Finance alum Nick Candito ’10 has been named to Business Insider’s “The Seed 100: The best early-stage investors” list, released in May.  

He and his fellow backers were celebrated for their knack for recognizing breakout founders, emerging ideas, and innovative products that will grow to be the “next big thing.”  

The list is built via data analysis that considers more than 20 investor portfolio attributes, such as reaching Series B+ follow-up funding rounds and performing well in initial public offerings most commonly listed on the Nasdaq.  

There’s an obsessive gene that outliers are born with, the three-time exited startup operator cites. He credits his often single-mindedness as the reason for his success in transitioning from a scrappy entrepreneur to a now-respected venture capitalist. Across all his investments, Nick is drawn to people even more than the products that inevitably evolve over time.  

“With lots of these founders, I’m hoping they’ll build another two to three companies that I can invest in over the next several decades,” says the 36-year-old, who lives in Austin, Texas, with his wife, Trish, and three daughters, Charlotte, Camila, and Campbell. “I tend to like the folks who have a chip on their shoulder and some kind of additional motivation. They have a burning desire. They don’t know how to fail.”  

After launching his career building two startups in the Boston area, Candito headed west to Silicon Valley. There, he joined RelateIQ, an intelligent CRM startup that sold to Salesforce in 2014 for more than $390 million. Next was founding and leading the cloud-based operations solution startup Progressly, which Box acquired in 2018. He’s been part of more than 200 private investments since 2014. 

Candito is currently co-founder and managing partner of San Franciso-based Angel Collective Opportunity Fund (known as ACOF), a platform for first-time venture capital fund managers to invest directly into breakout portfolio companies. He also operates as an advisor to the early-stage companies he believes in, offering everything from strategy to recruiting and fundraising.  

His goal is simple: to help other founders find success. As he says, “If we get a few things right, sometimes there is an opportunity to build a generational company” – like his mentor David M. Beirne ’85 was able to do with eBay and others as part of Benchmark Capital. 

“When I talk to founders I tell them, ‘I was an OK founder and CEO. If I do my job as an investor, you’ll be a lot better than I was,’” he says. “There’s no ego in my approach. I’m trying to help us win. In having seen around the corners, hopefully, I can save them from a rough day or two they will inevitably face as a founder.” 

Seed-stage investing carries the highest risk in venture capital, but as Candito has proven, the upside can bring huge returns on relatively small investments.  

Select personal and fund investments can tracked below: