EP46 Eliminating Obstacles and Executing with Joe Beard ‘96, Co-Founder & CEO of CollateralEdge

This episode features a conversation with Joe Beard ‘96, Co-Founder & CEO of CollateralEdge, a Dallas-based fintech platform that provides banks with a flexible, automated sales enablement solution to efficiently increase lending capacity without compromising credit quality. Joe has had a diverse career spread across the military, technology, investment banking, and venture capital. As a former Partner at Perot Jain, a Dallas-based venture capital firm, he led 40+ investments in 5 years. He's a Founder and Board Member of Venture Dallas, the premier venture capital conference in the DFW region, and a recipient of the Tech Titans Investment Catalyst Award. He spent 8 years as an investment banker in New York and Dallas and has executed approximately $10 billion in transactions across M&A, debt, and equity. In this episode of On Point, Joe talks about how he had to adapt and use what he learned at West Point to succeed in business. He discusses the investment strategies that helped him make fifty investments in under five years, the importance of remaining clear headed when problem solving, and why having work experience before attending business school is extremely beneficial. He also talks about finding balance when moving between different segments of finance, business, and entrepreneurship. ----------- Key Quotes “The biggest challenge initially was just making sure that you're balanced, and really kind of being intentional about how you spend your time. And, there's never enough hours in the day, right? You know, no matter what work ethic you're bringing to the table, no matter how you're being creative about resources, there's never enough hours in the day to do all the things that you want to do. So you have to ruthlessly prioritize your time. You have to be ruthless about prioritization. Not chasing the next shiny ball, but really kind of focusing your effort and energy and doing the things that you know are gonna move the needle for your business.” - Joe Beard ----------- Episode Timestamps (02:08) Segment: AAR (03:45) Experience at West Point  (10:04) Journey in the Army (11:33) Segment: Sit Rep (15:17) Attending business school (17:06) Starting in investing banking (20:07) Investment strategies (25:10) About CollateralEdge (33:27) Quick fire questions (39:39) Segment: SOP (43:45) Mentorship (45:20) Segment: Giving Back ----------- Links David’s LinkedIn West Point Association of Graduates We’d love your feedback—take a minute to complete our short podcast survey and help us make future episodes even better!