Meet The Venture Capitalist Who Treats Cultural Shifts Like Market Data

0:00Everything in life is a trade-off. Are you willing to make that trade-off? Are you willing to take that risk? One individual had to constantly ask himself that question, and it led to him leaving a cushy job at Intel and starting his own investment firm. In a minute, we'll be diving into the venture capital world with Mr. Marlon Nichols. You're in the Enterprise Zone at the NASDAQ.

0:25Hello everyone, it's Jabari Young, senior writer at Forbes, the United Enterprise Zone at the NASDAQ Market Site. And I have a special guest. His name is Mr. Marlon Nichols. He's the co-founder and managing partner at Mac Venture Capital. And this is a venture capital firm that invests in seed stage companies, prioritizing in emerging sectors. And he has more than$500 million in assets under management. He's also a Forrest BLK 50 money master. Marlon, thank you so much for the time, man. I appreciate it. Looking nice and good, as always, in the suits and the pink polka dots. I appreciate you. Yeah, man.

0:56Absolutely. It's not your first time at the Nasdaq, is it? I think it actually is my first time at the Nasdaq. Oh, my God. And a seasoned investor like yourself, have you never gotten to the Nasdaq? I've never come. Well, welcome, man. I definitely love to have you. You want to be back, I'm sure. I'm sure. Some companies going public that you have in your portfolio. But before we talk business, man, how's the family? How's everything? Everyone's great. Nice. Everyone's great, yeah. Nice. Any kids? Yeah, I have two daughters. You have two daughters.

1:17Marlon Nichols: Oh, you're a girl dad like me. What's the secret? You know, teach them all the tricks. Yeah, all the tricks that we used to do. Exactly, exactly. Well, they say if you're a girl dad for the first time, that means you were a heartbreaker when you were moving around. Oh, God, man. I like to say that, though. When you're a girl dad, that means that the good heavens above, they know how to take care of women. You know how to take care of the girls. But I love it. But how old are they? 17 and 11. 17 and 11. Okay, so mine's 13. So what is it like dealing with a teenage girl? Because she just crossed that 13 mark.

1:47I'm starting to see the eye rolls, man. I'm starting to see the different changes. How do you deal with a teenager? You know, dad doesn't get a lot of the grief, actually. Right? You're always just dad. So it's smooth. And I've always tried to set it up as like, you know, hey, I'm the person that you can come to no matter what. I may be upset about it. We'll deal with it. And then I can be upset about it afterwards. Right. But I got to be that first call. I got to be the person that you feel comfortable speaking with. And it just takes time to build that level of relationship. Yeah. Well, you teach me, man, because I'm like the I rules.

2:19You be like, what did I do wrong? Of course you follow the stock market, man. You have to. You're an investor, right? A little bit. Yeah, a little bit here and there. My stuff is more on the private side, right? Because I'm laser focused on venture capital and specifically seed stage venture capital. So public markets are going to do what they do. And, you know, we look at it, you know, at a cursory level or what have you. I'm not putting a lot of stock and paying a lot of attention to it. Well, what type of investor are you when you do pay attention to it? What type of, aggressive, passive? How are you when you do pay attention to public markets?

2:52I'm fortunate to have a wealth manager who manages those types of my public investments for me. So I'm not like doing day trading or focusing on a specific stock or anything like that. It's more general. Like how does this fit into my overall portfolio? because at some point I'm going to stop working. That's right. And I need that money to work for me. That's right. Absolutely. So if he does a bad job, you just call him. You're fired. I'm going to go find somebody to make me some money. Right. I love that, man. Listen, here we are in 2026. And, you know, I was just at the dollar store. I still shop at the dollar store.

3:26Right. I'm frugal. But I saw Christmas, you know, decorations up. And so, you know, we're at the time of the year where it's ready to end. Oh, yeah. Heading into the next year, man. But listen, we all need that music. Right. That soundtrack to 2026. What's been the music that's been keeping Marlon Nichols inspired as an investor? I'm general. You know, I mentioned one of my daughters. She's 17. And she just started at the Berklee College of Music. Okay. And so she's been putting me on to a lot of different types of things. She's into alternative pop, R &B, a little bit of rap. You know, so I see a little bit of that.

3:58But I'm old school, man. You know, in terms of like hip hop, I'm Jay-Z. You know, I'm Jada Kiss. You know, those are my guys, right? So you know, what do you call it? Not Blueprint. Everyone says Blueprint is the number one. Yeah. Reasonable Doubt. That was my thing. That's classic right there. That was my thing. Yeah, man. Bring it on for me, man. Sauce Money, man. When him was on J, man. Bring it on. That's my favorite track from Reasonable Doubt. I love that album so much, man. Love it. Yeah. Late 90s hip hop, early 2000s. That was a whole, that was an era. Yeah, man. Yeah. Yeah, baggy jeans, all that, man.

4:34Fubu's Rockins, Jabot jeans, you know, all of that, man. I wore all of that. Of course, you had to. But the music was real. The music was real. It spoke to you. You know, if you grew up in a certain place, you can hear and understand exactly what they were talking about. It resonated, you know? You walk into a third grade class, Marlon. And, you know, I think these days, you know, third graders may know what Venture Capital is, but let's say that they didn't. And they say, well, what do you do, Marlon? How do you explain your job to these group of third graders? What I would say to them is I help people fulfill their dreams.

