Voices of Women in Venture 🌊

Oana Olteanu is a Partner @ SignalFire where she focuses on enterprise software at Seed, Series A and Series B. Prior to joining SignalFire, Oana was at Scale Venture Partners where she invested in applied ML and developer tooling. Oana sourced Scale's investments in Observe.ai, Flatfile, and Proscia. She was part of the deal teams for Honeycomb and AllyO (acquired by HireVue). She also supported existing portfolio companies such as Dialpad, Matillion, and BigID. Prior to Scale, Oana was an AI seed investor at SAP.io, SAP's $35M seed fund, where she sourced the investments in Plum.io, Oto.ai, and Akorda.

1.) From Tank Driving in Romania to VC's Rising Star:

• How Oana made her way from driving tanks in Romania to becoming a VC?
• How did leaving Romania for Germany and then moving to the West Coast impact her mindset?
• What does Oana know now that she wishes she had known when she entered VC?

2.) How to Assess a VC: The Founders Guide:

• Pre-investment, how can founders know whether a VC can add value? What are the signs?
• What three core questions will reveal how much value a VC can add?
• Post-investment, what can founders do to extract the most value from their VCs?
• What should the founders ask their investors for help with? What should they do themselves?

3.) The VC

Founder Relationship:

• Oana has the highest founder NPS of any VC I have ever had on 20VC, what does Oana believe makes her founders rate her contribution so highly? What works? What does not?
• How does Oana give sometimes very hard feedback to founders but retain that relationship of trust and safety at the same time? What mistakes do other VCs make in giving feedback?
• What does Oana believe are the single biggest misalignment between VCs and founders?

4.) VCs Behaving Badly: 101

• What are the single biggest ways Oana sees VCs behaving badly?
• How does Oana think founders expectations of the product of venture should change?
• Does Oana believe boards are valuable? What can be done to improve them?

Oana's Favourite Book: The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living: Featuring new translations of Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius

On this episode, Elio interviews Alicia Oddi, Managing Director at Rev1 Ventures. Rev1 Ventures provides seed-stage venture capital funding in Columbus, Ohio along with startup services, space, mentoring, and connections. Alicia discusses two Rev1 programs that are aimed at underserved entrepreneurs. The Grow To Scale Mentor Program is fueled by a $1.4MM grant from the U.S. Economic Development Administration (EDA) “Build to Scale” program, and paired with a $1.4MM Rev1 local match with funding secured through returns from Rev1 investments. The program aims to accelerate technology entrepreneurship for concept and seed-stage businesses by increasing inclusive access to business support and startup capital. So far, eight startups have joined the first cohort of the program, and it is available to all current Rev1 clients with diverse leadership – either women or entrepreneurs of color. Diverse founders working on a tech-enabled, high-growth idea can https://www.rev1ventures.com/grow-to-scale-at-rev1/ to get started.

Jenny Lefcourt, General Partner at Freestyle Capital joins Nick to discuss Founder to Forbes Midas List, Behind the Scenes of an Intro Call, Why B2B2C is Best and Avoiding the Leaky Funnel Trap. In this episode we cover:

• Making the Switch from Angel to VC
• Tips For Founders Pitching Jenny and Freestyle
• How to Reach Conviction without Consensus
• Burn and Learn Investing
• B2B2C and Avoiding the Leaky Funnel
• And More!

Missed a recent episode? Go to The Full Ratchet blog and catch up! The hosts of The Full Ratchet are Nick Moran and Nate Pierotti of New Stack Ventures, a venture capital firm committed to investing in founders outside of the Bay Area. You can follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter! Founders, are you frustrated by trying to find the ideal VC's for your stage, sector, and geography? Answer five questions with VC Rank and generate your customized list now.

This week, Alexis gets non-technical with Ashley Mayer, Co-Founder and General Partner at Coalition Operators. They talk about wearing wedding dresses at 4-star restaurants, naming-and-shaming, dining incompatibility (!), and MAUs (but not the ones you think).

You can find Ashley on Twitter at twitter.com/ashleymayer and Alexis at twitter.com/yayalexisgay or instagram.com/yayalexisgay and twitter.com/NonTechnicalPod.

This episode is sponsored by Betts Recruiting! If you’re a high-performing professional looking for your next opportunity, it’s time to become a Betts Connect Community member. Apply to join Betts’ exclusive network, and if you’re accepted, those tech startups will reach out to YOU. Apply now for your exclusive lifetime membership at bettsrecruiting.com/nontechnical

Kathryne Cooper tells us about Jumpstart Nova, a new $55M fund investing in incredible Black healthcare founders at the seed and series A stage.

