Vanessa Larco: Formerly Partner @ NEA

In this episode, Vanessa Larco shares her journey from a childhood immersed in tech to a career in venture capital. She discusses early influences, building resilience through cold calling, and financial literacy education. Vanessa recounts her time at Georgia Tech, majoring in computer science, and balancing social and academic life. She reflects on internships, career aspirations, and experiences at Microsoft during the financial crisis. The conversation covers her career transitions, including roles at Playdom, Twilio, and Box, and her move to venture capital. Vanessa offers insights for product managers transitioning to VC and concludes with advice on overcoming the fear of failure.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
The one thing I've learned and I've mentored alot of folks over the years, I've been very
fortunate.
And the one thing I've seen that reallyseparates folks, like real entrepreneurs or
people that just start, it's like, they're notas scared to fail.
They're not scared of rejection.
Like even growing up, had friends that hadphenomenal grades and I was like, Oh my God,
are you gonna apply to like your dream school?
They're like, No, I'm probably gonna getrejected.
I'm not applying.
Was like, Wait, you're not even gonna apply?

(00:22):
Well, I know.
And like, It'll hurt too much if I apply andput all that effort in and then I get rejected.
Welcome to The Investor, a podcast where I,Joel Palafinkel, your host, dives deep into the
minds of the world's most influentialinstitutional investors.
In each episode, we sit down with an investorto hear about their journeys and how global

(00:45):
markets are driving capital allocation.
So join us on this journey as we explore theseinsights.
Alright.
So we're live here on the investor podcast withVanessa Larko, new friend of mine.
Really enjoyed, you know, talking to her acouple weeks ago and just really excited to

(01:05):
kinda go deeper on her background.
We have a couple parallels with us both havingtechnical backgrounds working in product.
But most notably, you know, she was formerly apartner at NEA and has just been in the
investment space for a long time.
So I think there's a lot of wisdom, careeradvice, you know, advice for people that are
looking to be an investor one day andprofessionalize that.

(01:28):
So I think there's a lot to unpack here.
But Vanessa, thanks for coming on the show.
Really excited to to have this episode withyou.
Thanks for having me.
Excited to chat.
Yeah.
Well, why don't we start off, Vanessa, withjust your your early days of your career?
You know, what did you think you wanted to, youknow, be growing up?
And from what I recall, I believe you said thatyour mother was a very successful entrepreneur

(01:51):
as well.
Yeah, she is still working.
So she is continues to be a successfulentrepreneur.
Now she's not in tech, but my upbringing, shehad been in pretty much the whole time up until
I was in high school.
And then she decided to start businesses thatweren't tech.
It was computer science in the 70s.
So I grew up in and around software andhardware.

(02:12):
That's amazing.
Yeah.
Mean, you remind me of one of my past guests.
It's a pretty well known entrepreneur inPhiladelphia, had a pretty exit.
And, you know, he was talking about hischildhood.
And his father owned a bunch of Arby'srestaurants, and then his mother owned like a
garment manufacturing company.
So he was seven years old.

(02:32):
And this is a fun thing to you.
And but you and I both have smaller kids thatare around the same age.
But, like, when he was seven years old, he wastalking about p and l for, the Arby's
restaurants.
Right?
So I wanna start with that.
Talk to me a little bit about, you know,growing up with, you know, a parent or parents
that were entrepreneurs and how that influencedkind of your career aspirations, maybe as a

(02:54):
child and how that kind of, you know, flowedinto kind of high school and college and and
kind of what you thought about your career andwhat it ended up being what it ended up being
later.
Yeah.
So I'll start with my parents are LatinAmerican, so you kind of have to work.
There's no free lunch.
So I think I was working for my mom starting atthe age of like three or four.

(03:17):
It was back in the day where she used to mailher pricing list in a floppy disk in a real
envelope to customers and prospectivecustomers.
Every quarter, she would have me sit down on acomputer and just copy floppy disks and put
them in an envelope and seal them.
So what was in the floppy disk?
I remember those by the way.
Yeah, it was her product catalog and newprices.

(03:40):
That was in online.
And so like anytime she had new products tosell or that she changed the prices on
products, the only way to get that informationto her customers was on a floppy disk.
Wow.
Just
mail them in the mail.
So was it the was it the black?
Because there's two types of floppy disk.
Right?
There's the really old school, which is theblack huge one.
Then there was there was smaller ones that werea little slicker that were Yeah.

(04:01):
With, the little slim thing.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So this is the old school stuff.
This was a black giant, like the five inch byfive and a half inch.
Sure.
Basically it was very simple.
I would put it in this giant computer and therewas already a floppy disk in there.
There was like two drives and then the computerwould have a loading bar and then it would say
like, do you want a copy?
I'd hit Y and then I'd wait for the whole barto go through.

(04:23):
And then when it's done, I would take out thefloppy disk and put in a new
one.
Wow.
And that was my job on Saturdays every quarter.
I had it easy.
I think my brother was like in the warehouselabeling boxes.
I think he got the short end of that stick.
But that's how it started.
Mean, we worked for her on that.
I understood like, what's a price catalog?

(04:44):
What are SKUs?
Why do you have more or less SKUs?
How does it add complexity in the warehouse?
Right?
And then as I got older, unfortunately, I gotpromoted to basically telemarketing.
So I had to cold call people.
She sold mostly to countries in Africa.
And so I'd have my call list and I'd calleveryone and say like, Are you upgrading your

(05:06):
computers this year?
And pre qualify the sales leads for her salesteam.
And I did that, I don't know, must have beenlike twelve, thirteen.
Wow.
Were you were you paid or were you just prettymuch was that just your duty as a chore to
was paid in quarters.
I had a punch card.
So I'd go to the office and hit the punch cardin the kitchenette.

(05:27):
Mhmm.
Punch in, do my work, and punch out.
Okay.
So I'm
Yeah.
I mean, so there's a lot of there's well, I Iwas just asking too because there's a lot of
social media content now with, these businessattorneys that share content about, like, you
know, parents that can actually pay their kids,you know, legitimately, and there's a tax write
off.
So you're you're essentially an employee backthen.
I'm looking into that.

(05:48):
We that's not I was paid under the table Sure.
Until the IRS in in quarters.
So don't think I met the threshold to, paytaxes on that.
Yeah.
It's essentially like an allowance.
I mean, it's
Basically, was an earned allowance.
Yeah.
But yeah, no, cold calling was actuallyterrifying.
Like people would hang up on you, people Andwould yell at I think actually that was
probably one of the best lessons of like, don'ttake a personal move on, go to the next line,

(06:13):
the next phone number.
Totally we'd get, I don't know, I would callprobably a couple, probably like a 100 plus
people each time I would make one of the, I'dsit down and make calls.
And I'd get like two that'd be like, yeah,actually we are gonna upgrade our systems.
Where are you based?
Oh, interesting.
And the great qualified lead.
So it got you used to that rejection, constantrejection, and that one to 2% conversion is

(06:41):
really exciting.
How do you think that's helpful for people'sconfidence as they're kind of trying to build
their communication skills?
The one thing I've learned and I've mentored alot of folks over the years, I've been very
fortunate.
And the one thing I've seen that reallyseparates folks, like real entrepreneurs or
people that just start, it's like, they're notas scared to fail.
They're not scared of rejection.

