Connor Sattely

Connor Sattely grew up in Western Pennsylvania without a clear plan for his life. He didn't have career goals as a kid. He just wanted to have fun and rebel against authority.

That rebellious streak led him to journalism.

"Journalists by definition are very independent and very rebellious," Connor says. "Newsrooms were interesting and not your standard work environments."

Buried in all the unread local news pieces were a couple great investigative articles: breaking news on alleged abusive behaviour assault by a basketball coach, revealing a coverup on lack of student housing. He found deep meaning in telling human stories, inspiring action through writing, and pushing teams of reporters to think bigger and better.

But print journalism in the mid-2000s wasn't looking like an industry with a lot of long-term potential. He started to get skeptical that writing up police reports and printing pages of text nobody would read was his life’s work.

His roommate met someone at a conference who had a startup idea. The roommate asked Connor if he wanted to help. No pay included.

Connor's response: "Yeah, sure."

That decision launched his startup career.

His first startup was GovFaces, a civic tech company founded in 2012. The idea was to use social media to make politics more responsive. The team secured engagement from several heads of state, government officials, and much of the European Parliament and Commission. They launched in the UK, Switzerland, at the UN, and at the EU. Connor set up shop in Geneva, Brussels, and London.

"I realized it’s an emotional high to build awesome products," he says. "You wake up in the morning, and you create something that wasn’t in the world yesterday. If it’s any good, it solves a problem for people or makes people's lives better. Building and motivating a team around that: even better."

But, as first-time founders, they didn't understand minimum viable products or how to make customers willing to pay. They made every rookie mistake there was to make. Connor served as co-founder and COO from 2012 to 2016. The company closed by 2018.

After GovFaces, Connor worked for a startup accelerator focused on social entrepreneurship, especially across Africa and MENA. There he met his next co-founders, who had extensive experience in Uganda.

Together they founded SEMA, a citizen feedback system for public institutions. The platform deployed at customs offices, police stations, courts, hospitals, and immigration offices across Uganda. The system helps institutions understand the feedback they receive and figure out how to improve. SEMA is still operational today, with over 320,000 users in Uganda.

Two startups. Five international startup networks Connor joined in his free time to volunteer his learnings, to help others avoid rookie mistakes. 

Connor had spent 12 years in the startup ecosystem, but he'd never sat on the investor side of the table. The raw opportunity of funding the next generation of changemakers appealed to him.

He got the word out through the network he took over a decade to build: VC is his next step.

It was harder than it sounded to get a door cracked open – his first six months of efforts to get involved with VC went ignored. He kept at it, cold calling, e-mailing contacts, attending conferences, and incessant messages on LinkedIn. 

Finally, unbelievably, a friend invited him to be part of a team creating a $300M climate tech fund. He had finally made it – he thought. The reality was soon exposed when the fund applied to VC Lab, an accelerator for VC funds.

"I attended some VC Lab info sessions and kept hearing Mike Suprovici say things like, 'Don't come to us with some huge fund target if you have no track record. Start with a smaller fund. Have a clear investment thesis. Don't make rookie mistakes,'" Connor recalls.

Connor started to sweat.

"It made me realize this ‘fund’ didn’t know what the hell they were doing – they didn’t even HAVE an investment thesis – but I had no vocabulary to express it, and no legitimacy in the industry to steer them in a new direction."

He and the other junior members on the fund team decided to join Venture Institute to gain that vocabulary. 

The program forced him to confront two realities.

"First, that giant fund was making every rookie mistake in the book, without the self-reflective ability to correct and improve," Connor says. “Second, that all my startup experience wasn’t doing jack for me in VC if I didn’t understand the fundamentals of fund economics, the LP-GP relationship, and deal diligence.”

He left the fund, and poured his energy into Venture Institute instead.

“Getting a residency and getting real experience with people who knew what they were doing was now the central goal.”

Connor obsessed over his Venture Institute work, going far above and beyond for every assignment. His high performance in the program made him one of the few participants in Cohort 2 offered a residency.

His residency: with the same team that exposed the weaknesses in the $300M fund. He was joining Decile Group, working with Mike Suprovici and Neal Strickberger. He’d come full circle.

He was assigned to the Deals team, supporting VCLab graduates in making deals. On his first day, he was thrown straight into the deep end.

"Neal handed me a deal one of our VCs was ready to make - an eVTOL startup in India,” he recalls. “It was something I knew nothing about. I was just told, ‘see if you can find something the VC missed.’”

Finally, his generalist startup background paid off. He loved diving into the details, finding hidden red flags, and coaching VC managers on doing better evaluation.

After his residency, Connor stayed on in a part-time role before transitioning to full-time. 

The journey from Venture Institute student to full-time role took fifteen months.

Today, he's seen over 650 deal reviews from 130+ unique VC firms. Neal and Connor have reinvented the Deals support provided to Decile Partners and Start Fund firms. He's one of the first team members at Decile that fund managers turn to when they've got a cap table that looks like a crime scene or a SAFE with toxic terms some lawyer buried in the fine print.

That print journalist from Western Pennsylvania who said "yeah, sure" to his roommate's startup idea is now helping fund managers around the world invest millions of dollars every month.

Connor's honest about what it takes to break into VC.

"A lot of people come into Venture Institute wanting to do what I did," Connor says. "Excel at the course, get a residency, turn the residency into a job."

The truth? That exact path is rare.

Out of 2,500 applicants, just 350 will get into each Venture Institute cohort. And only the top 50 of those will get a residency. From there, some may find full-time jobs at those companies, like Connor did. But often, they're hired by new firms now that they have industry experience. Some even go on to start their own firms.

"Venture Institute is a way to build your knowledge about how venture works," Connor says. "It coaches you on taking the first steps in activating your network. It guides you on what kind of value you can offer. And it makes sure you know what the hell you're talking about when you sit down with someone in the VC industry."

The real path into venture is longer and less linear than most people expect. But learning the fundamentals and getting your foot in the door? That's half the battle.

Add value for free. "Show people who you are through your work. Demonstrate competence and build relationships. The opportunities will follow."

Network relentlessly. "Once you've shown your value and willingness to help, get to know every person and organization in your geography, industry, and stage. Talk to them about what they're doing, what's working, what's not. Add value everywhere you can."

Focus on what you love. "If you're passionate about it, you'll put in the work without it feeling like work. And people will notice your energy and commitment."

Say yes. Connor's career has been built on saying "yeah, sure" to opportunities that came his way. His first startup, his work in Uganda, his path into venture. None of it was planned. All of it came from being open to what was in front of him.

Venture Institute is where Connor's journey began. It could be where yours begins too.