Michael Palank, General Partner MaC Venture Capital
Michael Palank has been General Partner at MaC Venture Capital since its inception in January 2019. At MaC, Michael focuses on seed-stage consumer and enterprise startup investing across a number of sectors. Prior, he was General Partner at M Ventures, a Los Angeles and Bay Area based early-stage venture fund. Michael was a member of the founding team of MACROMedia, a disruptive media company founded by Charles D. King and focused on the multicultural market where he led digital strategy and operations. Michael has six and a half years experience working both inside and alongside early-stage startups in the media and technology sector. He ran business development and became GM of TopFloor, a venture-backed e-commerce startup formed out of technology studio Science. Additionally, Michael has consulted with over two dozen startups aiding in business model development, financial modeling and early-stage fundraising strategy. Michael worked closely with LA-based media and events company BeautyCon on their initial seed round which included investments from Hearst, Raptor Group, CAA, Maker Studios (now with Disney) and Fullscreen (now with AT&T). Michael entered the LA tech ecosystem in 2012 as a new business consultant for Amplify, one of LA’s top incubators turned early-stage venture capital firms.
Marlon Nichols CoFounding Managing Partner MaC Venture Capital
Marlon Nichols is the co-founder and managing general partner of MaC Venture Capital, a leading seed-stage firm renowned for backing visionary founders who redefine industries. Under his leadership, MaC has grown into one of North America’s largest seed-stage venture firms, surpassing $600 million in assets under management (AUM). In October 2024, the firm announced the closing of its third fund ($150 million), further solidifying its influence in the early-stage investment landscape. Marlon’s portfolio includes industry-defining companies such as Airspace, Blavity, FINESSE, Gimlet Media, MongoDB, Pipe, Purestream, Thrive Market, and Shekel Mobility, among others. His keen eye for transformative opportunities has earned him widespread recognition, including consecutive placements on Los Angeles Business Journal’s LA500 (2022–2024) and Business Insider’s Seed 100 (Top Early-Stage Investors) for three years. Additionally, he ranks 25th on the Kauffman Fellows Fund Returners Index and has been featured in PitchBook’s 25 Black Founders and VCs to Watch for six years. His expertise is frequently sought by top media outlets such as Axios, CNBC, Fortune, and more.A passionate advocate for diversity and inclusion, Marlon serves on the board of Kauffman Fellows, working to expand representation for underrepresented minorities in venture capital. With a unique blend of technology acumen and leadership principles shaped by his athletic background, he actively mentors CEOs, fosters strategic partnerships, and helps founders scale their businesses into market leaders.
Investment Focus
Marlon: There are a number of areas that I am focused on at MaC. Obviously, like most other folks, AI is an important technology. And so we’re looking at AI across a number of industries. Focused on physical things blended with software as that’s another key area for us. Energy, again, on the back end of AI and all the compute power necessary for that. And then the energy associated with it, I think energy is going to be increasingly important, particularly alternative energy sources and software to manage those things. So those are the areas where I’ve been spending most of my time that are kind of newer areas. But also the places where I’ve spent time traditionally have been around FinTech and healthcare. And I think that will continue as well. We’ve done a few of those deals already this year.
Mike: Happy to give my perspective on that. I think you know the home run investments and in VC are ones where you can obviously make a lot of money for your investors. First and foremost, that’s what we’re trying to do is return a lot of money to our investors who are foundations and endowments, fund-to-funds, pension funds. We take that very seriously about wanting to make them a lot of money. But if on top of that, you can also back companies that will have a positive impact on the world,
on communities that maybe get less attention from startups as that kind of makes it a win-win. And I’ve been focused on broadly the area of hard tech because I see a lot of opportunities to achieve both those objectives inside of hard tech. Not that it’s not in Health Tech and FinTech.
There are ways to really benefit the world in certain demographics of people and in those segments as well. But in hard tech, I see opportunities to make a lot of money as well as drive meaningful change in the world. At Mac, periodically we publish these reports that we call the state of technology and culture, and it’s where we sort of do a deep dive into a particular sector and why we’re excited about it, some of the macro trends inside that sector and and where we’re specifically interested. And we’ve done these around gaming, around Space, and around Africa. And the latest one that we published a couple of weeks ago was around hard tech. It’s called the return to hard tech.
And I think when we started fundraising for our funds and had been investing in some hardware companies in the Space sector and the Defense sector we got a lot of side eye from some investors! Wondering ‘Why are you investing in hardware companies aren’t they hard? Aren’t they hard to scale? Aren’t they super capital intensive?’ All these things and and part of the reason for writing this report was to explain why we’ve been investing in hard tech and why we continue to invest in hard tech!
And the core to this thesis is that you look at every major technological revolution of the last hundred years, whether it’s the industrial revolutions, the nuclear age, the space age, the personal computer, the mobile revolution, now the AI revolution? What’s been the through line of all these revolutions that have really reshaped business and society in major ways? It is hardware. that is at the center of all these revolutions. Companies that have built hardware!
And on top of that, software businesses have been built. But the through line is hardware! And I think the roots of Silicon Valley are definitely intertwined with hardware. Software is a relatively newer phenomenon that came up in the 70s and 80s. But it’s nice to be returning back!
that the trader is building a new semiconductor company and all the big companies from the early era of Silicon Valley from Genentech to Intel to Sun. All these companies had hardware at their core. And then of course, in the eighties and nineties, two thousands, we really shifted over to software, in part for good reason.