(07:01):
Like even growing up, had friends that hadphenomenal grades and I was like, Oh my God,
are you gonna apply to like your dream school?
They're like, No, I'm probably gonna getrejected.
I'm not applying.
I was like, Wait, you're not even gonna apply?
Well, I know.
And like, it'll hurt too much if I apply andput all that effort in and then I get rejected.
Sure.
But it was like, you know, high school tocollege, but even people now, they're like, I
wanna start a company and I have this idea.

(07:21):
I'm like, Okay, start.
Well, maybe I need to Like, save how much dohave saved?
Like, what's your monthly budget?
How much do you need to have cushion?
Okay.
You have that cushion.
Go start.
Well, maybe I need this.
Maybe I'm like, just start.
Yeah.
Or some people say, hey, you know, I just wannamake sure that it'll work out.
Like the only way you're gonna make sure is ifyou actually do it, right?
Just do the thing, right?

(07:42):
Do the thing.
And I think the cold calling as painful as itwasn't as much as I complained about that as
my, one of my jobs for my mom, It just taughtyou to like, just tackle the list.
You're going get a gazillion no's, but someonewill say yes at some point.
Yeah.
And so you just like, I mean, I wouldprocrastinate around the office.
I'd like, pour milk.

(08:02):
I would do this.
I would try to like do everything before itgets started.
But just like, just start.
Just like once you pick up the phone and you'rein the groove, like it's fine.
You figure it out.
Yeah.
And so I think that that's what I learned mostfrom it is like, just start, don't worry about
the rejection.
Everything has rejection in it somewhere.
Nothing is like rejection free.
So you might as well, like, go for the thingthat has the highest upside.

(08:26):
So how many calls are you so where'd you getthe leads?
You got them from, you're just dialing a phonebook or did you get some qualified leads from
someone?
The sales team, they would buy lists of people.
Okay.
Yeah.
But they would buy them and they'd deliver inlike booklets.
Oh, yeah.
And
you would highlight the ones they would everyday.
They would at least go through and do like afirst pass.

(08:47):
And then I would call them and then getinformation from them.
Sure.
But yeah, no, it was old school.
It was a long time ago, but it made me And alsomade me just very curious about like, why do
people buy?
How do people buy?
And it was really interesting to understandbecause my mom told, at that time she was
selling hardware, what do they use theirhardware for?

(09:08):
What do their upgrade cycles look like?
What's the minimum viable that they need?
And then if they get too cheap of a product andthey outgrow it within a year, then that was a
waste of money.
They should have just gone like one notchhigher.
At that time we were just differentiating onmemory.
It was like, do want two fifty six or do youwant 500?
Know, I was like,
you were selling what were you So you wereselling different computer products?

(09:30):
Yeah.
Two.
Okay.
Got it.
So is this the time is this around the timewhen like Dell computers was Yeah. Coming
Coming
My mom actually would sell the software patchfor memory cards for Michael Dell.
That's where she got the idea to do like a Delllike computer, but sell it in a market where
Dell wasn't, or nobody was paying attention,which was Africa at the time.
Yeah, sure.

(09:50):
And so she wanted to build the Dell of Africaand she built something, I don't know, not as
big, but pretty close and sold that business inthe nineties.
So it was really interesting though, I think,just understand, to talk to customers at such a
young age, just like try to
understand Absolutely.
All the work.
Yeah.
Because you never learned that stuff.
I mean, I never was fortunate to kind of getthat experience.

(10:12):
Right?
I don't like mean that.
Ever.
So how are you kind of thinking about that withyour three kids?
Like, are you trying to teach them?
Because I'm trying to do some of that with myson, at least.
My daughter's only three years old, right?
She I'm just too busy arguing with her overlike a lollipop or something, you know?
Yeah.
But how are you kind of translating some ofthat with your kids?

(10:33):
Yeah, well, have a seven year old and he's myoldest and he's very curious about things.
So he'll be like, Buy me this.
I'm like, I'm not buying you that.
You have buy with your own money.
And like, I'm gonna do a plug for one of myportfolio companies.
He has a green light card.
So it's like a checking debit.
He has a phone for very different reasons, buthe has the green It's one of the three apps he

(10:53):
has on his phone is this green light app.
So he can open that.
And they have modules where they teach youdifferent lessons.
But what I was explaining to him, interest,like you put your money in, this is your
interest rate.
And so it just grows every month by this rate.
Sure.
And like a couple months later, like we talkedabout how it worked and how it compounds.
I didn't think any of it sunk in.

(11:15):
I thought it went like way over his head.
And I was like, Oh, whatever, I tried.
And then a couple of months later he comes,he's like, Mom, I would really like a higher
interest rate.
I was like, Yeah, buddy, you and me both.
He's like, I can put my money in and I don'thave to, like, work and it it grows.
I like I like that.
I was like, yeah, dude.
Interesting concept.
Yeah.
We all love that.
Know, compounding capital.
Yeah.

(11:35):
I mean, look.
I mean, my my son got some money for we didlike a communion party for him, right?
And we just put into a savings account.
I'm like, what are we doing here?
Just took the whole money and put into themarket.
And I'm like, look, you know, I hear and thenwhat I've been doing is kind of showing him the
different tickers.
Like, hey, you own Tesla.
Do you know what Tesla is?
And then I so he's been very curious now wherehe opens up kind of some of the tickers and

(11:58):
he'll come up with some random toys that he'splaying with, and he'll try to look them up.
And I'm like, that's not a company.
It's probably part of like a bigger parentcompany.
That curiosity is there, which is reallyexciting
Yep.
To We've been also teaching him aboutindividual stocks and he opens a stock app and
he knows red is down, green is up.

(12:19):
It's like, oof, a lot of red today.
What happened?
And so I explained tariffs to him.
Yeah.
And he's like, but if we keep raising tariffs,why don't they just raise tariffs?
Then everyone just raise tariffs and then wecan't buy any toys.
I'm like, yeah.
He's Trust us.
We've had those conversations I
was like, yeah, it is.
And then I was also explaining like low margin,high margin businesses to him because we were

(12:43):
talking about entrepreneurship.
And I said, you're the boss of a business, themoney comes into you and you decide how much to
pay other people, how much to invest in thebusiness, how much you keep.
That's your decision.
And so typically the bosses pay themselves morethan everyone else in most cases.
Oh, I understand.
So then in kindergarten, this was last year,they made a poster for each kid and the teacher

(13:05):
filled out the questions and somebody asked youwhen you grow up.
And he just wrote boss.
B Just O S S.
Not the boss, just boss.
And I asked him, he's like, Yeah, I wanna makethose decisions.
I was like, Well, it's responsibility.
You have to work really hard when you're theboss.
You have to work harder than everyone else.
And he's like, Why?
If everyone else is working, why do you need towork at all?

(13:25):
Just hire a bunch of people and then you don'thave to work.
I was like, Oh no, if you don't work, theydon't wanna work either.
And so he's getting these concepts of like,what are the trade offs of being an
entrepreneur?
What does it mean?
Like, why do people decide to be entrepreneursversus other people decide to just work for
someone else?
And then a couple months later he comes andhe's like, Well, we went to an ice cream store.

