Banana Capital's Turner Novak on his unconventional path in breaking into VC, being a successful stage agnostic investor, and leveraging social platforms to build advantages

Follow me @samirkaji for my thoughts on the venture market, with a focus on the continued evolution of the VC landscape.

We’re thrilled to bring you my conversation with Turner Novak, founder of Banana Capital. While fairly new to venture, Turner continually brings some of the most interesting perspectives about technology, and is one of best venture follows on social media.  

Turner has an incredible backstory on how he broke into VC, and ultimately within a few years was able to found Banana Capital in January 2021, with $9.99M in commitments, including several institutional investors. Prior to having his own fund, he was General Partner at Gelt VC and also interned at a pre-seed firm Afore Capital. 

We talked with Turner about the value of social media in VC, how he thinks that successful investing can be stage agnostic, and his views on where the public and private markets are today, and where they may go in the future.

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In this episode we discuss:

02:00 Turner’s journey into Venture Capital

03:21 Getting his first internship in VC at Afore Capital

07:43 The early days as an investor and his first investments

11:25 How he built a strong deal flow channel despite being so new.

13:37 Choosing to raise his fund without a 506c provision and going the traditional way despite a huge social following.

15:42 The impetus behind raising $9.99M

18:55 Turner’s scaling plan

22:04 The role of speed in the capital environments today

25:26 Using social media to amplify his strategy and brand

30:51 How he strikes the right balance on social media to ensure he’s productively adding to the brand, but while staying authentic.

34:28 Turner’s investment criteria and how he evaluates deals and companies

38:06 What he believes the markets will look like in the next 2-3 years

43:18 The most counterintuitive thing he’s learned as an investor

45:10 The lesson he’s learned from an investing miss

46:51 The investor that most inspires him

Mentioned in this episodeBanana CapitalGelt VCAfore Capital

I’d love to know what you took away from this conversation with Turner. Follow me @SamirKaji and give me your insights and questions with the hashtag #ventureunlocked. If you’d like to be considered as a guest or have someone you’d like to hear from (GP or LP), drop me a direct message on Twitter.

Transcript:

Samir Kaji:

Hi, I'm Samir Kaji, host of Venture Unlocked, the podcast that takes you behind the scenes of the business of venture capital. Today, we're thrilled to bring you my conversation with Turner Novak, Founder of Banana Capital. While fairly new at venture, Turner continually brings some of the most interesting perspectives about technology and venture and also happens to be one of the best follows in social media.

Samir Kaji:

He's also got a great backstory on how he broke into this sea and ultimately within a few years was able to found Banana Capital in January 2021 with 9.99 million amendments, including several institutions participating. Before starting his own fund, he was a general partner at Gelt VC and also had interned at pre-seed from Afore Capital.

Samir Kaji:

We covered a lot of ground at this podcast, including the value of social media in VC, how he thinks being stage agnostic can be a successful strategy and his views on the public and private markets and where we're headed. Now, let's get into the episode to hear all of that and more.

Samir Kaji:

Today's episode is sponsored by Pacific Western Bank, a full-service commercial bank with over 34 billion in assets. The venture banking team at PacWest specializes in financial products and services for both startups and the venture and private equity funds that back them. I've worked with many of their team members over the last few decades. And I can attest to their commitment to bringing a high touch and personalized experience for every startup and fund manager client they have.

Samir Kaji:

So, whether you're a founder or a fund manager at any stage of development, and you want to find out more, check them out at www.pacwest.com.

Samir Kaji:

Hey, Turner, it's great to see you, man. Thanks for being on the show.

Turner Novak:

Hey. Awesome, thanks for having me.

Samir Kaji:

This will be a lot of fun given your backstory, which is really unique, and then all the great content that you put on Twitter and TikTok regarding venture and tech in general. But let's get back to how you got into this, why you became interested in being an investor. And then ultimately, how did you actually break in when you didn't have the traditional Silicon Valley networks that a lot of people that get into venture do.

Turner Novak:

The first time I really got interested in venture and knew it was possible to do it from Michigan, was I read a post from Blake Robbins at Ludlow saying, I forget the title, it was how I became a VC from Michigan. And it was always something I thought was fascinating because there's intersection of all these different things I wanted to do when I grew up and what I was interested in.

Turner Novak:

But yeah, I live in Michigan. I kind of thought I might have moved to a big city at some point, but ended up getting married right after school, met my girlfriend, now my partner during school. So, we never moved away.

Turner Novak:

And yeah, so I remember reading Blake's post was like, "Oh, cool. So, it's possible." And that was really the first thing that kind of got me. I mean, I had joined the investment club in college and was the president of the club for a couple of years.

Turner Novak:

And I just loved investing. And I was mostly investing in venture style things in the public markets anyways, kind of knew that's what I was going to do. But I never actually thought it was possible until that moment when I first read that.

Samir Kaji:

Yes. So, you read the post that inspires you. You're like, I think I can do venture from a place like Michigan. But it still requires you to find a landing spot, have somebody believe in you in the early days. And I know you interned at Afore, how did you go about actually getting in front of folks like that to even intern or even ultimately get a job?

Turner Novak:

Here's a long process. Initially, it started, I had just started tweeting, essentially. I'd use Twitter for, I don't know, a decade for fantasy football. I think that was initially what I use it for a lot. And I just noticed that it seems like a lot of people are on Twitter talking about this stuff. It's a way to kind of share your thoughts, build a brand, a kind of funny word to say but showing how you're thinking about things. And I kind of just slowly started to meet people that way.

Turner Novak:

And initially, I just kind of picked a niche or certain things to talk about with the end goal of eventually making the jump into VC. So, I kind of started, I think the first couple months I was on Twitter, all I talked about was Snapchat and just how I thought it was coming back. I mean, the consensus at the time was this is the next Myspace. And I was very firmly just thought that was just wrong. And i…