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A Fund of My Own

Hi everyone – Thank you so much for following along with me on this blog over the past 10 years. When I first started in VC, this space a critical place for me to process my thoughts.

Now, a decade into my career in venture and two decades into my career over all, I know what I want to say. And I know what I want to build.

I’ve put a lot of energy into building my firm, Symphonic Capital, over the last few years and I’ve loved the process of doing more than talking recently. That being said, I’m so excited to have launched a new e-mail newsletter soon where you can keep up with what I’m thinking about.

You can sign up here. See you in your inbox soon!

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An Ode to Those Who Came Before

Those who met me when I got my start in venture almost 6 years ago, probably remember the bright eyed bushy tailed Sydney. Back then, I told everyone who would listen that I was intent on starting my own fund one day. I initially said that it would be within 2 years of my venture career, then 2 years became 3, 3 became 4 and eventually the itch to start something of my own dulled into a feeling that most days I could forget, if I didn’t think about it too much.

What I realize now, was that as I uncovered the complexities required to start a fund, I got scared about what wanting more for myself would cost. Scared that I couldn’t build the type of fund that I wanted to authentically, scared that I would make a mistake, scared that it was all too much for me to take on.

That changed in 2020.

The reckoning that venture underwent that year and in the years since cannot be understated. White women, Latinx people and Black people are launching a new generation of new funds, and every few months it seems, a new barrier is broken. Getting a front row seat to this radical shift has been a privilege. From the first $1B Black owned fund to the largest woman founded firm, the world is changing in front of my eyes and the “no limits” mantra is truer than ever before. Additionally, since 2015, the barrier to entry in venture has continued to fall – thanks to organizations like Carta, Angellist, Flow, Allocate, Recast, Raise, Bridge, Coolwater, Strut and others – and I am watching new entrants do things their own way. The stronghold that the old (white) boys club had on the venture ecosystem is loosening.

The movement gave me so much hope and pushed me to think critically about what I wanted in my venture career again. Once I started leading my own deals and working directly with founders who I admire, the flicker in my belly officially transitioned to a flame. I was so inspired by them! The founders who I get the privilege of working with are putting their livelihoods on the line to build new institutions that serve the communities they care the most about. Why aren’t I doing the same?

I’m so excited to reimagine what is possible for myself once more. #LFG

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How I Got More Involved in My Local Community and Government

Growing up, community work was always on my schedule. Whether that was volunteering as a liturgist at my church, delivering meals via meals on wheels, running behind my mom as she raised money so other kids in San Diego could get scholarships to college, I was always involved in my community. As I grew up, to address this part of my identity I conflated my work and my community service. Working in the government and nonprofit sectors made this easy to do. It wasn’t so easy when I transitioned into the private sector in 2014. I didn’t make time for this again if I’m honest until 2016 when he-who-shall-not-be-named was elected President.

I remember a rush of interest from friends and colleagues on how to impact national elections. Writing letters to Senators, signing petitions, and wearing pussy hats became normalized. It felt like I had regained some sense of community activism in my life too. This collective work felt good despite the fact that I (like many people) was put on an emotional rollercoaster. Part of the emotional rollercoaster was dedicating so much of my community service work to national causes. I didn’t realize how much this would have on my mental health, but the lack of agency that I had and the inability to see my impact on a real level made it all more exhausting.

It was around this time that I began to explore how I could become more involved in my own local government. The problems facing the entire country – 300 million people!! – are so big, so broad and so thorny that I thought maybe I could see the needle move on my efforts if I decreased the scope of the problems was looking to have an impact on. I am from San Diego, CA – a city that boasts a population of almost 1.5M, yet most of the work I did there was focused on a very small community surrounding the church I was raised in and the nonprofits my parents got us involved in from an early age. Oakland is barely 450K people so I thought to myself, of course, I could make a dent here on a community in The Town if I really tried. This effort reminded me of the bell hooks quote in All About Love where she says: “I like living in small towns precisely because they are most often the places in our nation where basic principles underlying a love ethic exist and are the standards by which most people try to live their lives. In small towns where I live (now only some of the time) there is a spirit of neighborliness – of fellowship, care, and respect.”1

