Fiftyfaces Focus - The Last Frontier: Diverse Founders and VCs: Recent Episodes
Aoifinn Devitt
It has been said that "access to capital is the last frontier of the civil rights movement". This podcast series tells the stories of diverse founders and venture capitalists across the business landscape, their experience with accessing capital and growing their businesses and the networks that have enabled them to thrive.
Anthony Amunategui is founder of CDO Group, a women owned business that provides general Contracting and Construction Management. He now spends most of his time as podcast host of The Future Factory Podcast, a podcast focused on diving into conversations about what the future holds for us personally and professionally and the adventures that shape that journey.
Our discussion starts with Anthony's upbringing in Florida and how he got his start - painting houses, and then as a stockbroker. We speak about how he learned to grow his sales technique, and the mentor who taught him about using his language to convey images. We hear about the relentlessness needed to make 300 calls a day, and how he processed the rejection and the no.
We jump then to his work in construction management and how he devised the concept of outsourcing construction management and how the business achieved its growth. We hear about mindset - about letting go of some of the baggage that weighs us down, weighing on our confidence and outreach.
Anthony is the founder and host of The Future Factory Podcast - which you can find here: https://www.futurefactorypodcast.com
He tells us what drove him to gather this collection of leaders and the sparks that unite them. We hear about the importance of working on oneself as an attribute of leadership - of pushing oneself to learn and change. He touts the benefit of coaching in many aspects of life including in business, relationships, personal development and leadership.
Isabella Mandis has just finished her freshman year at Harvard College and the founder of “Girls who VC” an industry affinity group which offers resources, content and community to women interested in pursuing careers in Venture Capital.
Isabella came to my attention through the industry grapevine and it is a fitting end to the first 2023 Diverse Founder and VC series to amplify some of the extraordinary work that she is doing in this field. Although still very early in her career, Isabella has gained valuable expertise across entrepreneurship and finance. It was in pursuing this interest that she realized that there were relatively few resources and affinity groups available to shine a light on VC investing and provide a vibrant career network in this area. She then did what every good entrepreneur does - she built one.
Listen in to hear how the idea was born over a winter break and how it quickly grew to close to 1000 members. Hear about the content that it provides and the insights that budding VCs find particularly helpful. Clearly the industry needs more initiatives like this in order to expose and amplify career choices that lie outside the traditional. It is exciting to see the ingenuity and promise that the next generation holds.
You can read more about girls who VC here: https://www.girlswhovc.com
Courtney McColgan is founder and CEO at Runa, a Mexico City based firm that offers a complete cloud-based HR and payroll software solution designed for small to medium-sized companies in Latin America. She previously was Chief Marketing Officer of Cabify a transportation services platform with operations across Latin America, Spain and Portugal. Prior to that she was CEO and Founder of Yellowsmith a venture backed start up based in New York. She has spent time at Y Combinator and as Entrepreneur in Residence at Morgenthaler. She started her career investment banking and venture capital.
Our conversation starts with Courtney's journey into tech and her experience in various accelerators which taught her everything she had not learned at Stanford Business School. We learn about the networks she developed, and her experience both as a founder and in capital raising. We speak in particular about the point at which it might be necessary to exit a start-up and start again, when the odds are actually in your favor depending on the stage you are at in your career.
Given Courtney's deep experience in Latin America we dive in to the tech ecosystem there and she maps the largest markets, the regulatory backdrop and the state of the infrastructure and she speaks in particular about her own experience as a female founder within it. She also shares her experience as a mother and a founder and the choices that worked for her.
Courtney Russell McCrea is co-founder and Managing Partner at Recast Capital, a platform supporting and investing in emerging managers in venture. She was most recently a Managing Director of Weathergage Capital a boutique fund of funds that provides its clients with access to premier venture capital growth equity and micro VC partnerships, where she also led the co-investing partnership. She is a Kauffman Fellow, class 3, and a member of the NVCA Forward Board of Directors the Alzheimer’s Association Board of Directors in Northern California and Nevada and Chair of the Episcopal Impact Fund Investment Committee.
Our conversation starts with Courtney’s upbringing in Illinois and how she discovered venture capital as a career. We then trace her path to striking out on her own at Recast Capital. Moving then to discussing the world of venture capital today we look first at the value added by programs such as the Kauffman Fellow program, as well as many of the other affinity groups designed to get women to thrive.
