Giant leaps forward: We believe in a future where humanity continues to leap forward, to overcome our great challenges.
āPassionate few: Blackbird was founded on the belief that small groups of people create the biggest change. The name āBlackbirdā comes from a jet developed by Lockheed Martinās Skunk Works team, who were separated out from the main engineering organisation to design and build jets that were inconceivable to most.
"The only chance you have in life is to be unpopular". Wild ideas always seem silly at the outset and that's why we say that the single unit of Blackbird is belief.
Blackbird is a startup and will always be run as a startup. Our founders wear t-shirts and so do we. We believe in substance over style (you aren't the suit you wear). As a metaphor, this value speaks to our collective desire to build a culture that allows personal expression, that encourages Blackbirds to bring their full and true selves to work every day.
Founders come first, they are our reason for being. We work for our founders, they donāt work for us. We believe in founder-led businesses. If there are grey areas, we will side with our founders, as we believe this will maximise our returns in the long term. Our reputation with founders is everything and we will guard it relentlessly.
We make high conviction decisions after careful research and debate, but also trust our instincts built up over years of pattern matching. We understand all startups are messy and will invest through the mess where we love the mission. We back founders for their exceptional strengths, not their lack of weaknesses. And, we need to fall in love with the businesses we back. Itās 100% conviction or nothing.
We donāt need to know all the answers to make an investment decision. Weāll look to maximise the upside, rather than minimise the risks. Weād rather back the hungry founder than the proven one. We understand that the next great business will probably not look like the last one and we will push ourselves to invest in emerging areas. Sometimes people will think weāre crazy to make an investmentāāāweāre happy with that. And weāre comfortable with the fact that weāll often be wrong.
We invest for the long term. Building iconic businesses takes the best part of a decadeāāāor longer. We donāt plan for exits. We want to back founders who are doing their lifeās work, who say no to the $30m acquisition offer and then say no to the $300m offer. You canāt get to be a billion-dollar company if you sell at $300m. We know the difficult thing is building a great business, not selling our stake in a great business.
Everything we do, we will do with integrity, in a way that weād be happy tell our kids about. Itās also a reference to the responsibility we feel for our investorsā capital. We will take care and strive to deliver excellent returns in a fair and transparent manner. We will always put our investors ahead of our personal interests. We will comply with regulations and pay our taxes.
And finally, our kids and our spouses are an important part of the Blackbird family. Weāll work hard, but weāll not let Blackbird get in the way of spending enough time with them.
