July 23, 2025 • 53 mins
In this episode, Megan Ananian from The Helm VC, discusses her career shift from policy to investment banking, her time at Yale SOM, and her role at Wells Fargo. She talks about joining Seed Invest, founding The Helm women's syndicate, and the significance of VC branding and media. The conversation covers market shifts, launching a VC community during the pandemic, and the benefits of virtual meetings. Megan also explores traditional vs. virtual investing, sector-specific funds, and trends in Web3, crypto, and NFTs. The episode wraps up with insights on tech layoffs, flexible work schedules, and networking events.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
And I was like, I think I can make a career outof this.
So decided to make the pivot and the thing thatI wanted to do in order to help me leverage a
new network was go to grad school.
So I applied to one school, which I alsowouldn't recommend, but I have a very high risk
tolerance.
And thankfully they let me in.
(00:21):
I spent the next two years in New Haven at YaleSOM, specifically because they had a great
impact investing program and I was still tryingto get back to my roots of policy education,
but use finance to influence those things andloved it.
(00:43):
Graduated in 2019 and was not sure if I wantedto operate or do finance or do venture.
I came from a finance background, but I didn'thave that much tech experience.
I had actually commuted back and forth toBrooklyn to do a product management internship
(01:04):
for about eight months in there.
That's my only foray into tech and software.
And so I found this amazing hybrid job at SeedInvest that had just gotten acquired by Circle
Pay.
Welcome to The Investor, a podcast where I,Joel Palafinkel, your host, dives deep into the
(01:27):
minds of the world's most influentialinstitutional investors.
In each episode, we sit down with an investorto hear about their journeys and how global
markets are driving capital allocation.
So join us on this journey as we explore theseinsights.
Well.
(01:48):
Right, so we're live.
So excited to have Megan on our show.
I've known Megan through just commoncommunities, who's excited to have you in one
of our fund accelerator cohorts in the past.
And it was really good catching up with you andhearing what you're up to now.
I think for the audience and some of the peoplethat are dialing in shortly, the mix of people
(02:13):
are people that are emerging managers.
So Alice has been an active investor and alsolooking at emerging fund management as well and
same with other people.
But I think it's interesting to hear frompeople who have gone through that journey.
So with you specifically, I know you had areally strong career and background and pivoted
(02:38):
into investing.
So we can start there.
Maybe we can talk about your career where yougrew up.
I know you've, you're in New York right herewith me, but just kind of your early career,
how it's how it's changed and, and you'venavigated through that career, think now is
even a timely time to kind of reflect on thattoo.
But just walk us through that and walk usthrough the experience of building a fund And
(03:05):
then maybe we just go through a couple powertips on how to source deals and what you guys
have done to actually evaluate companies andfounders and what are some characteristics of
good companies in your opinion versus mediocreones and we'll stick from there.
Okay, that sounds great.
(03:25):
A lot to cover.
I started out my career, I grew up in SouthCarolina, but I come from a family of Armenian
immigrants.
They came through Ellis Island like a hundredyears ago now.
And so I felt like I always had New York in myblood and wanted to come back.
So I came back as soon as I could and I've beenhere ever since, but I, growing up studied
(03:51):
accounting, had no idea what investment bankingwas, wasn't even on the radar, venture capital,
not even a thought in my mind.
I actually focus on working for Teach ForAmerica undergrad to get the first TFA cohort
to South Carolina because even though they'relike forty ninth in the country in public
(04:12):
education, we didn't have a TFA cohort.
So I spent college doing a of lobbying of thestate government because I went to school at
the University of South Carolina, which was inour state And so I quickly, my first big light
bulb moment was that the biggest people thatwere influencing the state government were
(04:34):
business organizations and large familyoffices, high net worths and not the
politicians.
And so I kind of made a conscious decision ofmaybe politics education, that's not the best
path for me starting out.
Maybe I
need to
learn about business and business influencespolicy.
(04:57):
And so we ended up getting a TFA cohort, but atthis point I had switched and decided not to be
a high school math teacher and I wanted to gointo investment banking because that's like the
big thing that your best job with a finance oran accounting degree.
And so I started out my career at Wells Fargoin Charlotte in their investment banking group.
(05:22):
I ended up spending six years there,
which
is kind of wild and unusual.
Most people should do the two and out.
Probably recommend that, but I got kind oflucky and I had a director that let me have my
own client portfolio and go out and sell toclients just six months in.
(05:44):
So it's kind of a dream job as a 21 year old.
Oh sure.
Convinced them to let me build out ourNortheastern division because there wasn't one
because Wells Fargo is a San Francisco bank,Legacy Wachovia, so they didn't have much of a
New York presence.
So because I was always dreaming of gettingback to New York, I convinced them to let me
(06:07):
move to New York and start up our product groupin New York City and I ended up doing that.
We built out a pretty good book of business thenext couple of years and then I kind of woke up
one day and I was like, I've spent six years ininvestment banking and I know how to sell one
debt product really well but I have no ideawhat the rest of this world looks like.
(06:30):
Like FinTech was starting to maybe be a thingand I was like, what's FinTech?
Like I work at a bank.
So I got really curious about tech andinnovation and obviously being in New York, it
was the best place to be.
I spent some time mentoring an accelerator,helping people build out their business models
and realized pretty quickly did some work inconsulting, building like series A, series B
(06:56):
pitch decks for companies.
And I was like, I think I can make a career outof this.
So decided to make the pivot and the thing thatI wanted to do in order to help me leverage a
new network was go to grad school.
So I applied to one school, which I alsowouldn't recommend, but I have a very high risk
(07:16):
tolerance.
And thankfully they let me in.
I spent the next two years in New Haven at YaleSOM specifically because they had a great
impact investing program and I was still tryingto get back to my roots of policy education,
but use finance to influence those things andloved it.
(07:40):
Graduated in 2019 and was not sure if I wantedto operate or do finance
or
do venture.
I came from a finance background, but I didn'thave that much tech experience.
I had actually commuted back and forth toBrooklyn to do a product management internship
(08:02):
for about eight months in there.
So that's
my only foray into tech and software.
And so I found this amazing hybrid job at SeedInvest that had just gotten acquired by Circle
Pay.
So it was a crypto company acquiring a FinTechmarketplace, kind of an accredited investor
(08:24):
platform, they also had a small $40,000,000fund.
So it was, and there's 15 people that workedthere.
So it was a perfect place of do a little bit ofeverything.
Nine months into my job there, the pandemichit.
So things got crazy pretty quickly.
I also didn't know this at the time, but it wascrypto winter, the first crypto winter.
(08:51):
And so CirclePay was doing an entire pivot oftheir business during this time.
I ended up spending less time on the cryptopayment side and more time on the seed invest
kind of sourcing deals side.
And seed invest has its pros and cons forwhether you wanna use that as a financing
(09:14):
marketplace, but one thing that I learned therethat is killer for this world is sourcing.
My KPIs were to have at least meet at least 15founders and get on the phone with them per
week and then present one deal to investmentcommittee every single week that I thought that
(09:38):
I could get the founder to sign a term sheet.
So, and at certain periods of times, was liketwo term sheets signed per week.
It's kind of crazy.
Yeah.
So what that ended up being is a lot ofenterprise sales, but a lot of sourcing.
And so I got bold with my sourcing strategies.
And I think the big thing that's tough whenyou're starting out in this world is you have
(10:01):
no idea where to start.
And once you get started, it's once you get theball rolling, there's a flywheel effect.
You meet great founders, you do good businesswith them.
They connect you with other great founders, youdo good business with them, but getting that
ball rolling and getting that flywheel startedis tough.
And I'm a people person, so I learned prettyquickly that you just be good to people and you
(10:29):
leave them in a better spot than you found themand you don't over push any kind of financing
solution, valuations, terms, you just try tohelp.
And even if it's not my firm, if it was withanother firm, I'm happy to make connections.
And so building that kind of, I'm gonna helpyou however I can mindset was really helpful
(10:55):
for me.
I'm happy to go further into sourcing, but I'lltell you kind of where that took me.
I met some founders while I was there who wereraising for an e comm startup and I was very
direct and honest with them and told them Ididn't think this business model was gonna
work, but I think that they were visionaryfounders and they just needed to find a
(11:17):
different vertical to go into.
And I ended up going into business with them.
They wanted to raise a fund called the helmbased here in New York City for female
founders.
And while I was at Seed Invest, I did manythings, but one of the things was lead our
female founder initiative.
(11:37):
So I had a pretty good network of founders tosource from, and I joined them in November
2020, peak pandemic again, and they set out toraise this fund, $25,000,000 fund, primarily
(11:58):
precedes seed generalists for female foundersoutside of consumer.
The thesis is that there are lots of genderlens funds that are investing in CPG, beauty,
wellness, which are all great, but we thinkthat to really create change, women should be
building businesses in industries that aremaybe overlooked don't have as many women
(12:22):
building in them.
So focused on climate tech, FinTech, Web3 andhealth tech.
So that turned into raising a fund, whichthere's the good, bad and the ugly with that.
There's a lot of just fun admin and gettingthings off the ground, but I implemented that
(12:46):
flywheel effect of being good to founders andthen they'll introduce you to other great
founders and all you need is a couple of wellconnected great ones and then you're in a
pretty good key that the helm had an amazingbrand with a really great social following
already So that helps bring people to us.
(13:10):
We ended up investing in eight companies anddid another 12 through SPVs.
So we also, during this time period, created awomen's syndicate that's over a 100 women, a
lot of which are first time angels that arelooking to start investing.
(13:30):
And so we had to teach them how to invest andthen we build investment memos every month and
take one hundred to two hundred ks allocationand give it to them.
And they'd write checks anywhere between one to25,000
And
fill this we built a six part masterclass toteach them how to invest, learn all the terms,
(13:56):
what to look for.
And so that kind of became, I would say inretrospect, those are probably two separate
businesses.
It's hard to run and teaching people how toinvest, but I'm talking to the guy who does a
little bit maybe actually it's very possible.
(14:16):
You just don't have to sleep ever and that'sYeah.
Possible, you And I have three clones ofmyself, so that's what I've done.
No, but yeah, no, I think, you know, what whatI like about you guys is you guys, when I go to
your website, you guys look like a media brand.