We turn then to analyze the challenges facing emerging managers in venture, and what it is that is attractive about this piece of the capital structure. Courtney uses case studies to illustrate the different reception that female and male founders face when looking for capital – whereby female founders are often expected to validate their credentials, while for men these credentials are taken at face value. We examine disparities in funding and visibility and ask what interventions can change these.
Adam Demuyakor is the founder and managing partner at Wilshire Lane Capital, a venture capital and private equity firm that focuses on PropTech solutions based in Los Angeles California. Born in the US to a family originally from Ghana, Adam started out on Wall Street in investment banking and held a number of private equity and venture capital roles before found in Wilshire Lane. He also holds a number of Board roles and is a Board of Trustee of the education nonprofit 9 Dots.
Our conversation starts with his family roots, and the expectations that accompanied his schooling and career choices. We hear how he came to be interested in real estate and how he gained experience in both the private and public side of the business, and ultimately the vision with which he launched his own firm. This is an opportunity for our discussion to dive into PropTech and discuss what the technology that is transforming real estate looks like, and how these theses are playing out. Among some of the concepts discussed are Ghost Kitchens and the new look Self Storage outfits, and we discuss some of the business models that are exciting him most at this juncture.
As an early stage venture capital firm, Wilshire Lane Capital, is highly focused on the entrepreneurs and their vision that they support, and many of them are diverse founders themselves. In fact in an industry in which female and black and brown founders are poorly represented, Wilshire Lane is breaking the mould – 36% of their companies are led by women outright, 29% of their companies have a black founder on them, and 79% of their companies have an underrepresented minority or a female in the C suite.
Wilshire Lane Capital recently entered into a strategic partnership with Nile Capital which sponsored our original diverse founders and VCs series, and we speak about how these ideas came together.
We speak about 9 Dots (see: https://www.9dots.org) , a nonprofit, based in Los Angeles, that focuses on providing subsidized computer science courses for the poorest students in the city. Adam shares why this is one of the most fulfilling of all of his roles. Finally, we discuss some highs and lows of his career so far, what Adam looks for in a founder and what it means to pass the “Shower Test”.
Constance Freedman is Founder and Managing Partner at Moderne Ventures as well as Moderne Passport – an early stage investment fund and industry immersion program which is focused on investing in technology companies in and around the multi-trillion dollar industries of real estate, finance, insurance, hospitality and home services. It has just closed its (over-subscribed) second fund at over $200 m. She sits on numerous boards and has received several awards including Crain’s Business 40 under 40 and Chicago Top Tech 50 (on three occasions).
Our conversation focuses on her professional journey and the fascinating world of Proptech – technology that is related to real estate and other property. This has been an area of expertise for Constance for some time, and we start with describing the opportunity in the area and then how Constance moved from working within another venture firm to starting Moderne Ventures. One of the most fascinating aspects of Moderne Ventures is the Moderne Passport program, which creates an ecosystem for over 700 founders as well as industry members to network, work together and create synergies. It is also about creating network effects and enriching the social capital of founders, as well as enabling innovation to flourish through a system of pilot programs and providing feedback.
There is more information about Moderne Ventures and the Moderne Passport program on: https://www.moderneventures.com
Adesuwa Okunbo Rhodes is the founder of Aruwa Capital Management, a growth equity impact fund investing in untapped opportunities across Nigeria and West Africa.
Founded when she was only 29, Aruwa Capital Management aims to change the narrative for women as capital allocators and entrepreneurs by investing in businesses that make an impact on addressing the gender gap. She previously was Partner and Managing Director at Syntaxis Africa and prior to that JP Morgan, and also holds a number of director roles as well as volunteer roles in groups such as Gaia Africa, Sponsors for Educational Opportunity and Rising Tide Africa.
In this fascinating discussion we discuss Adesuwa's early years in finance and what prompted her to start her own fund. We analyze what it means to invest with a "gender lens" and learn how it is not just about creating more seats at the table, but creating more tables.
Adesuwa is a visionary and empowering role model on the African financial scene and the vision for gender equity established by Aruwa Capital sets the standard for women-led equity everywhere.
There is more information on Aruwa Capital Management here: https://www.aruwacapital.com
Frans van Eersel is the CEO and Founder of dopay, a payments company headquartered in London but with a primary market of Egypt, where Frans lived for 4 years. He has had a long career in industry, and is also CEO of Driver’s Seat Investment.
