Forward Thinking Investors: Recent Episodes
Mat Sherman
Forward Thinking Investors is a podcast where Mat Sherman interviews the world's brightest up and coming investors, as well as many who have already proven themselves as the best. Topics will range from portfolio construction theory to what makes a good market, and everything in between. The goal of this podcast is to help popularize the concept of investing with the public and get them familiar with how investors think. Listening to this podcast will make you a better investor and a better founder, so I hope you enjoy Forward Thinking Investors!
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About Elizabeth Yin:
Elizabeth Yin is a co-founder and General Partner at Hustle Fund, a pre-seed fund for software entrepreneurs. Previously, Elizabeth was a partner at 500 Startups where she invested in seed stage companies and ran the Mountain View accelerator. In a prior life, Elizabeth co-founded and ran an adtech company called LaunchBit (acq 2014). Elizabeth has a BSEE from Stanford and an MBA from MIT Sloan.
Elizabeth has reviewed over 20k startup pitches from around the world in the last few years and has helped numerous portfolio founders raise hundreds of millions of dollars. Her work and writing on startup fundraising has been featured in numerous publications including TechCrunch, Forbes, Huffington Post, BetaKit, and more.
About Zach:
Zach Coelius is a four-time entrepreneur and now investor in early-stage technology companies. Learn more about his rolling fund here or follow him on Twitter here.
About Kirby
Kirby Winfield is a seasoned startup operator and investor, and is currently the Founding General Partner at Ascend.vc, a pre-seed stage venture fund investing in marketplace, e-commerce/DTC, and B2B software startups in the Pacific Northwest.
About Hunter WalkHunter Walk is a co-founder and Partner at Homebrew, which is an early-stage venture capital firm based in the Bay Area. Before Homebrew, I led consumer product management at YouTube, starting when it was acquired by Google. I originally joined Google in 2003, managing product and sales efforts for AdSense, Google‘s contextual advertising business. My first job in Silicon Valley was as the founding product and marketing guy at Linden Lab. Before graduate school, I was a management consultant and also spent a year at Late Night with Conan O‘ Brien. My parents are proud of my BA in History from Vassar and MBA from Stanford University.
Nikhil is the cofounder and GP of Footwork. Prior, Nikhil was Managing Director at Shasta Ventures, where he invested in Canva, ClassDojo, Frame.io, Imperfect Foods, Lattice, Literati, Pill Club, Tally, and The Farmer's Dog. He was previously at Insight Partners and on the founding team at Artsy. Nikhil found his footwork growing up in the UK, India, and the San Francisco Bay Area, playing cricket and tennis.
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About Kathryn Finney (From LinkedIn)
Named by Inc Magazine as one of the most influential women in tech, Kathryn Finney has made her mark as an entrepreneur, social media visionary, “women in” advocate, investor, and 3x published author.
On the heels of the events of the Summer of 2020, Kathryn created Genius Guild, a business creation platform that uses the venture studio model (Lab & Venture Fund) to invest in Black entrepreneurs building scalable businesses that serve black communities and beyond. Pre-launch, Kathryn and Genius Guild raised over $5MM in investment from a number of partners including Pivotal Ventures, an investment and incubation company founded by Melinda Gates, Impact Seat, an investment company led by serial investor Barbara Clarke, First Close partners, and individual investors such as Andrew Bosworth (Facebook).
In April 2020, Kathryn founded The Doonie Fund with a $10,000 personal donation, to encourage other black women entrepreneurs to continue to build their businesses in the middle of the COVID-19 crisis. One Medium post, a few emails and 6 weeks later, the fund grew to over $150,000, providing micro investments to over 1500 Black women-owned businesses.
Kathryn is the founder of digitalundivided, a groundbreaking social enterprise focused on creating a world where women own their work. Kathryn started digitalundivided after selling her company, The Budget Fashionista, the pioneering lifestyle media company. Her research, “#ProjectDiane”, drew widespread buzz for disrupting the dialogue around women of color and tech entrepreneurship. She grew the organization from a simple idea to a dynamic organization with a seven figure budget, 20+ staff, and two offices. After eight years as CEO, she stepped down to become the first black woman business author at Portfolio/Penguin Books.
A Yale-trained Epidemiologist, Kathryn has received numerous honors and awards including the Echoing Green fellowship, Eisenhower Fellowship, Entrepreneurs Magazine’s “Woman to Watch”, Grace Hopper ABIE award, Marie Claire’s 10 Women to Watch, Ebony Power 100, Black Enterprise “40 under 40” list and more.
A White House Champion of Change and a past member of the National Advisory Council on Innovation and Entrepreneurship (NACIE) appointed by the Obama Administration, Kathryn was honored by the Borough of Manhattan with the “Kathryn Finney Appreciation Day”. She has also received an Honorary Doctorate from Mount Holyoke College and was inducted into both the African-American Alumni Hall of Fame at Rutgers University and Spelman College’s “Game Changers Academy.”