You know, I spent some time I don't if I toldyou, but I spent some time in product
(14:37):
management as well.
So I worked for Hearst magazines for a reallybrief amount of time.
So a lot of my clients were like, you know,Estee Lauder, Chanel.
So like the, the logo and the branding andeverything was like really, really sensitive as
far as like making sure that you don't, youknow, capture the brand in the wrong way.
(14:59):
So like, when I was looking at you guys'website, it really looks like a luxury digital
media brand.
So I really appreciate that just from my pastcareer.
So definitely well, you guys took that The
features editor from Harper's Bazaar Olivia.
She's amazing and she's made everything
(15:21):
very good.
So she was your designer?
We hired an external designer but she drove alot of that.
She drove a lot of it, yeah.
So it's yeah, I mean I worked on some of thesome of the media properties on Harper's
Bazaar, so no wonder it looks familiar.
But yeah, it looks really cool.
I mean yeah, so I think I think I'm starting tosee that a lot.
(15:43):
There's different, you know, what I'm seeing isthere's different platforms, right?
And these platforms have several differenttentacles, right?
So they have, they have a media brand.
Essentially, every VC is a media brand, right?
Because there's a podcast, there's, people aremonetizing off of sponsorships of the
newsletters.
(16:03):
There's a couple like LP updates that I gotfrom people and it's like sponsored by Stripe,
you know, so I'm starting Yeah, so I'm startingto see VCs, you know, build kind of a platform
and also kind of an interesting way to generatedifferent revenue channels.
You know, obviously there's education, there'smedia, there's community building, there's
(16:27):
sponsorship.
So I'm starting to see that, which I think iskind of cool and interesting.
And I'm starting to see a lot of people buildstuff too, you know?
I'm one of those people that have started tobuild some software because the reason why is
like, when you think about it, the money itwould cost to pay for something like PitchBook
or some of these other softwares, you couldprobably take that same amount of money and
(16:50):
build your own custom platform if you're goodat if you're good at product.
If you're not good at product, the challenge isyou'll change your mind 200 times and then
spend too much money on developer changes.
So if you can kind of do it in a strategic way,like the lean startup way, then I think you can
have a lot of cool flexibility in terms of likewhat you're trying to build.
(17:12):
So one of
best VC products that I've heard built thatmade me be like, I really wanna build that is
Alexis Ohanian at seven seventy six has builtlike an internal CRM that lets you become part
of the portfolio.
You can
see everyone that they're connected to, any ofthe partners, and you can just with one click
(17:33):
like ask for an intro and it'll automaticallyproductize it and send the intro.
That's really cool.
That saves a ton of money for the
That's still, yeah, feel like that still hasn'tbeen nailed.
I feel like it's still hard to do intros.
You still have to kind of like email bothpeople.
They've had like a couple softwares that helpyou.
Yeah, Bridge, I've tried that and I gotconfused a few times.
(17:54):
So it kind of so I stopped using it.
So I still, I mean, luckily, I just magic.
I just, you know, send everybody my Calendly.
And they're okay with, you know, just usingmine.
But sometimes I'll use somebody else's.
Yeah.
The problem with Calendly, though, Calendlydoesn't really, I wish Calendly really worked
well as a CRM, because Calendly truly does havelike, every single person that I spoke to.
(18:20):
But it's like when I've tried to use it as aCRM, like there was one time where the cool
thing is you can just kind of like look in youremail history and you can be like, oh, who is
that person?
Oh, Megan, I wonder what her email is.
And I can even see your number because a lot oftimes when you book a call, like you'll leave
your number so I can find somebody to sell.
But what sucks with Calendly is it doesn't letyou export.
(18:43):
Tell me if you haven't seen this, you figuredout, after three months, but after three months
you can't export.
And I don't know why.
Have you been able to export?
No, I'm about to email somebody, a productmanager at Calendly and be like, you really
need to solve this because that is true.
That is where most of my CRM is.
It is.
(19:03):
I mean, every every person that you've spokento, if people use your Calendly, pretty much
everyone you've spoken to in the last year isin Calendly.
Wow.
At least for me, right?
But I've tried to do, I've had some interestingbusiness calls.
And I was like, Oh, who was that person I spoketo like six months ago, and it wouldn't, I
(19:24):
could find it through the UI, but it wouldn'tlet me download the Excel.
I don't know why.
But that was kind of a limitation that I had.
So I've heard HubSpot is really good.
And then I think Zoho is cheaper.
But I haven't, you know, I haven't really wentall in and use them yet.
But I've heard good stuff.
I've tried.
But again, you could build a cooler one thatwas easy to use.
(19:46):
Yeah.
It's cheaper to probably build it yourselfthan, than probably pay the subscription for
like something that you're not really gettingvalue out of.
Yeah.
So this is a total aside, but I was talking toa founder about it today.
And I was like, I don't know why this productdoesn't exist at least well yet, why isn't
(20:07):
there a directory of all the VC funds and whatstage they invest in and what sectors?
It's just crazy that it's so opaque and I'mlike searching through all my emerging fund
manager chats to be like, I know somebody'sfocused on web three at series A or Fin, and
(20:29):
it's just, you have to, it's exact, it remindsme of it because you're talking about the CRM.
I'm like thinking in my head, I know I talkedto somebody who's focused on that city and that
place and it just doesn't exist.
Have you used NFX?
I know NFX has somewhat of a directory, but Ithink it's still scraped from like Crunchbase
(20:49):
or something like that.
I think maybe I just, maybe it exists and Ihaven't personalized it as well, but it doesn't
tell me, you know, all the people that I'vespoken to, you know, it's just I have to search
colds directly.
You know, it's crazy though.
There's only, you know, there's only last timeI checked, I did some research on that.
There's only like 1,800 venture funds in TheUS.
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And there's only like 3,000 in The And there'sthere's only 1,800 in The US.
So in a year, our fund accelerator willgraduate about two fifty.
Wow.
So slowly, you know, slowly meeting people, butI think it's interesting.
(21:37):
Yeah, I mean, should put it in some database orsomething.
Yeah, mean, I think it's there, but you gottapay for it.
You gotta pay for PitchBook to probably, youknow, export it or get access to it.
And even PitchBook is not that accurate.
It's not.
I talk to people who are recruiting.
I try to mentor people all the time and they'relike, how do I find specific ones?
(22:00):
Know the Midas list or you know the ones thatare in Forbes all the time but there are great
emerging funds that people just aren't aware ofthat they could get it.
Yeah, I mean, think that would be a really hotproduct if you could figure out how to if they
had a zoom info for LPs, because zoom info,what it does is it just pulls, I think it pulls
(22:22):
from some database that's cleansed and updated.
And then it just and it's usually like not thatgreat either.
Yeah, that's
the thing.
I think so.
A product lesson that I have is you could havea mediocre product, but if you have really
amazing marketing, like you'll win, you know,and even it's not even the marketing spend.
I mean, obviously you need to have market shareand and pay for marketing, but if you just have
(22:47):
really good marketing and also it's just kindof the other product.
I mean, I feel like for the kind of pitch bookproducts, like the bar is still pretty low.
You could just pull all of the names of the VCsand then, I think if you can start getting some
data on LPs, if you're trying to raise for afund and it's good data, I think that's
(23:12):
interesting.
What zoom info does is it doesn't just like letyou download all the emails.
What it does, which I think is kind of cool isit has like a UI.
So it creates like a pre populated email foryou.
And then you can kind of like send all like alimited amount of people like that automated
email.
Interesting.
That way you don't kinda scrape or maybedownload all their emails and spam everybody.
(23:36):
I don't know.
So Interesting.
Okay.
Yeah.
The best product that I've seen for VC isrecently is Tactic.
Have you seen that?
Tactic.
I am a power user of Tactic.
Amazing.
Tactic has so shout outs to Anubhav becausewhenever somebody joins my cohort, I just like,
(23:56):
literally, there's no subject.
I'm like, Anubhav, like help me.
It's like a two line email.
I'm like, hey, you guys help them with theirfun model.
Yeah, Tactics a great product.
The amount of time that I wasted trying tobuild my own home, that even once I built it
and it's complicated, it was not intuitive.
(24:17):
It wasn't as beautiful to figure out, like,should we invest in the pro rata of this round?
What does it look like if we do a first checkonly?
Yeah.
What if we do, you know, what if we start doing$500,000 checks instead of $300,000 checks?
Yeah.
The way that it makes it so easy to iteratescenario plan, I'm like, God, I could have
(24:40):
saved myself so many hours.
But what they did there was what Anubhav didthat was really good is he iterates all the
time.
So he'll give product updates because that'swhat I thought too in the beginning.
Was like, know, you're you're gonna do one fundmodel.
You're doing a $20,000,000 fund.
You already have your strategy and then you'redone.
Right?
So why would you wanna keep paying for it?
But I think what he's been doing now is addinglike more features that like you could connect
(25:05):
to like LP reporting, you can start trackingyour portfolio companies.
So I think that's a really smart way to kind ofiterate on product.
I mean, was one time where I just gave themtons of feedback and and then I logged in and
like I kind of I was like hey you actually Iwas like flattered that he actually took my
feedback because a lot of times when you're aproduct manager you know you hear a lot of
(25:29):
feedback and you don't listen to anybody you'relike thanks for being nice.
I think he's gonna be successful because he isthe like, king of listening to his users and
then prioritizing what is important.
And the same thing he's like implemented someof the things that I've recommended.
I'm like,
How did
this happen?
And I think it was also nice the last twelvemonths in a market that has been wild for lack
(25:54):
of a better word of, okay, originally I waslooking at valuations between 5 to 10,000,000
at the seed stage.
Now they're double that, at least if you getinto some good ones.
So how does that affect my fund model?
What kind of exits do I need to be able to seein order to do that?
(26:15):
And then the market shifts back again andpotential for a recession and how will that
affect my fund model?
And if maybe our exits are a little bit furtherout, I think we've been insulated for the most
part at the early stage because our portfoliois eighteen months old.
(26:36):
We're not looking for any exits for
And I mean even in 2020, I mean there was a lotthere were a lot of exits.
There was like the slack exit and there wasstill a lot of huge massive, you know, activity
and events that happened.
