Voices of Women in Venture 🌊

Elizabeth Yin of Hustle Fund joins Nick on a special Crisis Coverage installment to discuss Investing after 1 Zoom Meeting, 2nd & 3rd Order Effects of the Virus, and Why "Market Pull" is Critical. In this episode, we cover:

• Tell us a bit about your background and path to venture
• Why'd you leave 500 and start Hustle Fund?
• What is the thesis at Hustle Fund?
• From a macro standpoint, how do you think the pandemic effects the venture landscape?
• What were some trends you were following, prior to the virus, that have accelerated in this environment?
• What are some that have regressed?
• What are some non-obvious sectors or business types that you're bullish on?
• Due to maybe second and third order effects of the virus, what are some sectors you are bearish on?
• You've said that you can make a decision after one Zoom conversation in 48 hours. Without much time to conduct diligence on the company and its founders, how are you able to get conviction so quickly?
• Many of us are trying to figure out how to invest w/o meeting founders in-person... what are some of the key things you're listening that help you make a quick decision w/o having met the founder?
• NFX's launched a new application process where startups can apply for funding, give up 15% equity and receive a funding decision in 9 days? What are your thoughts?
• You've stated that long term success for you is in changing the way that early stage VCs invest and think about investing. What's wrong w/ early stage investing and how do you see it changing over the next decade?
• I appreciate your contrarian belief that the best startups will be founded outside the Bay Area. Why do you think this is the case?
• Are there specific areas/geos you're focused on?
• I want to talk about this concept of "market pull"... Can you define "market pull" for the listeners and how you assess whether a startup has it or not?
• What advice do you have for investors/fund managers as we proceed amidst a very uncertain future?

To listen more, please visit http://fullratchet.net/podcast-episodes/ for all of our other episodes.

Also, follow us on twitter @TheFullRatchet for updates and more information.

Arlan Hamilton is a champion for underestimated voices. With her company Backstage Capital, she has invested over $10 million in over 130 companies with underrepresented founders; those who identify as women, People of Color, or LGBTQ. Arlan herself identifies as all three, and she was sleeping on an airport floor when she knew she had to do something about the fact that no one in Venture Capital looked like her.

In this interview, Arlan digs into the catalyst moments that lead her to the world of Venture Capital, why she doesn’t believe in Imposter Syndrome, and what makes a strong pitch when it comes to raising capital for your company.

Press play right now and don’t forget to pick up Arlan’s new book, “It’s About Damn Time” at your local bookstore.

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My guest today is Arianna Simpson, who has spent her career in an around the world of technology working at startups, Facebook, and now in venture capital as an investor focused on the world of cryptocurrencies.

I met Arianna when I hosted a panel at a big investing conference in New York City and she was one of the panelists. On the panel, I found her style to be very straightforward and compelling. It is clear that she loves to learn and that the best manifestation of her style of learning is investing in technology.

In our conversation we discuss broad trends in crypto that we haven’t spent much time on before: decentralized versus centralized exchanges, privacy coins, and evaluating a found or early team. We build a framework for learning about this new asset class, discuss the importance of travel, and the value of pushing oneself outside of comfort zones.

Hash Power is presented by Fidelity Investments

Please enjoy our conversation

For more episodes go to InvestorFieldGuide.com/podcast.

Sign up for the book club, where you’ll get a full investor curriculum and then 3-4 suggestions every month at InvestorFieldGuide.com/bookclub.

Follow Patrick on Twitter at @patrick_oshag

 

Show Notes

2:12 – (First question) – How to teach someone else to build an investing philosophy around crypto

4:00 – The major risk factors to investing in crypto

6:28 – best practices for mitigating risk

7:39 – What factors to think about when it comes to whether a token will lose all value or not

8:39 -  Taking a pulse of the investment community on crypto

11:36 – How she heard about and became interested in crypto currencies

12:34 – Are people really using crypto currency as a hedge against rampant inflation

13:52 – Investing thesis in the space

14:07 – Arianna’s systems for learning about cryptocurrencies and staying up to date on them

15:19 – Arianna’s take on the issue of increasing transactional through put

16:49 – Layer 1 solutions and making it all scalable on a blockchain

17:56 – her take on the fat protocol thesis

20:32 – Defining utility vs security tokens

21:54 – evaluating different coins

21:02 – Why cross currency swaps are important and how they work

26:17 – What are the chances of a scenario where there’s just one token and everything is built off of that one

28:02 -  Comparing centralized and decentralized exchanges

29:47 – How the traditional investing world is going to regulate transaction involving cryptocurrencies and view security around those transactions

31:54– Impact this will have on capital formation

33:44 – Evaluating teams behind crypto companies

35:48 – The importance of gut when evaluating people

38:47 – How Arianna’s global upbringing impacts her thinking on the technology

39:51 – What countries or regions have had the largest impact on Arianna’s investing philosophy

42:41 – Doing things you’re not qualified for

43:59 – Gender imbalance in crypto and what can be done to shift that

45:28 – Most recent thing that has gotten Arianna excited in the crypto space

46:15 – Explaining Zero X

47:33 – How her views on reading have evolved

48:54 - Kindest thing anyone has done for Arianna

Learn More

For more episodes go to InvestorFieldGuide.com/podcast. 

