I’m so grateful to have been included on Silicon Republic’s list of Game Changers for 2018. I can’t imagine a better category to get into other than firestarters. Read more about the list here and my specific segment here.
Why I Decided to Become Pipeline Angels’ 1st VC-in-Residence
In September, I added another job to my title. I’m still the Investment Associate and Head of Ops at Precursor Ventures and have now joined Natalia Oberti Noguera and her team at Pipeline Angels as their first ever VC-in-Residence.
It started with a simple e-mail. I’m not yet an accredited investor, but I was inspired with what Natalia was building. So I filled out the Pipeline Angels application and included a short note about how excited I was to get involved wherever I could be useful. Luckily, my application aligned with a new idea Natalia had brewing to get more women like me involved in Pipeline Angels.
Natalia and I hopped on the phone and she shared her vision for extending her pipeline initiative to not just help women and non-binary femmes become angel investors, but also help women, non-binary people, and men of color become GPs at investment firms.
The road to GP is usually paved with a stint in angel investing and a demonstrated ability to bring quality LP leads to the table.
But these prerequisites to the job require one huge piece that many women and non-binary femmes lack → access to capital.
As a VC-in-Residence, her vision was that I would be given the opportunity to learn both. Through working on a team alongside angel investors, I would get to learn the ins — and — outs of the angel investment process, support their decisions on who to invest in and be a contributing member of their investment team. Through working with accredited investors, I would be able to build relationships with women and non-binary femmes who could be tomorrow’s LPs.
As Natalia put it: Pipeline Angels created the role of VC-in-Residence to inspire our members and broader network to help change the face of venture capital by becoming LPs in VC firms led by #morevoices.
I’m grateful for Natalia’s vision and even more grateful for Precursor Ventures’ sponsorship. Professional
development opportunities in venture capital are few and far between. I’m lucky to have found a crew that understands the importance of growth.
Interested in learning more? Check out Megan Rose Dickey’s feature about the VC-in-Residence role in TechCrunch.
Why I Decided to Become Pipeline Angels’ 1st VC-in-Residence
In September, I added another job to my title. I’m still the Investment Associate and Head of Ops at Precursor Ventures and have now joined Natalia Oberti Noguera and her team at Pipeline Angels as their first ever VC-in-Residence.
It started with a simple e-mail. I’m not yet an accredited investor, but I was inspired with what Natalia was building. So I filled out the Pipeline Angels application and included a short note about how excited I was to get involved wherever I could be useful. Luckily, my application aligned with a new idea Natalia had brewing to get more women like me involved in Pipeline Angels.
Natalia and I hopped on the phone and she shared her vision for extending her pipeline initiative to not just help women and non-binary femmes become angel investors, but also help women, non-binary people, and men of color become GPs at investment firms.
The road to GP is usually paved with a stint in angel investing and a demonstrated ability to bring quality LP leads to the table.
But these prerequisites to the job require one huge piece that many women and non-binary femmes lack → access to capital.
As a VC-in-Residence, her vision was that I would be given the opportunity to learn both. Through working on a team alongside angel investors, I would get to learn the ins — and — outs of the angel investment process, support their decisions on who to invest in and be a contributing member of their investment team. Through working with accredited investors, I would be able to build relationships with women and non-binary femmes who could be tomorrow’s LPs.
As Natalia put it: Pipeline Angels created the role of VC-in-Residence to inspire our members and broader network to help change the face of venture capital by becoming LPs in VC firms led by #morevoices.
I’m grateful for Natalia’s vision and even more grateful for Precursor Ventures’ sponsorship. Professional
development opportunities in venture capital are few and far between.
I’m lucky to have found a crew that understands the importance of
growth.
Interested in learning more? Check out Megan Rose Dickey’s feature about the VC-in-Residence role in TechCrunch.
How I Hustled My Way Into Venture Capital
I’m so grateful to have been featured on Two Dope Boys’ Podcast to talk about my journey to VC and my experience here. Check it out here and let me know what you think!
How Can VCs Make Entrepreneurship Suck Less?
So much ink has been spilled on how difficult entrepreneurship is.
And rightfully so! The more I talk to entrepreneurs, the more respect I gain for them. Living years without a paycheck, managing investors who are telling you to run fast in 10 separate directions and working with a team who is there because they believe in you when you aren’t sure if you believe in yourself is physically, mentally and emotionally exhausting. Yet, much of the VC rhetoric I hear praises someone’s ability to go through this process. They glorify the struggle. They say that if it was easy, everyone would do it.
