From Ballet Dancer to Lead Investor with Emily Walsh @ Georgian Partners - Escape Velocity Show #46

About this video

In this Escape Velocity interview, Emily Walsh, a principal at Georgian Partners — introduced as having raised $1.2 billion across four funds — traces an unlikely path: an undergraduate dance degree at Juilliard and freelance performing, then running a nonprofit founded by Juilliard colleagues as its first full-time employee for about four years, doing arts-accessibility work in schools, hospitals and communities. Lacking formal business training, she earned an MBA at Cornell, spent a couple of years at McKinsey working with banks and insurers on digital transformation, then joined Georgian. She says dance taught grit — auditioning among hundreds and hearing ’no’ repeatedly — and that McKinsey taught leading through influence, which fits Georgian’s minority, lead-investor model: it typically enters at growth stage, above $6 million ARR / around $10–20 million revenue, writing roughly $20–40 million cheques, and must influence founders rather than control them. Trust, she argues, comes from authenticity and doing what you said you would; Georgian models itself on a software company with in-house R&D, customer success and operations, growing from 17 people when she joined to almost 60. Saying no is the worst part of the job: they build their own bottom-up model (mid, low and return cases) and try to share the build and meaningful feedback so a no still teaches the founder something. Georgian’s differentiator is its ‘impact team’ — an in-house applied research lab of machine learning, data science and security staff who can run three-to-six-month projects with portfolio companies. Its thesis evolved from applied analytics (from 2008) to applied AI and conversational AI, with examples discussed including Chorus, Ada, Rasa, Reonomy and Ritual. Her advice to founders wanting AI help: start with a data engineer and a clear, well-scoped understanding of your data before hiring expensive data-science talent. She also discusses learning to communicate and be confident without knowing all the answers (she recalls crying after her first finance class at age 28) and Georgian’s support for Canada Learning Code.

Key takeaways

• Influence beats control for minority investors: build trust by being authentic and consistently doing what you said you would do.
• Make a ’no’ useful — Georgian builds a detailed bottom-up financial model for each serious candidate and shares the build and feedback so founders learn from the process.
• Georgian’s stated edge is its in-house impact team: applied researchers, ML engineers and data scientists who help portfolio companies unlock value from data they have not yet monetised.
• Before hiring data scientists or ML talent, hire a data engineer first and get a firm, well-scoped handle on your data — otherwise the expensive hires will be frustrated and wasted.
• Ask founders up front what their ideal partner in the round looks like, then communicate and adjust your process to address those motivations — winning deals is, as discussed, 100% sales.

Episode details: published January 28, 2021 · 36:45 long. Summary written by Self Growth Videos from the episode itself. Business results and any income figures mentioned are Dan Martell’s own claims, shared for education — they are not typical or guaranteed.

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