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Jenny is the Managing Director of Techstars New York and Managing Partner at The Fund. According to her LinkedIn, she is a pre-seed investor into 140+ companies including: Latch (LTCH), Chainalysis, Alloy, Headway, Supergreat, Contra, Bloomscape, Simple Health, Particle Health, Pair Eyewear, Solo Funds, Halp, Minded, Talent Hack, Rupa Health, Morty, Wagmo, Smarthop, Solid, Remesh, Tempo and so many more! 🚀🚀🚀
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About Gaurav (From LinkedIn)
Co-founded Afore Capital, one of the largest venture funds ($124M) dedicated to super early stage investments. No investment is "too early" for Afore, and in fact, we prefer to get involved as early as possible and help the company get to the next stage where traditional VCs can get involved. If you think we could be a fit for your startup, please find a warm intro and we'd love to chat!
Previously, I made 26 seed-stage investments including Cruise Automation (acq by GM for $1B+), Firebase (acq by Google) and Dia & Co (Series A Sequoia Capital) through Founder Collective.
I was one of the first Product Managers for Android (led the Nexus product line); joined the platform when we had less than 1M total users (today >2.5B). I was recognized with the Founders Award, highest employee achievement award at Google, for my contributions to Android.
Also co-founded Polar in 2007, leading native ads platform.
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Samara is the Founding Partner of an institutionally-backed pre-seed stage fund, Chingona Ventures, focusing on investing in technology and technology-enabled companies all over the U.S. Prior to this she was an early stage investor at MATH Venture Partners, an early-stage venture fund investing in technology start-ups with differentiated approaches to customer acquisition. In this capacity, she led new investment review, diligence and execution. Prior to venture capital, Samara worked at Goldman Sachs, where she was continually ranked top 5 in selling financial products, providing market insights, advising on portfolio construction, and consulting on business practices.
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About Charlie O'donnell (From BBV Website)Charlie O'Donnell is the sole Partner and Founder at Brooklyn Bridge Ventures. The fund makes seed and pre-seed investments and was the first venture firm located in Brooklyn--where he was born and raised. Brooklyn Bridge invested in the first rounds of The Wing, Canary, Hungryroot, Ample Hills, Clubhouse, Imagen, and goTenna among others.
Charlie has a reputation for being early to identifying important companies. Nick Bilton identifies him as an influence on early Twitter investors in his book, Hatching Twitter. Dennis Crowley credits him as having helped kick off the first funding of Foursquare before other VCs had said yes. At First Round Capital, he helped source the firm's investments in Singleplatform (sold to Constant Contact), Moat (Sold to Oracle) and GroupMe (sold to Skype). Charlie discovered GroupMe at the hackathon where the service had been built. He also sourced investments in Backupify (which was an idea he had tweeted to the founder, a friend of his), Moat, chloe + isabel, and Refinery29.
Working in venture capital since 2001, he apprenticed his way through the asset class with analyst roles on the original Union Square Ventures team as well as at the General Motors pension fund--a long time limited partner in many top tier funds.
Charlie is one of only a dozen individuals to be named to Business Insider's 100 Most Influential People in NY Tech five or more times. He served on the founding board of the New York Tech Meetup and is one of the group's first 100 members. He was recently named to City & State Magazine’s Tech Power 50. His blog, This is Going to Be BIG!, is one of the ten most widely read VC blogs in the country and over 13,000 people read his weekly NYC tech newsletter. He has spoken at SXSW and Techcrunch Disrupt.
Charlie bikes to work, has done four Ironman 70.3s, four marathons, and founded the kayaking program in Brooklyn Bridge Park. The longest he has consecutively been outside of the five boroughs of New York City is three weeks.
About Brooklyn Bridge Ventures (From BBC Website)
Brooklyn Bridge Ventures, the first VC fund founded in Brooklyn, NY, is the most accessible early-stage partner for startups in NYC. We foster a thriving community both online and offline open to founders and innovative professionals of all backgrounds.
BBV manages approximately $30 million and counting across three funds, leading or co-leading investments of up to $400,000 in New York City pre-seed and seed companies that have yet to raise $750,000 in prior rounds. Conversations often start pre-product and pre-deck and no warm intros or other systematic barriers prevent us from engaging with the community. Pitches and outreach generally start by e-mail or via a calendar request.
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Delian Asparouhov is a principal at Founders Fund. Before joining Founders Fund, he was a principal at Khosla Ventures, head of growth at Teespring, and founder of a healthcare company called Nightingale. Delian is Bulgarian, attended MIT, and likes to ski and play soccer.
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About Jeff Morris Jr.
Jeff Morris is the founder and Managing Partner of Chapter One. He was previously the VP of Product, Revenue at Tinder. In the role, Tinder became the #1 top grossing app in the App Store and one of the top grossing products in mobile history.
As a product leader, Morris is passionate about building high performing teams and creating profitable products that delight customers.
At Tinder, Morris built the revenue team and led the creation of multiple blockbuster hits including Tinder Gold and Boost. These products broke industry records and helped increase the Match Group market cap by $8B+.