But I think there is a fundamental problem in the entrepreneurship ecosystem today.
It is becoming so hard and so irrational to start companies that the people who we need the most (i.e. rational, smart people) are opting out. I am inspired by this post on Why More Women Don’t Run for Office. So much of what Raina Lipsitz discusses can be applied to entrepreneurship.
It doesn’t make any sense for highly qualified women (particularly women of color) to start companies.
After foregoing wages that they need to feed their families and communities, they are going to go through a round of disappointing interviews with VCs that will give them a 1-2% chance of receiving funding.
If we continue to structure a path to successful entrepreneurship as we do, we will continue to get the egomaniacs to enter and succeed.
Do you only want Travis Kalanick 2.0 running the companies of the future? I don’t. So how do VCs make entrepreneurship easier? I think there are a few fundamental things that VCs can do to make entrepreneurship more friendly. We should normalize taking a meaningful salary.
- I have seen burn rates all over the place. Entrepreneurs I’ve talked to are everywhere between living at the poverty line to living in the SOMA Grand. This is crazy.
- Why isn’t there more excitement amongst VCs to help entrepreneurs meet the lowest rank of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs? Why isn’t there more acceptance of the fact that the opportunity costs to these individuals is high already – with or without a salary?
We should treat entrepreneurs with humility.
- As Kanye put it – You Ain’t Got the Answers, Sway. Entrepreneurs are building from scratch. Yes, we may have seen things similar to what they’re creating in the past, but almost everything since then has changed. The timing, competitors, funding environment.
- We have so much to learn from each and every entrepreneur that walks through our doors. And the only way we’ll succeed in our jobs is if we take each opportunity to soak up the knowledge from these founders seriously and respectfully.
We should not ask entrepreneurs to sacrifice their lives for their companies.
- When we’re doing this, what we’re saying is – making me money is more important than anything else you could be doing.
- NYTimes describes this phenomenon in a recent article: “The guy is developing an app that lets you visualize how a coffee table from a catalog might look in your living room. I suppose that’s cool, but is it really more important than seeing your kids? Is the chance to raise some venture capital funding really “the ultimate reward”?”
What is the ultimate reward is deeply personal to each person. But I hope that as VCs, we empathize with entrepreneurs who may have thoughts, lives and dreams outside of building the company we invested in. They are better entrepreneurs for it.
The Power of Language
In the venture capital industry, there are so many “buzzwords”. Almost all of them can be found on Twitter with a hashtag attached: #blockchain, #ai, #futureofwork. These shortcuts are helpful to manage the overwhelming amount of “new, exciting ideas.”
VCs try to put these buzzwords on products and ideas in order to group their thinking. If something is in a specific buzzword category, you can quickly come up to speed on the market, KPIs — basically, the things that matter. If something is outside of that category, it takes a more time to understand the entire diligence process.
This can lead to the known buzzword > the unknown unique idea.
This is disconcerting for a number of reasons — including the confirmation bias effect, and the creation of herd mentalities. Unfortunately, I have seen this trickle down to entrepreneurs who are looking to hire quickly and exclusively look at candidates who have previous experience in similar companies with buzzwords they can understand.
The biggest downside of doing this is you miss out on swaths of the population who could:
- Be uniquely qualified for these opportunities and,
- Bring with them a level of critical thinking that often comes with having perspectives across industries.
I wanted to create a thesaurus translating public sector experiences to private sector buzzwords
As a veteran of the public sector myself, I know that my transition to the private sector was made infinitely easier when I figured out how to talk about my past in language that private sector people understood.
The main audience for this includes:
1. Entrepreneurs who are looking at candidates and don’t know how to decipher their background.
2. Public sector candidates looking to make the switch and exploring ways to talk about their experiences
3. And, to help inform the public about how to interpret similar work done across industries who use different vernacular or “buzzwords”.
Development/Gifts (i.e. Chief Development Officer)
What does this mean? This person has a history in fundraising across multiple stakeholders — foundations, HNIs, and private companies.
How does it translate? Business development or growth hacking
Outreach (i.e. Public Outreach Associate)
What does this mean? This person has a history in managing a brand.
How does it translate? Marketing, product marketing or content strategy
Program (i.e. Program Assistant)
What does this mean? This person has a history in managing cross-functional teams.
How does it translate? Analyst, business operations, project management
Membership/Volunteer (i.e Membership Coordinator)
What does this mean? This person has a history of building communities.
How does it translate? Customer success
Social (i.e. Social Worker)
What does this mean? This person has a history in developing a deep understanding of their clients needs and providing them with support to address these needs.
How does it translate? Therapist, venture capitalist ( ?)
I hope this helps! Are there other experiences I should include? Let me know by leaving a note below or e-mailing me at sydney@precursorvc.com.
The List of Black Women in VC
A compilation of black women who work in the venture capital ecosystem
When I first arrived into the venture community, my first instinct was to find my people.
The List of Black Women in VCWhen I first arrived into the venture community, my first instinct was to find my people. As an outsider in this new, foreign space, it was important that I build a sub-community within venture in which I felt safe.
So, I started building the Women of Color in VC network with Siri Srinivas. Since our first dinner last November, I have had the privilege of getting to know so many amazing women.
However, in this post, I want to highlight the black women in venture. We are here and the numbers are growing.
It is important that we recognize, listen to and encourage these women as we look towards building an inclusive venture ecosystem.
I’m hoping this list can be particularly helpful for:
Startups building boards
VCs adding new GPs or Venture Partners
Conference Organizers developing rosters of panelists and keynote speakers
I look forward to seeing these amazing women represented more in the venture capital community and growing this list exponentially in the years to come.
Investors
Kesha Cash — Managing Partner, Impact America Fund
Lisa Lambert — Managing Partner, The Westly Group
Daphne Dufresne — Managing Partner, GenNx360 Capital Partners
Tracy Gray — Managing Partner, The 22 Capital Group
Arlan Hamilton —Managing Partner, Backstage Capital
Shauntel Poulson — General Partner, Reach Capital
Karen Kerr — Senior Managing Director, GE Ventures
Lisa Coca — Managing Director, GE Ventures
Richelle Parham — Partner, Camden Partners
Danielle Morris — Partner, Jumpstart
Monique Woodard — Venture Partner, 500 Startups
Anne Richie — Venture Partner, Jumpstart
Ulili Onovakpuri —Principal, Kapor Capital & Venture Partner, Fresco Capital
Brittany Davis — Principal, Hello Angels
Nicole Walker — Principal, Baird Capital Ventures
Gloria Ware — Principal, Jumpstart
Stefanie Thomas —Senior Associate, Impact America Fund
Megan Maloney — Associate, General Catalyst
Jillian Williams — Associate, Anthemis Group
Sydney Thomas — Associate, Precursor Ventures
Adina Tecklu — Analyst, Canaan
Sydney Sykes — Analyst, NEA
Sonya Powell — Analyst, Jumpstart
Ita Ekpoudom — EIR, Plum Alley Investments
Candice Mathews — Executive Director, Hillman Accelerator
Roxann Stafford — Director of Programs, Matter.VC
Lauren Booker Allen — Senior Manager, Omidyar Network
Kimberly Marshall — Senior Program Officer (Tech Investments), Gates Foundation
Ebony Pope — Senior Manager, Village Capital
Marilyn Waite — Senior Manager, Village Capital
Diane Henry — Angel
Lauren Bias — Angel
Kathryn Finney — Angel
Gayle Jennings O’Byrne — Angel
Lorine Pendleton — Angel
Lisa Skeete Tatum — Angel
Operators
Saydeah Howard — SVP of Talent and Venture Services, IVP
Mandela Schumacher-Hodge — Portfolio Services Director, Kapor
Onyedikachi Achilike — Program Manager, Newark Venture Partners
Abyah Wynn — VP, Trimantium Capital
Timmeko Love — Business Development, Mayo Clinic Ventures
Kendall Sherman —Community Manager, Flybridge
Natanya Montgomery — Knowledge Coordinator, First Round
Did I miss someone? Please let me know! You can reach me here: sydney@precursorvc.com
Timeout — Why did I want to become a VC again?
It has been a week in the Valley for the books.
As all of the industry’s ugliness comes to light, I am forced to call a time out and reflect on why I wanted to be in this business in the first place. Underneath the surface of this question, lays an even bigger question: What does a successful VC look like to me?
From my discussions with GPs, it seems like everyone has their own definition. To some, a successful VC is the one who has the fancy startups next to their name on their Twitter handle (i.e. early investor in @Uber). To others, a successful VC is one who took their learnings from their time at a16z and applied it to start their own company. And to a few, a successful VC is one who built a generation of companies that will contribute to a more healthy workforce.
