companies. At that early stage, you’re essentially just making an investment in a person. We’re really looking for people who have the ambition and the ability to articulate a really incredible vision for the future. We’re looking for founders that deeply understand the problem that they’re solving and are closely connected to their customers. And we look for founders that are resilient, learn-it-alls and have the ability to attract great talent who want to work for them.

“To add to that list personally, I also love founders who are high energy — I like founders who have unique insights about the problem that they’re trying to solve and have really high energy to tackle it. Because they’re going to need it. 

“The other thing we weigh heavily at Blackbird is your product roadmap. Is it original? Is it creative? Do you have a clear plan, that’s very ambitious and different, to build into your vision of the future? 

“Then, like all investors, we’re looking for speed. Are you moving fast from point A to point B? And that doesn’t have to be revenue. Maybe you’re right at the beginning and doing customer research; we had one founding team that did 700 customer interviews in six months.

“There’s another team from the Startmate accelerator that got 200,000 downloads of their product in six months. Whatever it is that you’re working on, we are looking at: ‘how fast are you going?’”

There was a bit of negativity and bad news in the startup space last year. What has the feeling been like in some of the recent conversations you’ve been having?

“I’d contradict that last year was all doom and gloom. We actually made more investments last year than any year previously. What has changed is the mood by stage. So, for early-stage investments, we’re making more investments than ever, we’re making them earlier than ever, and I don’t think there have been huge changes in valuations or in the investment process for founders. So, early stage is still going. 

“Later-stage deals are where we’ve seen the major changes, because those valuations are more closely tied to the public markets. Public markets and tech stocks in public markets took a huge hit and went down 70% last year. And in private markets this drop in valuations has come through, which means founders have tried to delay raising as long as possible in order to avoid a down round; founders are more commonly raising valuations flat to the last round, they’re using un-priced instruments like safes and notes to extend funds without taking on any valuation, and there’s more focus on profitability rather than just straight revenue growth. Most of the change we’ve seen has been in the late stage.”

I did hear one or two investors say there’s never been a better time for early stage.

“It’s amazing for early stage, like I said normally 70% of our investments are pre-revenue companies, last year I think it was 95%. We’re really going early.”

Christie Jenkins joins Jodie Imam, Steve Maarbani and Jun Qu as a guest judge at SmartCompany‘s the Pitch, in Melbourne in February. Want her to see your great idea? Enter now!