This week we had on Abha Nath (@abhanath) of Wonder Ventures.

Wonder is an early-stage fund that aims to invest earlier than anyone else in Southern California’s best founders. Since its founding in 2015, the firm has invested in category-defining companies like Honey, Luxe, Joymode, and a number of others. Abha is the first and only hire at Wonder, and we wanted to have her on to dive into her unique path.

In this talk, we discuss:

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This week we had on Brandon Beck with Kickstart.

Kickstart is an early-stage fund based in Salt Lake City that focuses on building and partnering with the best companies in the Utah region. Since launching in 2008, this targeted approach has established the fund as one of the most successful in all of the Mountain West with their portfolio consisting of companies like Galileo, NAV, Lucid Software, and countless others.

In this talk, we cover:

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This week we had on Sutian Dong, who is the co-founder of Women in VC.

Women in VC is the world's largest network for women working in venture capital, and since its founding in 2015, the group has grown to nearly 3,000 members today. Sutian has been of our earliest supporters, and she has given us tons of priceless knowledge on building and scaling communities. 

In this talk, we cover:

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This week’s guest is Kenn So, who works as an associate at Shasta Ventures.

We wanted to bring on Kenn because he recently published the most comprehensive book we have found on breaking into venture, but we touch on a lot of other things as well. In this talk, we cover:

Check out Kenn's book here: https://kenn.so/Breaking-into-early-stage-VC-55bec51b43254c858abfceb16b21827f

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This week we talked to Cheryl Campos, who is Head of Venture Growth and Partnerships at Republic.

Republic allows for both accredited and non-accredited investors to invest directly into startups through their platform, and within her role, Cheryl focuses on helping build out partnerships with other venture capital and ecosystem builders while also supporting Republic's existing portfolio.

In this talk, we ask Cheryl about:

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This week we had on Abhinaya Konduru, who works as an associate at M25.

M25 is one of the most respected early-stage funds in Chicago, and within her role Abhinaya spends her time sourcing new investments and working with portfolio companies. In this talk, we discuss:

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This week we had on Meagan Loyst, a VC at Lerer Hippeau based in New York.

Lerer Hippeau is one of the most active and well-respected early-stage venture funds in the world, and within her role, Meagan focuses primarily on Seed and Series A investments in consumer, digital media, e-commerce, emerging tech, and enterprise software. Meagan recently did some interesting work around Gen Z trends, and after interviewing 75 other young investors from around the world, she published some of here findings here.

In this talk, we discuss:

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This week we had on Abir Liben, an investor at Serena Ventures based in San Francisco.

Serena Ventures is the venture arm of Serena Williams, and since launching in 2014, the fund has established itself as one of the top-performing celebrity-backed funds.

In this talk, we discuss:

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This week we had on Mark Grace, an investor at M13 based in LA.

M13 is one of the premier consumer-focused funds, and their portfolio consists of companies like Lyft, Ring, ClassPass, Daily Harvest, and many others. Mark was one of the earliest employees at M13, and we wanted to have him on to learn more about what he is focusing on today.

In this talk, we discuss:

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This week we had the chance to talk with Molly Fowler who serves as the CEO of Dorm Room Fund. 

Dorm Room Fund is the OG student-run venture fund, and since launching in 2012, the fund has invested in over 200 startups, and the community has grown to 300+ founders and 50+ mentors. Molly serves as the head of the ship for this massive and growing community of startup talent, and we are very grateful that she let us borrow 30 minutes from her extremely busy schedule.

In this talk, we ask Molly about her unusual path into venture, the thesis behind investing in student-run startups, how DRF has built an unfair advantage over other similar initiatives, and how her team goes about identifying talent in an increasingly-large applicant pool.

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