I started off by joining a nonprofit board in Oakland. I found the application online! It was an interesting experience where I was able to work with Beyond Emancipation – a nonprofit committed to helping foster youth build essential skills. The impact I was able to have was amazing, but the workload was too much. After a bit of reflection, I realized that part of the reason the workload was too much is that I took on too much instead of delegating. But I needed to quit to get that perspective and I’m proud of all of the progress they’ve continued to make.

After the pandemic started I began to reconsider my relationship to public policy once more. I started by talking with neighbors about ideas to build out a mutual aid program for those in need and at the same time, I began joining in on Oakland city council meetings to listen and learn more about what our public officials did. I also spoke up during public comments to vocalize my opinions about police brutality in Oakland.

Both of these efforts led to some really awesome results. The first was that the mutual aid program gained steam and a small group of 4 helped fundraise over $10K for neighbors in need. Our giving drive even gained us a spot on local television! I am so proud of the work we were able to do. The checks we sent out allowed people to pay rent, buy groceries, pay past-due bills. It was amazing.

After joining a few City Council meetings, a friend shared that Oakland actually had a variety of public commissions and boards that allow you to get deeper engagement into city policies. The applications were online and so I applied to the Oakland Public Safety and Services Oversight Commission.

I honestly had no idea what I was getting myself into and I’m grateful I didn’t (this is the story of my life honestly: pick a goal to achieve first, get overwhelmed by all of it figure out the details later). I was signing up for 2-years of public service which included, but wasn’t limited to, 1 meeting per month that lasted anywhere between 2-4 hours – this meeting was usually held on Mondays at 6:30pm, which meant that I was sometimes in meetings during a workday until 10pm at night. In advance of the meeting, you are sent pages and pages of documents to review. In order to come prepared to have a productive conversation, you needed to read these documents. The Oversight Commission I was on was tasked with reviewing $30M+ in spending a year – that is a really big deal! To honor that, I wanted to do my job well.

What I learned quickly after a few meetings, was that because the turnover of the Commission was so high, many meetings could feel like we were starting from scratch. You don’t realize how meeting only 1x per month can impact your ability to be fully prepared and present until you find yourself asking the same question across multiple months. It was at this time that I decided to build out a presentation that could tell the story and impact of the Measure our oversight commission was created to oversee – Measure Z – over its entire history. I joined the Oversight Commission almost 7 years into its implementation and so had a lot of data to work with.

A few other Commissioners and I spent 6+ months pouring over the 7 years of data to compile this presentation. We gave this presentation to the City Council in December. Looking forward to seeing how this progresses!

  1. All About Love – bell hooks. Page 100.
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Who I’m Supporting on Giving Tuesday

Giving Tuesday is one of my favorite days. I remember running campaigns for it when I used to work in non profit at The Fund for Public Schools. It is a great day to think about opportunities to invest in your neighborhood and community. To that end, I wanted to surface the nonprofits that I have a monthly subscription to with the hopes that it will help others learn about them and get inspired to subscribe to a nonprofit that is doing work that they care about.

Chapter 510 – I learned about this organization while I was at the OMCA visiting their Afrofuturism exhibit. I loved Chapter 510’s focus on helping children dream and create art.

Capital B – I am a Pre-Seed investor by day, so it’s only right that I give to a nonprofit who is still in pre-launch phase. I love the vision for what they’re building and think that it is urgently needed. A safe and accurate place for news created by and for Black people.

Oaklandside – Really love reading the writing of amazing journalists like Azucena Rasilla and Ashley McBride who both keep me up to date on what is going on in Oakland and keep me grounded in the historical context of it all.

NPR – I recently did a review of the podcasts I listen to and almost all of them are NPR produced. Invisibilia, Rightnowish, Planet Money… I’m especially a huge fan of the work KQED is doing to elevate the voices of marginalized folks.