5:07And the way I do that is by providing them with capital or I'm talking third graders. I'm providing them with money so they can start the business that they want to start. And then along the way, I help them with advice. I introduce them to other businesses. I introduce them to other people that can help them to grow this business. And then one day that business is going to become so successful that they're going to have what I call a liquidity event, which means that they're going to sell that business in some way. Right. And when they sell that business, just like if you have a lemonade stand and you sell that lemonade, you get your five dollars.

5:45Right. So now that we have the five dollars, the money that I've invested in them, I've become partial owner of that business. Right. So your lemonade stand is worth five dollars. And, you know, maybe I get a dollar out of that at the end of it for putting in 50 cents. Right. That's exactly what I what I do. I help people see their dreams, go after their dreams, and then we celebrate when they do. That's perfect segue, man. Let's get an update on Mac Venture Capital. Again, a venture capital firm that invests in early stage startups. Right. Given the seed money, more than 500 million assets under management.

6:22Investors include Fairview Capital, Goldman Sachs, Teachers Retirement, System of the State of Illinois, as well as the University of Michigan. AUM update, still over 500? You're approaching 600? Over 600. Over 600 now? Okay. That happened this year? Because I remember in February, I reported it was like 517 at that time. You know, assets and the management fluctuate, right? You know, some companies are going to appreciate in value in the portfolio. Some companies are going to go out of business. Some companies are going to depreciate, right? So it just ebbs and flows. Ebbs and flows. Yeah. Yeah, but around 600 now.

6:51Or over 600. Above 600. Okay, okay. How much does the company use to deploy when you're writing checks? Is it$3 or$5 million range? Yeah. We primarily invest at the seed stage, right? And at the seed stage, you can look at our max check is around$5 million. $5 million, okay. But we also write some pre-seed checks. And what pre-seed deals look like, they're a little bit less baked in terms of traction than the seed deals. But the founders are phenomenal. and the space that they're building in is also a space that we care a lot about. And so we want to be able to do something and get some skin in the game and watch it and then play at a more intense level down the road.

7:32And so those checks are half a million to about a million. Yeah. Well, you look at the overall thesis of MAG Venture Capital. Your cultural investing is what you said previously in years when you first started this firm, identifying emerging behavioral trends, right? Behaviors that become the social norms. These are the type of founders and companies that you look for. Take me inside of that strategy, that thesis a little bit. What do you find in? Yeah. So essentially what we're doing is we're searching for second order effects that come about as a result of big changes in technology, big changes in regulation, and as you said, big changes in human behavior, right?

8:08So one example I can give you today is everyone's all hyped about AI, right? And so what does that mean? What does the proliferation of AI mean for different aspects of our lives? What does it mean for energy consumption, for instance? We know that it's going to put a major strain on the grid. What does it mean for alternative energy sources? We know that that means that there's going to need to be a lot more sources of energy. Yeah. What does it mean for certain types of jobs? Who are going to be looking displaced? What new ones are going to emerge? And so we try to look at all those things and identify white space.

8:55Where's a place that we need to invest because AI is going to continue to be a thing? So where can we invest that's going to support the proliferation of AI? And I'll give you some history, right? So think of early 2000s, right? And... During the dot-com bubble? Yeah. Or just that during and then just after, right? You had a lot of dot-com companies fail, right? And you got to ask yourself, why did they fail, right? Because you're talking about a company that needs to run on the internet, but less than 50 % of households had broadband. So who are you selling to and how are they going to use your product, right?

9:34So fast forward a little bit, you have Google, one of the wealthiest companies in the world, right? They were born right around that time, and they benefited from broadband surpassing 50 % of the household. Fast forward from there, go to the 2010s, right? Now you're thinking of companies like Uber and Lyft and Spotify, right? All these mobile first kind of companies, right? And you got to think, what enabled them to go forward? It was the Apple App Store. It was 4G. It was LTE. Without those, these companies don't exist. So we think of AI in the same way. What's needed for AI to truly reach its potential?

10:19Energy. There's a lot of penetration amongst consumers today, but there's not a great amount of penetration in the enterprise. And so that comes down to distribution. It also comes down to infrastructure. So we're looking at a lot of plays around distribution and infrastructure security that will enable AI to truly meet its potential and really see 80%, 90 % penetration within the enterprise. Yeah. And you sound like a previous investor I was talking to, he's going all in on copper, because he says, hey, you won't need AI, right? Copper is one of the main ingredients that you need as you scale out.

10:54But one of the things you said on a previous podcast, AI haven't even started to reason yet. So you think there's some companies that are very undervalued right now because we haven't even gotten to that point yet. But you like to release the cultural shifts, those reports. And you have recently come out the State of Technology and Culture Report where you're kind of looking at the physical energy systems, as you said, and where it's headed. I believe you said it at 35 million across 12 companies that you guys have already invested in. And diving to that report, what did you guys learn about where we are currently and also America's physical energy system?