I mean, I launched our BC community in 2020 andI felt that the reason yeah so I launched it
(26:58):
like this community this platform like twentytwenty April so this is like the peak of like
the pandemic and
I guess I really like you've always been aroundyou
know no it's a we've only been around for acouple years, you know, I thought I just kind
of think about community and, what, what Ithought my hypothesis is I think at that time
(27:19):
too, like everybody was at home, everybody waskind of out, you know, they were working, but
they're working from home And you know, it wasa great recession.
The great resignation too.
So a lot of people are quitting their jobs andsome people are just trying to figure out what
they should do next.
And you know, that was a good time.
Think for people to start thinking about, justnew careers, new opportunities.
(27:43):
And I think it's easier to do that when youdon't have to go to the office as well, right?
If you can kind of like hang out at home, likestill do your work and be productive, but then
also kind of learn new things, kind of connectwith people.
I think that also helped too because no one wasin the office.
So I'm curious to see how things are going tochange with New York.
I mean, I don't know about you, but I mean, Ifeel like New York is feeling like it's 2019
(28:08):
again.
It's like, it's definitely like, you know, alot more active and bumping.
I mean, so I don't know what you think aboutthat.
If you feel like it's coming back to life ornot,
or I think so.
I think we're back.
Love New York from Long New York.
I think we maybe have a little bit more crime,little bit more, frustration with the
(28:33):
transportation system than we used to.
But I
think as we come back to life and we get putthe sun on things and get the world back
moving, it's gonna get better again.
The thing that I never want to happen again isdoing all first time meetings with founders in
person.
(28:53):
Now that I don't do that and I can line up fiveto eight Zoom meetings a day, it's so much more
efficient to not be commuting all over thecity, jumping off the subway to go meet
somebody for a call.
So my, I don't know if I'll get pushed back onthis but right now my new idea is first time is
(29:17):
always on zoom second time we'll meet in personyeah just because you know sometimes things
it's just it's too inefficient to meet somebodyif you don't know if it's gonna be a good
one
or not.
Sure.
And then you're hustling all over the city fora bunch of calls that
are Yeah.
I mean, you a user of Loom?
Do you like the the Loom product?
(29:39):
Like, like, product videos?
Yeah, I feel like that has allowed me in someinstances to not have a meeting.
Instead of trying because the problem is like,you're trying to get on somebody's calendar,
right?
And then they may only be free like in fivedays, but what I was trying to get across,
like, you know, like, could have just been acouple lines back and forth, right?
(30:03):
So, so I've had a few VCs that have used thatstrategy and they have a process.
They're like, look, we do have a first zoomcall, and then we'll go back and forth on Loom.
So like, well, you know, they'll have a video,they'll be like, hey, well, walk me through
your, you know, your growth marketing strategy.
How did you get this cost per user?
And like, you can like fire off like, I thinkit's free up to like five minutes, right?
(30:27):
So you can fire off a bunch of your questionsin person.
It's probably easier to talk than than sendinformation.
Do you ever follow Alex Hormozi?
No.
You have to follow this guy.
Him and his wife are like a power couple.
Alex Hormozi.
(30:48):
I've told Alice about this guy like 100 timesalready, but I kind of look up to him.
Him and his wife is like gonna tell the storyagain, but he had a gym.
I think he was somewhere in Texas or something,but he had a gym and he was trying to like
build this gym business and, that was doingokay.
And then he found all in, but he was doingreally good at marketing and he found all these
(31:10):
other gyms that were really struggling.
So he was like, look, I'll fly to your city.
I will turn around your gym and make it 100 ksa month.
The catch is if I get you to 100 ks, I willpocket the first 100 ks on my own.
Then he pretty much like replicated himselflike 80 times and he got to like 30,000,000 in
(31:30):
revenue in the first year.
What?
Yeah.
So he yeah, so it's just look him up AlexPormozi.
But what you know, he always gives like reallyamazing business advice.
So like one of the pieces of advice he says asa leader is when you're saying something, speak
it.
(31:50):
It's easier for you to speak and give yourupdates verbally to everybody, but have
somebody else text you bullets.
So it's kind of it's easier to kind of ingestthings in text format, but you can kind of just
kind of get your message out like, you know,off the cuff just verbally, instead of sitting
down and typing an email and synthesizing it,you could probably just say what you need to
(32:13):
say in like a couple minutes, but you don'twant to talk to somebody when you're trying to
get in that.
So he's got like a bunch of crazy like businesspieces of advice like that.
So it's good.
He's a really interesting person to.
So he launched that he launched Jim launch.
And now he launched a new company calledacquisition.com.
(32:36):
And what they do is they, they pretty muchinvest in companies that are 3,000,000 in
annual revenue plus.
And then they'll take like a growth equityposition into the company and scale the company
by like 10x from like 3,000,000 to 30,000,000.
So that's what they're doing now.
Like and they're all over.
So what they're doing, which is crazy isthey're all over Tick Tok, Instagram.
(32:58):
So they're going really hard on content, butit's like super organic content.
So, what they'll do is I think what they'redoing is they'll sit for like an hour and shoot
probably like ten, fifteen minutei videos.
And then you send it to somebody on Fiverr,they'll edit it, add video and content.
And then they distribute it on like, you know,Instagram, YouTube shorts.
(33:20):
And, yeah, so they're just going really hard oncontent.
So I'm seeing a lot of people do that as well,which is pretty interesting.
So
interesting.
I, I recently spoke to a partner at an oldschool VC in Boston.
It's
been around since the eighties.
So like old school, old school.
(33:41):
And he asked me, he's like, what do you thinkabout investing over Zoom?
I feel so uncomfortable doing it.
I feel like sometimes I meet the founders inperson and I regret investing in them cause
they're different people and I'm like, I havenot gotten that at all.
Feel like it's pretty easy to get to knowsomebody and builds, you know, camaraderie and
(34:04):
build a relationship over Zoom.
I think it's weird to think about pre pandemic,I took all phone calls.
I was never Zooming.
I don't know if you're the same, but it'sdefinitely harder to get to know somebody over
the phone, but still doable.
But over Zoom, I love it.
I think it just, it brings us all together.
(34:26):
We could all be sitting in a room togetherright now, but it was just surprising to me to
hear somebody even, you know, maybe in 2020, weheard that it's 2022 now.
And he's like, no, I can't do Zoom.
I can't.
I feel like I don't trust the people on theother side.
I'm like, maybe that's a you problem.
It
(34:46):
hasn't been, yeah, I mean, I've always investedvirtually in the last three, four years, so it
hasn't really been an issue for me.
I mean, I have some of my earlier, some of myearly angel investments when I was kind of like
learning to be an angel.
I did take like three meetings, three or fourmeetings just to get to know the people.
(35:07):
But it was because I enjoyed like getting toknow those people, right?
It wasn't really because I was like skeptical.
I had a lot of questions and they didn't reallymind kind of hanging out with me, so it was
fine.
But you know, then you kind of learn theetiquette.
Did you hear from
the phone?
Did I do it?
I think we spoke on the phone and then theyhappen to be in New York and then I met them in
(35:30):
person and then we invested.
But yeah, I mean, you know, last couple yearsI've done everything virtual.
But you know what's what's helped with mystrategy is, you know, I have a community of
fund managers, so there's a lot of funds thatalready have better deals.
Yeah, they a lot of those steps have alreadypassed.
So so that's definitely been like a sourcingstrategy for me.
(35:50):
A lot of the interesting deals come from otherfund managers.
Even if I'm diligencing a deal, I'll also justget some opinions from other people.
So I kind of try to get some as many inputs asI can and try to synthesize it.
Yeah, I think that's the best way to do it.
And again, very biased, but I think emergingfund managers have the best deal flow and we
(36:15):
are incentivized more, incentively are alignedwith our founders because we need you to
succeed for our funds to succeed because we'realso a startup too.
They do.
Hustling together.
My hot take recently is that I think thereshould be more M and A in the VC world.
(36:37):
I think some of these traditional funds shouldsay, listen, we don't know, we don't have
pipelines of female founders or minorityfounders, or we're looking to bridge into Web3.
We're just gonna acquire emerging Web3 fund oran emerging minority run fund.
I think it would be a great idea to help someof these traditional funds kind of become new
(37:02):
again and rebuild their flywheel.
Yeah, mean, they're doing that with corporateinnovation, right?
So if you have like a really interesting sensorcompany, a Caterpillar could just, you know,
absorb you and then you just become part oftheir, they're like a Caterpillar employee,
right?
And then you just work in their innovation lab.
I met a founder one time that told me that I'mlike well what you know what's your big vision?
(37:25):
And he's like oh I want to just get by acquiredby a Caterpillar and work at Caterpillar's
Innovation Lab.
That didn't really excite me.
That didn't seem like a big like grand, oldvision for me.
I'm like, okay, you just want to be in a labemployee.
It's a great exit, I guess, you know, but justdidn't get me didn't get us give me as excited.
(37:48):
But I think, you know, I think the the questionis like, you know, how exciting is that for the
fund manager, you know, is the fund managerokay, but like not working for JPMorgan, you
know, is JPMorgan's like women wellnessdivision and now they have, you know, they've
acquired the helm and now the helm is kind ofrunning their division.
But I think it's a really interesting cultureand brand play.
(38:11):
I worked at a large institution that acquired areally successful FinTech company.
And that was an interesting culture because itwas like this FinTech company.
Most of the people were like these hipsters inBrooklyn.
And then like the institution was like thismassive conglomerate.
So just kind of looking at the differentcultures.
(38:32):
You know, it was a fun challenge to try tomerge those cultures together because they're
definitely different.
But I think, yeah, I mean, I think there shouldbe different plays where you can have that
opportunity.
My question would just be like the terms, likeis it attractive for the fund manager, you
know, if they get pretty much like an evergreenbalance sheet and they get to just pretty much
(38:56):
work for L'Oreal, I guess, know, then I thinkthat's a
lot like the corporates acquiring and I think Ilove that there are so many emerging funds in
market and now every angel thinks they shouldbe a fund manager.
Sure.
I think there should be a little bit moreconsolidation of like
yeah I mean A16Z has so many they have likeculture fund.
(39:18):
Yeah.
So I think I think I know what you're sayinglike some of these bigger, bigger, large funds,
they already have different funds underneaththem anyway.
So I feel like that could be an opportunity,especially if somebody I don't know if you know
Kofi.