I’m also really grateful to be on the board of two non-profits who I also think are doing great work and I want to shout them out here too!

Colorwave – They are helping Black and Brown people access technology careers that many previously thought were unattainable by giving cohorts access to community support and technical training. I wish I had something like Colorwave when I was first transitioning into tech!

Project Include – They are helping the tech industry become more inclusive through research, training and accountability. It’s led by the inspirational Ellen Pao. Their most recent report on discrimination against disabled people was powerful – I learned so much!

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OMCA’s Afrofuturism Exhibit: My Photo Journal

When you first walk into the museum, you are presented with this photo on the wall. What a powerful image! I had seen this photo a few times in advance in some of their publications and the IRL version did not disappoint. What does this image conjure for you? For me, it reads like a promise. A small whisper that says, “don’t despair too much, I promise you that you will survive.”

After waddling around a bit to find the special exhibit and finding out some really intriguing information about California’s history with impressionism, I finally found it. The main event! When you walk in, you first hear the sound which might have felt amplified because it was so dark. The first piece of artwork you are presented in the music. It acts beautifully in concert with a chalk based mural on the wall. The second thing you encounter is non other than the grandmother of Afrofuturism herself, Octavia Butler.

A few new things I learned about Octavia Butler during this visit:

  1. She is from California like me!
  2. She left this one journal entry that I hadn’t seen before. I love the focus on intensity and think that it’s something you feel in her writing. Sometimes it’s so intense that it’s uncomfortable and I think that’s her point.

After you walk past Octavia Butler, you continue to be a part of amazing art. I was honestly overwhelmed by it all and I will have to go back again and again to get the full experience of it. I eventually though walked into a spaceship-like structure and was presented with the following playlist. I continued to listen to it even after I left the exhibit and wanted to share (I particularly liked Tainted Love by Gloria Jones).

I kept walking around and stumbled upon this presentation and I loved it because it reminded me of my own family’s journey. I had not seriously considered us migrants before, but it’s so true we are. What courage it takes to move across the country away from everything you previously knew – particularly in those times. While we moved to San Diego, I think that the same sentiment holds.

This was the last exhibit on the way out of the exhibit and I loved it so much! It was a reimaging of the cable news network focused on Black news created by Black people about Black people. I must’ve sat there for at least 20mins watching. It did not disappoint. I wrote a little bit more about why it didn’t here: https://airtable.com/shrhzzigJpWTNZIGM

As you exit, you’re presented with this message above the wall. I don’t know how you can’t walk of that feeling all of that energy. I cried as I walked out, as to be expected!

If you’re in Oakland, you can check out the exhibit by purchasing tix here: https://museumca.org/exhibit/mothership-voyage-afrofuturism

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Birthday Reflections

One of my intentions for the year of 2021, has been to fail more in public. While it wasn’t an official reason why I started to roller skate, now thinking back on it, given that intention, I can’t imagine a better sport to pick up. The entire assignment when learning how to roller skate is to fall often and very publicly. So far, over the past 3 months since I started I have had 1 twisted ankle, 1 sprained ankle, 1 bruised hand, a very bloody finger and lots and lots of other falls that luckily didn’t do much damage to my body, but definitely hurt my pride!

There have been good things too though. Like, I can skate backward now, I am able to do crossover steps and I can stop without just falling down (sometimes!). I am working up to being comfortable enough on skates that I can join the group in the middle of the skating rink (I have learned that there is always one!) that is doing some funky line dance. That is the goal to hit by the end of the year.

This challenge was particularly interesting to me because I grew up a trained dancer and gymnast. I began both of these sports almost at the same time that I could walk so they were natural to me. While dance and gymnastics were both physically challenging and required serious training, I rarely got hurt – I’ve never had one broken bone and rarely got sprained ankles. I tried my hardest not to let anyone see me sweat, never let anyone see me fall, never make a mistake. That is the expectation when you are on stage – to present a routine extremely physically challenging effortlessly, with a smile. I realized only recently how much of that dogma I internalized and roller skating is my way to find my way back.

