Voices of Women in Venture 🌊

In this episode we speak with Jomayra Herrera, a Senior Associate at Cowboy Ventures - a seed-stage venture fund based in the Bay Area. She shares her thoughts on the pandemic’s effects on the future of education, current trends in K-12 education technology, and opportunity areas for aspiring ed-tech entrepreneurs and funders like her.

Nicole Williams is 22 and working at a venture capital firm.  She has dropped out of 2 attempts at college, is well respected in the tech community and has a sense of fashion that makes the grey clothes wearing Vance Crowe want to try out some new styles.  During this conversation we spoke about Artificial Intelligence, what it means to be radicalized, how she utilizes Twitter and her thoughts on the place of fashion.

This is the 57th interview in the ongoing series of Coronavirus perspectives. I believe that society will have the rules re-written when we come out of this global pandemic and it is important to hear how various individuals and industries are handling themselves amidst the crisis. 

To find Nicole on Twitter @nwilliams030 https://twitter.com/nwilliams030

Nicole works for Compound Venture Capital @CompoundVC

This will be the last week of Coronavirus focused podcasts. Going forward, anything about Coronavirus is as a result of it being a part of our lives.   

@VanceCrowe

In this episode we are joined by Holly Beilin, Director of Communications and Community at Engage Ventures, and Monique Villa, Investor at Mucker Capital and Founder of Build in SE. They tell Yuval and Charlton about their work in ecosystem networks across the Southeast, and how storytelling strengthens regional communities. 

Show notes: https://medium.com/p/94608cac0d35/

Website: www.ecosystem.builders

Season 2 Partners:

AFWERX: https://www.afwerx.af.mil/

Startup Space: https://www.startupspace.us/

Clique: https://clique.ai/

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Hello listeners, and welcome back to Tech Forward! This week, I've reissued my conversation with Maria Salamanca, a venture capitalist at Unshackled Ventures. She was named 2018 Forbes 30 Under 30 for Venture Capital. Unshackled Ventures fills a unique space in the entrepreneurial ecosystem by funding teams with immigrant founders.

Maria's own journey — she immigrated from Colombia at age 7 and became a citizen at 18 — has motivated her to uplift others by eliminating barriers to entrepreneurship and education. Due in part to her history, Maria has a deep understanding of the challenges immigrants face when starting a business in the United States. She and Unshackled Ventures have identified the barriers that immigrant entrepreneurs face:

• Access to capital
• Office space
• Lack of support network
• Immigration support

These barriers are what led them to specifically support immigrant founders. "It's hard to be an immigrant entrepreneur and jump into that full time while also juggling concerns about who will sponsor your visa." As 45% of Fortune 500 companies have immigrant founders, there's clearly a high level of entrepreneurship among immigrants despite the significant barriers to the tools and resources which would enable them to fully execute that entrepreneurial spirit.

When it comes to the immigration process, Maria says, "Usually immigrants have to figure all of this out on their own, and most of them do. But that really takes away from the time they could be spending on their projects. They have to keep on top of deadlines and court dates, and struggle with the instability of,Will I be here in 3 months? What about my family? That stress puts a burden on founders." That's why some of the funding at Unshackled Ventures supports an in house counsel, allowing entrepreneurs to work closely with an immigration lawyer. "We fund only a small percentage of immigrant founders, but we want them to focus on their product as much as possible."

Research has shown that cross cultural experiences lead to innovation. "As an immigrant, you come into a new country where there's a different context for a variety of things. Many times, that means you can see a gap where a need isn't being met." To really foster those cross cultural experiences, Unshackled Ventures has created an ecosystem of universities, mentors, advisors, and investors who really believe in the value that immigrant entrepreneurs bring to the table.

Maria and I also discussed the possible future of immigrant entrepreneurs in the current political climate, as well as the advice she would offer to immigrant founders in search of funding. Thank you so much to Maria for joining me, and to all of you out there for listening. See you next week!

