ep 067: Marlon Thompson

The Craft with May Globus

Marlon Thompson is a truly wonderful human who is building a better, more inclusive business world. His passion for bringing equity, community and education to the venture capital space led him to launch Future Capital in 2020, alongside being a partner at LOI Venture. In a former chapter, he was also a spin instructor and a lululemon ambassador.

He was born in Scarborough, Ontario, raised by a single mother in the Malvern neighbourhood. It was an area with a range of diversity, with many ethnicities, cultures, and cuisines in one place. Precocious and mischievous, he was a rule breaker as a young child—something he eventually grew out of as a teen but being an entrepreneur today, being a bit of a rule breaker still rings true.

Marlon began his career journey in retail as a manager at Abercrombie & Fitch, before making his way to Vancouver after accepting a retail operations role at Indochino. He found himself in venture capital after a natural conclusion to his retail career, landing a role at The Next Big Thing (now called LOI Ventures) running an accelerator program for a new generation of entrepreneurs. Particularly interested in the financial side, he began to see a pattern of funding and capital lack that became a barrier to entrepreneurs looking to scale their businesses.

In this conversation, we talked about the challenges he observed his single black single mother go through; what working in retail taught him about managing complexity; the current landscape of venture capital and how diversity leads to better businesses; extra pressures of being “the first” POC in a room & at the table; what “code switching” means and its roots in survival; understanding angel, LP & syndicate levels in the investment space; the importance of financial literacy & actionable steps; what to look for in an investor for your business; how he’s taking care of himself in the wake of recently losing of his mother; and much more.

TIMESTAMPS:

6:45 - Growing up
18:57 - Retail
23:52 - How he got to Vancouver
25:32 - What he learned from a tech startup
28:16 - What his mom thought about his career choices
34:01 - Code switching
41:19 - How he got into VC and angel investing
45:03 - About his company Future Capital
50:23 - Levels of angel investing
56:39 - Equity
01:06:59 - Marlon’s finance advice
01:10:45 - What to look for in an investor
01:14:28 - How he is taking care of himself through the grief process
01:18:57 - Where to find Marlon
01:19:37 - Final question