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Ep. 301 How I Raised It with Marlon Nichols of MaC Venture Capital

·41 min·2 clips

Marlon Nichols says, 'you got to kiss a lot of frogs to find the prince' when raising a first fund.

The early question is simple. Why leave a corporate investing seat when it already comes with capital and a corporate base? Marlon starts with the economics. If an investment can make the firm billions while the investor gets a much smaller bonus, the setup begins to feel strange. Then he narrows it down. Intel gave him room to move, but the firm still had a strategic center of gravity. He could not wander too far from it. That left some founders out of reach, including companies he believed could become meaningful but did not fit cleanly inside the corporate mandate. So he left. Cross Culture Ventures began with Troy Carter, a music manager and angel investor, and fund one was a relatively small $15 million vehicle. The story sounds a lot like building a company: raise the first fund, use mentors to get in front of LPs, then earn the next conversation by doing what you said you would do. The episode keeps coming back to the mechanics. What did the path look like? How did LP access happen? What matters after the first introduction? Marlon's answer stays practical. Mentors can open doors, but the relationship only gets stronger if the investor follows through. The Troy Carter piece later changes shape. As the first fund moved through its investment period, Troy decided he preferred angel investing over institutional venture work and handed Marlon the brand. That handoff carries the rest of the story into mandate, ownership, LP trust, and access to capital. By the end, Marlon is back in the present: AI for fintech and digital health, media, and software opportunities around energy.

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