Profile

Tod Francis

Tod Francis has 25 years of experience working with marketing and consumer driven companies. Since 2004, Tod has been a managing director of Shasta Ventures where his investment focus is technology-enabled consumer companies. Some of his investments at Shasta include Mint, Flock, Turn, Logoworks, UpTake and companies still operating in stealth mode. Prior to co-founding Shasta Ventures, Tod was a general partner at Trinity Ventures for ten years where he was involved with companies such as Blue Nile, BabyCenter FatBrain, LoopNet, NextCard, Wedding Channel, Jamba Juice and PF Chang’s.

Previously, Tod spent ten years in marketing and management positions including serving as a partner at Ram Group Marketing Management, and as a marketing manager at Johnson & Johnson on the Tylenol brand.

  • M.B.A., Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University
  • B.A., Economics, Northwestern University

Areas of Special Interest

  • Consumer services that are offered on-line
  • The next generation of commerce enabled by the internet
  • Consumer media sites
  • Next generation advertising platforms
  • Products and services to relating to energy consumption
  • Environmental sensitive products and services
  • Services designed to serve small businesses

Why I Love Working With Entrepreneurs

My experience as an entrepreneur started early. By college, I had started and run three businesses. Shasta was also a start-up. We borrowed office space, printed cards at Kinko’s, used credit cards to finance purchases and raised capital. At Shasta, we get to live the entrepreneurial dream every day, not only because we started the firm from scratch, but because we get to work with so many amazing entrepreneurs, doing what we can to help them fulfill their dreams.

I really thrive on working with entrepreneurs every day, hearing about their visions and passions and sacrifices and seeing them succeed. We only do well if our companies do well. All of our incentives are completely aligned with the companies in which we invest as our goal is to create shareholder value. It’s not about just showing up at board meetings. It’s about supporting the CEO and the founders with whatever they may need help with, whether that’s making introductions or interviewing candidates or providing feedback on a marketing strategy. Whatever it takes. We think about these companies constantly and sweat every up and down along with them. Rarely, do companies succeed by following the original plan. It is always exciting.

What Makes a Company Great

Great companies are usually the result of strong teams that provide a compelling customer experience. The role of the entrepreneur is to build a team with the right combination of skills and have a unique vision and intense passion to lead a company to a special outcome. They often have crazy ideas that turn out to be very insightful.

A company has to nail its value proposition to its customers. No matter how phenomenal your product or technology is, it has to be worthwhile and unique to the end user. And you have to figure out how to get your target customer to use, try and refer your product. That is the ultimate sign of a good product experience. If you provide value you create value. At Shasta we’re big believers that the financial returns will follow when companies concentrate on a great customer experience.

That’s never truer than with the consumer market. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from 25 years of continually focusing on building businesses around the consumer, it’s that great businesses are executed well on 100 different levels. It’s not as easy as people think. From product design to branding to positioning and distribution—marketing to a consumer is fickle and delicate. But when you nail the whole package, consumer businesses can be the most exciting possible.

Title

  • Managing Director

Expertise

Internet-enabled consumer and business services

Contact Info

"No matter how strong your technology is, your product has to be worthwhile and unique to the end user."

Current Investments

Selected Prior Investments


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