Happy 33rd birthday to me!

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Why Being a Capitol Hill Intern is the Perfect Pre-VC Job

My first office job was as an intern on Capitol Hill. (My first job was selling Cutco knives to my neighbors, but that’s another story!)

I can’t imagine a better training ground for my work in VC. Why?

  1. As a Hill intern you have to respond to every constituent email. That means sometimes 100s of e-mails a day. Yes you can build out a template, but each one needs to feel personalized. People are e-mailing you about very personal and important topics – climate change, healthcare reform, their own experience with discrimination, the list goes on. As a VC, I am now responding to 100s of e-mails a day and doing the same thing. I am creating some templates to help me shortcut the timing required to get back to every single person, but I’m also personalizing every e-mail so that the folks who reach out know it’s a person who is responding back. They’re e-mailing me asking for funding to support a company they might have put their life savings into – they deserve a response that has some care given to it.
  2. As a Hill intern, you have to manage many stakeholders all the time. When I was interning for Congresswoman Barbara Lee, the Republicans had just taken control of the House. That meant that Congresswoman Barbara Lee had to manage these new colleagues of hers, and also the expectations of her very liberal constituents who elected her. Plus she had just taken the role as Chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC). This does not include the other leadership positions she had at that time – so she had to manage the relationships with the CBC on top of the other positions she held in the House. She was pulled into a hundred different directions daily. She was an amazing role model for me to watch. As a VC, it’s very similar. You have the expectations of your investors (or LPs), your co-investors, your portfolio, your teammates… Managing all of these stakeholders while also staying true to who you are and what you came into office (or into VC) to do is hard and also one of the most important responsibilities of the job.
  3. As a Hill intern, you have to play the long game. There are no metrics for success. You spend most of your day writing e-mails, drafting PR statements (I got to help draft the one Congresswoman Barbara Lee wrote after Michael Jackson died), and just generally helping. The path towards working on policy and legislation often times requires first working on consituent related problems. Congresswoman Barbara Lee is a great example – she worked for Ron Dellums for years before exploring a Congressional seat. You are required to do work that serves others before you become a decision maker. This concept of servant leadership teaches you how to stay focused on the collective instead of yourself. Which is honestly a great pre-requesite for any leadership position, but I think it has definitely served me well in VC!
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What Happens To Me When I’m the Only

The first time I can remember being the Only Black girl in my class was gymnastics. My parents started me in gymnastics when I was 3 – they were determined to make me the next Dominique Dawes. I don’t remember much about that experience except that I hated gymnastics. My teacher – who was a white woman – was so hard on me. I remember one time when I was probably about 5 or 6 years old, I burst into tears because the teacher pushed me to do an umpteenth push-up. I was tired. The teacher told me to stop crying because my parents were not paying to have me go to gymnastics and cry.

The second time is dance. I have spent more time in dance than any other career in my life. I was a professional dancer from 3-15. Professional means – I spent on average 4-5 hours a day at the dance studio, traveled across the country to participate in competitions and won enough trophies to cover an entire apartment. My entire career at the dance company I danced with, my sister and I were the only Black kids. This meant exposure to extremely harmful language like – a white girl, who was my classmate, telling me that she was Blacker than I because she was better at dancing Hip Hop than I was (!!!) This also meant the mundane things like trying to get my hair in a bun or choosing “nude” tights were more complicated. So I was constantly negotiating with myself and others how I was “allowed” to operate in this space.

The third time  I can remember was in the National Charity League (NCL). It was one of those high society organizations that my mom somehow got me into. I don’t know how because we didn’t live in or near the same zip code as anyone else in the group. The group was all white girls. They lived in North County in places like La Jolla or Del Mar or Rancho Santa Fe ( if you know San Diego, you know these are the rich places to live). I lived in a weird part of the city that was standardly middle income – our neighbors were teachers, doctors and a guy who ran a dog sitting place (he was the coolest!). NCL became a place where I turned into a full-time observer because it was made clear that I was an outsider – most discussions inevitably turned to conversations about friends of theirs who went to the same Montessori middle school. So at every NCL event, I felt like the purpose of my presence was to be their audience.

