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Ep. 309 How I Raised It with Mark Phillips of 11 Tribes Venture Capital

·38 min·2 clips

Mark Phillips says 11 Tribes invests in founders’ mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual health.

1. How I Raised It episode 309 follows Nathan Beckert’s conversation with Mark Phillips of Eleven Tribes Venture Fund in Chicago. 2. Mark Phillips is the founder of Eleven Tribes, and Nathan Beckert is the host of How I Raised It, a show about how founders and VCs raise capital. 3. The episode asks how a failed founder built an early-stage venture fund around founder resilience, capital efficiency, and personal development. 4. Mark describes Diasense, a hardware device for type 1 diabetics that aimed to measure blood sugar more passively, as the startup that shaped his view of venture. 5. He says Diasense ran for about three years and was later leapfrogged by better technology, which left him unable to raise the capital needed to continue. 6. After shutting down the company, he says he went back into consulting while his wife and family were starting a new season at home. 7. Mark says he became interested in venture capital, angels, and accelerators because he wanted to understand what actually supports founders in growth and development. 8. He says he searched for firms that would value his experience as a failed founder but never found a fit, which led him to incorporate Eleven Tribes in 2019. 9. He says COVID-era lockdowns in 2020 became the moment when he and his wife decided he should give the fund an honest effort. 10. Fund 1 took about 18 months to raise, and Mark says it required more than 675 Zoom calls and roughly 200 calls before the first commitment. 11. He says the first investor backed the fund because of his passion, not because the idea had proven merit. 12. Mark says that early LPs were investing in the manager as much as the strategy, which pushed him to sell the vision instead of the model. 13. He says the back half of the fundraising journey accelerated once he stopped trying to convert every no into a yes. 14. Mark says asking directly whether a meeting is a fit is better than dragging a prospect along and hoping for another email. 15. He says a founder he spoke with that morning asked for angel introductions, and that direct ask immediately surfaced two names he planned to share. 16. Fund 2, which launched in September 2023 and closed in March of this year, raised $46 million and was described by Mark as similar in spirit to Fund 1. 17. He says Fund 2 relied on a larger network, including family offices and operators, because institutional capital was not realistic without fund-one DPI. 18. Mark says Eleven Tribes sold a 5% GP stake to a family office, and he describes that relationship as a major source of introductions and momentum. 19. The conversation is direct and practical, with Mark moving between fundraising mechanics, family-office strategy, and personal resilience without a scripted feel. 20. People raising a first fund, founders thinking about identity, and operators interested in founder support would likely get the most from this episode.

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