In early August, the Top Tier leadership team met to discuss the firm’s commitment to our investors, a belief in partnership, and the continued conviction to invest in the future. Leaving these conversations reaffirmed the pillars of which our firm is built on: Leadership, Empathy, Transparency, Trust, Excellence, and Respect. We hold ourselves to these standards to ensure authenticity within our work and the relationships we cultivate with each other, with our investors, and with prospects.
While this is a period of reflection, it is also one of celebration. Fifteen years ago, Top Tier Capital Partners spun out of Paul Capital with a clear objective: to create long-term value by backing exceptional managers, to build enduring relationships through honest communication, and to utilize our learned experience as a tool in helping investors navigate the VC ecosystem. As we celebrate our fifteen-year milestone and think about what’s to come for the Top Tier team, we want to take a moment to reflect on our firm’s history and the labor that has shaped it.
At its core, venture capital is an investment in the unknown, which is why an exceptional manager who brings with them evergreen intelligence and pattern recognition is so crucial.
“Our investors and prospects are just as much a part of this story as we (the firm) are,” Garth Timoll, CEO & General Partner, shares. “They have to believe in us. That we will seek to deliver a strong risk-adjusted return, leveraging our advanced market understanding while truly caring about their success.”
In 2012, just a year after Top Tier Capital Partners established itself, our team invested in Smartsheet. At the time, Smartsheet was transitioning from a startup into a rapidly growing enterprise software company. Our General Partners recognized the greatest strength of the company – accessibility for the user– similar to what we’re seeing with AI across all platforms.
Smartsheet gained traction because it was easy to use and combined a collaborative approach with intuitive workflow management capabilities. It was designed to make people’s lives more productive. That’s the kind of product Top Tier strives to back, and we did so alongside some of our closest working relationships – specifically Madrona Ventures.
Top Tier’s Sean Engel, CIO & General Partner, shares his view on strong leadership, “Partnership is bi-directional – a give and take. It’s about working together to get investors to a common goal. A good General Partner knows how markets can shift and is able to intuit what could be around the next bend. Our investment in DraftKings is a perfect example of this.”
The Top Tier team felt confident that DraftKings would be a massive success. We invested in 2017 while closely following Murphy v. NCAA. In 2018, the case come to a close with PASPA (Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act of 1992) being repealed. This allowed states to legalize sports betting, veering away from previous limitations. Using pattern recognition and close market monitoring, our team at Top Tier knew that an opportunity was on the horizon. This boom in legalized sports betting created space for much greater online sports wagering and iGaming across the country. DraftKings would become, and remain, one of the most popular sites to do so.
As we begin to look forward at the next fifteen years, we know that investing in our own future is just as important as the work we do with others. By the time this is published, we will have made our move from the Transamerica Pyramid to the iconic Hartford Building (650 California Street). Our move has been filled with nostalgia and gratitude. TTCP’s change in office space is indicative of our commitment to our investors and their continued success; we are building enduring relationships that deserve to be tended to.
Reflecting on Top Tier’s spin-off from Paul Capital has given our firm a clarity – this is not the end of one journey and the beginning of another. It’s the next chapter in an already meaningful story, one that we are excited to continue writing.
Garth leaves us with a memory from his Paul Capital days. “Nearly fifteen years ago, following the birth of my first child – my daughter, Elise – I returned to the office from paternity leave. I was hoping for a slow re-entry to work,” Garth laughs. “Of course, that’s never how things go. I walked into my office and saw that everything – and I do mean everything – was covered in pink glitter. It was in my desk drawers, on my armchair, in the bookshelf…” Garth laughs. “The entire firm was in on it – with Jessica (Jessica Archibald, General Partner) and Sean (Sean Engel, CIO & General Partner) leading the pack. As annoyed and sleep deprived as I was, I felt lucky to be working with people I could laugh with.”
Garth continues, “It’s hard to believe fifteen years have gone by. Top Tier started with just eleven employees, myself included. Now, we have offices in San Francisco, Boston, and London and we’re fortunate enough to work with people all over the world.”
Our team at Top Tier is excited to see what the next fifteen years will hold. We look forward to our continued partnerships, new relationships, and continuing to hold ourselves to a standard of excellence to ensure we are the investment partner you can always count on.
Sincerely,
The Top Tier Team
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