(13:46):
He knows the ice cream owner.
He's like, Mom, does Javier, the ice creamowner, have a lot of money?
And I was like, Well, no.
And he's like, Yep, but he owns his ownbusiness.
Why doesn't he have a lot of money?
Like, Well, he sells a low margin product,meaning like he sells this ice cream, an ice
cream cone for $4 but it costs him $3 So afterevery ice cream, he only makes $1 and that's

(14:08):
fine, except that he only sells it to ourneighborhood.
He has this small addressable market.
I'm like, Damn.
Right?
And he's like, Okay, well, my mom now is in thefood business too.
And he's like, Well, what about Abu?
Is she a low margin or high margin business?
I was like, Well, it's a low margin business,but she sells wholesale.

(14:29):
She sells to all of The United States.
So even though she makes $1 per that she sells,she sells like hundreds of thousands of them
every month.
Yeah.
Ask no other questions.
Six months go by, we come to my room and visitmy mom.
And the first thing he says is like, Abu, whenyou die, I wanna take over the business and I'm

(14:50):
gonna sell pandemonos to the whole world.
And then I'm almost like, What?
And I'm like, Oh, oh God, I know exactly wherethis is coming from.
This is
Yeah.
Let me explain.
I was like
It's a little dark, but it's also ambitioustoo, right?
But in his mind, was like, what's bigger thanThe United States?
The whole world.
And so if I increase my TAM and a loan marginbusiness, right?
So it's you can see the wheels turning.

(15:11):
Yeah.
And this past weekend, we were at the beachwith my one of my good friends and he's a GM of
a really amazing high end restaurant in Miami.
And my son was grilling him.
He's like, Is it high margin?
Is it low margin?
How do you price things on your menu?
The GM, are you the CEO?
He's like, No, I'm not the CEO.
Why aren't you the CEO?
He's like, Well, there's a CEO that owns allthe restaurant, like the restaurant group.
And he was like, well, do you own a part ofyour restaurant since you're managing it?

(15:34):
And he's like, well, no, I don't have equity.
He's like, why don't you ask for it?
He's like, am I really having this conversationwith a seven year old?
I was
like,
dude, you don't even know.
Like, you don't even know.
He might be renegotiating his terms of his,employment in the next couple weeks.
Know?
Who knows?
You never know.
So
Couple other yeah.
There was another plug too.
So I don't know if I I bought this book.

(15:55):
It was called Lina Mo CEOs.
Dina She Cares books.
That was a great book.
Love that.
That's where he learned the word CEO.
So then he asks everyone if they're CEOs, andthat's where he learned that term.
There's also a game that my son's been playing.
I caught him playing it.
It's like this pizzeria.
The game that I played when I was a kid, it wasjust a pizzeria and you just kinda are trying

(16:16):
to you're trying to, feed all the people andthen you, like, die or something or you you go
up you get in trouble.
But this game was really interesting because itshows if you're profitable in or not.
So you can make some tweaks to which pizzayou're selling and like the different pizza is
going be a different price point.
So we did one round and it shows like a P andL.

(16:36):
But it's very basic.
It's like, this is how much you pay.
This is how much you made.
This is how much your expenses were.
So you're in the red.
So I was trying to teach my son profit and justkind of like, you know, basic math, right?
Just how much you're making minus yourexpenses.
So it's kind of cool to see some more of thoseresources there.

(16:58):
I'm sure it was there when I was younger too,but I just didn't have access to it or just the
knowledge about it, or even someone that wouldstimulate that interest.
So I think it was really exciting for you tokind of have those role models early on.
So let's talk about kind of the next phase.
So you're, you know, maybe getting into highschool, I'm assuming maybe just taking a lot of
different, really interesting electives.

(17:20):
So kind of what was going on in your mind interms of your career and kind of what you
wanted to do, you know, obviously seeing yourmother as a role model.
No, I was a very rebellious teenager.
So where I think most people in Silicon Valleywere straight A students and took all AP
courses, I was not that in high school.
I grew up in Miami.

(17:41):
Miami has a really big social scene.
I was very much more concerned over which boatwere we gonna take to The Bahamas and not tell
our parents Where about was the next party?
Like which sandbar was everyone gonna party onthis weekend?
I was really good at math so I could likebreeze through my math homework.
I took computer science because no one wantedto take the class and the teacher basically

(18:03):
begged the kids that were good at math to takehis class.
And so I was like, I'll take your class if younever give me homework.
Sure.
He was like, Oh, okay.
And I was like, Great, you're my elective.
And he was like, I love how this negotiation'sworking out for us.
So I was just a troublemaker.
And I mean, I never got caught, I never gotpunished, but I was a troublemaker in high

(18:24):
school.
And then when it came to like junior year, Iwas like, Oh man, I need to get into a good
college.
Or my mom's gonna let me go away to college.
In Latin culture, you don't like just leaveyour house to go to college.
You have to have like a reason to leave yourhouse.
So, Sure,
was getting
out from underneath my mom's roof.

(18:45):
So I was like, okay, what do I need to do toget into like a top?
I wanted to study CS.
I liked it.
And I felt like it came easy to me.
So I like, what do have to do to get into top10 CS schools?
Like, are the top 10 CS schools?
Okay, let me look at all the requirements.
Was like, Georgia Tech, like because it'sclosest to home.
Had gone there, so I visited and I liked it.

(19:05):
And I was like, All right.
I went to my college counselor.
She's like, You're never gonna get in.
You'd have to take all AP classes this year andget straight As to have a shot.
She's like, sign me up for all the AP classes.
Every single class had to be AP except for likeone elective.
And she's like, You're gonna die.
And I was like, I'll figure it out.
And then they did.

(19:25):
I took all AP classes.
I got all straight As, and I had a slim chanceof getting into tech.
And then I got in.
It all worked out, but it was not a slam dunk.
I was like waitlisted at University of Illinoisor Banner Champaign.
And I don't even think I would I don't know.
I applied to Berkeley.
Think it was like flat out very fast rejectionfrom Berkeley.

(19:47):
It was like instant.
Is
real it time?
No, just So yeah.
And then university of I I applied as a mathmajor to WashU, and I was waitlisted there too.
Mhmm.
So yeah.
And then I got to schools, but but I was like
So you did so you went to Georgia Tech?

(20:08):
You ended up going there?
Okay.
Yeah.
It makes sense.
I mean, it's they had a really good engineeringprogram as well.
Did you do computer science?
I taught 10 CS school.
That was the requirement my parents had for it.
So that's that was the requirement.
I met it.
I went.
I got my butt kicked.
It's an extraordinarily difficult school.
That's when I became a nerd.
Like that's when I was like, I have no sociallife.

(20:30):
I'm gonna live in this lab.
I'm gonna be doing homework all day, all night,seven days a week.
Because the other students that came in for CSwere brilliant.
And they were like amazing hackers that hadbeen like either black hat hackers or white
hat.
It depends on like what side, but like theywere black hat, they were white hat.
And I was like, I don't even know what you guysare talking about.
I did like usual basic in high school.

(20:52):
Sure.
Was like, didn't do C, you didn't do assembly?
I'm like, no.
They're like, haven't hacked into a bankingsystem.
I'm like, I thought that was a federal crime.
I didn't any of these things.
And so I had to work so hard to just keep upwith everyone.
Sure.
I loved it.
I loved the challenge.
I also, at this point, was fascinating.

