The Road Untraveled: VC Perspectives with Brian Hollins

"I firmly believe that for-profit technology companies stand the best chance of solving many of the world’s toughest problems and venture lets me be a part of that process."

Amy is a Partner at Costanoa Ventures where she focuses primarily on fintech. In addition to deepening the firm’s fintech portfolio in the US, Amy has driven the firm’s expansion into emerging markets, specifically into Latin America and Africa. Her primary focus is on seed and series A stage B2B fintech companies, which encompass everything from fintech infrastructure to payments to application-layer tools. She has led multiple investments, including Assis, Malga, Highline, and Highnote.

Before joining Costanoa in 2019, Amy ran North American sales strategy and operations at Zuora, a public enterprise software company. Prior to that, she spent three years investing in growth stage technology companies at Summit Partners, where her investments included Podium, InfoArmor (acq. AllState), and onXmaps. Amy began her career on Wall Street, working at JP Morgan where she spent time as a technology investment banker and as an equities trader focused on financial services.

Ben Lerer is a Managing Partner at Lerer Hippeau. He is the Co-Founder and former CEO of Thrillist, which was acquired by Vox Media in 2022. He chairs the Board of Directors for Urban Upbound and is an Associate Member of the International Academy of Digital Arts & Sciences (IADAS).

Lerer holds a BS from the University of Pennsylvania.

Wen-Wen is a Partner at Gradient Ventures.

Previously, Wen-Wen was the CEO & Co-founder of NexTravel (YCW15), a leading corporate travel solution that serviced thousands of customers like Lyft, Twilio, and Stripe. She grew the business to over $100M in annual sales before exiting to Travelperk in 2020. Prior to this, Wen-Wen worked with a number of startups in leadership roles. She started her career in tech at LinkedIn. She received her BA from UC Berkeley in Economics and her MBA from USC Marshall School of Business.

Kate Goodall (she/her) is the Co-Founder and CEO of Halcyon, an incubator for early-stage impact ventures. Since launching in 2014, Goodall has added an early-stage venture fund (of which she is co-managing director), an angel investing network, microloan fund, and a range of intensive programs, continually seeking to serve increasing numbers of entrepreneurs globally in more ways in order to solve the pressing social and environmental problems of our time.

In 2016, Goodall helped establish WE Capital, a consortium of leading businesswomen investing in and supporting women and women-led companies. In 2018, Goodall launched an international arts and dialogue festival, By the People, which ended in the pandemic. Goodall has served as juror at national and international social entrepreneurship competitions, like the Creator Awards, Pitch@Palace, and MIT Tech Review Innovator Europe & Latin America, and has helped select the 2021-2022 Class of White House Fellows under the Biden Administration. She was listed as DC Inno’s Fire Blazer, one of the Washington Business Journal’s Power 100, 40 Under 40, Women Who Mean Business, and Washington’s New Guard, Washingtonian’s 2017 Tech Titans, and Techweek 100 DC’s Talent Cultivators. Goodall has also received the Crittenton Leadership Award, is a Sorenson Global Impact Leader, and a member of YPO.

In a prior life, Goodall worked as a Maritime Archaeologist. She has 2 sons who keep her on her toes.

Daniel Acheampong, Founder, Visible Hands VC

Daniel was most recently an Entrepreneur in Resident at MIT designX, where he co-founded a marketplace platform. He was an associate at Summit Partners, where he helped manage the firm’s due diligence process to raise investment funds. Previously, he was a financial analyst at Goldman Sachs, where he supported senior management in supervising the New England Private Wealth Management business. He received a dual Masters in Business Administration from the Wharton School and Public Administration from Harvard Kennedy School. He received his Bachelor of Arts from Brandeis University.

He spends his free time trying new exercise routines, snacking on peanut trail mixes, and reading lots of non-fiction.

