Our Venture Process

Like other private investors we believe strongly in the importance of driving deal flow to ensure the quality of our investment portfolio. In the realm of Stage 0 ventures this translates into idea flow. Our approach places great emphasis on a constant process of focused idea generation followed by rapid and relentless critical examination.

Many of our ideas emerge from the rich network of relationships built through the Treacy & Company consulting practice and Michael Treacy’s numerous speaking engagements. We also employ a unique, pro-active approach to idea generation that has yielded a number of venture concepts later validated by market experience. First, we use a well-defined set of criteria to target industries and/or markets likely to be rich in emerging opportunities. Then, we leverage our understanding of value leadership strategies to systematically identify potential ventures within the target sector.

These potential ventures are then rapidly assessed by the application of experienced practical insight, a variety of proprietary analyses and – critically – the expert judgment of our friends with long operating experience in the target sector. In a typical year we might evaluate a dozen different sectors, investigate 5-20 promising ideas in each and yield one venture concept deemed worthy of progressing toward launch.

Treacy & Company places tremendous emphasis on the roles of experiential learning, adaptability and strong leadership in creating successful ventures. If the concept development process has been done right, the opportunity is real – but the best path to exploiting it most effectively won’t be known until the business is actually up and running. Therefore we maintain a strong bias for quick action, experimentation and changes on the fly – all of which are best affected by a small dedicated team of experienced professionals managing the venture through an initial phase of operation in which Treacy & Company is the sole source of funding.