Yeah,
Kofi Ampadu works for a 16.
Yeah,
he works for like the culture fund for A16Z,but he's got like a beverage fund on the side.
(39:43):
So he's got this fund.
I think it's like a $5,000,000 fund that theyfocus on like different beverage technologies.
It's kind of cool that you know, people peoplesupport that.
But yeah, I mean, think there's a there's Ithink the attractiveness of funds is the
expertise in a certain sector, right?
So like if you don't know anything about Webthree, then hey, invest in the help because
(40:07):
they do that full time all day, every day.
They go to NFT week and they know all thefounders where like somebody who's working at
Sequoia may just not have the bandwidth to bein all those communities, you know.
So yeah, absolutely.
And then there was a there was a psychedelicsfund that got an allocation from a large
(40:27):
venture fund and it was because they just werecreating a lot of content.
The content was pretty
wrestling
on the top of everybody's news feed and theyjust got, they got attention through that.
So I think that's kind of going back to what Iwas saying before.
Like I think a fund in some instances is like amedia company.
You're pretty much building a media brand andpeople resonate with your story, I guess.
(40:52):
And content can be a great sourcing strategy assomebody looks into what do you think about?
How are we gonna tokenize whatever it iscommunity engagement and then as opposed on it.
And then that's how the founders find us.
Yeah, it looks like Alice, it looks like yougot a question here.
(41:14):
It looks like yeah, I'll ask reports.
She has she has something about an orphan drugmanufacturer.
So I guess that's a like I guess a drugmanufacturer that didn't that maybe lost their
partnership with like a large conglomerate?
I've looked at one before, but I would say itwould have to be a unique use case.
(41:39):
Like I do FDA approval, like pre FDA approvalcompanies, I just invested in an ovarian cancer
diagnostic.
So I guess it's not a drug manufacturer, but Ithink a key thing is making sure that it's a
business and not a product.
(42:00):
Yeah.
I think the first thing that comes to mind withan orphan drug manufacturer is is that a
business or is that just a product that needsto be pulled up somewhere?
Mhmm.
That's a very good point.
No.
It's it's because we're looking into a companythat they have great trajectory so this would
be their second round focus on orphan drugs.
(42:26):
Gotcha.
Yeah, But I agree with you.
So is it a product or is it a company?
Very different.
Right.
And then also for something like that, it'sgonna need some strategic or corporate help in
order to get there.
And I don't have strategic value in that space.
So I would look for signal from a lead investoror someone who has that strategic expertise
(42:51):
that can help them get there because Icertainly wouldn't be able to help them develop
that drug.
Yeah, I mean what I've been a littledisconnected in the Web3 space recently just
because of some other things that I've beenworking on, but you know what is going on in
(43:13):
that space?
I think we had NFT week coming up the nextcouple of weeks, right?
So probably going to try to get more plugged inthere.
But can you just give me some macro trends orsome updates or things that are exciting in the
space?
Yeah, and I'm happy to send you some of the NFTNYC events that I'm going to.
(43:33):
That'd be great.
I will say in general, I have not made a fundinvestment in Web3, made a big investment, but
it's because the valuations are absolutelyinsane.
Pre revenue, pre product, just an idea, it's$50,000,000 and that just doesn't work with the
(43:58):
traditional finance person in me.
So, but I think there's what I'm still gettingplugged into and I'm most excited about is I
think there's some really exciting businessmodel innovations.
There's a lot of noise in the space, butthere's some business model innovations that I
think will be here to stay.
Like being able to do payments, like payment topayment overseas and without having to go
(44:27):
through banks and do KYC, AML and all of thosethings.
There's a lot of noise in that right now andthere's some things that are maybe unintended
outcomes of it and you see NFTs and profilepictures and I think that got a little crazy.
I have a bunch of them, but there's notnecessarily a correlation in my mind of VC
(44:53):
backed NFTs and the price of the NFTs.
And so I think we will see them as a use casefor what is to come.
Really excited about music NFTs, real estateNFTs, just the business model innovation of
being able to own something versus, you know,play to earn gaming, NFTs for that, any kind of
(45:19):
creator economy being able to actually earnyour way into something is super exciting, but
I think you have to, it's hard to find thosediamonds in the rough with all of the noise
that's going on.
NFT hype.
I think I get pitched by a brand new NFTmarketplace like every two days.
Sure.
I just not sure we need more NFT marketplacesat this point.
(45:43):
Yeah.
But I'm excited about what is to come becauseit's a brand new lens and perspective with
which to look at things.
And I think we'll see a lot of that clear upAlso once people have more on ramps to crypto,
right now everything's been built for peoplewho are crypto native and so I'm in BFF and our
(46:12):
mission is to bring more women into Web3 andthe amount of time that we have to spend just
helping people set up their wallets and buytheir first NFT on OpenSea, it's not easy.
I could not teach my grandmother to do it forsure.
So I think there will be a lot of on ramps thatare built that make that whole process much
(46:33):
easier and that will bring the world into it.
But I think it's inevitable.
I mean, there are way too many smart peoplethat are way smarter than me that have poured
their lives and capital into this and Fortune500 CEOs that are building in it now that it's
(46:55):
here to stay.
You just
ignore a lot of the fluff and the noise and getdown to the actual innovation and that's what
I'm excited about.
You know, just to switch gears and I know we'rewrapping up soon, but I'm a New Yorker myself,
right?
So do you feel all the people that left arecoming back or do you think some of those
(47:16):
people are still going to stay there?
Or do you feel that they're gonna start gettingfollow and come back?
I already know.
I knew that.
I mean I knew that would happen, but you know Iwas always
And look at rent.
Rent's crazier than it's ever been.
I feel like I'm a 70 year old woman.
I'm like back in my day you used to be able toafford and now it's like I don't think I could
(47:40):
afford to live in Manhattan anymore.
No,
it's really expensive now.
Yeah, rent's blowing up everywhere.
Mean so
it's something I look at for founders too,because I am for talent is everywhere,
opportunities everywhere, you can workremotely, but there is something to be said of
(48:02):
building in the New York City environmentalongside other founders that are doing it too.
And even my husband's a founder and for a whileduring the pandemic, we were down south and
kind of building an oscillation and seeing justthe change of coming back to New York and being
able to like go into a co working space and goto an accelerator and talk to all the other
(48:26):
people that are having the exact same issuesthat you're having.
Yeah.
And just what that does for mental health andjust ease of education and how quickly you can
scale.
I think that makes a big difference.
So do you think we're still in the greatresignation?
Do you think people just still don't want towork anymore and they just want to do something
else?
Or do you feel that people are ready to go backto the office?
(48:50):
I think there is a lot of fluff incorporations.
I don't know if you've seen this.
I had no idea how bad it was until I workedremotely with friends and you like you took a
three day weekend and then you all work fromthe home on Friday and it's like, you guys
don't really work.
You take like two conference calls a day andmaybe send emails and call it a day.
(49:14):
So I think there's a lot of rethinking forpeople like that of, is this the right gig for
me?
And honestly, there should be some rethinkingon the corporation side of, do we need a 100
people to do this one small gig?
Like maybe there should be a little bit moreefficiency there.
Sure.
But I think I'm pro people trying to figure outwhat they actually love to do.
(49:40):
Because I think we learned in the pandemic lifeis really short and there's, you don't wanna
take you that those two conference calls andsend three emails, don't do that.
The world's not gonna be a better place by you
to But
I think the market's probably scaring people alittle bit right now.
It is, yeah.
Tech layoffs, so I'm.
(50:00):
There is, I mean, there's been a lot of thoseposts.
I mean, talk about people getting their offersrescinded.
That's kind of
nice.
Heard about one earlier today, a VC fund in NewYork who rescinded some principal offers, which
is scary.
Oh, wow.
I didn't know it was in the VC space.
I've been seeing a lot.
It's weird.
It's been Coinbase and Twitter a lot.
Don't know if it's like fake, if they're fakeposts or not, but, but they they look pretty
(50:23):
real.
But look, I'm in the camp like I don't thinkyou need to have a fixed like I don't think you
need to clock in and clock out and show thatyou worked forty hours.
Think if you have all about clear.
Yeah, I feel like if you have a clear goal,it's like, look, you need to launch this
product or you need to get this amount ofrevenue in by the June, right?
(50:46):
And if you're able to achieve that goal, thathigher level deliverable, I feel like it
doesn't matter if you do it like from 9PM to6PM or if you did it from like nine to twelve
and then you didn't do anything for us today.
But then you crushed it another day, you know,so I feel like I feel like if you could get
(51:10):
stuff done, but also still have fun and maybetake a day off and go to the beach with your
family, I feel like you'll still be in a bettermental state.
You
want to do great stuff.
Corporations don't need to be babysitters.
Boss shouldn't be your babysitter.
As long as at the end of the week everything isdone that was supposed to be done and you've
(51:31):
hit your KPIs, I don't care if you did it allin twenty four hours on Monday then didn't work
the rest of the week.
I don't care as long as whatever you need to dofor your mental health and just for being the
best at what you are.
I think trying to fit us all into this likenine to five Some people work great 6AM to noon
(51:52):
and then they take off the rest of the day.
So I'm totally on board with all that.
Yeah, you can measure it, So if you have sometype of measuring stick, that's how you know if
you're doing well because you're like, look,you know, the measuring stick is, hey, we need
to be generating 90 ks in revenue every month,right?
So if something happens and you're notgenerating 90 ks, maybe you are taking too many
(52:13):
Fridays off when you should be taking calls,right?
So, so as long as you're hitting those goals,think it's fine.
But anyways, look, thanks for popping in.
I know this was,
kind
of last minute and appreciate you popping inand really good catching up with you.
Hopefully we hang out sometime.
Like let me know about NFT NYC and, all theother stuff that's, going on.
(52:36):
Should get together with some of the other VCsand do something.
I, my buddy drew does like the boating thing.
There's like a there's like he takes.
I can definitely introduce you if you youhaven't gone, but he does like this little
boating trip like eight to 10 VCs every once inwhile.
It's been a while since they've had some ofthose things, but I'm excited to see everything
(52:58):
open up.
It's
kind I'm like dying to get back out there anddo a happy hour or something.
Yeah, cool.
We'll make it happen.
I'll yeah, mean I I've been able to do a couplelike things in New York with the alumni, so
I'll definitely make it happen.
I'll try to get everybody together.
Would be something in the summer.
Yeah.
New York summer is the best.
(53:19):
I know.
Yeah, find a nice rooftop.
Well, thank you.
This is really great.
Thanks for
time catching up and keep me posted oneverything.
And I was like, I think I can make a career outof this.
So decided to make the pivot and the thing thatI wanted to do in order to help me leverage a
new network was go to grad school.
So I applied to one school, which I alsowouldn't recommend, but I have a very high risk
tolerance.
And thankfully they let me in.
(00:21):
I spent the next two years in New Haven at YaleSOM, specifically because they had a great
impact investing program and I was still tryingto get back to my roots of policy education,
but use finance to influence those things andloved it.
(00:43):
Graduated in 2019 and was not sure if I wantedto operate or do finance or do venture.
I came from a finance background, but I didn'thave that much tech experience.
I had actually commuted back and forth toBrooklyn to do a product management internship
(01:04):
for about eight months in there.
That's my only foray into tech and software.
And so I found this amazing hybrid job at SeedInvest that had just gotten acquired by Circle
Pay.
Welcome to The Investor, a podcast where I,Joel Palafinkel, your host, dives deep into the
(01:27):
minds of the world's most influentialinstitutional investors.
In each episode, we sit down with an investorto hear about their journeys and how global
markets are driving capital allocation.
So join us on this journey as we explore theseinsights.
Well.
(01:48):
Right, so we're live.
So excited to have Megan on our show.
I've known Megan through just commoncommunities, who's excited to have you in one
of our fund accelerator cohorts in the past.
And it was really good catching up with you andhearing what you're up to now.
I think for the audience and some of the peoplethat are dialing in shortly, the mix of people
(02:13):
are people that are emerging managers.
So Alice has been an active investor and alsolooking at emerging fund management as well and
same with other people.
But I think it's interesting to hear frompeople who have gone through that journey.
So with you specifically, I know you had areally strong career and background and pivoted
(02:38):
into investing.
So we can start there.
Maybe we can talk about your career where yougrew up.
I know you've, you're in New York right herewith me, but just kind of your early career,
how it's how it's changed and, and you'venavigated through that career, think now is
even a timely time to kind of reflect on thattoo.
But just walk us through that and walk usthrough the experience of building a fund And
(03:05):
then maybe we just go through a couple powertips on how to source deals and what you guys
have done to actually evaluate companies andfounders and what are some characteristics of
good companies in your opinion versus mediocreones and we'll stick from there.
Okay, that sounds great.
(03:25):
A lot to cover.
I started out my career, I grew up in SouthCarolina, but I come from a family of Armenian
immigrants.
They came through Ellis Island like a hundredyears ago now.
And so I felt like I always had New York in myblood and wanted to come back.
So I came back as soon as I could and I've beenhere ever since, but I, growing up studied
(03:51):
accounting, had no idea what investment bankingwas, wasn't even on the radar, venture capital,
not even a thought in my mind.
I actually focus on working for Teach ForAmerica undergrad to get the first TFA cohort
to South Carolina because even though they'relike forty ninth in the country in public
(04:12):
education, we didn't have a TFA cohort.
So I spent college doing a of lobbying of thestate government because I went to school at
the University of South Carolina, which was inour state And so I quickly, my first big light
bulb moment was that the biggest people thatwere influencing the state government were
(04:34):
business organizations and large familyoffices, high net worths and not the
politicians.
And so I kind of made a conscious decision ofmaybe politics education, that's not the best
path for me starting out.
Maybe I
need to
learn about business and business influencespolicy.
(04:57):
And so we ended up getting a TFA cohort, but atthis point I had switched and decided not to be
a high school math teacher and I wanted to gointo investment banking because that's like the
big thing that your best job with a finance oran accounting degree.
And so I started out my career at Wells Fargoin Charlotte in their investment banking group.
(05:22):
I ended up spending six years there,
which
is kind of wild and unusual.
Most people should do the two and out.
Probably recommend that, but I got kind oflucky and I had a director that let me have my
own client portfolio and go out and sell toclients just six months in.
(05:44):
So it's kind of a dream job as a 21 year old.
Oh sure.
Convinced them to let me build out ourNortheastern division because there wasn't one
because Wells Fargo is a San Francisco bank,Legacy Wachovia, so they didn't have much of a
New York presence.
So because I was always dreaming of gettingback to New York, I convinced them to let me
(06:07):
move to New York and start up our product groupin New York City and I ended up doing that.
We built out a pretty good book of business thenext couple of years and then I kind of woke up
one day and I was like, I've spent six years ininvestment banking and I know how to sell one
debt product really well but I have no ideawhat the rest of this world looks like.
(06:30):
Like FinTech was starting to maybe be a thingand I was like, what's FinTech?
Like I work at a bank.
So I got really curious about tech andinnovation and obviously being in New York, it
was the best place to be.
I spent some time mentoring an accelerator,helping people build out their business models
and realized pretty quickly did some work inconsulting, building like series A, series B
(06:56):
pitch decks for companies.
And I was like, I think I can make a career outof this.
So decided to make the pivot and the thing thatI wanted to do in order to help me leverage a
new network was go to grad school.
So I applied to one school, which I alsowouldn't recommend, but I have a very high risk
(07:16):
tolerance.
And thankfully they let me in.
I spent the next two years in New Haven at YaleSOM specifically because they had a great
impact investing program and I was still tryingto get back to my roots of policy education,
but use finance to influence those things andloved it.
(07:40):
Graduated in 2019 and was not sure if I wantedto operate or do finance
or
do venture.
I came from a finance background, but I didn'thave that much tech experience.
I had actually commuted back and forth toBrooklyn to do a product management internship
(08:02):
for about eight months in there.
So that's
my only foray into tech and software.
And so I found this amazing hybrid job at SeedInvest that had just gotten acquired by Circle
Pay.
So it was a crypto company acquiring a FinTechmarketplace, kind of an accredited investor
(08:24):
platform, they also had a small $40,000,000fund.
So it was, and there's 15 people that workedthere.
So it was a perfect place of do a little bit ofeverything.
Nine months into my job there, the pandemichit.
So things got crazy pretty quickly.
I also didn't know this at the time, but it wascrypto winter, the first crypto winter.
(08:51):
And so CirclePay was doing an entire pivot oftheir business during this time.
I ended up spending less time on the cryptopayment side and more time on the seed invest
kind of sourcing deals side.
And seed invest has its pros and cons forwhether you wanna use that as a financing
(09:14):
marketplace, but one thing that I learned therethat is killer for this world is sourcing.
My KPIs were to have at least meet at least 15founders and get on the phone with them per
week and then present one deal to investmentcommittee every single week that I thought that
(09:38):
I could get the founder to sign a term sheet.
So, and at certain periods of times, was liketwo term sheets signed per week.
It's kind of crazy.
Yeah.
So what that ended up being is a lot ofenterprise sales, but a lot of sourcing.
And so I got bold with my sourcing strategies.
And I think the big thing that's tough whenyou're starting out in this world is you have
(10:01):
no idea where to start.
And once you get started, it's once you get theball rolling, there's a flywheel effect.
You meet great founders, you do good businesswith them.
They connect you with other great founders, youdo good business with them, but getting that
ball rolling and getting that flywheel startedis tough.
And I'm a people person, so I learned prettyquickly that you just be good to people and you
(10:29):
leave them in a better spot than you found themand you don't over push any kind of financing
solution, valuations, terms, you just try tohelp.
And even if it's not my firm, if it was withanother firm, I'm happy to make connections.
And so building that kind of, I'm gonna helpyou however I can mindset was really helpful
(10:55):
for me.
I'm happy to go further into sourcing, but I'lltell you kind of where that took me.
I met some founders while I was there who wereraising for an e comm startup and I was very
direct and honest with them and told them Ididn't think this business model was gonna
work, but I think that they were visionaryfounders and they just needed to find a
(11:17):
different vertical to go into.
And I ended up going into business with them.
They wanted to raise a fund called the helmbased here in New York City for female
founders.
And while I was at Seed Invest, I did manythings, but one of the things was lead our
female founder initiative.
(11:37):
So I had a pretty good network of founders tosource from, and I joined them in November
2020, peak pandemic again, and they set out toraise this fund, $25,000,000 fund, primarily
(11:58):
precedes seed generalists for female foundersoutside of consumer.
The thesis is that there are lots of genderlens funds that are investing in CPG, beauty,
wellness, which are all great, but we thinkthat to really create change, women should be
building businesses in industries that aremaybe overlooked don't have as many women
(12:22):
building in them.
So focused on climate tech, FinTech, Web3 andhealth tech.
So that turned into raising a fund, whichthere's the good, bad and the ugly with that.
There's a lot of just fun admin and gettingthings off the ground, but I implemented that
(12:46):
flywheel effect of being good to founders andthen they'll introduce you to other great
founders and all you need is a couple of wellconnected great ones and then you're in a
pretty good key that the helm had an amazingbrand with a really great social following
already So that helps bring people to us.
(13:10):
We ended up investing in eight companies anddid another 12 through SPVs.
So we also, during this time period, created awomen's syndicate that's over a 100 women, a
lot of which are first time angels that arelooking to start investing.
(13:30):
And so we had to teach them how to invest andthen we build investment memos every month and
take one hundred to two hundred ks allocationand give it to them.
And they'd write checks anywhere between one to25,000
And
fill this we built a six part masterclass toteach them how to invest, learn all the terms,
(13:56):
what to look for.
And so that kind of became, I would say inretrospect, those are probably two separate
businesses.
It's hard to run and teaching people how toinvest, but I'm talking to the guy who does a
little bit maybe actually it's very possible.
(14:16):
You just don't have to sleep ever and that'sYeah.
Possible, you And I have three clones ofmyself, so that's what I've done.
No, but yeah, no, I think, you know, what whatI like about you guys is you guys, when I go to
your website, you guys look like a media brand.
You know, I spent some time I don't if I toldyou, but I spent some time in product
(14:37):
management as well.
So I worked for Hearst magazines for a reallybrief amount of time.
So a lot of my clients were like, you know,Estee Lauder, Chanel.
So like the, the logo and the branding andeverything was like really, really sensitive as
far as like making sure that you don't, youknow, capture the brand in the wrong way.
