Forerunner Ventures first made its name in the venture world by betting on once-nascent startups like Jet, Bonobos and Glossier when it was far easier to build a digitally native brand. Yet as commerce evolves, so does the firm.
As part of its ongoing evolution, Forerunner five years ago brought aboard veteran VC Brian O’Malley to dig into startups at the intersection of commerce and enterprise tech; to find out what’s interesting to him right now, we recently swung by Forerunner’s office in San Francisco’s Presidio National Park (now home to a growing number of venture firms) to ask.
Our conversation was wide-ranging, but unexpectedly, O’Malley seemed the most excited about old-fashioned service businesses. Think travel agencies, therapists’ offices, even plumbing companies — all of them “sleepy but very large cate …
