Voices of Women in Venture 🌊

Today’s episode is with Lan Xuezhao, founding partner of Basis Set Ventures which has raised $301M across two funds. Lan has extensively studied AI, data science, and human psychology, and with Basis Set, she has combined those elements to bring a very unique approach to investing.

Lan’s background in corporate development at Dropbox and management at McKinsey has contributed to her data driven approach to sourcing and investing. She has a PhD in Psychology from the University of Michigan. 

We chat about Lan’s unique investment philosophy, how she found GP/LP fit for Fund 1 and then Fund 2, how her firm has many shared characteristics of a portfolio company, and what makes for a founder super power.

A message from our sponsor

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In this episode we discuss:

02:18    Lan’s journey into venture capital

07:40   How did she go unconventional on fund size

10:06    Lan’s learning about GP/LP fit

13:57    Constructing a different LP base in Fund 2 vs. Fund 1

17:18    The structure of the fund’s tech and investment team

21:01    Eliminating bias

22:56    Founder psychology + super power thesis

26:00 Top two key traits of the best founders

28:31    How Lan sees BSV’s place in the market today

31:25    Future of firms in her size range

34:14    Her Anti-Portfolio

36:09    Inspirations from the investment world

Mentioned in this Episode

* Basis Set Ventures

* Thesis on What Makes a Successful Founder

I’d love to know what you took away from this conversation with Lan. Follow me @SamirKaji and give me your insights and questions with the hashtag #ventureunlocked. If you’d like to be considered as a guest or have someone you’d like to hear from (GP or LP), drop me a direct message on Twitter.

Podcast Production support provided by Agent Bee Agency

My guest today is Elizabeth Galbut, one of the founding partners of SoGal Ventures. SoGal Ventures is the is the first female-led, next generation venture capital firm. In this episode we discuss how Elizabeth's interests led to thinking about consumer innovation, how she started a fund, the biggest arbitrage opportunity of her lifetime, and managing a two person global fund. Without further ado, here's Elizabeth.

Some of the questions I ask Elizabeth:

1. You were originally in healthcare. What prompted you to make this transition to become a venture capitalist?
2. How did SoGal Ventures come about? What's your typical check size
3. I know Pocket is located in Asia, you're located in the United States and you are a two GP, how do you think about where to focus on investing since you are quite global and have a small team?
4. Walk me through your due diligence process
5. What categories do you spend the most time on? How do you analyze categories
6. What has to stand out when you talk to founders?
7. I know part of your focus is looking at products that serve the upcoming generation. What are you most surprised by Gen Z?
8. What's one thing you would change about venture capital?
9. What's one book that inspired you personally and one book that inspired you professionally?
10. What's the best piece of advice that you've received?
11. What's one piece of advice for founders?

Mary D'Onofrio, Vice President at Bessemer Venture Partners (the oldest VC firm in the US) talks about choosing the right growth investor for your company and about the preparation to that stage (explaining how to get in touch with growth investors early). We also spoke about the major differences between fundraising on early and growth stages.

Mary's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mary-d-onofrio-a125b2154/

Mary's Twitter: https://twitter.com/mcadonofrio?lang=en

Bessemer Venture Partners: https://www.bvp.com/

10 laws of the cloud, by Mary D'Onofrio: https://www.bvp.com/atlas/10-laws-of-cloud

Once an Operator, Always an Operator with Elle Bruno

👋 Hey! Thanks for checking out the GoingVC Podcast: Uncovering new paths into VC, diving deeper into alternative models, and addressing areas of weakness every second Monday with Austin and JJ MacLean (@jjmaclean) from the GoingVC team.

We're really excited to be bringing to you today our conversation with Elle Bruno of Techstars. As always, if you've got any questions, feedback, guest ideas, or just want to say hey, don't hesitate to shoot us a message at [email protected]!