Our conversation starts with his upbringing in the Netherlands and the interesting coincidence that payments and banking played a role in his career from the very beginning. We speak about the genesis of DoPay, and the persistent disparity in the access to banking services around the world. This ability to access a means of payment other than cash can be transformative, and truly impactful, and we speak both about the commercial opportunity and the opportunity for impact that a payments company like DoPay creates.
We speak then about the reality of operating on the frontier in terms of payment technology, founder life and lead generation, and some of the setbacks and frustrations that can come from this. We move then to reflections, on leadership giants who have inspired him such as https://hbr.org/1994/07/competing-for-the-future and Seven Habits of Highly Effective People (https://www.franklincovey.com/the-7-habits/).
Ahryun Moon is Founder and Head of Company Strategy at GoodTime.io a company designed to boost employee productivity by making scheduling meetings easier. This is not her first time founding a company – she also founded Etch Keyboard and previously worked as a financial accountant and financial analyst.
We start with her upbringing and the hackathons that awakened her interest in tech and problem solving. When she noticed that recruiters were spending the bulk of their time on scheduling meetings, she went "under cover" at large companies in Silicon Valley in order to scope the extent of the problem. This was the seed that generated GoodTime.io, and we turn then to her experience as a founder, raising capital, developing an all-remote team and being productive in a "Couple-preneur" arrangement (her husband is also a partner at GoodTime.io).
We dig deep into what Ahryun terms the "female founder discount", why this persists and the way that it erodes company value and prospects. This is a passionate discussion that uncovers the inequities that continuing and we pick apart how to address them.
Ashwini Asokan is the founder and CEO of Mad Street Den, an Artificial Intelligence company, powering Retail, Education, Healthcare, Media, Finance & more with its image recognition platforms, Vue.ai and Blox.ai. Headquartered in the Bay Area, California, the company has offices around the globe. She previously worked at Intel, where she led IXR's Mobile Portfolio, which explored the future of mobile technology and designed compelling mobile experiences that people will love.
While at Intel Ashwini spent time working on the Mobile Portfolio where she combined teams comprising designers, anthropologists and software engineers. We talk about the importance of including anthropologists to understand the sometimes varied use case of technology, and we explore what insights this can provide.
We move then to talk about a video in which Ashwini refers to AI as "Brains, Bots and Bullshit" and dissect what this in fact means, and what can be done to improve how AI is used and developed in the future.
You can find this video here:
Mind the product talk
https://www.mindtheproduct.com/need-product-people-save-ai/
And an video about Ashwini's entrepreneurial journey here:
NatGeo video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJlrH1sD7u0
As an entrepreneur who has worked through capital raising, Ashwini has a host of insights into the playing field for capital and some of its shortcomings. We look at the steps she took to shore up her own business venture and how her training in the arts taught her the choreography needed to stay the course. We examine the importance of the social sciences, of learning how to "fail up", build muscle and stay the course, particularly as a woman in the competitive field of tech. Finally, we look at the importance of eating protein, in more ways than one.
In our second series focused on founders, allocators and investors on the Frontier – we hear from a diverse group of professionals who share their vision for investing, impact and change. From venture capitalists focused on the burgeoning world of Prop-Tech, to investing with a gender lens, developing a network to change the black narrative in the professional world, to harnassing the power of music royalties, to payment platforms - we share insights from the coalface.
**Our guests in Series 2 and their date of launch are:
Wednesday October 12:** Ashwini Asokan who is the founder and CEO of Mad Street Den, an Artificial Intelligence company, powering Retail, Education, Healthcare, Media, and more with its Image recognition platforms, Vue.ai and Blox.ai. Headquartered in the Bay Area, California, the company has offices around the globe. She previously worked at Intel, where she led the Mobile Portfolio, which explored the future of mobile technology and designed compelling mobile experiences that people will love. We hear why AI needs to move beyond "Brains, Bots and Bullshit". Ashwini also features in our 2022 Women in Tech miniseries.
Wednesday October 19: Ahryun Moon is Founder and Head of Company Strategy at GoodTime.io, a company designed to boost employee productivity by making scheduling meetings easier. This is not her first time founding a company – she also founded Etch Keyboard and previously worked as a financial accountant and financial analyst. - Ahryun also features in our 2022 Women in Tech miniseries
Wednesday October 26: Frans Van Eersel is the CEO and Founder of doPay, a payments company headquartered in London but with a primary market of Egypt, where he lived for 4 years. He has had a long career in industry, and is also CEO of Driver’s Seat Investment. He is currently based in Abu Dhabi.
