Jim Curry
Co-Founder and CEO, BuildGroup. On 1 show, 1 appearance. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
investorexecutivefounderoperatorbuildgroup.com ↗
Jim Curry is the co-founder and CEO of BuildGroup, an investment firm backing early-growth SaaS and AI-enabled software companies. He previously served as an executive at Rackspace and co-founded the open-source cloud platform OpenStack.
1shows
1appearances
16statements
1resolved
0supported
1contradicted
0%fully supported
Everything Jim Curry said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Curry: Build Group backed Casetext when consensus viewed legal tech as dead
“One of our bigger successes, we had a company called Case Text which was in the legal space, which, you know, when I invested in that five years ago, I remember everyone saying, What are you doing? Legal tech's kind of a dead hole. And this was even different …”
Curry: Traditional investors optimize entry and exit, not operations in between
“I think investors are really good at optimizing the entry and the terms and the exit, but not necessarily great in between.”
Curry: Co-CEO leadership models rarely succeed
“I do not believe in co-CEOs. I think that is a really difficult thing to make work. I think in the end, you really need to have one person in charge.”
Curry: VCs evaluating founders on "coachability" is offensive
“I would hear VCs refer to whether founders are coachable or not. I found that kind of offensive because I viewed this as a joint journey in that to me, the question is, are we going to work well together and make each other better through our engagement or not…”
Curry: Build Group rejects VC power law for concentrated portfolio support
“As I tell founders, I go, my portfolio is concentrated enough. I don't want zero. I need something that works. And I actually care and I want this thing to be successful.”
Curry: Fully remote work setups definitively harm company culture
“There are benefits to being remote. So I won't knock all those down, but culture definitely takes a hit. Zero doubt about that. Humans need to be together to establish culture.”
Curry: Having a 20-year vision maximizes exit value even for short-term sales
“My big belief is that whether you're intending to sell in two years or 20, you're best served by having a long-term plan and strategy because that, even if you don't deliver on it, having the vision for it will help to create an excellent outcome for you if yo…”
Curry: Operating plans and budgets must derive from a concise written strategy
“The number one thing that I think we do, right, that, that really helps companies is we help them define their strategy every year. And I tell them, don't have to do a lot of work on this. It can be a one to five page document, but write your strategy down. Yo…”
Curry: Interconnected industries generate more valuable data for software applications
“I do think that the more players you see in an industry, the more those players have to work together, the more you're going to tend to find data. Because when you have partners, you're sharing data which means you probably have applications that are generatin…”
Curry: Most private cloud deployments worldwide run on OpenStack
“If you run a private cloud deployment today in the world, it's probably running on OpenStack.”
Curry: Losing outside capital once ends an investor's career
“One lesson you learned in this industry is you can lose your own money as many times, as much time as you want. You can lose other people's money one time and you're done.”
Curry: Every company Build Group backs has major GTM issues requiring adjustment
“That's not a hundred percent true, but you know, I would tell people every single company I've invested in has had some major go to market issue that needed adjusting.”
Curry: Build Group Will Not Invest in Companies with Busted Products
“But what is really hard to fix is product. And what I won't do is get in a situation where a product is busted.”
Curry: Build Group raised $330M permanent capital first fund
“So the first fund we raised, three hundred thirty million dollars
It's structured as a permanent fund, which essentially means we can hold investments for as long as they want to go.”
Curry: Build Group targets early-growth companies with $3M to $10M ARR
“We invest the early growth stage. So these are companies that are, call it three to five million ARR on the low end, ten million on the high end.”
Curry: Build Group uses AI to identify bottlenecks in its internal diligence process
“We, we're doing it ourselves. I, we, like every other firm, we're figuring out how to use AI to really work top of the funnel, ingest, extract data move the analysis, but I'm also using it to analyze our investment process. Where are we having gaps? Where is i…”
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Jim's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 INNOVATORS & INVESTORSLEDGER | Co-Founder and CEO, BuildGroup | 1 | 16 | 0% 0/1 | full record on Innovators & Investors → |