Sign up for the book club, where you’ll get a full investor curriculum and then 3-4 suggestions every month at InvestorFieldGuide.com/bookclub

Follow Patrick on twitter at @patrick_oshag

Laura Deming is Founding Partner @ The Longevity Fund, the first VC firm dedicated to funding high-potential longevity companies. To date, Laura has raised $26m across 2 Longevity funds and has backed the likes of Unity Biotechnology, Precision Biosciences, Metacrine, Navitor, and Alexo Therapeutics. Prior to Longevity, Laura was accepted to MIT at the age of 14 to study physics and then dropped out to join the Thiel Fellowship and start The Longevity Fund. If that wasn't enough, Laura most recently founded Age1, a four-month startup accelerator program focused on founders creating longevity companies.

In Today's Episode You Will Learn:

1.) How Laura made her way from studying physics at MIT at just 14 to founding The Longevity Fund and dropping out to join The Thiel Fellowship?

2.) As a 16-year-old, looking to raise a fund to invest in longevity, how was the fundraise process for Laura? Why does Laura believe that raising your first fund is very much like raising a seed round for a company? What was the catalytic moment when the fundraise started to come together? What were the biggest challenges of the raise?

3.) Why does Laura believe that there is a shortage of young biotech founders today? What can be done to solve this and increase pipe? How does Laura find biotech founders compare to more traditional consumer and B2B founders she engages with? How does what they look for from their investor base differ?

4.) Laura has spoken before of "the importance of going against the herd"? How does Laura assess the current landscape for biotech investing? Is Laura concerned to see the entrance of much more traditional VCs into the space? How does Laura look to try and avoid groupthink? What is crucial to this?

5.) How does one need to think about portfolio construction when investing in an inherently riskier biotech space? Does Laura agree with the conventional wisdom around the lack of follow-on funding for biotech companies? How does Laura think about reserve allocation with Longevity today?

Items Mentioned In Today's Show:

Laura's Fave Book: The Mysterious Stranger by Mark Twain,

Laura's Most Recent Investment: System1

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

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

We had the chance to chat with Anarghya Vardhana, a recently minted partner at Maveron Ventures, a consumer facing VC. In this episode, Anarghya talks about her upbringing, her values, challenges she's faced, what it's like working with Dan Levitan, and her excitement for the future of consumer tech. Signup for our newsletter to get notified of the latest release and to receive the latest insights in VC and startups http://eepurl.com/dzVE5j

Hi I’m Maren Bannon, I'm the co-founder of Jane VC. Jane is a new fund to invest in early stage female lead startups in Europe in the U.S.

Before moving to Europe and starting Jane, I spent my career as an operator in San Francisco. I worked at large tech companies, startups, and I was also a founder. At university I studied engineering, and over and over again I was surrounded by rooms full of men. I got the idea of starting Jane from my experience as a woman in tech, and recognizing the huge untapped potential of female founders. I want the technology being built to be as diverse as the people on this planet.

Today I want to give founders actionable advice on how to cold pitch a VC.

60% of VCs are white men who went to Stanford or Harvard. If you went to one of these schools, chances are you have a warm connection. If you're one of the other 7 billion people in the world you likely don't have this network, but you still may be building something incredible. This is why we started Jane VC: we decided to let anyone cold pitch us because we believe that access to venture capital should depend on what you're building, not who you know, or, where you went to school. I'm personally a huge believer in cold emailing, calling, pitching. I've gotten jobs, made friends, and acclimated to new countries this way. There's something magical about the way a cold intro inserts you into a new network, and broaden the people that you interact with.

So today, I'm going to give some actionable advice about how to cold pitch a VC.

Tip #1:  tailor the email to the person you're trying to reach. VCs are inundated with emails and impersonal emails are very obvious, so when you're writing to a VC take the time to research that particular investor and explain why you think they would be interested. Have they made investments in adjacent industries? Do they have a past role at a company your competitive sat? Is there something unique about the way they think about the world that you think would resonate?

Tip #2: nail you're one liner. This is the old elevator pitch, it's still highly relevant. You need to be able to describe your business in a ten second elevator ride. You should be able to describe who you are, what makes you unique, and what you offer, in one simple sentence. Until you can automatically and succinctly explain the heart of what you do this quickly you'll be wasting your time pitching anyone. (...)

Tip #3: list bullet points on your traction. This could be users or revenue numbers, notable customers, advocates, angel investors with relevant industry expertise. A bulleted list makes these bragging points easy to skim and gives VCs a quick overview of who you are and why you matter.

Tip #4: make sure to explain why YOU. In this initial pitch you should have a brief description of your founding team. Make this easy to skim, again, highlight which parts of your background make you the ideal people to run this business.

Tip #5: include and ask. Be explicit, why are you contacting this VC? Are you trying to raise a seed round? Are you simply looking for advice? Be very clear about what you're asking for.

Tip #6: include the right materials. Your letter can be very brief to a VC, but make sure to include more information in case it is something that's interesting to them. This could be a deck or a one pager about your company. You could attach it as a PDF with compressed photos, or a link like Dropbox or Google Drive.

Thanks for having me on this episode today, I'm really excited about 50inTech’s mission of reaching gender equality in the tech industry. It's very aligned with what we're doing at Jane.