Throughout college, I was the “only” a few times. A few classes at Duke, a semester abroad in Scotland, nothing really to write home about. And after college graduation, I went into the public sector where I was surrounded by an amazingly complex set of people who came from all walks of life. It’s only recently that I realized how rare that is. In the public sector, I never really feared for my own safety and I always felt taken care of. It wasn’t perfect (if it was, I’d still be there!) but I think back to that experience as extremely formative and without it I’d never be where I am today. I was forced to consider every angle of every policy – it was invigorating and played to my strengths (I am a deep thinker and love that about myself). And constantly asked to build policies that focused on the most vulnerable first. I loved that work and I was only able to do this deep thinking effectively because I was in institutions that invited vulnerable or minoritized populations into them. I was never an “only”. I was in the public sector for about 5 years before returning to school. I went to Berkeley-Haas for my MBA in 2014.

After business school, the number of times and spaces where I existed as the “only” grew exponentially. I can’t even count the number of times I have been an “only” after arriving on campus. I hadn’t given myself the space to reflect on who I become when I am the “only” until recently and I realized that I should outline exactly what the costs are to being the “only” so that I can remember them and so that others can understand.

Being the Only Black girl in places comes with a set of serious risks. The most significant one for me is – you are highly visible. Visibility is not great because it usually comes with tokenization. An example of tokenizing behavior is when the people around you no longer expect to be held accountable to individual racist acts they perform because hiring you or being associated with you absolves them from any wrongdoing. (to be clear, we live in a country where white supremacy is extremely pervasive, we all need to be vigilant against racist behavior because it is everywhere and in everyone) Instead of receiving protection yourself, you are being used as a shield to protect others around you.

Additionally, when you are highly visible, your moves are more public. Your mistakes are often more public too. You are less able to enjoy the anonymity that is sometimes required for you to have the courage to get back up after you fall down – if fewer people see you fall, there are fewer judges around to tell you how you should get back up. Because most white people live segregated lives, I assume that when I’m the only Black girl in a place, I’m also the only Black girl these white people know. That triggers, for me, a complex layer of processing I can’t fully describe; I feel an intense expectation to then become a representative of my intersectional identity instead of an actual human. A human with human emotions, wants, needs, expectations, worries, anxieties.

Work that inspired this/ vibez with this one:

  1. Economic State of Black America
  2. “We reject pedestals, queenhood, and walking ten paces behind. To be recognized as human, levelly human, is enough.” – The Combahee River Collective Statement. I love this because I think a lot of people think that being “the only” comes along with the assumption that you’re “the best”. I don’t think I’m the best and think there are a lot of people just as great. Why would I want to be somewhere that puts me on this pedestal? And doesn’t putting me on this pedestal just make it easier to fall off?
  3. “won’t you celebrate with me” – Lucille Clifton
  4. “Cluster Hires” – I don’t want to offer any broad takeaways or, “here’s how to fix this” statements, but this is interesting research.
  5. Nikole Hannah-Jones’ epic statement.
  6. The work of Heather McGhee. You can check her out by reading her book. 
  7. The White Space

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Why I Decided to Do Kauffman + How I Found the $$$ to Pay for it

I am so excited to be a part of the Kauffman Fellows Program! I did it for a variety of reasons, which I’ll try to outline here.

First, though, I want to tell you about my biggest pandemic learnings. The answer to why Kauffman starts there.

Pandemic Learnings

The pandemic gave me a lot of time and space to reflect on how I was previously operating in the world and explore how I might design a life that fits me post-pandemic. I realized that I was very reactive, almost constantly, in pre-pandemic life and I wanted to build more intention into my life. After this reflection, I started to explore what I used to do in pre-pandemic life that doesn’t suit me.