11:28Like, where is it at right now? If you had to describe it in one word and dive into that report a little bit. Yeah, I think the main thing, the main takeaway that I got from the report while we were doing the research is that for the first time, there's demand that's that's that's not being driven by the technology. Right. So I'll explain. So, you know, you think about coal. Coal got us like the railroads, right? So it changed transportation a little bit, right? Then you got oil, right? Oil gave us another form of transportation. Then you got electricity. And then we saw the birth of the modern home, right?

12:06So the changes in energy or the technological shifts in energy were creating these next things. Today, what we're seeing is that there's a demand for more energy, and that's driving what the technological shifts are going to be. So there's something like I think 2 ,600 gigawatts of energy just sitting to be deployed. That's more than the grid today. And so what that tells me is that we're going to need alternative energy sources. We're going to need more solar. We're going to need batteries. We're going to need nuclear. We're going to need, like, other things, right? And it's going to have to sit alongside the grid that we have today because we can't wait 12 years to rebuild the grid or repair the grid or expand the grid, right?

13:03It has to happen today. And so that's the main thing that I've found is that alternative energy is where we are today. it's where we're going to have to continue to go. Yeah. How are you facing the political ideology change, right? Because under the Biden administration, they were all in on clean energy. Here we are under the Trump administration, not so much so, right? How are you facing those political headwinds when you're talking about investing in these new clean energy sources? Yeah. So I'd say this is, you know, energy investing 2.0, if you would, right? The first time around, it was around the credits, right?

13:38So buying a car, putting a solar panel in your house. Right. What benefit do I get? What kind of discount do I get for installing this thing? Right. We're at a different point now. Like the demand is there. Yeah. Right. And so the demand is what's driving the need for these alternative energy sources. So I don't think, you know, obviously, you know, politics and regulation are always going to play a part in any kind of big business. But that's not what's driving the interest this time. And so because of that, because you have general and true demand, I think this thing is here to stay. Is there a company that you're looking at that, you know, has impressed you, Seed still, in that Seed early stage, that has potential when it comes to clean energy sources?

14:18And if so, who are they? Yeah. I'll tell you about three of our more recent investments in the energy space, right? One is called Blue Core, Blue Core Energy. They're in Long Beach. And what they're doing is using 70-year-old nuclear technology, right, that the Navy's been using for 70 years. And what they've done is basically shrunk the size of the reactors and put them on a floating barge. And now they've actually purchased the fuel, the uranium, to actually now start to create the energy, get the critical catalyst and all that stuff. But think of this. Four small nuclear reactors can power something like 15 ,000 homes and take care of the needs of everything on a port.

15:02Today, a port, they're being run by gas generators and things like that. There's not enough energy to provide for them. And then you think about things like data centers and the pushback that we're seeing from communities about data centers because people aren't stupid. It's like you want to put this massive entity here that's going to pull on our grid. It's going to drive up our cost of energy. And depending on what type of energy you're using, you might be adding pollution, right? So a company like BlueCore can be a great solution to that. First of all, the power is coming offshore. It's on a barge.

15:47Second of all, it's clean, right? It not only produces clean energy, but it cleans the water around it. So now you can drink the water that's in Long Beach's port next to the barge. So you're solving a lot of challenges. And we're going to need these data centers. They're going to come. Absolutely. So we have to find ways to make that happen. Another company, Jonta Power. And so what they're doing is they're revolutionizing solar. All right. So to this point or before them, you needed a good amount of real estate in order to power a facility using solar. What Johnson's done is they built vertical towers that allow you to pull in energy for longer periods throughout the day.

16:39And you can distribute energy four times the rate that you would from a typical solar with far less land. So now airports, think cell phone towers, places where solar was not viable before, it is viable now. And then you add on to that, they have an AI platform that not only allows you to control their solar solution, but all of the other alternative energy solutions that make up your whole package. So those are a couple of companies. I said I was going to do three, but I'll give you those two. Well, I mean, listen, another area that you guys are going all in on at M-MAC Venture Capital is in Africa.

17:22It's so funny. I was talking to a friend of mine today, and I found out she moved to Africa, moved to Ghana from the U.S. And, you know, I say, hey, what are some of the misconceptions that maybe people have over here? It's more advanced than people think, right? These countries over here and this continent is more advanced than what people think. And you have firsthand knowledge. You have about 20 million or so that you've already deployed in African companies. Kenya and Nigeria are two of your main focuses, the countries that you're looking at. Why are those countries? What's standing out over in Africa?

17:50There are five major markets, right? I hope I remember them all right now. But you got Egypt, you got Nigeria, you got South Africa, you got Kenya, and I'm missing one. So we looked at it from that standpoint, right? Which of these markets are big enough to sustain or to enable or take in venture-type funding and generate venture-type returns. It needs to be a big market all on its own, right? Hopefully a lot of these solutions become pan-African solutions, right? But to start, you're going to operate in a country, and we want to make sure that the size of the opportunity can generate the size outcome that we need for venture capital dollars.