To me, I have realized that so much of what I want out of being a VC is not the picking, not the glamour and glitz, it’s the boring, unsexy part of being an ecosystem builder. This may in large part be a function of my background. Working across almost 5 different industries — federal government, local government, philanthropy, CPG, startups and now VC — will do that to you. I see implicit connections that require fluency in the language of different institutions.
This fluency inspires me to build bigger, larger, more stable bridges, than narrow silos.
That doesn’t mean that picking great companies doesn’t matter. If you want to stay in business past Fund I, it definitely does! But I refuse to pick companies or entrepreneurs who are not as committed to building the type of VC ecosystem that is required for it to flourish — diverse, empathetic even when it hurts and driven to do things the right way, not the fast way.
My thoughts are that these are the kinds of people who, once successful, will remember what being without power felt like so well that they never corrupt themselves with it.
I’m excited to see what happens as the bad actors are excluded from the party, leaving space open for the many different types of VCs to finally get their invitations. The ones who are here not just for the power, but for far more interesting, nuanced and inspiring reasons.
What does an associate actually do?
Now I’ve really got to figure out what’s going on.
Prior to joining Precursor Ventures, my research into Venture Capital had focused on the high level — I followed partners, kept up to date on trends and explored startups I thought were interesting.
In informational interviews with associates I focused too much on questions like, “How did you get this job?”, “What should I prepare for in the interview?”and not enough on questions like, “What do you do all day?”
Once I got the job ( ?) and started asking my peers the third question, I realized the answer varies widely across firms. This is especially true when you take into account the size of the firm. Associates at firms that employ 100s of people have positions that look much different than those at firms that employ <5 people (like ours!)
So I’m going to focus on what associates at firms with <5 people do. As a startup, my role ebbs and flows with the needs of the organization. Overall though, associate roles at small firms can be bucketed into three areas: ops, sourcing, diligence.
Operations
In a company with fewer than 5 people, we mirror a lot of the companies we back in that, we are essentially a startup ourselves. So what is operations? Think bizops and you’re about there. In most small firms, the major functions like Finance, Design, Web Development are outsourced and it is the associate’s role to consult, review and improve these areas.
However, the breadth of the operations work can be expansive — from exploring investor CRM systems to building community efforts for the portfolio.
Sourcing
Associates are often tasked with searching for startups that the firm might be interested in investing in. In order to accomplish this, we need to first get a strong pulse of the markets the firm invests in. That means taking many meetings with people who have different vantage points of the same market — founders, other VCs, experts and customers.
Diligence
Once the startup is found, a lot of research has to be complete in order figure out if the startup has the potential to become a dragon or unicorn. In the Pre-Seed stage, the majority of that research is done on the people and the ideas, not the numbers. So we take time to dig into the founders’ history — who knows them well? How do they rise to challenges? What do their relationships with their co-founders look like? — in order to build a strong understanding of their ability to execute against their vision. We also dig into the ideas by asking questions like, “Are there customers searching for this solution already?”
If I had to pick one thing I didn’t realize would be a big part of my job though, it would be networking. Venture Capital is such a small industry that it still operates a little bit like a club. In order to get in, you have to make yourself known and be known. If you’re an extrovert (like me) that can be a lot of fun!
I hope this was helpful and would love to get your feedback. What did you think?
Learn Something. Pass it on.
I have been in venture capital for almost 10 months. I am still learning, all the time, and want to leave a few breadcrumbs about all the things I’m soaking up as a self-proclaimed VC newbie.
I’m doing this for two reasons:
- There is no channel available to learn alongside someone else in VC. I did my research early on before entering into this world — from reading Feld Thoughts to listening to 20 Minute VC. But this information concentrates on VC legends. Where are the voices from those who are still in the stages of becoming? What are they learning? I want to contribute to that conversation.
- There are many idiosyncrasies about venture capital that people don’t talk about until you’re “in the circle”. I don’t want to perpetuate this hoarding of knowledge. Through this blog, I hope to lower the barrier to entry for the next guy/gal interested in VC.
So, who is my blog for?
- Entrepreneurs who want to know what happens behind the curtains in VC;
- Students and career switchers who want to learn if this career is for them;
- And for me, so I actually track everything I’m learning.
I plan to get these out every couple of weeks. First blog is coming next week — yay!
If you’re interested in keeping up, please subscribe. And please leave me feedback, comments and questions! The key piece of this is that I’m still learning so I will get some things wrong. I’m looking to you to challenge me.
I hope you enjoy + I’ll talk with you soon!