Wednesday November 2: Adesuwa Okunbo Rhodes is the founder of Aruwa Capital Management, a growth equity impact fund investing in untapped opportunities across Nigeria and West Africa. Founded when she was only 29, Aruwa Capital Management aims to change the narrative for women as capital allocators and entrepreneurs by investing in businesses that make an impact on addressing the gender gap. She previously was Partner and Managing Director at Syntaxis Africa and prior to that JP Morgan, and also holds a number of director roles as well as volunteer roles in groups such as Gaia Africa, Sponsors for Educational Opportunity and Rising Tide Africa.
Wednesday November 9: Constance Freedman is Founder and Managing Partner at Moderne Ventures as well as Moderne Passport – an early stage investment fund and industry immersion program which is focused on investing in technology companies in and around the multi-trillion dollar industries of real estate, finance, insurance, hospitality and home services. She sits on numerous boards and has received several awards including Crain’s Business 40 under 40 and Chicago Top Tech 50 (on three occasions).
Wednesday November 16: Adam Demuyakor is the founder and managing partner at Wilshire Lane Capital, a venture capital and private equity firm that focuses on Prop-Tech solutions based in Los Angeles California. Born in the US to a family originally from Ghana, Adam started out on Wall Street in investment banking and held a number of private equity and venture capital roles before found in Wilshire Lane. He also holds a number of Board roles and is a Board Trustee of the education nonprofit 9 Dots.
Wednesday November 23: Kike Oniwinde Agoro is the Founder and CEO of BYP Network, a platform that connects Black professionals to each other and corporations. She is a BSc Economics graduate of The University of Nottingham, University of Florida MSc scholar, and an ex-Great Britain javelin thrower. She previously worked in investment banking, and then in Business Development at a fast-growing financial technology company for two years because she realised ‘tech is the future’. Kike was a member of the Forbes 30 under 30, Maserati Top 100 Most Innovative Founders and a Financial Times Top 100 BAME Leaders in Technology. She is on the board of the London Chambers of Commerce Black Business Association, Getting on Boards and is a London Tech Ambassador
Wednesday November 30: Sherrese Clarke Soares who is the Founder and CEO of HarbourView Equity Partners, her second time founding a fund, having previously founded Tempo Music Investments. She has over 20 years experience in leadership roles across corporate finance with a particular focus on the communications, media and entertainment sector. She has been recognized in the Billboard Top Women in Music 2020, Change Agent List 2021 and Dealmaker List 2020. She sits on the board of a public company, Evoqua Water Technologies, is a Member of the Board of Trustees of Carnegie Hall and the Treasurer and National Board Member of Planned Parenthood of America
Sherrese Clarke Soares is the founder and CEO of HarbourView Equity Partners, a global investment firm focused on niche markets and esoteric investments in the media and entertainment space. She previously was the founder CEO and Board Directly of Tempo Music.
Sherrese has had over 20 years experience in leadership roles across corporate finance with a particular focus on the communications, media and entertainment sector. She has been recognized in the Billboard Top Women in Music 2020, Change Agent List 2021 and Dealmaker List 2020. She sits on the board of a public company, Evoqua Water Technologies, is a Member of the Board of Trustees of Carnegie Hall and the Treasurer and National Board Member of Planned Parenthood of America.
We start by discussing Sherrese's upbringing, when, as the child of immigrant parents, she learned about the "cost" of entrepreneurship. She describes how initially it seemed very expensive to her - as if it was a luxury she could not afford.
We move to discuss her passion for music in particular, and how she blended this with her passion for finance mid-way through her career.
We discuss how she started to develop insights into this - music - as an asset class - one that is enduring, and remarkably resilient through cycles. We spend some time discussing the characteristics of music - how we all have a soundtrack to our lives, and how our spending on music tends not to dip with economic cycles. We look at the artists and how data can enable a group like HarbourView to detect some undiscovered gems and develop an edge in this area.
Sherrese holds a number of Board Roles across a wide range of industries and interests and we examine what it is to be successful in executing on these diverse roles, and how she allocates her time to them. Finally we examine diversity in the industry, the experience of capital raising and developing a start-up venture, first as an "intra-preneur".
This podcast is being released as a bonus in advance of our second Diverse Founders and VCs series which will be released next week.
Kike Oniwinde Agoro is the Founder and CEO of BYP Network, a platform that connects Black professionals to each other and corporations. She is a BSc Economics graduate of The University of Nottingham, a University of Florida MSc scholar, and an ex-Great Britain javelin thrower. She previously worked in investment banking, and then in Business Development at a fast-growing financial technology company for two years because she realised ‘tech is the future’.
Kike was a member of the Forbes 30 under 30, the Maserati Top 100 Most Innovative Founders and a Financial Times Top 100 BAME Leaders in Technology. She is on the board of the London Chambers of Commerce Black Business Association, Getting on Boards and is a London Tech Ambassador. She has been named as a Sky Woman in Technology Scholar, F-Factor Winner and New Entrepreneurs Foundation Winner. She was invited to Paris on a business trade mission with London Mayor, Sadiq Khan; won a STEM Trailblazer Batons Award at Houses of Parliament and has won over 20 entrepreneurship awards.
Our conversation starts with her early upbringing and her first experience of interning at an investment bank, when she gained a spot in a BAME internship. She describes that experience and how she found few role models within that setting and a general underrepresentation of Black people within the industry.
We then transition to her time playing sport at a high level - for the GB national junior team, and look at what skills that taught her about resilience, training, patience and failure, and living with it. After Kike's time in the US, studying at the University of Florida, she became aware of the shared experiences of Black professionals on both sides of the pond and became determined to "change the Black narrative" in the professional world.
She founded Black Young Professionals in 2016 and the platform has since grown to 150,000 members and over 1000 corporate clients including Facebook, DAZN and Farfetch. Over 15,000 of their members have been up-skilled through mentorship, thought-leadership events and industry specific insight with all members boasting an enhanced network.
In 2020, Kike led a successful crowdfund campaign with over 1200 investors and raised over $1m.
We are releasing this podcast early as a bonus to promote the upcoming BYP conference on October 6 to be held at the Mermaid in London. Expected to host over 600 people the event will feature over 60 speakers, over 30 corporate sponsors, and a theme of "knowledge is power", part of the "decade of proactive change" commitment of the conference series.
The theme of "knowledge is power" is a pledge by Black leaders to share their knowledge to help other people become leaders and to help others be allies and to help them understand what it takes to navigate the world of work and different industries. The event will feature panel sessions, exhibitor booths and an after party. See: https://byp.network/leadership-conference-2022/
Yvonne Bajela is an investor in early stage companies at Impact X Capital, which invests in start-ups across Europe, the Middle East and Africa. She has worked across the globe in investment banking, corporate venture capital and in academia, and is a frequent speaker on the topics of entrepreneurship and female empowerment. She was listed as a member of the Forbes 30 Under 30.
Our conversation covers Yvonne's early interest in markets and finance, her career journey, and how she identifies talent across the venture capital arena. We discuss what both her upbringing and her role in venture capital taught her about failure, and how she resorts to the lessons of some well-known figures to overcome imposter syndrome.
Yvonne is a thought leader for diversity in venture, female empowerment and entrepreneurship and is instrumental in efforts to create stronger, more broad reaching networks to provide support and mentorship globally.
This series is brought to you with the kind support of Wellington Management, one of the world’s largest independent asset managers, focused on delivering long-term investment excellence for clients and their beneficiaries, as well as Nile Capital Group, a sector-focused, operationally-oriented private equity firm based in the Los Angeles Area.
James Norman is CEO at Pilotly, a market research platform for creative content, based in the Bay Area. He is a Partner at Transparent Collective, a group of founders dedicated to increasing exposure and access to Silicon Valley for African-American and Latino/Hispanic men and women. He is a serial entrepreneur, who built his first company at the age of 16.
Our conversation traces James's exceptionally early entry into running his own business, which started with baseball cards and video games, then looks at the mindset that it takes to be an entrepreneur. We speak about his work at Pilotly, and the Transparent Collective, a group that provides not only incubator-type support but also social capital and fund-raising firepower to underrepresented founders.
In mid 2020 James wrote a powerful article in HBR, entitled "A VC’s Guide to Investing in Black Founder", in which he set out the four key challenges they need to overcome:
- Different Problems requiring Different Solutions
- Different Surroundings, Different Resources
- Different Culture, Different Communication
- The Continuous Threat of Unconscious Bias
We discuss the ramifications of this for the next generation of founders, and how the right framework and capital can pave a way.
There is more information about Transparent Collective at:
James's HBR article is available here:https://hbr.org/2020/06/a-vcs-guide-to-investing-in-black-founders
This series is brought to you with the kind support of Wellington Management, one of the world’s largest independent asset managers, focused on delivering long-term investment excellence for clients and their beneficiaries, as well as Nile Capital Group, a sector-focused, operationally-oriented private equity firm based in the Los Angeles Area.
Shruti Van Dyke Gandhi is General Partner and Founding Engineer at Array Ventures which invests in enterprise deep tech early-stage companies. Shruti is also a professor in the computer science department at Columbia University. She spent her early career as a developer on mainframe security, collaboration tools, and data analytics. Post engineering, she invested in early-stage companies at True Ventures and Samsung's venture fund. She is also the recipient of Chicago Booth 2021 Distinguished Alumni Award at Chicago.
Our conversation traces Shruti's experience in computer science and high growth industries and how this motivated her desire to launch a venture firm focused on high growth companies in the B2B world. We speak about the skills need to be successful in venture - from decision making (which needs to be fast) to knowing one's own strengths and weaknesses and supplementing gaps by surrounding oneself with the necessary skills.
We discuss the experience of some female founders in attracting venture capital and the issue of confidence, and the importance of thinking sufficiently "large" when it comes to check size and opportunity set.
See the following article for some positive news about increases in the numbers of women in venture, despite starting from a very low base. https://www.fastcompany.com/90567387/women-in-vc-growth
This series is brought to you with the kind support of Wellington Management, one of the world’s largest independent asset managers, focused on delivering long-term investment excellence for clients and their beneficiaries, as well as Nile Capital Group, a sector-focused, operationally-oriented private equity firm based in the Los Angeles Area.
Mark Mwangi is the founder of Amitruck, a Kenya-based company which connects transporters (whether a motor-bike, pick ups, van or even a large articulated truck) directly to clients, and aims to ensure convenient pricing and cut out a large part of the costs of goods. He is also co-founder of Dalwyn, a natural gas exchange, based in London. He was previously a senior investment manager at Pictet Asset Management in London, and prior to that worked in Equity Research at Bluecrest. One fun fact shared on another podcast is that he is also a licensed pilot.
Our discussion starts with Mark's first introduction to trucks, and how it stemmed from a part-time job he took to support his studies. We talk about his ascent through the financial industry in London and the surprising origins of some of his mentors. We then moved to his return to his home country of Kenya and what sparked his entrepreneurial instinct.
Mark does not sugar-coat the challenges of being a founder and of raising capital as a founder - and the strains of the pandemic have made the first few years extraordinarily challenging with logistical issues and additional restrictions. He speaks about the challenges of re-integrating into his home country and of re-establishing his network there, which took longer than he had expected. It is a story of some trials, some tribulations and some important triumphs. I hope you find it as inspiring as I did.
Mark's earlier podcast in which he describes his flying skills as well as his entrepreneurial journey is available here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-002-kenyan-supply-chain-startup-amitruck/id1560891255?i=1000515803351
This series is brought to you with the kind support of Wellington Management, one of the world’s largest independent asset managers, focused on delivering long-term investment excellence for clients and their beneficiaries, as well as Nile Capital Group, a sector-focused, operationally-oriented private equity firm based in the Los Angeles Area.
Austin Clements is a partner at Slauson & Co., a Los Angeles based venture capital firm that provides pre-seed and seed funding to a range of founders. He's a Kauffman fellow and has a strong interest in economic empowerment. He was previously Chair of Pledge LA, and alliance between LA's venture capital community, the Annenberg Foundation, and the Office of Mayor Eric Garcetti. He also holds a number of board roles.
We start by talking about his upbringing in LA, his time at Morehouse College and how his taste of business there left him determined to find a job in venture capital. We hear how his initial search came up dry, but how he persisted and fulfilled his goal eventually.