Connect with us

Website | Twitter | Instagram | Facebook

Join Linda and Parul Singh, a venture capitalist, startup veteran, engineer and parent, as they talk about leaning into the fear that cloaks our desire to move away from something familiar. Your 'familiar' can be a comfortable job, a relationship, something about your health/well-being, or more. Learn how other people's expectations and our desire for safety slow us down and can limit us from being driven by the promise of something great. Linda and Parul share tips for making the choice to transition during uncertain times - including pandemics - when our fear takes on broader and even more complex dimensions. Don't miss this 12-minute episode!

Angela Strange is a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, one of the leading venture firms of the last decade with a portfolio including the likes of Facebook, Github, Slack, Airbnb, Asana and more. As for Angela, she largely focuses on investments in financial services and is currently a board member of Addi, SynapseFi, and Tally. Prior to a16z, Angela was a product manager at Google where she launched and grew Chrome for Android and Chrome for iOS into two of Google's most successful mobile products.

In Today's Episode You Will Learn:

1.) How Angela made her way into the world of venture and came to be one of the leading fintech VCs with Andreesen Horowitz?

2.) Why does Angela believe that every company is going to be a fintech company? What is driving this shift? How does removing the barriers to entry for more products change both product quality and cost? How does Angela think about the role of regulation here?

3.) How does Angela think about what makes the best insertion points? How big does the initial wedge into the market have to be? When do you need to be able to prove you can transition from the insertion to the wider market? How does Angela fundamentally assess market size today?

4.) How does one transition to being the system of record? Do you have to be the system of record from day 1? Which examples are most striking for Angela on becoming a system of record? What are the biggest challenges in making this transition? Which metric tells you if you have become it?

5.) Does Angela think we are in a period of bundling or unbundling? What are the leading indicators of each? How does Angela assess the Fintech M&A market today? Will we continue to see large consolidatory moves in the form of Credit Karma, Plaid etc etc?

Items Mentioned In Today's Show:

Angela's Fave Book: Investing: The Last Liberal Art

As always you can follow Harry and The Twenty Minute VC on Twitter here!

Likewise, you can follow Harry on Instagram here for mojito madness and all things 20VC.

cc: growth journeys from emerging ecosystems to global markets.

Deena Shakir is a partner at Lux Capital, a $2.4Bn stage and sector agnostic VC firm, that is looking to back mission driven entrepreneurs in frontier sectors. Deena is the first-generation daughter of immigrants from Iraq and has grown up in Silicon Valley, even before she realized she wanted a career in tech. A former journalist and then a diplomat, Deena led strategic partnerships for early stage products in health, research, machine learning and search at Google, before joining Google Ventures. At Lux she has led the fund’s investments in companies like Mos, Shiru and Neo.

What’s in this episode?

1) Lux Capital’s investment approach of investing in category defining, frontier sectors

2) The way to build conviction across different disciplines and stages

3) Coming from an immigrant family and the way that impacts your investment style

4) Discussion around impact investing vs investing in companies benefiting humanity

5) Looking for grit, ambition and discipline in founding teams

You can reach us through our website or @getcced on Instagram, Twitter, Youtube, Facebook, and Linkedin. Hosted by Enis Hulli and Rina Onur.

Great connecting with Rachel Springate about her path into VC, raising consumer-focused Muse Fund II, her partnership with Assia, and diversity in venture.

050 Helping your Portfolio Companies with Managing Partner of Mighty Capital SC Moatti

 

SC Moatti is a technology visionary and investor.

 

 

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• Other than money what value can Venture Capitalists bring to the deal?

 

 

We would also like to thank CJ Terral who made the introduction that allowed the interview to happen.

Help us out!

Help us reach new listeners by leaving us a rating and review! It takes less than 30 seconds and really helps our show grow, which allows us to bring on even better guests for you all! Thank you – we really appreciate it!

 

Learn more about SC Moatti

• Linkedin

 

 

CONNECT WITH SHAWN:

 

https://linktr.ee/ShawnflynnSV

 

• Shawn Flynn’s Twitter Account