The first thing I came up with was networking. I realized I get very serious anxiety around networking in its traditional sense. Attending events, especially nighttime events, was devastating to my sleep. It takes me hours to process events because I am very hypervigilant in large groups, which means that the cost of a nighttime event is a nighttime of sleep.

The second thing that came up was my commute/working life in SF. I am based in Oakland. I love Oakland so much!! I love the new friends and communities I have been able to build because of the pandemic-induced WFH situation. I am now more deeply connected to my neighbors, local businesses + city government. I won’t give that up. My ability to live in a neighborhood whose values align so deeply with my own, to have Black neighbors, to have the kids on the street look out for me to see if I’m hanging out on my porch swing… it’s really beautiful. I now know the true opportunity cost of my commute/working life in SF. While Precursor plans to open an office eventually, I don’t expect to be there for more than a few hours on 1-2 days a week and plan to use that time specifically for team building.

There are a few reasons why I think it took me so long to realize these qualities about myself. One of them is that there is a prevailing notion in VC that younger VCs have infinite time and energy because they don’t have children, spouses, etc. This is compared to older VCs who have families and can’t possibly be expected to go to another networking dinner. I fundamentally disagree with that. Young VCs might be caring for aging parents, might be volunteering in their community, might be struggling mentally/emotionally and this expectation that their time is less valuable than older VCs’ time is dangerous.

As a result of this reflection, I decided to replace the very transactional nature of many of these coffees and lunches and happy hours with anyone who e-mails me w/ an @vcfirm.com e-mail address with an experience that gives me an opportunity to build relationships with people who are taking the time and effort to really get to know me and who are excited about improving themselves. Which brings me to Kauffman. I am so excited to join this group of folks who are building intentional relationships with each other in a way that is less transactional.

Growth Mindset

Another reason I joined Kauffman, is because while I have a really strong perspective on what types of companies I am passionate about investing in, I know that there are still things I don’t know about this business and myself. I am looking forward to using this space, as a Kauffman Fellow, to be, in many ways, a learner. There is a lot of talk about how Black women need the same opportunity to fail as white guys. I think what we also need to explore is the concept that Black women need the same opportunity to be seen as learners instead of as experts. There is so much research that shows that Black girls in education spaces are adultified. While I’m no longer a child, I think the corollary here is that as a Black woman, I’m often expected to enter new spaces and know all the things all the time – to never slip up. This is a trap. I deserve the space to be seen as a learner and to be given the grace that learners are given. I am grateful to be at a fund that gives me space to learn, make mistakes and grow within the fund. I wish that for all Black women in VC.

The Cost, Though

I want to be honest about how I paid for it. I am not rich, plus Precursor is not a $1B+ fund, so I had some really hard decisions to make.

$80,000 is the cost of Kauffman. Let’s not beat around the bush here: that price tag is really really steep. This leads to an exclusion of folks who might find the experience useful, but just can’t figure out how to make the numbers add up. Many Black people in venture are at less established funds that are unable to foot this large bill on their behalf and they don’t have access to the family wealth to put down this capital on their own. I know this to be true, not just because of the data, but because that is my story. To me, that $80K might as well be $1M. I don’t have $80K and have no way of borrowing it from family. So after I applied and got accepted, I asked for help. I reached out to people and organizations who have been supportive of me over the last 5 years and I was met with such generosity. I was able to get $10K from an 😇, $20K from a sponsor organization and $40K from Kauffman. Precursor paid the remaining $10K.

I am so lucky. I know that. I am brainstorming ways to make this experience more accessible to those who are not as lucky. More updates on that later this year! If you’re interested in collaborating on this and have ideas, let me know! You can reach me at sydney@precursorvc.com.

Thanks for reading! Looking forward to continuing to share more about my experience in the program over the coming months and years!

References and motivation to write this:

  1. Nick Caldwell’s “Happy to Be Here” YouTube clip
Sydney Paige Thomas