18:31So that's how we ended up with Kenya and Nigeria to start. We're now also doing, we have our first investment in Senegal, our first kind of francophone Africa investment. But it all comes down to relationships, man, to be honest with you. You can't go, like I live in LA. I'm not going to walk around the corner or take a two-hour flight and sit with a founder. So I need to know that I'm getting into this deal with another venture firm or another investor or ecosystem player that I can trust. and I know they're going to be on the ground and do the hard, you know, heavy lifting, things that are, you know, relevant to the location, right?

19:15I can advise a company on, you know, the general aspects of business, right? I can advise a company, you know, on all the things I've seen that you need to do to grow a business, right? I can't advise a company sitting in Lagos what their consumers want or need, because that's not my expertise. I don't live there. So I need to make sure I have those partners. So we develop relationships with other venture firms, ecosystem players, banks, et cetera. And those are the people that we learn about these opportunities from and go into these opportunities with. So I think that's a big thing. But yes, it's not as kind of backwards as a lot of people think, right?

19:59It's a mobile forward, mobile first, I should say. Big FinTech over there too. Huge FinTechs, right, that have done really well. They have challenges that are different from the challenges that we've seen in the U.S. One example, for instance, everyone in the U.S. can get a credit card, right? You're on college campuses and everyone's got a little booth. Come sign up for this credit card. And then the Monster Energy trucks and Red Bull right across the street. All of that, right? All of that. You don't see that particularly in Nigeria. Revolving credit for consumers is hard to come by. It's expensive, and it usually needs to be collateralized against a physical asset, like a home or something like that.

20:44And a lot of folks aren't going to own homes. A lot of them are renting. So we invest in a company called Carrot Credit, for instance. Right? Which is another thing that we saw that we're seeing too is the younger population, they're holding more crypto assets. They have, you know, they have, you know, public equity books that they're holding. So what Carrot is allowing these people to do is to borrow against that asset. Yeah. Right? And that's not something that's going to change. Right? So now they're introduced in this concept of credit card revolving credit for consumers, but backed by assets of value that they can continuously monitor to make sure that they don't lose capital on that loan.

21:30Yeah. With all these geopolitical issues that we're facing right now, Middle East, the war, Europe going through what they're going through with the energy crisis, a lot of people may look over to Africa and the U.S. has its own conflicts with them and Africa and the continent. But when When you go over there, what does Marlon Nichols see? What do you see over there that maybe the opportunities are there? We just said a whole bunch of companies and then FinTech, but what aren't people paying attention to over on that continent? I think that we talked about energy, right? I mean, there's some...

22:00When I'm in Lagos and I go once a year, I'm actually going next week. Can I go? No, I'm not planning. We'd love to have you on a trip. I might want to go see Jay in LA. I don't know. But power goes out many times a day. Yeah, power out of zero. Yeah, and they have these backup generators, right? And a lot of these countries are on the right offshore, right? So a company like BlueCore could mean a lot there, right? There's not a lot of real estate in the city to stand up solar towers, right? So a company like Janta could play a part there. And it doesn't have to be those companies. It could be companies that are grown from there.

22:43So I think there's a lot of opportunity. We talk about bytes versus atoms, right? I think there are a lot of opportunities around atoms, around building physical things that can drive the world forward, drive those countries forward. Do you see more venture capital firms headed that way, especially ones that are black run like yourself? You know, it's a mixed bag. There's a lot of late stage capital on the continent. There's starting to be more early stage capital. I wouldn't say a lot of those firms are U.S.-based firms. They're Africa-based firms. So, you know, there's like five firms, C-States firms in Lagos that we partner with all the time.

23:25They share deals with us. Some of them were founded by some of the most successful Vintech founders, right, from Flutterwave, you know, companies like Andela, Paystack. They all have their own venture vehicles now, right? They're considered like the godfathers of tech and companies that took on venture dollars. So all the new founders, they go to them. So they see everything. So we get close to them, in which we have, we get to see everything as well. So you have about$20 million again that you've deployed over there. Is any update on that or is it still around that$20 million mark? We'll invest no more than 10 % of any given fund in kind of our emerging market strategy, which is primarily Africa.

24:09I think in MAC Fund 1, it might have been 7%. Fund 2 is like 6.6%. Fund 3, so far, we're still investing out of Fund 3. I think it's somewhere around 3.64%. And when you're talking to, you know, against amongst your peers in the VC world, and you may say, hey, got this company over in Africa. This is happening in Africa. You still may get some, I'm not going over there. Like, what is the reaction? What is that reaction? Like, what do you tell them? Like, you should go over there. You don't know what you don't know. Yeah. Right? And there are a lot of companies being formed in the U.S., right? Is it worth the headache for them to go over there, right?

24:50But the way I look at it, we have another company, Shekel Mobility, right? We invested$1.3 million into that company, I'd say about four years ago or so. They took that$1.3 million, and they had a little bit more from some other investors, but we were the largest investor. And they've become a profitable company. They've deployed something like 250 ,000 loans with zero principal loss or loss on principal. Right. That company for a company to do that in the U.S., you'd have had to invest a lot more in that. And so these are the kind of stories that I, you know, I try to tell them. But really, you got to go over there.

