20 VC 063: What It Takes To Standout In A Crowded Market with Ezra Galston @ Chicago Ventures

Ezra Galston is a VC @ Chicago Ventures, where he focuses on consumer facing and marketing tech investments and is actively involved with Blitsy, BloomNation, Kapow Events, Luxury Garage Sale, Shiftgig, SpotHero, and Zipments. Ezra’s thoughts on startups, have been published in the Wall Street Journal, TechCrunch, VentureBeat and Re/code.
Prior to Chicago Ventures, Ezra was a Young Entrepreneur at Foundation Capital. Before business school, Ezra served as the Director of Marketing for CardRunners Gaming – the parent company of CardRunners, Hold’em Manager and DraftDay – and before then earned a living as a professional poker player. If that wasn't enough he is also the author of one of our fave VC blogs www.breakingvc.com.

In Today's Episode You Will Learn:

• How Ezra became a Poker Player and then transitioned to the world of Venture Capital?
• What is the mission with Chicago Ventures? Average ticket size? Preferred sector? 
• How important is it for startups to be close to their investors, geographically and relationship wise?
• For marketplace startups, what metrics does Ezra really deep dive on?
• With the likes of Instacart raising huge rounds, why are we seeing this huge increase in food tech?
• In hugely crowded markets, how does Ezra sort the wood from the trees?
• What advice would Ezra recommend to individuals looking to enter the VC industry?

Items Mentioned In Today's Episode:

Ezra's Fave Book: The Little Prince

Ezra's Fave Blog or Newsletter: Stratechery by Ben Thompson, Carpool.vc

Ezra's Fave Productivity Tools: Rapportive, Bitmoji

Ezra's Most Recent Investment: Luxury Garage Sale, Attendant

Bill Gurley: 10 Factors To Consider When Evaluating Digital Marketplaces

HungryRoot: Charlie O'Donnell, Brooklyn Bridge Ventures

As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Ezra on Twitter right here!