(14:59):
So like, when I was looking at you guys'website, it really looks like a luxury digital
media brand.
So I really appreciate that just from my pastcareer.
So definitely well, you guys took that The
features editor from Harper's Bazaar Olivia.
She's amazing and she's made everything
(15:21):
very good.
So she was your designer?
We hired an external designer but she drove alot of that.
She drove a lot of it, yeah.
So it's yeah, I mean I worked on some of thesome of the media properties on Harper's
Bazaar, so no wonder it looks familiar.
But yeah, it looks really cool.
I mean yeah, so I think I think I'm starting tosee that a lot.
(15:43):
There's different, you know, what I'm seeing isthere's different platforms, right?
And these platforms have several differenttentacles, right?
So they have, they have a media brand.
Essentially, every VC is a media brand, right?
Because there's a podcast, there's, people aremonetizing off of sponsorships of the
newsletters.
(16:03):
There's a couple like LP updates that I gotfrom people and it's like sponsored by Stripe,
you know, so I'm starting Yeah, so I'm startingto see VCs, you know, build kind of a platform
and also kind of an interesting way to generatedifferent revenue channels.
You know, obviously there's education, there'smedia, there's community building, there's
(16:27):
sponsorship.
So I'm starting to see that, which I think iskind of cool and interesting.
And I'm starting to see a lot of people buildstuff too, you know?
I'm one of those people that have started tobuild some software because the reason why is
like, when you think about it, the money itwould cost to pay for something like PitchBook
or some of these other softwares, you couldprobably take that same amount of money and
(16:50):
build your own custom platform if you're goodat if you're good at product.
If you're not good at product, the challenge isyou'll change your mind 200 times and then
spend too much money on developer changes.
So if you can kind of do it in a strategic way,like the lean startup way, then I think you can
have a lot of cool flexibility in terms of likewhat you're trying to build.
(17:12):
So one of
best VC products that I've heard built thatmade me be like, I really wanna build that is
Alexis Ohanian at seven seventy six has builtlike an internal CRM that lets you become part
of the portfolio.
You can
see everyone that they're connected to, any ofthe partners, and you can just with one click
(17:33):
like ask for an intro and it'll automaticallyproductize it and send the intro.
That's really cool.
That saves a ton of money for the
That's still, yeah, feel like that still hasn'tbeen nailed.
I feel like it's still hard to do intros.
You still have to kind of like email bothpeople.
They've had like a couple softwares that helpyou.
Yeah, Bridge, I've tried that and I gotconfused a few times.
(17:54):
So it kind of so I stopped using it.
So I still, I mean, luckily, I just magic.
I just, you know, send everybody my Calendly.
And they're okay with, you know, just usingmine.
But sometimes I'll use somebody else's.
Yeah.
The problem with Calendly, though, Calendlydoesn't really, I wish Calendly really worked
well as a CRM, because Calendly truly does havelike, every single person that I spoke to.
(18:20):
But it's like when I've tried to use it as aCRM, like there was one time where the cool
thing is you can just kind of like look in youremail history and you can be like, oh, who is
that person?
Oh, Megan, I wonder what her email is.
And I can even see your number because a lot oftimes when you book a call, like you'll leave
your number so I can find somebody to sell.
But what sucks with Calendly is it doesn't letyou export.
(18:43):
Tell me if you haven't seen this, you figuredout, after three months, but after three months
you can't export.
And I don't know why.
Have you been able to export?
No, I'm about to email somebody, a productmanager at Calendly and be like, you really
need to solve this because that is true.
That is where most of my CRM is.
It is.
(19:03):
I mean, every every person that you've spokento, if people use your Calendly, pretty much
everyone you've spoken to in the last year isin Calendly.
Wow.
At least for me, right?
But I've tried to do, I've had some interestingbusiness calls.
And I was like, Oh, who was that person I spoketo like six months ago, and it wouldn't, I
(19:24):
could find it through the UI, but it wouldn'tlet me download the Excel.
I don't know why.
But that was kind of a limitation that I had.
So I've heard HubSpot is really good.
And then I think Zoho is cheaper.
But I haven't, you know, I haven't really wentall in and use them yet.
But I've heard good stuff.
I've tried.
But again, you could build a cooler one thatwas easy to use.
(19:46):
Yeah.
It's cheaper to probably build it yourselfthan, than probably pay the subscription for
like something that you're not really gettingvalue out of.
Yeah.
So this is a total aside, but I was talking toa founder about it today.
And I was like, I don't know why this productdoesn't exist at least well yet, why isn't
(20:07):
there a directory of all the VC funds and whatstage they invest in and what sectors?
It's just crazy that it's so opaque and I'mlike searching through all my emerging fund
manager chats to be like, I know somebody'sfocused on web three at series A or Fin, and
(20:29):
it's just, you have to, it's exact, it remindsme of it because you're talking about the CRM.
I'm like thinking in my head, I know I talkedto somebody who's focused on that city and that
place and it just doesn't exist.
Have you used NFX?
I know NFX has somewhat of a directory, but Ithink it's still scraped from like Crunchbase
(20:49):
or something like that.
I think maybe I just, maybe it exists and Ihaven't personalized it as well, but it doesn't
tell me, you know, all the people that I'vespoken to, you know, it's just I have to search
colds directly.
You know, it's crazy though.
There's only, you know, there's only last timeI checked, I did some research on that.
There's only like 1,800 venture funds in TheUS.
(21:12):
And there's only like 3,000 in The And there'sthere's only 1,800 in The US.
So in a year, our fund accelerator willgraduate about two fifty.
Wow.
So slowly, you know, slowly meeting people, butI think it's interesting.
(21:37):
Yeah, I mean, should put it in some database orsomething.
Yeah, mean, I think it's there, but you gottapay for it.
You gotta pay for PitchBook to probably, youknow, export it or get access to it.
And even PitchBook is not that accurate.
It's not.
I talk to people who are recruiting.
I try to mentor people all the time and they'relike, how do I find specific ones?
(22:00):
Know the Midas list or you know the ones thatare in Forbes all the time but there are great
emerging funds that people just aren't aware ofthat they could get it.
Yeah, I mean, think that would be a really hotproduct if you could figure out how to if they
had a zoom info for LPs, because zoom info,what it does is it just pulls, I think it pulls
(22:22):
from some database that's cleansed and updated.
And then it just and it's usually like not thatgreat either.
Yeah, that's
the thing.
I think so.
A product lesson that I have is you could havea mediocre product, but if you have really
amazing marketing, like you'll win, you know,and even it's not even the marketing spend.
I mean, obviously you need to have market shareand and pay for marketing, but if you just have
(22:47):
really good marketing and also it's just kindof the other product.
I mean, I feel like for the kind of pitch bookproducts, like the bar is still pretty low.
You could just pull all of the names of the VCsand then, I think if you can start getting some
data on LPs, if you're trying to raise for afund and it's good data, I think that's
(23:12):
interesting.
What zoom info does is it doesn't just like letyou download all the emails.
What it does, which I think is kind of cool isit has like a UI.
So it creates like a pre populated email foryou.
And then you can kind of like send all like alimited amount of people like that automated
email.
Interesting.
That way you don't kinda scrape or maybedownload all their emails and spam everybody.
(23:36):
I don't know.
So Interesting.
Okay.
Yeah.
The best product that I've seen for VC isrecently is Tactic.
Have you seen that?
Tactic.
I am a power user of Tactic.
Amazing.
Tactic has so shout outs to Anubhav becausewhenever somebody joins my cohort, I just like,
(23:56):
literally, there's no subject.
I'm like, Anubhav, like help me.
It's like a two line email.
I'm like, hey, you guys help them with theirfun model.
Yeah, Tactics a great product.
The amount of time that I wasted trying tobuild my own home, that even once I built it
and it's complicated, it was not intuitive.
(24:17):
It wasn't as beautiful to figure out, like,should we invest in the pro rata of this round?
What does it look like if we do a first checkonly?
Yeah.
What if we do, you know, what if we start doing$500,000 checks instead of $300,000 checks?
Yeah.
The way that it makes it so easy to iteratescenario plan, I'm like, God, I could have
(24:40):
saved myself so many hours.
But what they did there was what Anubhav didthat was really good is he iterates all the
time.
So he'll give product updates because that'swhat I thought too in the beginning.
Was like, know, you're you're gonna do one fundmodel.
You're doing a $20,000,000 fund.
You already have your strategy and then you'redone.
Right?
So why would you wanna keep paying for it?
But I think what he's been doing now is addinglike more features that like you could connect
(25:05):
to like LP reporting, you can start trackingyour portfolio companies.
So I think that's a really smart way to kind ofiterate on product.
I mean, was one time where I just gave themtons of feedback and and then I logged in and
like I kind of I was like hey you actually Iwas like flattered that he actually took my
feedback because a lot of times when you're aproduct manager you know you hear a lot of
(25:29):
feedback and you don't listen to anybody you'relike thanks for being nice.
I think he's gonna be successful because he isthe like, king of listening to his users and
then prioritizing what is important.
And the same thing he's like implemented someof the things that I've recommended.
I'm like,
How did
this happen?
And I think it was also nice the last twelvemonths in a market that has been wild for lack
(25:54):
of a better word of, okay, originally I waslooking at valuations between 5 to 10,000,000
at the seed stage.
Now they're double that, at least if you getinto some good ones.
So how does that affect my fund model?
What kind of exits do I need to be able to seein order to do that?
(26:15):
And then the market shifts back again andpotential for a recession and how will that
affect my fund model?
And if maybe our exits are a little bit furtherout, I think we've been insulated for the most
part at the early stage because our portfoliois eighteen months old.
(26:36):
We're not looking for any exits for
And I mean even in 2020, I mean there was a lotthere were a lot of exits.
There was like the slack exit and there wasstill a lot of huge massive, you know, activity
and events that happened.
I mean, I launched our BC community in 2020 andI felt that the reason yeah so I launched it
(26:58):
like this community this platform like twentytwenty April so this is like the peak of like
the pandemic and
I guess I really like you've always been aroundyou
know no it's a we've only been around for acouple years, you know, I thought I just kind
of think about community and, what, what Ithought my hypothesis is I think at that time
(27:19):
too, like everybody was at home, everybody waskind of out, you know, they were working, but
they're working from home And you know, it wasa great recession.