25:31You got to go over there. You have to experience it. You have to start to, you know, build your community and your network to get comfortable. Yeah. What do you look for in entrepreneurs? I know one of the things you said is you love charismatic founders, people who could bring people together like follow me. Right. You love those type of founders. What do you look for in entrepreneurs? So I think in a founding team, what I found, there are a few things that you cannot get away from. And I've tried, right? Sometimes you fall in love with a deal or you really like this founding team, but they're missing some elements.

26:05And whenever those elements are missing, it's never going to work out. And so the first thing I call it like thoughts to things, right? So you got to have someone on that founding team that has experience with product management. So taking an idea and turn it into a product that delights. You've got to have someone on the team that can sell because you can create the best widget in the world. But if you can't move units, it doesn't matter. You've got the thing that you were referencing, like an attractor. There's a lot of talk these days like, yeah, with AI, you can have a company of one. and you can build a multi-billion dollar company has yet to be seen.

26:48Are you a believer in that theme or philosophy? I think you're always going to need incredible people. Yeah. Right? And history shows us that you need incredible people to build an incredible company. And so you've got to have an attractor, right? Someone's got to be able to attract that major talent, right? That they want to work with you. They want to build this with you. Yeah. Right? And then I talked about sales. Yeah, engineering. Engineering. Engineering is so important. And when I first started my venture career, there were a lot of, call it tech-enabled businesses, right? So the tech wasn't the core aspect of the business.

27:26So you outsource it to someone else to kind of build the tech, right? Because there are no patents there. There are no trade secrets in that part of it. And so I would say all the time back then, well, you don't have to have technical talent to do that. But I've learned that you actually do. Because even if you're outsourcing the building of something, you need to understand internally what is being built. Are they building the right thing? What are the red flags to look for? And because if you don't, you can end up with a significant amount of technical debt. And what I mean by that is you can spend, say, a million dollars, two million dollars out of the five million dollars that you raised to build this technology, and you built the wrong thing.

28:09So now you've got to find that two million dollars from somewhere else that you weren't expecting to actually build the right thing. And if you have someone on that founding team that is technically apt, then you don't run into those problems. Yeah. I've seen founders that are just super headstrong. They have an idea in their head and basically just ignore everything else going on around them. Markets change. Behaviors change. The world changes. And if you're not paying attention to that stuff, you're just building with blinders on. You said that in 2020. Elaborate on that a little bit. Are you still against those headstrong founders?

28:43No, I think you have to be a great founder. You have to have a perspective. Right. And you have to be stubborn to a point, but you can't be blind. If the market around you is changing, your customers are going in a different direction, agentic AI now exists and you're still trying to push forward an old agenda that's not going to work. Well, that's not smart. Right? So there's a level of like brash and, you know, just like hard nose that has to be paired with a level of humility and curiosity. While avoiding that, what you call analysis paralysis. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. What's it like being a black man in venture capital in 2026?

29:28Right? I mean, you know, I've covered venture capital for a while now, particularly looking at founders within, you know, black America. and over the last four years, things have went up, down, and for some it's level because of the ideology shift. People are pairing black people with DEI, right? I mean, that's just a thing. I don't know why, but we're being paired with DEI, but here you are still in a very interesting space within venture capital operating with, you know, again, 600, over 600 million in assets in the management. What's it like for you being a black man navigating this space? I mean, it's not short of its challenges, right?

30:02It's no different than being a black man that's living in the United States. Right? It is what it is. But we made some very conscious decisions early. When we first, when we launched our first MAC fund in 2019, or even before that, when I launched my very first venture firm, Cross Culture Ventures in 2015. Yeah, with Troy Carter. Yeah, with Troy. it. You know, there were a lot of firms that were popping up that were diversity firms, right? They were only going to invest in Black and brown people. And we said, like, but that's not the world, right? There is, I respect and I appreciate, and there is a need for firms that are going to focus on that because there's a gap.

30:50It's like, what, 1 % of venture funding goes to, you know, to black founders. So there is a gap. But for us, the way we looked at it, that's not the way the world looks and it's not the way the world works. And it's not the way that we want the world to work. We want a meritocratic society. We want the best founders building the best companies that are the best qualified to get the dollars and to go off and build this thing and be successful. right? And if we're honest with ourselves, a lot of those founders are going to be black, are going to be brown. And so what we set out to do is to be meritocratic.

31:29We're going to pick the best founders, right? So if you're black, if you're white, if you're a woman, if you're a man, if you are the best person or team that's doing this, we're going to invest in you. And we know ourselves, you know, our team is primarily diverse. And so if we're not going to give people that look like us the benefit of the doubt or the opportunity, then what does that say about how we think about ourselves? Yeah. Right? And so we approach it like that from the beginning. So when, you know, LP stopped investing in diversity funds, they didn't have to stop investing in us, right?

32:08Because we never changed what we were going to do. Yeah. Your mission stays the same. Again, investing in culture, right? And again, culture is kind of identified in, and black and brown people kind of make, you know, the culture that we see today. On another podcast, you also said that it was the worst part of the job is raising money. I know you've changed your philosophy on that a little bit. Will you kind of look at it and say, it's a challenge that you kind of embrace. But again, you know, that times we have to go out and ask people for money, right? Is the challenge maybe worse today than it was a couple of years ago?

