Steve Schlafman - Helping Leaders Lead with Capital and Coaching

David Nebinski (0:00)

Hey, friend, really excited for this Portfolio Career Podcast episode with Steve Schlafman. You can also find Steve tweeting on Twitter, at Schlaf, where he is a very active and inspiring user of the platform, at Schlaf. With over 10 years of investment experience into startups at The Kraft Group in Boston, Lerer Ventures in New York, RRE Ventures in New York, after a 12-day team month journey, he is now a partner at Primary Venture Partners. He talks about his journey where he thought that he wanted to start his own company, but he ultimately decided that he needed to be a part of a team, and that was the best way for him to show up, to lead, to inspire others.

On this journey, though, he decided to start an intense coaching certification program.

He recently completed this course that, with over 200 hours of work done, and just passed an exam. He actually now believes that this skill that he has can be transferable to many, many other industries and sectors, and ultimately could be of value if the investment capital, venture capital business saw a recession. Ultimately believes it enables him to show up as an investor, to add value, and ultimately to be of service to the founders, which he believes is the primary obligation for venture capitalists to help founders be the best leaders that they can be. He loves combining this investment, facilitation, and coaching as much as possible. We talked about this and so much more related to personal development, career development. So tune in to build and grow your portfolio career. And as always, let me know what you think. Welcome to Portfolio Career Podcast.

Your host David Nebinski is here with Steve Schlafman. How's it going, Steve?

Steve Schlafman (1:51)

Everything's great.

David Nebinski (1:52)

We were going to go to an event tonight. How do you typically introduce yourself?

Steve Schlafman (1:56)

It's a good question.

Because I think when I go to events, I usually introduce myself two ways.

The first is what I usually say in a work setting. And then the other is what I would say in a personal setting. And so in a work setting, the easiest way to describe what I do is I'm a partner at a seed stage venture capital fund here in New York called Primary Venture Partners, also known as Primary. And that's half of what I do. And then the other half is I'm a leadership and executive coach. I'm actually in the process of finishing up my nine month certification, which has been pretty intensive. And so I spend about 95% of my time investing in great founders. And then the other 5% of my time basically spending with leaders outside of our portfolio coaching in an intimate setting.

David Nebinski (2:50)

Okay, how did you, it seems like the coaching, that's a newer area. What drove you to get into that field?

Steve Schlafman (2:57)

Yeah, it's a great question. So I have been an investor for about eight years. It's actually longer if you include a stint that I had with the Kraft Group. They own and operate the New England Patriots up in Boston.

And about three years ago, I dabbled working with a coach. And then my wife decided, my wife is the CEO and co-founder of a company called The Sill to direct a consumer brand for houseplants.

And she started working with a coach and it just really transformed her business. And maybe about two years ago, I went to her and I said, look, I know I'm doing the investing thing and I'm on this track.

But I think I want to be a coach and she's like, you're way too young to be a coach. I know you'd be great at it and in a lot of ways you have a lot of the same tendencies and mannerisms of a coach but do that when you retire. And then about a year ago when I was leaving RRE Ventures where I was a principal and an investor, I decided to leave and go on a journey which has basically taken the last 12 months and I knew I was going to have some time off to explore new avenues and for a while I had no clue what I was going to do and then maybe four months into it I started coming up with a concept where I thought I was going to be an entrepreneur and go build my own firm and combine that with a leadership academy. So kind of marrying a seed fund with a leadership institute and coaching was sort of a natural component of that and as part of that idea I felt that it would be really critical for me to go and get certified as a coach. But this has been a pretty long path, two to three years. I also would say that that's that's important to note is that a number of my friends are founders that have worked with and have worked with coaches and have just gotten so much value from it. And for me, I always felt that even though I was taking board seats of companies, I always felt that I would show up more as like the advisor mentor coach rather than the institutional investor that shows up to board meetings. And I just I think my demeanor is more towards like, okay, how can we problem solve, remove all the stuff that's in our way as opposed to enforcing my insecurities and my own idiosyncrasies on founders in the boardroom.