(21:12):
I didn't know if I was smart or not because Igrew up in Miami and all the people, being
smart wasn't something that was valued in mysocial circles.
Being popular, being well dressed, all thosethings mattered, but smart didn't.
And so when I went to college, I was like, Iwant to figure out if I'm actually smart or
not.
And so I really just wanted to see like howhard of a curriculum could I take on?

(21:35):
Like how hard could I push myself and figureout like, what are my limitations?
Like what am I actually good at?
What am I actually gonna struggle with?
And so, yeah, it was a really interesting time.
So like where most people had partied incollege, I had a good time.
Was in a sorority, but for me college was thetime where I like studied.
It was all about and learning.

(21:56):
And I was so happy to graduate.
I mean, tell me about the dynamics of peoplethat you knew in high school.
So I was quite rebellious too when I was like16, 17.
And like I was lucky I got through most of mysenior classes, but I was running track, was in
abandoned stuff, so I was kind of a rebel.

(22:18):
I was like, I graduated by the skin of theteeth, but then I think that's what probably
pushed me to work harder in college.
I'm like, I don't want be a complete idiot.
But it kind of motivated me because I had, youknow, not that perfect of a background in high
school.
Was, you know, definitely social.
Then I would say this is what I observed themexcited to hear what you you observed, but like

(22:40):
that even even in college, I wasn't like a fourpoint zero student.
I think I had, you know, maybe mid to high, youknow, 3.5 and above.
But like I did go out, I partied, I hung outwith friends.
But like a lot of times when I was studying forthe exam, you know, I try to get a hookup from
somebody.

(23:01):
Somebody like took the exam the quarter before.
Right.
And then I'm like, look, you helped me out, youhelped me out.
And a lot of that is very similar in DC, right?
You're kind of building those relationships.
So I think some of those kind of skills wouldjust kind of getting the right connection
somehow and obviously pass paying it forward.
Where I felt like the kids that got 4.0s, theywere not employable.

(23:22):
Like they would just stay in school andcontinue their postdoc and just be lifelong
students.
They were just such academics.
But they were like socially awkward.
So tell me about that.
Tell me about like the different dynamics ofpeople that maybe you studied with the
different personalities, right?
I think, look, I always believe in working hardand playing hard, right?
So you gotta be social, go out there and have agood time, but then also just make sure that

(23:45):
you, you know, like do well in your exams.
Yeah, I mean, learned, where I actually learnedthe balance because in high school it was all
about my social life.
And just like seeing how many rules we couldbreak without getting in trouble, really like
testing the boundaries of these things.
In college, my freshman year, I got my buttlike, my soft my first semester of freshman

(24:10):
year, I almost died.
Like, took calc one and the teacher's like,well, everybody took AP calc.
Let's just start on chapter six.
And I was like, Woah, woah, woah.
I took Calc Honors, not AP Calc.
Yeah.
And I need chapters one through six.
So can we And everyone's like, Oh yeah, chapterone through six.
I did that in like preschool.
And I was like, I'm gonna die.

(24:31):
So it was like just catching up, catching up,catching up.
And I did like, okay grades wise.
Sophomore year, I was very much like, I wannaknow if I can get straight A's.
And Georgia Tech is interesting because thecurve is graded to a 2.7.
And so a 2.7 is like average.

(24:53):
So a three point zero is honors.
A 3.3 is high honors.
A 3.5 is highest honors.
So just like knock down a regular scale by likehalf a point.
And that's like the Georgia Tech scale.
Sure.
And I was like, I wonder if I can get a fourpoint zero.
So spring semester of sophomore year, I shotfor a four point zero and I was taking hard CS

(25:14):
classes.
And I basically required that I studied and didhomework and projects every single day, seven
days a week.
And I would only be able to sleep five to sixhours a night.
And so I got the four point zero, but I haddone nothing but study.
And I was actually starting to get nodes bleedsfrom the stress and the lack of sleep, like

(25:35):
regular nodes bleeds.
And I was like losing my appetite.
Like physically I was falling apart as well.
Sure.
And so after I got the four point zero, I cameback home, I slept for like three days straight
and I was like, yeah, not worth it.
Like nobody is going to care that I have a fourpoint zero.
Like I will get a good job with above a threepoint zero.
So like my goal is to go somewhere between likea three point zero and a 3.5.

(25:59):
And I got so maniacal that I was like, don'tAnd Georgia Tech doesn't have A pluses or
minuses.
It was just As or Bs.
So I was like, I don't want anything above,like too far above a 90.
Like I just wanna cross the A threshold.
So it'd calculate like how many questions Ihave to get right on the final to get my A.
And I
was like, Oh, great.
I only need to get a 60 on my finals today.

(26:21):
Shooting for a 60.
I'm not gonna shoot for a 100.
I'm gonna memorize exactly like three quartersof this material and YOLO the rest.
Sure.
And so like, if I got like a 96 on something,I'm like, oh, I studied too far, like into what
I needed.
That's It could have been out with friends.
Yeah.
So I actually ended up figuring out thatbalance after sophomore year.

(26:43):
Yeah.
And then I interned at Microsoft and I lovedit.
I was like, I am actually much more of a doerthan a studier.
I realized like, I actually don't like school.
It was like a means to end.
I started working with I- Like
what was your favorite elective in school?

(27:05):
Didn't What class?
Have electives at Strokes, just because wascomplicated at the time.
Was a tech school.
So like people's electives were likethermodynamics or like mechanical engineering
101.
Like your electives are just other engineeringcourses.
Know.
I didn't
like those.
I weaseled, we did have a business school, butthose classes are always overbooked.
So I found a way around it, which was declare adouble major in business and CS so that I can

(27:30):
register for the business classes.
And then I dropped my double major when it wastime for me to graduate.
So I could just graduate CS.
Sure.
Once I figured out that hack, which was like myjunior year, I really liked my marketing
classes.
Like everything that was like customer facing,like use cases, case studies.
Because it brings you back to your childhoodwhen you were kind of doing a lot of that
stuff, right?

(27:50):
That and like, it's actually how the worldworks.
If you build a product, you ain't gonna begood.
Then like, if you can't sell it, it doesn'tmatter.
You can't market it, it doesn't matter.
Like understand-
And same thing, I mean, the parallel, sorry tocut you off, but I just gotta say this, but
like, you've got an A plus, you got a 98%versus a 96%.

(28:11):
You're the best student that ever walked,right?
But if you can't even sell yourself to get thatjob at Microsoft, then nobody really cares,
right?
I know.
And let me tell you, when I got that, becausethe internship at Microsoft is very
competitive.
Come on campus and they pick up couple ofstudents.
One of my CS professors was like, I always getasked who I should recommend and I'm gonna put
recommendations for just two students in thisclass.

(28:32):
Like who wants to be recommended?
We all raise our hand.
And he's since apologized to me and we'refriends on Facebook and we message every once
in while.
Looked at, there was only two women in theclass.
We both raised our hand.
He looked at both and he's like, I'm notrecommending you.
You're not the Microsoft type.
Wow.
And we were like, Is it because we're women?
And he's like, It's just, you're not nerdyenough.
And I was like So when I got the internship, Iwas like, I didn't need your recognition

(28:55):
anyway.
Here's my offer letter.
You just suck and I don't like you.
Luckily I'd already finished this class at thatpoint.
Everybody was shocked.
Everybody was shocked.
Like you don't get a hundreds on the test.
Like you don't like, you're not number one ortwo when we do like the time coding labs.

