Alberta Chapter President on The ‘Spidey-Sense’ of Investors

Emmet McGonagle

Jul 29, 2022

Mark Mitchell, Alberta chapter president at Valhalla Private Capital, principal and director at Red Thread Ventures and managing partner at Weave VC, has claimed that “Spidey-senses” are one of the most important traits for investors within a saturated startup ecosystem.


Discussing “how to invest in early stage companies in Western Canada” with
Tyler Chisholm, host and founder of Collisions YYC on episode 168 of the Current & Critical podcast, Mark began: “When I first started [investing] I was hesitant in being super candid, but I was also learning a lot of different mechanics of how to look for signals or pattern matching.


“A lot of investing at an early stage involves recognizing some of those signals and developing the Spidey-sense of ‘okay, I need to dig deeper into this one’”, he continued, “because there's just so many deals.”


With this in mind, Mark claimed that the best approach to addressing companies who fail to meet this pattern recognition - which has been hailed by Valhalla CEO and chairman Randy Stewart Thompson as the company’s
“secret tool” - is to give them “actionable” feedback.


“If I'm actually listening to a pitch and I have the opportunity to comment, I will always try my best to give super candid, actionable feedback instead of saying ‘oh, your deal sucks.’”


Coincidentally, this isn’t the first time a
Spiderman reference has made its way onto the Valhalla Private Capital blog.


The plot of
Spiderman has previously been mentioned in ‘Harry Potter and the Hero’s Journey narrative in pitching to investors’, as well as ‘Ask An Expert: Enter The Metaverse’, which makes reference to 2018 film Enter The Spider-Verse.


On a previous episode of the Current & Critical podcast,
Randy Stewart Thompson – chairman and CEO of Valhalla Private Capital, managing director of Old Kent Road Financial and co-owner of Peterborough United Football Club – outlined how not to become Silicon Valley.


Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our
contact page.

By Emmet McGonagle 01 Dec, 2023
Canada’s unemployment rate has trended higher once again this month, according to the latest iteration of Statistics Canada’s November labour force survey.
By Emmet McGonagle 29 Nov, 2023
More than half of workers believe that disclosing worker compensation details on job postings will lead to better equality in pay, according to the latest iteration of LinkedIn’s Workforce Confidence Index . The index - which is based on a survey of 3,302 members in Canada between June and September 2023 - found that 52% of people asked felt that people sharing their pay information (including salary and bonus) would improve workplace equality, compared to 48% in 2022. This number varies between different generations, with younger Canadians more likely to express support for pay transparency (73%), followed by 69% of Millennials, 46% of Gen X and 44% of Baby Boomers. However, 37% of those surveyed remarked that they felt anxious about sharing their pay information - a 2% rise from the year prior. Likewise, just under half (49%) said they felt well compensated for the work they do while 74% expressed that the pay gap between CEOs and employees had become too wide. The people of LinkedIn have come out in their dozens to give their two cents on the topic, with Adrienne Tom , executive resume writer for executives, saying: “ I'm all for salary transparency, so long as the number is clear and legit. Some postings list salary ranges so wide that the actual salary number isn't entirely clear, leaving job seekers confused.” “If you have a manager who is not advocating for the pay gap, you are working for the wrong manager,” remarked career strategist Sweta Regmi , while noting that women in Ontario earn an average of $0.87 for every dollar earned by men. On the topic, she added: “Salary ranges with job postings can help close the gender pay gap while allowing companies to find qualified candidates more quickly.” Do you have a question about angel investing? Get in touch with Valhalla Private Capital via our contact page .
Share by: