Venture firms are quite naturally judged by the company they keep. It’s why I’m pleased to announce that David Snider will be joining us as an ExIR in our New York City office.

More than perhaps any other business, we are nothing more than our team and the people around us (plus a checkbook). Surrounding most great firms you will find a cloud of talented people, connected to the firm by various types of association: current entrepreneurs, former entrepreneurs, advisors, scouts and many flavors of X-in-residence.

At Bain Capital Ventures, we have many examples of all of the above. One of the programs we’ve had great success with is our Executive-in-Residence (ExIR) position. In the entrepreneurial economy, many of the most talented people find themselves between gigs, having just exited something exciting without an immediate next role to jump into. This caliber of leader has the luxury of time as s/he looks for the next perfect pitch, but also has no desire to have an idling engine while waiting.

That’s where ExIR programs, such as ours, come in as a mutually-beneficial solution to this wait. In 2016 we hosted Bill Okun, who co-founded CapitalIQ, and then went on to be Chief Commercial Officer at the Corporate Executive Board. For the first half of 2017, we were fortunate to work with Ron Martin, formerly President and CEO of PaySafe, a major UK payments company, who is now engaged for a stint with one of our recent investments.

Today, we are lucky to have David join us. David will work with the firm’s investment team to source and review potential new opportunities and advise portfolio companies on their operations.

David has a similar background to me and a number of others on our team, having started his career at Bain & Co, and then joined Bain Capital. After business school, he (very wisely, as it turned out) decided to try his hand at entrepreneurship by joining Compass (then Urban Compass) as employee number 10 and serving as its Chief Operating Officer/Chief Financial Officer. Compass is now one of the leading New York City tech success stories, expected to generate over $300 million in revenue this year and valued at more than $1 billion.

I have no doubt that David will end up back in a leadership position at another important tech company, but we’re hoping to keep him with us as long as we can.