(29:18):
Like how did you get the internship?
It's like, I'm just better at interviewing thanyou.
I don't know what to tell you.
Like, it turns out you need to be better thanjust a fast coder to get the internship, but
everybody was shocked and a lot of people werelike actually pretty upset that I'd gotten it.
Sure.
And so that was interesting.
But yeah, no, to your point, like you have tobe able to sell the thing.

(29:38):
Okay, so tell me what happened after Microsoft.
So you did the internship.
You do any other, a couple other internshipsbefore you graduated?
No, no.
I did the Microsoft internship.
I studied abroad software as junior year, didthe internship junior to senior year, and then
I had fun, but my dream was to get this IBMsales job in Manhattan selling software to Wall

(30:02):
Street, which is like the most coveted job.
The quota was low.
The payouts were big at the time.
Like every IBM CEO had come from the softwaresales division.
It was like fast track to executive track.
And in my mind, I was like, I'm gonna live inNew York City with my friends from Miami.
And I'm gonna be wearing like fancy suits towork every day, and taking clients to like

(30:26):
great events.
And I was so excited.
And then I went through the interview process.
It was like a ton of rounds.
It was all around the country.
It was like 200 people initially applying,whittled it down to seven.
And then I met the seven finalists, actually itwas when the Wall Street was melting down.
They put us in a conference room like, We don'tknow if this job exists, let us figure it out.
Sure.
So we're just like all sitting in conferenceroom chatting.
I was like, I'm the only one that's at ETS?

(30:47):
Like, None of you know how this software works?
I'm like, Nope.
So and so was like son of someone who wascousin of the CEO.
The other person played Yale football and thehiring manager had played Yale football.
Like everyone just like connected and no onehad done CS and nobody even knew what the

(31:08):
product suite was.
Like I had studied it, I used it, I demoed it.
Was like And I was like, wait a second.
And then my Microsoft interview, I was likecoding on a whiteboard.
Sure.
Like algorithm, like sweating it out.
I was like, I don't, maybe I want to I waslike, Maybe I'll just, I'll do the Microsoft
thing because I've worked so hard with a CSdegree.

(31:29):
So I'll do it for like a couple of years andthen I'll move to New York and then I'll do
like the social fun thing.
Yeah.
It feels like I worked too hard in school tojust like not use it or not to be around other
people who like went through it too.
And then I actually pitted Microsoft, IBM,Siemens, Expedia.
I had a couple of offers and this was like 2008during everything most.

(31:50):
During the meltdown, yeah.
That's the other fun part is like, I learned tonegotiate.
My mom always told me the best leverage youhave is if you don't care if you walk away.
Yeah.
And so I'm like, I don't care if I take, like Iwas like, if I have the IBM job, great, I'll
live in New York with my friends.
If I take the Microsoft job, great, I'll beworking with Which like other CS one of the two

(32:12):
like toss-up?
And so I went into negotiation with like, Idon't actually give a shit which one of these
two I end up going to.
So IBM would offer me this.
And I'm like, I don't know, maybe I'll justtake the Microsoft offer.
They throw in a bunch more.
Then I call Microsoft.
I'm like, IBM offered me this, this and this.
So like, I think I'm just gonna take thatoffer.
I'm like, no, no, no, wait, wait, And then Igot this like egregious offer.
I was like, they even, just to like, just giveyou an anecdote.

(32:37):
I had a horse, it's a very long story.
I rescued him in the outskirts of Atlanta andthey offered to pay for the relocation of my
horse from Atlanta to Seattle.
Like they just like threw that in as like anSure, yeah.
And I was like, All right, cool.
Yeah, I'll do it.
And then I realized like, anytime we wanna goin negotiation, like the best leverage you can

(33:00):
have is actually like being able to walk awayfrom either and not care.
Yeah.
It's like buying a car.
I'm like, I can walk out of the dealership andnot care if I take this car with me or not.
And so like just coming from that position isjust the best.
And when the times where I'm like, I don't haveleverage, I'm an awful negotiator.
When I don't have leverage and I absolutelyneed the thing, that's what I'm working on

(33:22):
because I have no poker face.
Like, I'm just, yep.
Nope.
You're right.
Like, this is I guess this is the price.
I have no leverage.
Yeah.
So tell me what happened after that.
So you ended up moving to Microsoft and workingthere for some time.
I worked on Surface when it was a big table.
Turns out in a recession, no one wants to buy a$14,000 table.
Sure.

(33:42):
Yeah.
So they struggled and they never
So it was a table.
It was an actual, Yes.
It was a huge table back in, like, oh, wait.
And that team was like my dream team to join,and Microsoft said there was no way they would
hire someone from undergrad.
I was like, okay, I'm just not joiningMicrosoft.
But it's policy.
And I was like, all right, fine, I'm notjoining Microsoft.
They're like, turns out we can break thatpolicy.

(34:05):
Good job on that team.
And I was like, wow, how flexible you guysbecome.
So I joined that team and worked with a me likeit was an incredibly talented team.
This is when Satya was on the was this the newCEO or was this before?
No, no, no.
This is Balmer.
Panos, I just think is like, runs up all thehardware stuff on Microsoft now.

(34:27):
Sure.
Panos, and it was a guy before him, think itwas Brad Carpenter, and then Panos took over as
the GM.
So I was in between both of those GMs.
Got it.
Probably has to be like a huge executive atMicrosoft after that.
But it was an incredible team.
I was the youngest person by far.
Was like, How did you get on this team?
I'm like, It's a long story.
I weaseled my way in, don't worry about it.

(34:48):
And I had to work extra hard because I wantedpeople to respect me and nobody thought So I
belonged I had to prove myself.
And then a good friend of mine was on the Xboxteam and they just started working on Kinect.
It
was like a super secretive underground project.
And he recommended me for a job there.
And my hiring manager was like, Look, you'retoo junior for this role.

(35:10):
And I was like, Well, I'll work harder thananyone else.
Like my whole career rides on whether thisworks or not.
You let And me know if you want then a monthlater they called me like, Yeah, why not?
And I was like, Okay, great.
So I was way under qualified for that job too.
But I worked my butt off.
I mean, was working three hour weeks regularly.
My friends threw a going away party for mysocial life in Seattle and all I did was work

(35:33):
every in single the office because Connect justwasn't working when you needed it to work
before Christmas.
So that was fun.
I think we all have some level of PTSD thatworked in Connector and the Total, bonded for
life after that.
When we shipped Oh, the thing that I learned atConnect was I can figure out a lot of things,

(35:57):
way more than I thought I could.
When I got there, I was like, I don't knowanything about speech recognition and I'm
running the speech recognition experience part.
And I don't know anything about thistechnology.
And I picked up textbooks and then I juststarted reading white papers.
Everything that Microsoft Research hadpublished on speech recognition from a Fartalk
device, I devoured it.
Then I reached out to random other researchersat universities to just like ask them my stupid

(36:19):
questions because I didn't wanna ask anyone onmy team.
Sure.
Because I didn't want them to know I didn'tknow the answer.
But then there was a cold calling where like, Idon't know you guys for your name, you authored
this paper.
I have really stupid questions for you.
Please teach
me these.
And then I figured it out and I was like, Wow,I can figure things out.
Even when I feel totally out of water, I willeventually figure it out if I put the effort

(36:41):
into it.
Then my mom always says, there's no substitutefor hard work.
They're just like, you can work smarter,harder, whatever.
But I'm like, you can work smarter and harder.
And then there's no substitute for that.
So that was an incredibly, that experienceshaped me.
It was a big part of who I'd becomeprofessionally.