The great resignation too.
So a lot of people are quitting their jobs andsome people are just trying to figure out what
they should do next.
And you know, that was a good time.
Think for people to start thinking about, justnew careers, new opportunities.
(27:43):
And I think it's easier to do that when youdon't have to go to the office as well, right?
If you can kind of like hang out at home, likestill do your work and be productive, but then
also kind of learn new things, kind of connectwith people.
I think that also helped too because no one wasin the office.
So I'm curious to see how things are going tochange with New York.
I mean, I don't know about you, but I mean, Ifeel like New York is feeling like it's 2019
(28:08):
again.
It's like, it's definitely like, you know, alot more active and bumping.
I mean, so I don't know what you think aboutthat.
If you feel like it's coming back to life ornot,
or I think so.
I think we're back.
Love New York from Long New York.
I think we maybe have a little bit more crime,little bit more, frustration with the
(28:33):
transportation system than we used to.
But I
think as we come back to life and we get putthe sun on things and get the world back
moving, it's gonna get better again.
The thing that I never want to happen again isdoing all first time meetings with founders in
person.
(28:53):
Now that I don't do that and I can line up fiveto eight Zoom meetings a day, it's so much more
efficient to not be commuting all over thecity, jumping off the subway to go meet
somebody for a call.
So my, I don't know if I'll get pushed back onthis but right now my new idea is first time is
(29:17):
always on zoom second time we'll meet in personyeah just because you know sometimes things
it's just it's too inefficient to meet somebodyif you don't know if it's gonna be a good
one
or not.
Sure.
And then you're hustling all over the city fora bunch of calls that
are Yeah.
I mean, you a user of Loom?
Do you like the the Loom product?
(29:39):
Like, like, product videos?
Yeah, I feel like that has allowed me in someinstances to not have a meeting.
Instead of trying because the problem is like,you're trying to get on somebody's calendar,
right?
And then they may only be free like in fivedays, but what I was trying to get across,
like, you know, like, could have just been acouple lines back and forth, right?
(30:03):
So, so I've had a few VCs that have used thatstrategy and they have a process.
They're like, look, we do have a first zoomcall, and then we'll go back and forth on Loom.
So like, well, you know, they'll have a video,they'll be like, hey, well, walk me through
your, you know, your growth marketing strategy.
How did you get this cost per user?
And like, you can like fire off like, I thinkit's free up to like five minutes, right?
(30:27):
So you can fire off a bunch of your questionsin person.
It's probably easier to talk than than sendinformation.
Do you ever follow Alex Hormozi?
No.
You have to follow this guy.
Him and his wife are like a power couple.
Alex Hormozi.
(30:48):
I've told Alice about this guy like 100 timesalready, but I kind of look up to him.
Him and his wife is like gonna tell the storyagain, but he had a gym.
I think he was somewhere in Texas or something,but he had a gym and he was trying to like
build this gym business and, that was doingokay.
And then he found all in, but he was doingreally good at marketing and he found all these
(31:10):
other gyms that were really struggling.
So he was like, look, I'll fly to your city.
I will turn around your gym and make it 100 ksa month.
The catch is if I get you to 100 ks, I willpocket the first 100 ks on my own.
Then he pretty much like replicated himselflike 80 times and he got to like 30,000,000 in
(31:30):
revenue in the first year.
What?
Yeah.
So he yeah, so it's just look him up AlexPormozi.
But what you know, he always gives like reallyamazing business advice.
So like one of the pieces of advice he says asa leader is when you're saying something, speak
it.
(31:50):
It's easier for you to speak and give yourupdates verbally to everybody, but have
somebody else text you bullets.
So it's kind of it's easier to kind of ingestthings in text format, but you can kind of just
kind of get your message out like, you know,off the cuff just verbally, instead of sitting
down and typing an email and synthesizing it,you could probably just say what you need to
(32:13):
say in like a couple minutes, but you don'twant to talk to somebody when you're trying to
get in that.
So he's got like a bunch of crazy like businesspieces of advice like that.
So it's good.
He's a really interesting person to.
So he launched that he launched Jim launch.
And now he launched a new company calledacquisition.com.
(32:36):
And what they do is they, they pretty muchinvest in companies that are 3,000,000 in
annual revenue plus.
And then they'll take like a growth equityposition into the company and scale the company
by like 10x from like 3,000,000 to 30,000,000.
So that's what they're doing now.
Like and they're all over.
So what they're doing, which is crazy isthey're all over Tick Tok, Instagram.
(32:58):
So they're going really hard on content, butit's like super organic content.
So, what they'll do is I think what they'redoing is they'll sit for like an hour and shoot
probably like ten, fifteen minutei videos.
And then you send it to somebody on Fiverr,they'll edit it, add video and content.
And then they distribute it on like, you know,Instagram, YouTube shorts.
(33:20):
And, yeah, so they're just going really hard oncontent.
So I'm seeing a lot of people do that as well,which is pretty interesting.
So
interesting.
I, I recently spoke to a partner at an oldschool VC in Boston.
It's
been around since the eighties.
So like old school, old school.
(33:41):
And he asked me, he's like, what do you thinkabout investing over Zoom?
I feel so uncomfortable doing it.
I feel like sometimes I meet the founders inperson and I regret investing in them cause
they're different people and I'm like, I havenot gotten that at all.
Feel like it's pretty easy to get to knowsomebody and builds, you know, camaraderie and
(34:04):
build a relationship over Zoom.
I think it's weird to think about pre pandemic,I took all phone calls.
I was never Zooming.
I don't know if you're the same, but it'sdefinitely harder to get to know somebody over
the phone, but still doable.
But over Zoom, I love it.
I think it just, it brings us all together.
(34:26):
We could all be sitting in a room togetherright now, but it was just surprising to me to
hear somebody even, you know, maybe in 2020, weheard that it's 2022 now.
And he's like, no, I can't do Zoom.
I can't.
I feel like I don't trust the people on theother side.
I'm like, maybe that's a you problem.
It
(34:46):
hasn't been, yeah, I mean, I've always investedvirtually in the last three, four years, so it
hasn't really been an issue for me.
I mean, I have some of my earlier, some of myearly angel investments when I was kind of like
learning to be an angel.
I did take like three meetings, three or fourmeetings just to get to know the people.
(35:07):
But it was because I enjoyed like getting toknow those people, right?
It wasn't really because I was like skeptical.
I had a lot of questions and they didn't reallymind kind of hanging out with me, so it was
fine.
But you know, then you kind of learn theetiquette.
Did you hear from
the phone?
Did I do it?
I think we spoke on the phone and then theyhappen to be in New York and then I met them in
(35:30):
person and then we invested.
But yeah, I mean, you know, last couple yearsI've done everything virtual.
But you know what's what's helped with mystrategy is, you know, I have a community of
fund managers, so there's a lot of funds thatalready have better deals.
Yeah, they a lot of those steps have alreadypassed.
So so that's definitely been like a sourcingstrategy for me.
(35:50):
A lot of the interesting deals come from otherfund managers.
Even if I'm diligencing a deal, I'll also justget some opinions from other people.
So I kind of try to get some as many inputs asI can and try to synthesize it.
Yeah, I think that's the best way to do it.
And again, very biased, but I think emergingfund managers have the best deal flow and we
(36:15):
are incentivized more, incentively are alignedwith our founders because we need you to
succeed for our funds to succeed because we'realso a startup too.
They do.
Hustling together.
My hot take recently is that I think thereshould be more M and A in the VC world.
(36:37):
I think some of these traditional funds shouldsay, listen, we don't know, we don't have
pipelines of female founders or minorityfounders, or we're looking to bridge into Web3.
We're just gonna acquire emerging Web3 fund oran emerging minority run fund.
I think it would be a great idea to help someof these traditional funds kind of become new
(37:02):
again and rebuild their flywheel.
Yeah, mean, they're doing that with corporateinnovation, right?
So if you have like a really interesting sensorcompany, a Caterpillar could just, you know,
absorb you and then you just become part oftheir, they're like a Caterpillar employee,
right?
And then you just work in their innovation lab.
I met a founder one time that told me that I'mlike well what you know what's your big vision?
(37:25):
And he's like oh I want to just get by acquiredby a Caterpillar and work at Caterpillar's
Innovation Lab.
That didn't really excite me.
That didn't seem like a big like grand, oldvision for me.
I'm like, okay, you just want to be in a labemployee.
It's a great exit, I guess, you know, but justdidn't get me didn't get us give me as excited.
(37:48):
But I think, you know, I think the the questionis like, you know, how exciting is that for the
fund manager, you know, is the fund managerokay, but like not working for JPMorgan, you
know, is JPMorgan's like women wellnessdivision and now they have, you know, they've
acquired the helm and now the helm is kind ofrunning their division.
But I think it's a really interesting cultureand brand play.
(38:11):
I worked at a large institution that acquired areally successful FinTech company.
And that was an interesting culture because itwas like this FinTech company.
Most of the people were like these hipsters inBrooklyn.
And then like the institution was like thismassive conglomerate.
So just kind of looking at the differentcultures.
(38:32):
You know, it was a fun challenge to try tomerge those cultures together because they're
definitely different.
But I think, yeah, I mean, I think there shouldbe different plays where you can have that
opportunity.
My question would just be like the terms, likeis it attractive for the fund manager, you
know, if they get pretty much like an evergreenbalance sheet and they get to just pretty much
(38:56):
work for L'Oreal, I guess, know, then I thinkthat's a
lot like the corporates acquiring and I think Ilove that there are so many emerging funds in
market and now every angel thinks they shouldbe a fund manager.
Sure.
I think there should be a little bit moreconsolidation of like
yeah I mean A16Z has so many they have likeculture fund.
(39:18):
Yeah.
So I think I think I know what you're sayinglike some of these bigger, bigger, large funds,
they already have different funds underneaththem anyway.
So I feel like that could be an opportunity,especially if somebody I don't know if you know
Kofi.
Yeah,
Kofi Ampadu works for a 16.
Yeah,
he works for like the culture fund for A16Z,but he's got like a beverage fund on the side.
(39:43):
So he's got this fund.
I think it's like a $5,000,000 fund that theyfocus on like different beverage technologies.
It's kind of cool that you know, people peoplesupport that.