Jumpstart has LPs such as Meharry Medical College, Eli Lilly and Company, Cardinal Health and is part of the trend of VCs offering strategic help from their LPs as an important value-add.

Thank you Oscar Adelman for the introduction to our guest today, Sita Chantramonklasri, Founding Partner at Siam Capital. Siam Capital is in search of innovation that betters people and the planet. We discuss how Sita got into investing, what it was like raising a fund for the first time, what investing in sustainability really means, and her underwriting guidelines.

Some of the questions I ask Sita:

1. Tell me about your journey into venture and your interest in investing

• Educated by Tara Westover

Justin Gordon (@justingordon212) talks with Shruti Gandhi (@atShruti), founder and General Partner of Array Ventures, a venture capital firm that focuses on solving impactful problems in the world leveraging revolutionary technology. Often that means category-leading startups that take advantage of data, analytics, workflows, and new platforms to change the way an industry works. They invest in smart people with a bold mission who take big risks in large or new markets.

Shruti brings a strong mix of operating and investing experience. She spent her early career as a developer on mainframe security, collaboration tools, and data analytics. Post engineering, she was an early stage venture capital investor at True Ventures, Samsung Electronics, Lightbank, HighBAR Partners, and the i2A Fund. She is also professor in the Computer Science department at Columbia University.

Website: Array Ventures

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/shrutigandhi/

Twitter: @atShruti

Show Notes:

More about the show:

The Vitalize Podcast, a show by Vitalize Venture Capital (a seed-stage venture capital firm and pre-seed 400+ member angel community open to everyone), dives deep into the world of startup investing and the future of work.

Hosted by Justin Gordon, the Director of Marketing at Vitalize Venture Capital, The Vitalize Podcast includes two main series. 

The Angel Investing series features interviews with a variety of angel investors and VCs around the world. The goal? To help develop the next generation of amazing investors. 

The Future of Work series takes a look at the founders and investors shaping the new world of work, including insights from our team here at Vitalize Venture Capital. 

More about us:

Vitalize Venture Capital was formed in 2017 as a $16M seed-stage venture fund and now includes both a fund as well as an angel investing community investing in the future of work. Vitalize has offices in Chicago, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.

The Vitalize Team:

Gale - https://twitter.com/galeforceVC
Caroline - https://twitter.com/carolinecasson_
Justin - https://twitter.com/justingordon212

Vitalize Angels, our angel investing community open to everyone:
https://vitalize.vc/vitalizeangels/

Kirsten Green is the Founder and Managing Partner @ Forerunner Ventures, one of the leading firms of the last decade investing at the intersection of innovation and culture. As a founder, Kirsten has led efforts to raise over $2B+ from leading institutional investors and invest in more than 100 companies. She currently serves as a board member at Glossier, Ritual, Faire, Hims & Hers, and Curated, to name a few. She has also invested in other smash hits including Chime, Jet, Warby Parker, Hotel Tonight and many more. Due to her immense success, Kirsten has been honored in Time's 100 Most Influential People and named a Top 20 Venture Capitalists by The New York Times in 2018 & 2017. Prior to Forerunner, Kirsten was an equity research analyst and investor at Banc of America Securities.

1.) Entry in Venture at 40 and Founding Forerunner:

• How did Kirsten make her way into VC at 40 with the founding of Forerunner having never had a role in VC before?
• What did everyone tell Kirsten when she was looking to break into venture? What did she tell herself when she heard this?
• What does Kirsten believe she is running from? What does she believe she is running toward?

2.) Fund Management and Leadership:

• How does Kirsten define high-performance today? What are the nuances of high performance in fund management?
• How would Kirsten describe her leadership style today? How has it changed over time?
• What have been some of Kirsten's biggest lessons in terms of what it takes to retain quality with scaling AUM and teams?
• What have been Kirsten's biggest lessons when it comes to giving hard feedback with kindness?

3.) The Venture Landscape Today and Forerunner's Position:

• Why does Kirsten believe the venture landscape is more dynamic today than ever?
• Does Kirsten agree with the statement that venture is less collaborative than ever?
• Why did Kirsten and Forerunner seem to amend strategy and move into B2B?
• Why does Kirsten disagree with the delineation between B2C and B2B?

4.) Parenting, Relationships and Life:

• What have been Kirsten's biggest lessons since becoming a parent? How has it impacted her mindset?
• Does Kirsten agree that relationships attract from sheer input on work? How does Kirsten separate relationships into two kinds of relationships?
• What does success in marriage mean for Kirsten? How has she seen that in her own marriage?