(37:05):
It was hard.
It was politically difficult.
It was technically difficult.
It was grueling timelines, super high stakes,lots of arguments.
People would like shout at each other.
People were throwing devices across the room.
Like it got intense and I And survived weshipped, think a really revolutionary product.

(37:29):
So then I moved to the Bay Area to work atPlatom because I wanted to work at startups.
I really wanted to be an entrepreneur at somepoint.
And I was like, I'm not gonna do it if I stayin Seattle.
Need to move to where like all the founders areand be in that environment.
So I wanna join a startup, see how it's doneand start my own.
So I joined Platoon.
And like when I got there, they're like, Oh, bythe way, we were acquired by Disney.

(37:50):
And I was like, Oh, great.
I wanted
to So be in So you're back at a big company.
I'm back at a big company.
My paycheck had Mickey Mouse on it.
Your email handle just changed at disney dotcom.
No, luckily they left Playdom alone for theearnout.
I got to still feel that like, and it was superhigh stakes because it was like, you don't get
the other quarter of this payout if you don'thit these numbers.

(38:12):
So
it was like a 100 miles an hour to hit thosenumbers.
And
there I started a gaming studio with a couplepeople.
They gave us like 600 ks to start the studio.
We launched, we built a bunch of stuff in ABtest platform because those didn't exist off
the shelf at the time.
For gaming, I guess, right?
For anything.
Like it was
way before Optimizely. Yeah, that's true. Yeah.That's the only one I can think about. Yeah,

(38:34):
Yeah, that's true.
Yeah.
That's the only one I can think about.
Yeah, Optimizely.
It was before them.
And Flurry was another one that was allowingyou to like shard things sort of.
But no, we built our own in house and then webuilt a game and we launched it and we were
raking in the money and that was super fun.
It was my first time as a manager.
I was like 26, 27.
I was managing a team of 40 people.

(38:55):
Everybody was older So than that is anotherlike fish out of water situation where I was
like, I need to read every management bookunder the sun.
Have to figure out am I gonna manage folks whenI'm the least experienced person.
Sure.
And I definitely don't deserve this job.
And I asked them like, why are you putting meas a manager?
And they're like, you know how to build andship.
And ultimately your job is to manage thesepeople so that we can all build and ship.

(39:19):
And I was like, oh, so I'm like, basically justlike a project manager that everyone reports up
into.
Sure.
What were some of the biggest learnings, youknow, from the books that you read and also
kind of applying that as a shifting to amanager.
There were different styles of management.
Then so that I didn't know that as someone thathad only been managed for a couple of years,

(39:41):
so Yeah. To
To Sure.
I always felt like your manager was older thanyou, had more experience and would like teach
you things and basically like mentor you.
And I was like, Well, that's not gonna be me.
And then I was like, Oh, there's like thisservice like management style where like you're
in service of the people that report to you.

(40:03):
And my job is to like unblock and facilitatethe things that they're trying to accomplish
because like they know those things better thanI do.
And there was like, it's basically a model oflike Bell Labs or any like really technical lab
where everyone on that team has like a PhDknows something way more than their manager's
kind of a generalist, like doesn't actuallyknow what anyone does.
Can't mentor them.
Like they're not an expert in this.

(40:24):
I'm like, okay.
I'm more like that.
I can't mentor those people in the field, but I
can un
them, and I can give them insights so that theycan do their jobs better.
So I'm like, how do I give you the best
You're like the plumber.
You you kind of unclog leaks.
Right?
There's a leak somewhere.
Something's something's broken.
You come in and unbreak it.
How do you think that that compares to Elon'sstyle where there's not really any management?

(40:46):
You know, reports from the there's two styles.
Right?
There's reports from three levels below thatcould probably just ping Elon directly versus
going through the chain of command.
And then there's a whole I don't know if youstudied, Ray Dalio's approach.
Right?
They record everything.
They have, like, this app that tracks, youknow, if you've answered things thoughtfully,

(41:08):
and you can rank people.
They have this app called the Dot Collector,where they talk about like radical
transparency, you can tell your boss that he'san idiot if you want, he or she's an idiot.
And it's encouraged, right?
And I think kind of what you were sayingearlier at Microsoft, you're afraid to kind of
tell your team if you didn't know something.
I felt that same thing a lot of times when Iwas working at bigger organizations, was kind

(41:30):
of afraid to admit that I didn't knowsomething.
I was afraid that it would impact myperformance, you know, score or something like
also, like, it depends, but in someorganizations, you ask a stupid question and
people don't get exposure to you that often.
I think the part of it is like how muchexposure?
Like if I see someone every single day, get toseem to be smart.

(41:52):
They also get to seem to be stupid.
I don't mind asking stupid questions.
Asking a stupid question in a room with a VPwho gets to see you once a year, that's very
hard to recover from.
Because like how do you then show them like,I'm not incompetent.
It takes a year to prove that you have anothermeeting with them where you can actually show
them you're smart.
So it depends, I think, how the org is set upand how many touch points you have with people.

(42:13):
Yeah.
That's a good point.
And then also, how do they measure performance?
And if you're Like in sales, because it's soobjective, if you ask all the stupid questions,
everyone's like, That person's an idiot, butyou're like surpassing quota every quarter.
Everyone's gonna be like, No, they're actuallya genius.
Sure.
They're like, That's their style.

(42:33):
Give people, they ask those questions, butthey're eclectic and they're brilliant.
And it's like, Why don't they say that becauseyou're hitting your numbers?
You can ask really smart questions and neverhit your numbers.
Everyone's like, Oh, that person's a smart ass.
Like, nobody likes them.
And like, Oh, these questions are smart, butlike you don't wanna hit your targets.
Everyone is like, Nah, they're not smart.
Sure.
It's harder the further away you get from thataccountability or showing that you're

(42:56):
delivering.
Yeah.
Right?
In engineering, you ship code or you commitcode.
And if it's bug free and if it's highlyreliable and if it's elegant, then everyone You
can ask all the stupid questions you want inthe room, but everyone respects it for senior
work.
Sure.
Product is different because product isn'tmeasurable like that.
So I think further away you get from trueattribution of your contributions, the harder

(43:22):
it is because you have to start managing yourimage a bit more.
Sure.
Yeah.
With product, I mean, you you take the blamefor everything pretty much, right?
You're the leader of the and was that your roleat Playdom?
Was it a product role?
Was it
kind of a hybrid?
No.
I mean, in gaming, they call it producer, but Ihated calling myself a producer because I'm
like software.

(43:43):
I'm a product lead.
Not a producer.
Yeah, the official title I think was somethingproducer.
Okay.
But it was more of a GM role because thesoftware, like building the game rolled up into
me, acquiring the users rolled up into me.
There was a bunch like base, you had like yourown mini P and L.
Sure.

(44:04):
And so that was a really great experience too,because it got to run kind of like my own
little business within a company.
And then that's when we spun out to leave,start our own gaming studio.
A couple of us left PlateUp to do that.
And that was not the success we wanted it tobe.
Basically pivoted two times and then got acquihired and I just bounced.