32:40I mean, this market is a challenged market, right, in venture, given the lack of liquidity that LPs have seen over the years, right? It's hard to continue. I get some of their perspective, right? It's hard to continue to pour money into something when you're not getting it back out, right? So that can make a kind of a difficult situation for certain LPs. But put that aside, you know, what I've learned over the years is it's a relationship thing, right? So now when I approach fundraising, it's like I'm building a relationship, right? I'm learning pretty quickly, is this a person, is this a group that I want to have a longer term relationship with?

33:23And if it is, then it's kind of fun because I have an opportunity to build that relationship with them from now. And hopefully it turns into, you know, dollars that are coming into our fund. Yeah. Well, what are you like as a leader? Because I'm sure they also want someone who knows how to lead a firm, right? One of the things that you said when you were kind of assembling your group together was the LPs you were talking to, they didn't know before y 'all merged with M Ventures, y 'all haven't had a track record together, right? So y 'all had to go start investing. But today in 2026, what do you like as a leader running this venture capital firm?

33:56Yeah, I try to just set an example, right? I don't ask my team to do anything that I wouldn't do myself. And they can see that. I also try to be as transparent as I can. There are times where you can share some information, times when you can't. But to the extent that I can share why we're doing this thing, or why I believe this, then I'll do it. Office door is always open. Come in, let's have a conversation. And I just try to give them opportunities. Right. And the way that we think about kind of our our junior folks is that we're building the next version of us. Right. So we're thinking about we're far from handing over the reins.

34:43Right. But but we are thinking about what that looks like down the road. And in order to. Succession is already in your head. Yeah. In order to to to make sure that that can happen, they've got to see every aspect of the of the business. So to start, they're involved from the deal sourcing to the diligence to the deal execution to the supporting the portfolio companies. And then some of them have graduated where they're taking the lead in supporting some of our portfolio companies and just reporting into the general partners in terms of what's going on with these companies. So we're building, we recruit the best athletes, best all-around athletes, and then we give them all the skills that they need and all of the exposure that they need to get ready for when it's their turn.

35:28Yeah. Do you do Taco Tuesdays? No. You got to do Taco Tuesdays and you're out there in LA, man. You got to do some Taco Tuesdays, man. We don't do Taco Tuesdays. Yeah, you got to do some Taco Tuesdays, man. But let's take a step back, man. You know, listen, you were born in Jamaica, moved to New York, Mount Vernon around age eight, heavy DP rock from out in Mount Vernon area. What was that like for you being born in Jamaica, growing up there for the first, you know, beginning years and then moving to New York? Man, kids are mean. So I had the strong accent, speak a little bit differently in Jamaica than you do in the U.S.

36:03What we studied in school, same subjects, taught a little bit differently. So that was an adjustment. The weather was an adjustment. It's hot in Jamaica. It gets cold in New York. A lot. Yeah. So he had all those things, but kids are resilient, you know, and I was resilient. And so ultimately, you know, made friends and just kind of grew up. This was home. But fortunately for me, I was able to go back to Jamaica basically every summer and spend those summers with my grandmother on my mom's side and then visit my parents, my dad's parents on the other side as well. So you didn't lose that connection.

36:47Yeah. Yeah, I grew up in both cultures, right? And I think it serves me, especially when we think about things like investing in emerging markets, right? I know what it's like to live in an emerging market, right? So I think that helps me to become a better investor. Yeah. What did your parents do? My mom, so my mom was the first entrepreneur that I've ever met, right? She owned the salon for a lot of years. That salon helped pay for me to go to Catholic school and things like that. But before that, when we first moved here, she was a nanny. She was a nanny. She wasn't a nanny in Jamaica. She was a cosmetologist in Jamaica.

37:26But you gotta come, you gotta go to school again here and get the accreditation and all that stuff. And I saw her go from being a nanny to this kind of rich white family in Larchmount to doing hair in our kitchen, the kitchen of our apartment, to then renting a booth at a local salon, to then getting her own salon and growing that and employing people for like 20 years. Wow. So that's what my mom did. And she was the first example for me of what it means to build something from nothing, how difficult it is to do that. and what it takes to stick with it. And then my dad, in Jamaica, he was a train engineer.

38:18When we moved here, he became a mechanic. And at one point worked for Amboy Bus Company. It's like the yellow bus company for all the schools in New York City. So that's what he did for a number of years. Both retired now. What were you like as a young little Marlin growing up in Mount Vernon? Like on a Saturday, what kind of cartoons were you watching? Once you became, and you adapted to the American culture, like, what are you doing on a Saturday morning? I tried to get outside. And, you know, if you know anything about Jamaican parents, they don't want you in the streets. No. So that was like, you know, we had a little tug of war.

38:54But I had a, you know, a small group of friends that they were like, yeah, you can go by their place and hang out. One of those guys, this guy named Michael Sierra, who was friends with, you mentioned Heavy D, Eddie Farrell, the DJ, Eddie F, right? His younger brother was friends with Mike. And we used to, on Saturday mornings, they'd be in their basement putting tracks together. Wow. So we would sneak down and just be hanging on the steps, looking around the corner, watching them do their thing. Saw Salt and Pepper come through there, a bunch of other people. So, those are some good memories.