Episode Chapters:

Link to the application for the WU/Techstars program Elle runs: https://www.techstars.com/accelerators/western-union

In our most recent episode, Cristina Nunez talks to us about True Beauty Ventures, a beauty and wellness VC firm which she co-founded in 2020 and touches on the firm's vision and investment thesis and her passion for the space. Cristina talks about how her experience and insights as both an operator and investor has contributed to her role in VC. She articulates the importance of women having other female mentors in the industry and closes with some thoughts on the state of women in VC and what remains to be done.

My guest today is Lucy Deland, Partner at Inspired Capital, who back early-stage founders with transformative ideas, brilliant teams, and relentless determination. Some of her investments include Geneva, Habi and Dandy.

A couple of books that inspired Lucy:

Amazing Grace by Jonathan Kozol

Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker.

Here's some questions I ask Lucy:

1. Since you went from investor to founder to investor, where it makes sense to start is what attracted you to focus your career on technology and innovation?
2. What was the insight that led you to founding Paperless Post?
3. What led you to going back to your "roots" (so to speak) and become an investor again?
4. Tell me a little bit about Inspired Capital and the formation.
5. What were some of the lessons learned from your experience as COO that made you a better investor?
6. I know that you're a generalist, but thesis driven. How do you approach which categories to focus on and opportunities?
7. In our prior conversation, we spoke about some of the differences when your customer is a consumer, SMB and enterprise. When it comes to technology, IU, and feature set, depending on who you are selling to, what are your must haves?
8. How has your due diligence process been disrupted by COVID?
9. What are some of the different milestones a company has to have at the seed vs. series A?
10. What are current trends (that are consumer facing) that you're focused on?
11. What's one thing that you would change when it comes to venture capital?
12. What's the best piece of advice that you received?
13. What's one piece of advice that you have for founders?

Melissa Frakman is the founder & managing partner of Emphasis Ventures (EMVC), a venture capital fund investing in early-stage fintech startups in India. She brings 15 years of experience participating in India’s digital revolution to bridge worlds for entrepreneurs and companies. Named on the “Global Fintech PowerList” by Innovate Finance, Melissa has led early stage investments in asia, supported new market strategy, and built partnerships worth over $1 billion for 15 of the Fortune 100 companies.

Follow Melissa (@melissafrakman), host Akash Bhat (@bhatvakash) and our podcast (@thedesi_vc) on Twitter.

. . .

The Desi Startup of the Week:

Piggy: Piggy is a next generation mutual fund investment app that simplifies investments.

. . .

In this episode, we will cover:

1. Sectors within FinTech that have stood out during the pandemic (4:12)

2. Melissa’s journey so far (5:46)

3. Why does Melissa think India has a more robust and advanced FinTech ecosystem than other markets (10:48)

4. FinTech: Bundling vs Unbundling (14:00)

5. FinTech investment trends and risks associated with investing in the space (17:04)

6. The FinTech opportunity: Urban, Middle and Rural India (19:43)

7. FinTech challenges within rural India (24:05)

8. Educating the masses: Is it the role of the govt. or startups? (25:53)

9. Innovation with UPI (28:15)

10. Assessing FinTech startups (31:16)

11. Traditional financial institutions: opportunity or threat? (35:37)

12. How does EMVC add value to their portfolio (37:58)

13. Rapid fire (40:23)

14. Ways to get in touch with Melissa (48:20)

In this episode, Camille shares with us how her upbringing influenced her professional choices as well as her work philosophy of doing good while doing well. She also talks about her work at Venrock, what guides its investment strategy, her particular passion for investing in orphan diseases and the importance of finding the right culture at funds.

Loved talking with Kerry about how startups should think about their marketing org and how that has changed.

This week we had on Erica Amatori (@ericaamatori) at Alpaca VC.

Alpaca is a generalist fund that invests in pre-seed and seed deals within the US and Canada. In her role, Erica leads up marketing, platform, community, and operations. Erica has been one of our biggest supporters and most active community members, and we wanted to reward her engagement by highlighting her work.

In this talk, we discuss:

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