(44:27):
I was like, I will give up all my equity.
I don't care, I'm out.
One of the co founders and I ended up notgetting along very well.
We disagreed on the pivot.
We disagreed on the roles and responsibilitiesfrom the get go.
And so looking back, I was like, why did Istart a company with that?
The other co founder was amazing and we'restill very close.

(44:47):
The third company was like, What was Ithinking?
He was just like a figurehead.
And I highly now advise against having afigurehead.
But at the time, the other co founder and Iwere so young that this figurehead were like,
Oh, he knows everything.
And he knows all the people and he has all theconnections and he knows how to do this.

(45:09):
And it turned out like he didn't.
And we were all figuring it out every day.
I was like, Wait, why are you the figure?
Why don't you get in and just We don't need amanager.
There's three of them.
You don't even deserve equity.
Get out of here.
No, I'm just kidding.
So
it was interesting times.
I learned again a lot.
That was interesting because that was like myfirst big professional failure, Like I did

(45:33):
really well at Microsoft.
My performance reviews were always likeexceptional.
I always was ranked top.
I got promoted more often than I should have.
Playdom was the same way.
I got promoted into role way bigger than Ishould have.
Everything was up into the right.
I thought like starting this company up intothe right, we're gonna like take this thing
yourself for a billion just buy an island inThe Bahamas and retire at like 30.

(45:58):
And it failed.
And we've got Aqua Heart, but I walked in withnothing.
Sure.
And that was so painful.
Like that where I was like, I will neverrecover from this.
Who would hire me?
I'm a failed entrepreneur.
I was like, maybe I should just get out oftech.
Maybe I should just move out of Silicon Valley.

(46:19):
Like I tried, I came, I tried, I failed.
I was very like mopey me, self pity, all thethings.
I went to Santorini.
Don't go to Santorini by yourself.
Everyone thinks that you've gotten left at thealtar.
Sure.
Before the high season, so there weren't verymany tourists.

(46:39):
So everywhere I went, they're like, oh, whathappened?
What happened?
Oh, this is way worse.
So what time what time did you go?
I guess, was it, like, the, like, spring breaktime?
Yeah.
It was in the spring.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Because that's kinda the off season.
Right?
Like when
And everybody just looked at me as such.
Like everyone on the island was just like, Oh,the poor girl.

(46:59):
I'm like, I didn't get left at the altar.
You didn't.
I'm like, No, I really didn't get left at thealtar.
I was like, Oh my God, this is way moreembarrassing than just going back to Silicon
Valley and facing my career failure.
Sure.
And decided to make a pivot.
Was like, I'm done with consumer.
Gaming was brutal.
I wanna do something different.

(47:19):
I wanna do product for enterprise software.
Cause it seemed like a very different job andit is a very different job to do product So
versus Pete Sincini who had known NEA forever,I reached out to him and I was like, Hey,
you're an enterprise investor.
What are the companies I need to apply to?
I wanna do like a series B or C.
And so he gave me a list, I applied to all ofthem and I ended up joining Twilio.

(47:42):
And that was really fun.
It reminded me of working at Xbox where likeevery time I told someone I worked at Xbox,
they're like, Oh cool, I love Xbox.
You know, like, tell me secrets.
When in the Bay Area, I'd be like, I work atTwilio.
Like, Oh my God, I love Twilio.
Yeah, I use them from all my pushnotifications.
Why?
I use it at hackathon in one.
Yeah.
You know, I was like, Oh, it's so fun to workat a company where people love the product.

(48:06):
Twilio was a blast.
The people at Twilio were That was the hardestinterview.
Like that interview was way harder thanMicrosoft.
And Jeff Lawson personally interviewed every PMat that time.
Sure.
And he grilled me on how I would price things.
Would never forget.
Asked me like, How would you price?
And it was when Warby Parker first came out.
He was like, I bought these glasses from awebsite called Warby Parker.
I don't know if you've heard of it.

(48:27):
And I haven't.
And he was like, Want them for a $100.
Like, How would you price these?
I was like, What?
He's like, How would you price these?
I'm like, Your glasses?
He's like, Yep.
I was like, Oh, okay.
And then the interviewer before that asked meto design a ticketing system for FIFA World Cup
with all the things that you have to get morepoints if you're in the country, get more

(48:48):
points when you signed up, then there's alottery and then you have to I had to design
like the algorithms to build that system.
It was such a hard interview.
It was like nine hours on-site.
Was something that
Sure.
Wow.
And so when I got the offer, was like, I haveto join.
If I made it through that, I have to join.
I know, yeah.
And all the people there were likeexceptionally brilliant.

(49:09):
And I made some lifelong friends there.
I ended up turning down the box offer to joinTwilio and Aaron Levy, it's another good
lesson, hates rejection.
I don't know how he keeps track of everythinghe does, but he would email me every couple
weeks or months a new job offer.
He was like, Wow.

(49:30):
We offered you and we never get rejected.
Why would you reject us?
We're better than Twilio.
Here's a different job.
And I'm like, No, I don't like that job.
He's like, Here's a different job.
I'm like, No, I don't like that job.
And then he hired a VP of mobile and he's like,Go hire her.
And so he emails me and he's like, Hey, Aarontold me we should meet.
I'm like, Oh my God, this guy, Aaron, woah,woah, persistent.

(49:50):
He's the CEO of like a huge company.
Is there anything better to do than you're No,Aaron somehow like just has 7,000 irons in the
fire and like is relentless.
Sure.
And then I met Dave Still and I loved him and Iloved what they were doing with mobile and no
one had been really thinking about mobile forenterprise or like mobile apps suite for

(50:10):
enterprises before Office was on iOS.
Actually, Balmer was very much against puttingOffice apps on iOS, very adamantly against it.
Sure.
And so I joined Box and it was also a blast.
Very different culture than the othercompanies.
It wasn't as engineering led.

(50:31):
Microsoft is very engineering led.
Twilio was very engineering led.
Even gaming is like very engineering led.
I got to Google and I was like, Woah, we arelike sales and marketing led.
I've never been in this environment.
And it was a very hard adjustment for me as aproduct person.
And so I'm like, Okay, let's fix these bugs.
They're like, No, we have to ship this featurefor this one customer.

(50:52):
I'm like, Features for one customer versus abug fix for like 10,000 customers?
Like, Get out of here.
I was like, Why is sales even in my section?
Like, You guys just email me.
Like, Don't come, don't talk to my engineers.
Like, What are you doing?
And everyone's like, Who hired that person?
Like So she doesn't know where she's I learneda lot, a lot about how to work with sales and

(51:14):
marketing.
And then I came to Venture and it was kind ofout of left field.
Pete Zanzini basically reached out andrecruited me to come join NEA.
Why me?
Why that time?
I don't know.
But he was very adamant that I needed to joinNEA.
Sure.
But I was very skeptical because I'm like, Ilove building products.

(51:36):
I build a ship.
You asked me what my career aspirations werethey were have my own software startup.
Like I wanted to do something very similar towhat saw Mark Zuckerberg doing when I was in
college.
And I wanted to be a software entrepreneur.
And I was like, if I don't find the right idea,because I learned a lot from having my own

(51:56):
startup that failed.
Was like, I need to have an idea I reallybelieve in.
And if I don't have, like Until that ideacomes, my goal is to be a chief product officer
somewhere.
In fact, my friends are now at the chiefproduct officer stage and part of me is like,
Oh, no, I'm jealous.
That was my dream for so many years.