But yeah, I mean, think there's a there's Ithink the attractiveness of funds is the
expertise in a certain sector, right?
So like if you don't know anything about Webthree, then hey, invest in the help because
(40:07):
they do that full time all day, every day.
They go to NFT week and they know all thefounders where like somebody who's working at
Sequoia may just not have the bandwidth to bein all those communities, you know.
So yeah, absolutely.
And then there was a there was a psychedelicsfund that got an allocation from a large
(40:27):
venture fund and it was because they just werecreating a lot of content.
The content was pretty
wrestling
on the top of everybody's news feed and theyjust got, they got attention through that.
So I think that's kind of going back to what Iwas saying before.
Like I think a fund in some instances is like amedia company.
You're pretty much building a media brand andpeople resonate with your story, I guess.
(40:52):
And content can be a great sourcing strategy assomebody looks into what do you think about?
How are we gonna tokenize whatever it iscommunity engagement and then as opposed on it.
And then that's how the founders find us.
Yeah, it looks like Alice, it looks like yougot a question here.
(41:14):
It looks like yeah, I'll ask reports.
She has she has something about an orphan drugmanufacturer.
So I guess that's a like I guess a drugmanufacturer that didn't that maybe lost their
partnership with like a large conglomerate?
I've looked at one before, but I would say itwould have to be a unique use case.
(41:39):
Like I do FDA approval, like pre FDA approvalcompanies, I just invested in an ovarian cancer
diagnostic.
So I guess it's not a drug manufacturer, but Ithink a key thing is making sure that it's a
business and not a product.
(42:00):
Yeah.
I think the first thing that comes to mind withan orphan drug manufacturer is is that a
business or is that just a product that needsto be pulled up somewhere?
Mhmm.
That's a very good point.
No.
It's it's because we're looking into a companythat they have great trajectory so this would
be their second round focus on orphan drugs.
(42:26):
Gotcha.
Yeah, But I agree with you.
So is it a product or is it a company?
Very different.
Right.
And then also for something like that, it'sgonna need some strategic or corporate help in
order to get there.
And I don't have strategic value in that space.
So I would look for signal from a lead investoror someone who has that strategic expertise
(42:51):
that can help them get there because Icertainly wouldn't be able to help them develop
that drug.
Yeah, I mean what I've been a littledisconnected in the Web3 space recently just
because of some other things that I've beenworking on, but you know what is going on in
(43:13):
that space?
I think we had NFT week coming up the nextcouple of weeks, right?
So probably going to try to get more plugged inthere.
But can you just give me some macro trends orsome updates or things that are exciting in the
space?
Yeah, and I'm happy to send you some of the NFTNYC events that I'm going to.
(43:33):
That'd be great.
I will say in general, I have not made a fundinvestment in Web3, made a big investment, but
it's because the valuations are absolutelyinsane.
Pre revenue, pre product, just an idea, it's$50,000,000 and that just doesn't work with the
(43:58):
traditional finance person in me.
So, but I think there's what I'm still gettingplugged into and I'm most excited about is I
think there's some really exciting businessmodel innovations.
There's a lot of noise in the space, butthere's some business model innovations that I
think will be here to stay.
Like being able to do payments, like payment topayment overseas and without having to go
(44:27):
through banks and do KYC, AML and all of thosethings.
There's a lot of noise in that right now andthere's some things that are maybe unintended
outcomes of it and you see NFTs and profilepictures and I think that got a little crazy.
I have a bunch of them, but there's notnecessarily a correlation in my mind of VC
(44:53):
backed NFTs and the price of the NFTs.
And so I think we will see them as a use casefor what is to come.
Really excited about music NFTs, real estateNFTs, just the business model innovation of
being able to own something versus, you know,play to earn gaming, NFTs for that, any kind of
(45:19):
creator economy being able to actually earnyour way into something is super exciting, but
I think you have to, it's hard to find thosediamonds in the rough with all of the noise
that's going on.
NFT hype.
I think I get pitched by a brand new NFTmarketplace like every two days.
Sure.
I just not sure we need more NFT marketplacesat this point.
(45:43):
Yeah.
But I'm excited about what is to come becauseit's a brand new lens and perspective with
which to look at things.
And I think we'll see a lot of that clear upAlso once people have more on ramps to crypto,
right now everything's been built for peoplewho are crypto native and so I'm in BFF and our
(46:12):
mission is to bring more women into Web3 andthe amount of time that we have to spend just
helping people set up their wallets and buytheir first NFT on OpenSea, it's not easy.
I could not teach my grandmother to do it forsure.
So I think there will be a lot of on ramps thatare built that make that whole process much
(46:33):
easier and that will bring the world into it.
But I think it's inevitable.
I mean, there are way too many smart peoplethat are way smarter than me that have poured
their lives and capital into this and Fortune500 CEOs that are building in it now that it's
(46:55):
here to stay.
You just
ignore a lot of the fluff and the noise and getdown to the actual innovation and that's what
I'm excited about.
You know, just to switch gears and I know we'rewrapping up soon, but I'm a New Yorker myself,
right?
So do you feel all the people that left arecoming back or do you think some of those
(47:16):
people are still going to stay there?
Or do you feel that they're gonna start gettingfollow and come back?
I already know.
I knew that.
I mean I knew that would happen, but you know Iwas always
And look at rent.
Rent's crazier than it's ever been.
I feel like I'm a 70 year old woman.
I'm like back in my day you used to be able toafford and now it's like I don't think I could
(47:40):
afford to live in Manhattan anymore.
No,
it's really expensive now.
Yeah, rent's blowing up everywhere.
Mean so
it's something I look at for founders too,because I am for talent is everywhere,
opportunities everywhere, you can workremotely, but there is something to be said of
(48:02):
building in the New York City environmentalongside other founders that are doing it too.
And even my husband's a founder and for a whileduring the pandemic, we were down south and
kind of building an oscillation and seeing justthe change of coming back to New York and being
able to like go into a co working space and goto an accelerator and talk to all the other
(48:26):
people that are having the exact same issuesthat you're having.
Yeah.
And just what that does for mental health andjust ease of education and how quickly you can
scale.
I think that makes a big difference.
So do you think we're still in the greatresignation?
Do you think people just still don't want towork anymore and they just want to do something
else?
Or do you feel that people are ready to go backto the office?
(48:50):
I think there is a lot of fluff incorporations.
I don't know if you've seen this.
I had no idea how bad it was until I workedremotely with friends and you like you took a
three day weekend and then you all work fromthe home on Friday and it's like, you guys
don't really work.
You take like two conference calls a day andmaybe send emails and call it a day.
(49:14):
So I think there's a lot of rethinking forpeople like that of, is this the right gig for
me?
And honestly, there should be some rethinkingon the corporation side of, do we need a 100
people to do this one small gig?
Like maybe there should be a little bit moreefficiency there.
Sure.
But I think I'm pro people trying to figure outwhat they actually love to do.
(49:40):
Because I think we learned in the pandemic lifeis really short and there's, you don't wanna
take you that those two conference calls andsend three emails, don't do that.
The world's not gonna be a better place by you
to But
I think the market's probably scaring people alittle bit right now.
It is, yeah.
Tech layoffs, so I'm.
(50:00):
There is, I mean, there's been a lot of thoseposts.
I mean, talk about people getting their offersrescinded.
That's kind of
nice.
Heard about one earlier today, a VC fund in NewYork who rescinded some principal offers, which
is scary.
Oh, wow.
I didn't know it was in the VC space.
I've been seeing a lot.
It's weird.
It's been Coinbase and Twitter a lot.
Don't know if it's like fake, if they're fakeposts or not, but, but they they look pretty
(50:23):
real.
But look, I'm in the camp like I don't thinkyou need to have a fixed like I don't think you
need to clock in and clock out and show thatyou worked forty hours.
Think if you have all about clear.
Yeah, I feel like if you have a clear goal,it's like, look, you need to launch this
product or you need to get this amount ofrevenue in by the June, right?
(50:46):
And if you're able to achieve that goal, thathigher level deliverable, I feel like it
doesn't matter if you do it like from 9PM to6PM or if you did it from like nine to twelve
and then you didn't do anything for us today.
But then you crushed it another day, you know,so I feel like I feel like if you could get
(51:10):
stuff done, but also still have fun and maybetake a day off and go to the beach with your
family, I feel like you'll still be in a bettermental state.
You
want to do great stuff.
Corporations don't need to be babysitters.
Boss shouldn't be your babysitter.
As long as at the end of the week everything isdone that was supposed to be done and you've
(51:31):
hit your KPIs, I don't care if you did it allin twenty four hours on Monday then didn't work
the rest of the week.
I don't care as long as whatever you need to dofor your mental health and just for being the
best at what you are.
I think trying to fit us all into this likenine to five Some people work great 6AM to noon
(51:52):
and then they take off the rest of the day.
So I'm totally on board with all that.
Yeah, you can measure it, So if you have sometype of measuring stick, that's how you know if
you're doing well because you're like, look,you know, the measuring stick is, hey, we need
to be generating 90 ks in revenue every month,right?
So if something happens and you're notgenerating 90 ks, maybe you are taking too many
(52:13):
Fridays off when you should be taking calls,right?
So, so as long as you're hitting those goals,think it's fine.
But anyways, look, thanks for popping in.
I know this was,
kind
of last minute and appreciate you popping inand really good catching up with you.
Hopefully we hang out sometime.
Like let me know about NFT NYC and, all theother stuff that's, going on.
(52:36):
Should get together with some of the other VCsand do something.
I, my buddy drew does like the boating thing.
There's like a there's like he takes.
I can definitely introduce you if you youhaven't gone, but he does like this little
boating trip like eight to 10 VCs every once inwhile.
It's been a while since they've had some ofthose things, but I'm excited to see everything
(52:58):
open up.
It's
kind I'm like dying to get back out there anddo a happy hour or something.
Yeah, cool.
We'll make it happen.
I'll yeah, mean I I've been able to do a couplelike things in New York with the alumni, so
I'll definitely make it happen.
I'll try to get everybody together.
Would be something in the summer.
Yeah.
New York summer is the best.
(53:19):
I know.
Yeah, find a nice rooftop.
Well, thank you.
This is really great.
Thanks for
time catching up and keep me posted oneverything.
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