Mark Fiorentino
Mark backs founders working in fintech, AI apps or vertical SaaS. Prior to joining BCV, he was an early employee at Stripe and spent six years as a partner at Index Ventures.
About
Greatness is not achieved without hard work
I can’t claim to be anywhere near as stellar as the founders I’ve had the pleasure of working with over the last decade. But I do live by the mantra that success does not come without the right balance of IQ, EQ and hustle. It’s the four word mantra I strive to live by. I apply it to working with founders, my personal life and everything in between. Life and work can be unpredictable. I grew up bouncing back and forth between my mom and dad’s homes every few weeks. At my dad’s apartment, we only had two bedrooms for my sister, myself and him so my dad and I would take turns sleeping on the couch. There was a point in between graduating college and starting my first full-time job when I had $109 in my bank account with no familial backup assets. There was a day when I had to lose 12 pounds in 10 hours to make weigh-ins at a college wrestling tournament. I joined Stripe, Index and, now, BCV to help founders with one of my best assets: A genuine and enduring drive to help them achieve greatness. From an early age, I learned that whether it’s life or building a startup, success requires sucking it up and figuring it out.
Founder-market fit is everything for me
I’ve had the pleasure of working for, and being on the boards of, some of the most incredible founders in the world. No exaggeration. Patrick and John at Stripe were payments nerds and customer obsessed. Every new hire had to read the book, Payments Systems in the US – and, no matter what team you were on (for a long period of time), you had to spend one week answering customer support tickets. This was user empathy at its finest, and I look for that same ethos in any founder I back. Jacob and Miguel at RevenueCat basically wrote the book on consumer subscription infrastructure having built a preliminary version of their product at their prior startup, Elevate Labs; realizing they weren’t the only ones with this ‘hair on fire’ problem. When they took the leap of faith to launch the company, they vowed no other developer would have this issue again. Now that’s drive!
LEARN, always
No one has ever told me I’ve been “naturally gifted at x.” And frankly, I believe that! However, what I also believe is that possessing an insatiable thirst to constantly learn has proven useful. It’s what drives me. It’s an asset to founders. And it takes many forms. Whether that’s obtaining firsthand experience unloading freight for my wife’s consumer goods startup in order to give tangible product feedback at Loop board meetings (just ask the CEO Matt McKinney), striving towards placing in the top 10% of the CrossFit Open or obtaining my Certified Sommelier license from the Court of Master Sommeliers, I’m constantly looking to not only expand my knowledge surface area, but to dig deeper in every category of interest. There’s no 80-20 in the pursuit of expertise!
Why BCV, and why make the switch?
As VCs, we spend every day assessing the growth and success trajectory of startups. So why not do that with venture capital firms themselves? It’s a question I’ve spent plenty of time ruminating on in the last few months. And, after plenty of reflection, I truly could not think of a firm with a steeper growth trajectory right now than BCV. BCV can help companies go from 0 to 1 – and from 10-1,000 and beyond - that’s rare. There's a uniquely massive network of enterprise executives and relevant platform infrastructure around BCV’s team of investors that draw from operator experience to guide startups through growth and maturity stages on a daily basis. I couldn’t help but gravitate towards this team.
Background