(52:18):
So when NEA came out, I like, I don't know.
I build a ship.
I'm an entrepreneur.
I'm not a VC.
I'm not one of you people.
I think you'll be great.
I'll teach you everything I know.
And a bunch of people at NEA were amazing.
And they're like, I think you'll do well here.
And I was like, You know what?
Why not?
I think if I hate it or I suck, at least I'llunderstand how VCs evaluate companies.

(52:43):
I'll understand how fundraising works.
That when I do my startup again, I can game thesystem have a booth put around to come
together.
You know the whole process, you'll haveconnections too.
Exactly.
Exactly.
It's like, is like two years, sure.
I'll do a two year tour in venture.
I mean, didn't tell any I was gonna do it twoyears, but in my mind, I was like, two years,

(53:04):
I'm out.
And the fun part is, you know, we you know, aswe mentioned, know, we have this accelerator
for managers.
I'm seeing a lot of managers that have fundsthat they've closed, but at the same time,
they're also tinkerers and they've also builtmicro apps to improve their workflows.
There's been a couple of them that haveactually started to build a lot of really cool

(53:28):
GPT wrappers, where you can just kinda, like,you know, source and screen things better.
You can pull in market data.
So Yes.
People like yourself, I feel like you can dothat, you know, eventually in tandem, and you
can kind of
That's the
fun that to also supplement what you're doingas well.
That's the fun part.
So I was in the eight and a half years.
And look, think venture takes a long time tolearn.
I don't actually feel like I could answer most.

(53:50):
People have questions.
I'm like, I don't know how answer that.
I can be in board meetings.
I'm like, Okay, write down that question.
I have to go figure it out.
Sure.
I felt like around year five, six is when Istarted to feel like, Oh, I know a lot of
answers.
Like I am answering questions for other VCs.
Like I'm mentoring and helping others.
Like, I think I might know what I'm doingfinally after five, six years in the seat.

(54:13):
And that's dangerous because once you know,then you start having opinions on what should
be different.
You're like, I wanna innovate because theproduct in you never The product person in you
never dies.
We could stream like that.
We should change that.
We should do this.
We should challenge that assumption.
And then it became clear, I should do my ownthing.

(54:34):
And it was funny because when I first told allmy friends that I was going into venture,
everybody was shocked.
They're like, What?
You bleed product management.
You're going to venture?
Nah, you're not gonna last a year.
Nobody thought I would last more than a year
or So
I thought when I was gonna call my friends andtell them that I was leaving to start my own
thing, that I would get the same reaction.

(54:54):
Like, Oh my God, you've at an 88?
I thought you were gonna be there forever.
Zero people said that.
Everyone's like, I'm surprised it took you thatlong.
I was like, Yeah, I'm shooting a VC firm.
They're like, Yeah, of course you are.
Like, What do you put?
Yeah, we all saw that coming.
Like, Wait, you all saw Nobody told me.
I thought this was like this grand revelation Ihad.

(55:15):
Like, No, it makes sense.
First half of your career, entrepreneurial,build software, build companies, build, build,
build.
Second half of your career, invest, invest,invest.
Now you're just building a company thatinvests.
Makes Sure. Perfect
Perfect Oh yeah, it is.
And it's early innings, but it's been amazing.
And now I'm like, this is what I've been meantthis is what to do.

(55:38):
This is like the culmination of all myexperiences and everything that I love all into
like this one moment.
And TBD how it all turns out, right?
But I have never worked so hard and I've neverhad so much fun.
I can't turn it off.
It's addicting.
So I know we got one minute left.
Maybe just a couple of quick bullets on piecesof advice.

(55:59):
So how would you advise product managers tomake the switch?
Because we encounter that a lot, right?
A lot of people coming from tech, from product,a lot of those people that used to work at
Oracle, they're at Angryson.
So what are some learnings or pieces of advicethat you would recommend for people to make
that pivot from tech or product into VC?

(56:20):
And you know, over the course of your career inNEA, what's kind of the top one or two things
that you've learned as advice to kind of justbe a better investor?
Look, I think in product, one of the things Iwish I would have done that I didn't was spend
more time on the business side of things.
I wish I would've spent more time with salesand marketing because on the board meetings, it

(56:40):
turns out that because I love product andtechnology, I invest in product forward
entrepreneurs and engineers.
So it turns out they don't need my help onproduct and engineering.
You know what they need my help on?
Hiring, marketing, pricing, sales.
And I'm like, you know what things I didn'tspend time on when I was in product?
Marketing, hiring, sales.

(57:01):
Right?
So I had to, like, lean on my network and justlike learn as much as I can by osmosis.
And then honestly, most of the time I justconnect entrepreneurs to those people.
So I wish I would've spent more time on theother parts of the business where I could like
have those case studies readily available togive to entrepreneurs.
And then to learn venture, like I don't thinkthere's a better place in the world for me to

(57:25):
learn venture than at NEA.
Like go somewhere with really smart people.
NEA's been around for fifty plus years, right?
Like they have so much interest.
They've seen everything.
Everybody in there is like an encyclopedia ofknowledge.
So having those mentors they could lean on,they were incredibly supportive.
Like that was just the, I couldn't have askedfor a better place to learn venture.

(57:48):
And so I would say like, ideally go somewherewe can learn venture, where there's like a
really supportive team, where there's a mentoror two who are really bought in to teaching
you, not like throwing off the deep end, sinkor swim, be a good source of deal flow, she
really wants to teach you the craft.
Then once you're in venture, would And thething I keep telling myself is like, stay
humble, stay humble.

(58:09):
Like one day you're great and one day you cannot be great.
So like stay humble, stay on top of things,treat people well.
I see in ventures so many times people get verybig headed and start treating people poorly,
but like treat everybody well.
Like there's, yeah, which is just weird in thatway.
It's a small world.
I mean, you never know who you're gonna reportto one day.

(58:30):
So it's just such a small world, I mean,especially in VC land, right?
Yeah.
Very much stay humble.
But it's an amazing, I would've been, I think Iwould've been very happy had I stayed in
product.
I think I'm very happy right now staying inventure.

(58:50):
And so I think both careers are awesome andgetting to experience both I think was
incredibly lucky.
So final question before you leave, what's onepiece of advice that you'd like to leave us?
Could be from your mother, it could be from amentor, could be just from a work experience,
but just to tie everything together, what's onepiece of wisdom you give us?

(59:16):
Honestly, it's normal to be afraid of failure.
Everybody is afraid of failure.
Every single person, I don't know anyone thatisn't afraid of failure.
It's just, how do you get past that?
Like, don't let that stop you.
Use that fear proactively, figure out like,what's my plan B if this fails?
What are all the Do your post mortem ahead oftime.

(59:37):
Like what are all the things that could causeme to fail and how do I mitigate all those
things?
Use that paranoia for a productive reason.
Sure.
Don't let that stop you.
Don't let fear be the thing that prevents youfrom even taking the first step into what you
wanna do.
Yeah.
Well, that's really helpful.
And Vanessa, really appreciate all your time.
You're very generous with your time.

(59:57):
So excited to hear what's next with all thatyou're building.
And, again, see you around soon.
Alright.
Thanks, Joel.
Alright.
Take care.
Bye.