After over twenty five years of leading startups, Armistead Whitney is ready to write his next chapter inside venture capital.
Whitney was just named as a Venture Partner at Circadian Ventures, an Atlanta-based early-stage firm run by founding partner Mike Dowdle.
While moving into venture capital was not necessarily a goal for Whitney, he told Hypepotamus that he feels working as a venture partner gives him a chance to leverage the skills he’s built up as startup CEO and founder.
“Many early stage investors come from a pure financial background, which is important to have in the boardroom, but if it’s not equally balanced with real operating experience at the same table, business decisions inevitably get made from a pure financial lens,” Whitney told Hypepotamus. “Many PE firms actually do a great job in providing an on-demand team of operators who can parachute in and help quickly solve specific challenges and opportunities in collaboration with the founder. Early stage venture investors rarely provide this value to their portfolio companies and I think they should. I saw this gap consistently in my career and recently realized I have an opportunity to help other passionate founders be more successful in the very early stages.”
Most recently, Whitney served as founder and CEO of cybersecurity management and compliance SaaS Apptega. The startup, which was founded in 2018, was acquired by private equity firm Mainsail Partners in March 2022.
Get To Know Circadian Ventures
Circadian Ventures is focused on investing in experienced entrepreneurs across B2B software. Circadian was Apptega’s lead investor in its seed round. Hypepotamus readers will be familiar with other local startups in Circadian’s portfolio, including KetteQ (Atlanta), Chattr (Tampa), Cogniti (Atlanta), Cloud Range (Nashville), Cloverly (Atlanta), Rent Ready (Charlotte), and Voxie (Atlanta).
While most of their investments are in the Southeast, the firm’s portfolio also includes businesses from across the country, founding partner Mike Dowdle told Hypepotamus.
“Mike is a former operator and was willing to really roll up his sleeves with me to make the business successful – which we did,” Whitney added. “Neither of us played the ‘hide the monkey’ game in the founder/investor relationship. Three of Circadian’s core values are integrity, transparency and positivity. Our partnership absolutely followed these for over 4 years through every challenge and victory we experienced together. These values are really important to me and are a big reason why I’m thrilled to join the Circadian team.”
Moving forward, Whitney said he is particularly interested in looking at how AI changes the B2B software world.
“As the infrastructure for AI continues to be built out over the next couple of years, I believe we’ll start seeing a completely new class of first-mover B2B software companies taking advantage of it. A lot of legacy companies and industries will struggle to innovate with AI fast enough. They’re not agile enough – but start-ups are – and I think they’ll be capital efficient doing it. That will open up significant M&A opportunities in a few years for vertical SaaS businesses in virtually every industry. These companies won’t need a unicorn-or-bust mentality or west coast VCs to bring really high returns. The key is picking the right ones!”