About Ajay:

Ajay Relan is an investor, entrepreneur, and community builder. Prior to Slauson & Co., Ajay was a founding Partner at Queensbridge Venture Partners. With a keen focus on brand building and storytelling, Ajay's passion lies in identifying trends and engineering culturally aligned brands.

A lifelong Angeleno, Ajay has established a business portfolio grounded in community. His most recent collaboration, Hilltop Coffee + Kitchen, has become a staple, facilitating productivity and collaboration in diverse neighborhoods across Los Angeles.

In 2012, Ajay founded #HashtagLunchbag, a grassroots movement that has fed 1,000,000+ hungry and unhoused people in 150+ cities around the globe. He went on to establish the Living Through Giving Foundation, a non-profit platform empowering the creation of programs engaging diverse groups of people to contribute to various causes in their local communities.

Ajay is a graduate of UC Santa Barbara.

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About Samara: 

Samara Mejia Hernandez is the Founding Partner and Managing Director of Chingona Ventures, a Venture Fund that focuses on rapidly changing sectors and founders with experiences that uniquely position them to build startups in underserved growth markets.

The fund has $60MM in AUM and has made over 40 investments across technology sectors in Financial, Food, Future of Learning, and Health/Wellness. Before this, she was an investor at MATH Venture Partners, started her career at Goldman Sachs, and she is on the advisory boards for Coolwater, Camino Financial, and VentureFWD.

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Key takeaways:

--Your limit to opportunities is your own mindset. 

--Founders should build their network consistently over time. It will help you understand the fundraising journey, and bring you honest feedback about how long the journey will take.

--Early stage investors are "founder evaluators" more so than "business evaluators". Help them believe you have the network, skills, grit, intelligence and flexibility it takes to get you to the Series B and beyond.

Mac Concell - Rarebreed Ventures

Mckeever E. (Mac) Conwell, 2nd, is a Baltimore native and attended Morgan State University, majoring in Computer Science. In 2006 at the age of 19 he joined a co-op program with the Department of Defense where he achieved Top Secret Security Clearance. He went on to become a government contractor doing software development in multiple computer languages and working for several companies, including Northrop Grumman and Booz | Allen | Hamilton. In October of 2009 Mac co-founded his first tech startup, Given.to. The Given.to team successfully completed two accelerators, Accelerate Baltimore and NewMe Accelerator, where he was later named entrepreneur-in-residence. Mac and his team sold the technology in 2014. His next venture, RedBerry, was accepted into the Dreamit Ventures Accelerator in Philadelphia.

Elisa Miller-Out, Managing Partner

Elisa Miller-Out is Chloe Capital’s Co-Founder and Managing Partner. She is an experienced serial tech entrepreneur, having founded and led seven companies over 20+ years. She is an experienced investor, having invested in 45 companies, in addition to executing 10 M&A transactions. Elisa is also an active board director and community builder. As an Innovation Advisor at NYSERDA, she helps advise on an $800 Million portfolio of entrepreneurship and investment programs for climate tech startups. She also serves as a mentor and Entrepreneur in Residence with several organizations, including Cornell University’s Center for Regional Economic Advancement, Launch NY, 76West and others. In addition, Elisa is an instructor with the National Science Foundation Innovation Corps and a guest lecturer at Cornell and Columbia. Elisa serves as a board director at Dimensional Energy, Impact Makers, Switch and as chair of the board at Singlebrook, a custom software services firm Elisa co-founded and led as CEO for over 10 years. Elisa oversaw the successful acquisition of a division of the company in 2016. Elisa has been featured in the New York Times, the Washington Post, USA Today, Forbes and other publications, and she speaks about technology and entrepreneurship at events across the country. Elisa graduated Summa Cum Laude from Barnard College of Columbia University. Learn more at ElisaMillerOut.com.

Submit your company for future investment from Chloe Capital: chloecapital.com/funding

Eric is the founder and GP of Contrary. Contrary's portfolio includes hyper-growth companies like Anduril, Ramp, and Zepto.

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