Florida Funders, one of Florida’s leading venture capital firms, has announced a partnership with venture capital growth company, Dragonfly Operating Partners.
A venture capital firm finds investors for startup businesses and often provides operational guidance; the collaboration has brought DragonflyOP’s services to many of Florida Funders’ early stage portfolio companies.
Currently, Florida Funders is invested in more than 100 businesses in a diverse range of sub-categories in the tech industry including fintech, entertainment, aerospace, sports, artificial intelligence and ecommerce.
DragonflyOP has directly impacted many of Florida Funders’ portfolio companies through hands-on collaboration and the development of a value creation blueprint.
Uniquely, DragonflyOP has a core team of 12 operating partners that include successful entrepreneurs and executives. With an extensive network of roughly 100 contacts, DragonflyOp brings in about 20 partners to work with clients regularly.
These partners, over the last year, have helped Florida Funders portfolio companies grow exponentially with a 250% acceleration rate.
“We are working as an extension of Florida Funders,” said Jim Barnish Jr., DragonflyOp operating partner. “We are their value creation team, their operational arm where if they see an opportunity with a founder or CEO that they backed or they’re either stuck, not hitting certain milestones, or the founder just wants to grow faster, they bring us in, we help establish what needs to happen in order to accelerate the company.”
The first aspect of DragonflyOP’s process is to perform an assessment of the portfolio company and determine strengths and weaknesses. To do this, its team not only discusses potential issues with company leadership, but does a deep dive into the company as a whole.
“We’re also looking at it more holistically to take a look at the business in entirety, and oftentimes what’s actually the biggest pinpoint isn’t what the founder wanted to solve,” Barnish explained.
The DragonflyOP team will then create a value creation blueprint for the portfolio company, outlining recommendations for improvement, growth opportunities and what areas to prioritize moving forward.
After the value creation blueprint is developed, DragonflyOP will work alongside its operating partners to provide companies with active, in the trenches guidance on how to implement the recommendations presented in the blueprint.
Progress will be determined by key performance indicators, a series of defined metrics.
“We figure out what’s going to take [the company] to the next level and we get in side by side with them to grow the company and then hire behind ourselves when they need full time talent,” Barnish said.
DragonflyOp works with portfolio companies for as long as they need its services. Some have been collaborating with its team of operating partners for years.
Additionally, DragonflyOP is taking steps to have a large community impact. “What we built here extends beyond just Tampa, it extends into St. Pete,” he explained.
“We’re arming our founders with some of the most battle-tested operators in the startup world, ” said Saxon Baum, Partner at Florida Funders in a prepared statement. “DragonflyOP helps our teams move faster, execute smarter, and reach their next inflection point with precision. It’s not advice – it’s precision execution.”
To learn more about DragonflyOP and its partnership with Florida Funders, visit https://dragonflyop.com/