39:32I thought you were going to be a rapper after all of that, man. At one point, did you say, I want to be a DJ? I know my lane. Well, I mean, listen, man, that lane has led you to tech, right? I mean, you went to Northeastern University in Boston, you know, management information systems major. And, you know, after that, you know, spending time in stints with HP going over the West Coast, being exposed to Silicon Valley and all of that good stuff. Even spend time in United Kingdom. You know what I mean? Living there for a while with the enterprise software startup and joined the consultancy firm NDS and advised Blackstone Group and all of that stuff.

40:06Such a rich history. I found it very interesting that you were also kind of advising McGraw-Hill and Warner Media, right, or Warner Music when they were going through their time of piracy and all of that good stuff. But, you know, one of the things I admire most about your career is that from time to time you found yourself being stuck in a box or lane and you wanted to get out of that lane and really go explore. How were you able to maneuver to get out of those boxes that, you know, these particular roles that you were going through kind of put you in? You know, I've always had great friends slash mentors that just gave me terrific advice.

40:41Right. So, you know, the first piece, right, when when I was with Frictionless Commerce, that was the enterprise software company you mentioned. And, you know, I was living moved to the UK to help them launch that company in the UK. and serve Europe. And then it ultimately got acquired. And it got acquired by a much larger company. And then you got to kind of think about, do I want to go to that big company and get put in this box? It's like, no, it's time to move back to the U.S. and do something else. And I moved back without having a job, not knowing what I was going to do. And I called one of my good friends, Dale Burnett, and he was working at the consulting firm NDS.

41:23And he was getting ready to go back to business school at Dartmouth. And he was like, I got to find my replacement anyway, man. Like, come meet these guys and see, you know, if this is something that they like you, if you like them, if this is something that you'd want to do. And so I did it. And it was a great, great experience, right? You know, working with the Blackstone Group, creating shared services organizations for the entities that they would buy and hold before they could sell it. And then that consulting firm branched over into strategy consulting, focused on media and entertainment.

41:56And so that's when I got the opportunity to work with, you know, Warner Music and McGraw-Hill at the height of like, you know, when the internet was becoming ubiquitous and piracy was becoming a thing. Amazon launched a Kindle and, you know, books were kind of going out of style, right? Helping them think through that stuff. They didn't take a lot of my advice initially, but everyone ended up on iTunes, which is one of the things that we told them to do. Ultimately, they did it, but not right away. So that was fun. But what I realized, you talk about boxes again, the consulting thing was interesting to me coming out of, you know, working with one piece of software, you know, a very specific customer base.

42:42then going to consulting is a bit broader, right? Until it gets narrow because it's about billable hours, right? So when you get good at one thing, you're going to keep getting billed out for that one thing. And I'm like, wait, this is what I was trying to avoid. So I went to another mentor, Maurice Coleman, who I actually met just out of Northeastern, like way back in the day. He was doing community banking for Bank of America. I think back then it was called Fleet Bank or something like that. out of Boston. And part of his job was to fund small businesses that could have an impact in the community.

43:19So it was basically venture capital, but on a smaller scale. And then, so fast forward, when I'm in this consulting, he's now in New York as well with Bank of America and doing that job on a grander scale. And he said, you know what, I think you could be good at this. Like, here's his book. He gave me a book, Winning Angels. All right. So kind of, I read that book and they said, look, I got these, um, these prospectus on, um, on these different businesses that I'm evaluating. I'm going to pass a couple of them to you and tell me what you think. And I would, uh, give him my opinion on it. And he'd come back.

43:54He's like, yeah, I didn't think about that. I didn't think about it in this way. He's like, I think you'll be good at this. He's like, you got to tighten up on the, um, on the finance and accounting side of things. Maybe consider going back to business school. And so that's when I started looking at business school. And I went back again and talked to Dale because now he was at Dartmouth at Tuck and just getting that kind of what's good, you know, what's not so good about it. Ended up applying to business school and. Cornell. Yeah. Got into Cornell and chose Cornell because a free ride and a stipend, actually.

44:25Marlon Nichols: Yeah. And they had one of the only MBA led venture funds in the country. Yeah. You led that one. Yeah. Yeah. I became the CEO of that for about a year and a half of the two that I was there. And that set me up to interview and land at Intel Capital. Yeah, Intel Capital. Again, from Intel, going cross-country, cross-cultural ventures, back with, you know, pairing with Troy Carter and then merging with M Ventures back in 2019. Yep. I believe that was. So, you know, you look at your career in one word, Marlon, before I get you out of here on some fun stuff, and you had to reflect and describe it in one word.

45:01What word would that be? Eclectic. Eclectic. Why eclectic? Because it's just been a bunch of different things. Oh, but that's how you like it, though. You hate one thing. You love going and touching everything. I like variety. Yeah, loving variety, man. And on that same level, when you hear that name, Troy Carter, what comes to mind for you? And I only say that, you know, former manager of Lady Gaga, Eve, Miguel, and all that. But you're all from West Philly. And I'm from Philly, too. So, you know, that brother has a resume that's outstanding, but, again, was one of your first venture partners.