About Operator CollectiveMallun and Leyla are partners at Operator Collective. Operator Collective was founded because we believe the power in venture capital is concentrated among a homogenous group that doesn’t represent where our industry is now or where it’s going. Despite the essential role operators play in Silicon Valley, they’ve been largely missing from the venture world. So we’ve created a new access point for operators from diverse backgrounds; they may not be household names, but they’ve spent their entire careers building and scaling companies, and now they’re ready to actively support founders and their teams as they bring new visions to life.
About Sheel:
I'm co-founder of Better Tomorrow Ventures (BTV) in San Francisco, with Jake Gibson. We're a $75m fund that leads pre-seed and seed rounds in fintech companies globally, generally with a first check of $500k-$1.5m. We take a pretty broad view on fintech, and many vertical SaaS and marketplace businesses fit in our purview too. We invest for a better future and genuinely believe that our companies make the world better; fintech is a great way to improve people's lives.
We like investing at the seed stage because it allows us to have the greatest impact. Founders need help and support and we love being the first call - we are both entrepreneurs first, investors second. We love thinking through strategy, figuring out distribution, helping companies hire, and helping founders raise the next round. We roll up our sleeves and try to be the biggest cheerleaders and most trusted partners for our companies.
I’m also on the investment committee for the Catalyst Fund, an initiative to support entrepreneurs building financial solutions for the underserved in India, Kenya, Mexico, Nigeria, and South Africa.
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About Natty Zola (From Their Website)
In 2008, I left a lucrative career to start a company, everlater.com. On my journey, I taught myself how to code, built the product, raised two rounds of venture financing, went through two significant pivots, hired and fired teams, thrived, stumbled, thrived again and ultimately sold the company to AOL. I get what it's like and what it takes to start and scale a company.
In 2015, I joined Techstars as Managing Director for the accelerator in Boulder. In that role, I discovered that I'm more passionate as coach than player. Since then, I've dedicated myself to helping other entrepreneurs succeed and have worked with over 200 founders directly as an investor, mentor and friend. I honor and respect the bravery of entrepreneurs and feel privileged to help on the amazing journey of making a dream a reality. I bring love, trust and loyalty to the teams I get to work with, helping them set and hit audacious goals. Friends and founders describe me as ambitious yet humble. Kind, supportive, loyal and earnest. A hard worker who’s not afraid to push and set high expectations.
Because people are the most important thing, I spend a lot of time helping the entrepreneurs I work with become the best versions of themselves, so they can do their best work at the most important times. I'm also a details guy and enjoy helping with the product, operations, UX, and analytics of a business.
I see my role as doing whatever I can to help a company get to product/market fit, set the early work cadence and culture and ultimately source and bring in the capital needed to scale.
I'm deeply committed to the Colorado startup ecosystem. I'm from Boulder, and was supported on my entrepreneurial journey by so many people in this community (big thanks to the Techstars and Foundry Group leaders and all the mentors and founders I've been lucky to learn from). I believe it's my mission to continue helping it grow into the best place to start a company.
When I’m not working, you can find me enjoying time outdoors. Living in Colorado, it feels so easy to do! My wife Pam and I stay busy teaching our young boys to bike and ski, going for a hike or bike commuting all over town.
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About Caroline KassieCaroline is a GP at Metrodora Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm investing in the health and education sector. Previously, Caroline was a Partner at Blockchange Ventures and the Executive Director of Beanstalk Labs, an innovation lab concentrated on the development of new business ideas for a New York-based venture fund that invests in early stage retail technology companies. Caroline was also an associate at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meager & Flom LLP where she practiced corporate law focusing on mergers & acquisitions and investment management. She graduated summa cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania and received her J.D. from Columbia Law School where she was a Harlan Fiske Stone scholar. She is a passionate mental health advocate and a producer of documentary films focused on social justice and human rights issues.
About Clara
Clara is co-founder and Managing Partner of the Urban Innovation Fund, a venture capital firm that invests in the future of cities. The fund provides seed capital and regulatory support to entrepreneurs solving our toughest urban challenges – helping them grow into tomorrow’s most valued companies.
About Leo Polovets
Leo Polovets is co-founder and General Partner at Susa Ventures, where he focuses on enterprise software; developer tools and technical products; and logistics and supply chain. Leo led Susa's investments in Outlier, Pex, Scalyr, and Stedi. Having been a software engineer for 10+ years, Leo approaches challenges with an engineering mindset and supports portfolio companies in vetting and hiring technical talent. Prior to Susa, Leo was the second engineering hire at Linkedin where he worked on the first versions of products like LinkedIn Jobs and LinkedIn Groups. Leo then worked on payment fraud detection algorithms at Google, and was also an early engineer at Factual, where he built data processing software. Leo received a bachelor's degree in Engineering and Applied Science (Computer Science) from Caltech.
About Mac
McKeever "Mac" Conwell II is the founder and managing partner of RareBreed Ventures. Mac is a former software engineer and two-time founder. One of Mac's companies failed, the other went on to a successful exit. Learn more about Mac by listening to this interview.
About Charles Hudson
Charles Hudson is the Managing Partner and Founder of Precursor Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm focused on investing in the first institutional round of investment for the most promising software and hardware companies.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit words.seedscout.com