And now I think hard tech is having a resurgence in large part for some of the reasons Marlon mentioned. The rise of AI, the energy that’s required. to power AI, the electrification of the world, the move to electric vehicles, electrification in general, our power demands are off the charts. And so we need better ways to generate power. And that originates in hard tech.
Personal Perspectives on how to Stay Sharp as Investors in today’s VC Climate
Marlon: For me, it’s just staying curious so reading lot, listening to what my peers are saying, and staying close to younger people. We’re getting older now, so we’re not the new kids on the block anymore! So listening to what they’re into, where their interests lie and then, as Mike said, we know. Periodically, we do these reviews where we look at different sectors and try to identify white space there. So, it’s really just about staying curious and surrounding ourselves with smart people that have different perspectives than ours. Yeah, easier in Silicon Valley yes, but, Mike and I, we are both based in LA. And so we believe there’s a lot going on, in terms of technology and perspectives throughout the world. So we try not to limit ourselves to bubbles and really get out and build relationships and develop relationships with folks around the globe. Mike mentioned that we have an Africa strategy, right? So in order to be successful there, it’s important for us to understand the needs of the citizens of that continent, the businesses on that continent. And by understanding what resources are available and not available, you can identify the white space and go after it.
Mike: Yeah, well, I think Marlon nailed it around the curiosity aspect. I think the best VCs have this insatiable curiosity! And I think I’m guilty of that, where knowledge acquisition is almost as important as breathing, where I just feel I need to consume as much information as I possibly can! Not even because it’s great for business, it’s because this is who I am! I just love understanding how systems work, how things work, how industries work, how companies work, how people work!
And just that the constant pursuit of that knowledge is again, almost as important to me as breathing. And so I think that that helps having this insatiable curiosity, which drives you to read as much as you can. I wake up to an inbox of 15 different industry focused newsletters, whether it’s space, defense, plastic injection, molding, you name it, some are broad and some are specific. But I’m just constantly reading and staying up to date on trends, reading white papers, and reading industry reports.
But I think mostly it comes from talking to people. And you know for us, the evolution into hard tech and how our focus has burned out over time really came from just backing great entrepreneurs, being involved with their companies, seeing the challenges that they’re facing and going out in search of people building solutions for your existing portfolio companies.
Through that, you learn a lot about new industries, new companies. We did due diligence and ended up investing in a nuclear fuels company that was serving the fission industry. And to me, the process of doing diligence for that company, Hexium, really opened my eyes to not just the nuclear fission and fusion industries, but just the increasing energy demands in general. And how we’re not able to meet them and how the most successful, wealthiest companies in countries throughout history have been those that have been energy rich and been able to really just maximize their energy production. And so this was all uncovered for me through diligence for this particular company. And, from there on out, it’s right, I need to do more in the energy space. And so it was, you know, diligence in this company, getting involved with this company, talking to the founders on a regular basis that informed me of the opportunity in energy. Its a continual learning curve.
Current Challenges with Constantly Changing Regulation & Effect on Investing & Startups
Mike: We’re in an interesting time. I think there’s advantages and disadvantages to the changing political regulatory landscape which our companies and ourselves are having to navigate. On the positive side, it seems this particular administration seems to be supportive of nuclear energy and energy in general, with some exceptions. And there seems to be an acceptance and acknowledgement that national security is directly tied to energy security. So that’s been great for a lot of our companies and companies in the space, in general.
The tariffs, good or bad, have been a challenge for our companies and navigating that and the ever-changing tariff landscape whilst trying to predict what’s coming next, because that has a real bottom line impact on a lot of our companies that are sourcing things from outside the United States There are many of them and so it’s it’s hard to predict and it does cause some chaos inside of our companies. Maybe that’s a disadvantage. Arguably it could also be an advantage for our company and our country, but for our companies it seems to present a challenge.
Defense was a bad word in the VC and startup landscape ten years ago, five years ago, but I think it’s been acknowledged in the geopolitical state of the world that we need more deterrence to deter some of our adversaries from taking bad actions. The defense budget is as large as it’s ever been. Again, some people think that’s terrible. Some people think it’s great, but certainly for startups building in the defense realm, it’s a great thing. I would argue that we need more innovation from the startup ecosystem working on defense solutions. It can’t all be government driven. I think the best solutions are going to be invented by startups, by commercial companies. Anduril is a great example of that and certainly that trend is a positive thing for companies building in that space. But it can also be challenging.
Marlon: I think you hit the nail on the head there in terms of diversification. It is always a winning strategy. For our companies that do have to build physical things, what it’s forced them to do is to diversify their supply and manufacturing chains. Oftentimes, what I’ve seen and in our portfolio is it’s worked its way to them finding more cost-effective ways to build what they need to to build, which is better for the bottom line.
So, that’s not something that—the chaotic nature of it, the the variable nature of it, the uncertainty that goes along with what we’re seeing here is not something you want to necessarily be a part of or have to navigate around. But the high quality founders, the best founders that we work with will embrace the challenge and you end up seeing a more diversified platform that yields better results. It hasn’t been terrible for the majority of our companies. Its just forced them to create better policies and processes.
Sometimes it just forces them to do as I was saying, what they knew they had to do, right? Now you just have a forcing function to accelerate that. So we’ve go an example, we have a fashion AI company, and that company definitely took significant steps to diversify their supply chain, which is positively impacted that business in a significant way. And without the forcing functions that we’re seeing right now, they may have held off on doing that for a year or two, which would have adversely impacted the bottom line. So there are some benefits to some of this chaos that we’re seeing.