45:31When you hear that name, Troy Carter, what comes to mind for you? Friend, brother. Friend, brother. Yeah. That's the guy that kind of helped you get into the space as well? No, not really. So, you know, when I first decided I was going to leave Intel Capital and I wanted to create my own venture firm, I was going at Solo. And I was talking to, again, mentors, right? So I talked to a couple people, Frida and Mitch Kippur from Kippur Capital, et cetera. And they were like, look, we love this. We're going to back you. but we need you to go and fly down to LA and meet this guy. And I had no idea who Troy was at that time.

46:10I was like, all right, cool. I'm gonna go check the box and get this money, right? And so I went down and we just hit it off. We spent the whole day together. It was supposed to be just like 30 minutes, spent the whole day together. We ended up going to a John Legend, a party at his house afterwards. And we were just hanging out and we just saw the world in a similar way, even though we're coming at it through different lenses. And when I left, he was like, I'm not going to invest in your fund. He was like, I angel invest and I'm pretty good at it. And just for everyone's reference, I mean, Troy was early in Spotify, Dropbox, Warby Parker, Uber, Lyft, et cetera.

46:52So yeah, terrific track record of investing off of his personal balance sheet. But then he called me back, it might have been a week or two weeks later and he's like I can't get this out of my head he's like I've always wanted to do a venture firm but I didn't have anyone that I wanted to build it with and I think you're that guy and so I was like well what does that mean like what what what are you thinking the economics are going to look like and it was like you know right down the middle 50 50 um let's let's go build this thing and and so we did and and we we stood up the fund and it was a a$15 million fund.

47:27We wanted to get 50, but it was our first time together doing it, we got 15, it was an interesting market then too. And we invested in some really great companies together and built the foundation for what has become Mac. Ultimately, Troy's a music guy. That's right. And he wanted to get back to music, right? And that was his passion. And if we're gonna build kind of a world-class venture firm, then you got to be all in. You got to be 100 percent into this thing, which is not going to leave time for you to work on these different projects, music related projects. And so he said, look, man, I'm going to go back and do this.

48:07But we built this thing together. I trust you. Take the brand and do with it as you as you see fit. And so that's when I started talking to other investors to see who I could recruit to to join CrossCulture. and ultimately what I got to was Charles King, Mike Palank, and Adrian Fenty. We were investing in a lot of companies together, them at M Ventures, me at CrossCulture. And Charles and Mike in particular, because they were in LA, we had developed strong personal relationships. By the way, CrossCulture was also an investor in Macro, which is Charles' media company. So there was a lot of overlap and just camaraderie and also just a difference in skill sets, right?

49:00A diversity of skill sets that I thought if we brought that together, we could create something really, really special. And so that's where it came. Over 600 million, I would say, is successful, man, right? Got to get to a billion, I'm sure you want to probably get there, but... We still got a lot that we want to do, but every now and again, you got to sit back, take stock, and appreciate where you are and then set the goal to get to where you want to be. Yeah, I love that, man. We'll get you out of here on some fun stuff, man. Rapid, you know, reaction stuff. But I appreciate the time again, Marlon.

49:31Successful, man. It's good to see what you guys are over there doing out in California-based firm. I know you don't like to say just L.A. because you're based all over the place in California. Well, the reason we say that, right, most of the team is in Los Angeles. Adrian's in Menlo Park, right? And, you know, you can't mention venture and not mention Silicon Valley. That's right. And so the fact that we have a real presence there, I think, is important. Yeah. That's why I say California beats firm, right? California. Actually, worldwide. You've got some stuff over in Africa as well, man. But I'll give you$10 ,000 right now.

50:04First thing Marlon Nichols is investing. I told you, I'm giving it to my financial advisor. He's going to do all my investing. And he's going to help me figure out how to make that move. Yeah. I love it. I love it. Marlon Nichols is a superpower. What is it? I know it's supposed to be rapid fire, but I think there are two. One is looking at big, complicated things and distilling it down to something very, very simple. That's something I feel like I do very well. And the other thing is relationship building. I can meet and get to know people very, very well and very, very quickly. Yeah, I love that.

50:39Get you out of here on this, man. My favorite business book, Good to Great. What's the difference between a good venture capital investor and a great one? I think one that actually takes the time to figure out who he or she is investing with, builds real relationships with them, and actually cares as much about the people as they do about the business that's being built. I should have asked you the difference between good Jamaican food and great. I'll get you on that one next time, man. But hey, listen, Marlon, thank you so much for the time, man. Really appreciate it. Congrats again on making the Money Masses list.

51:13For me, that list was very powerful to put together and identifying you and seeing all the things that you guys are doing out in MAG Venture Capital was really inspiring. So congrats on that, man, and much success in the future. Thank you. It was a humbling experience to be on that list. So I appreciate you for - I appreciate you taking the call and answering some of the questions that we had on there. So I appreciate that. Marlon Nichols here at the NASDAQ in the Enterprise Zone. Now you're leaving the Enterprise Zone. Thank you for watching.

51:37Marlon Nichols: Thank you for listening.

51:43Thank you.