We talk about the difficulty in threading the needle of supporting deserving founders and sifting through 100s of prospects to find the gem. Austin's philosophy is to get behind people, that are delusional with their vision, but pragmatic with their execution. He says that they want people that have a vision that's almost unsettling about how big it is, and what they want to grow their company to be. But they also need to be very pragmatic in the sense of they know what the first few steps look like.
There is more information on Grid110, an affinity group with which Austin is involved, here (https://www.grid110.org/). See here for his Medium article "The Delusion around Inclusion" (https://medium.com/@austinlac/the-delusion-around-inclusion-34bc30e89694).
This series is brought to you with the kind support of Wellington Management, one of the world’s largest independent asset managers, focused on delivering long-term investment excellence for clients and their beneficiaries, as well as Nile Capital Group, a sector-focused, operationally-oriented private equity firm based in the Los Angeles Area.
McKeever (Mac) Conwell, II, is Managing Partner at RareBreed Ventures, a venture capital firm based in the Baltimore area. He has held various roles including as a software engineer, an entrepreneur in residence at the NewME Accelerator, a Fund Manager at Maryland Technology Development Corporation where he was a member of the Seed Investment Team and various advisory and consulting roles in the tech space. RareBreed Ventures is a pre-seed fund that aims to invest in exceptional founders outside the large tech ecosystems earlier than everyone else.
Our conversation starts with Mac's upbringing and his early interest in engineering and tech. We speak about role models and networks and how lack of them can be so much of a hindrance to underrepresented potential founders. We move to his time at the NewME Accelerator and how this opened his eyes to the power of networks as well as to some particularly inspiring other tech luminaries and acted as a motivator.
Mac is committed to not only seeding the next generation of founders but also to creating a nurturing ecosystem that enables such founders to thrive and develop their own networks. He is also committed to educating VCs as to how to identify and develop rare talent.
There is more information about RareBreed Ventures on https://rarebreed.webflow.io/ and you can follow Mac at Mac the VC (@MacConwell) on Twitter or on Instagram (@macconwell).
This series is brought to you with the kind support of Wellington Management, one of the world’s largest independent asset managers, focused on delivering long-term investment excellence for clients and their beneficiaries, as well as Nile Capital Group, a sector-focused, operationally-oriented private equity firm based in the Los Angeles Area.
Shalom Lloyd had a career of over 20 years in the pharmaceutical industry and then went on to found two businesses. She is the founder of Naturally Tribal skincare, a beauty line based on traditional remedies including shea butter, which she developed initially to cure her son’s eczema. She is also the co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer of eMQT, described as “the Bridge between the Pharmaceutical Industry and Africa” which facilitates clinical trials for pharmaceutical companies in Africa. She has been a keynote speaker on the topic of innovation and was a fellow of the Start-Up Leadership Program in London until 2020.
Our conversation starts with Shalom's upbringing in Nigeria and her taste for adventure which saw her leave for Russia to study pharmacy at the age of 16. Returning from there she found her passion in the pharmaceutical industry and her realization of the gap in use of pharmaceutical trials in Africa was the spark for her business venture eMQT.
Just as necessity is the mother of invention, Naturally Tribal was borne out of kitchen experimentation, and then sourcing the Shea Butter for that saw Shalom embark upon a journey back to her roots in Nigeria, and in particular to the Kingdom of Essan in Nigeria where Shea Butter is sourced. Shalom's mission is to make an impact on the women in this area, ensuring economic empowerment and a sustainable future. Naturally Tribal was launched in Harrods in Milton Keynes at the end of April 2021. I can't think of a better definition of impact than that.
See this inspiring video for more information about Naturally Tribal and Shalom Lloyd's journey. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dq8mWKNwJg0. There is more information about Naturally Tribal at https://naturallytribalskincare.com/ and about eMQT at https://emqt.org.uk/,
This series is brought to you with the kind support of Wellington Management, one of the world’s largest independent asset managers, focused on delivering long-term investment excellence for clients and their beneficiaries, as well as Nile Capital Group, a sector-focused, operationally-oriented private equity firm based in the Los Angeles Area.
Ezechi Britton is a Founding Member, Principal and CTO in residence at Impact X Capital, which invests in start-ups across Europe, the Middle East and Africa. He previously was the co-founder of Neyber, a financial wellbeing provider where he was also Chief Technology Officer. He is the Co-Founder and CEO of Code Untapped, a digital skills accelerator, which runs ideathons, innovation labs, coding workshops and other events to give underrepresented and diverse technologists the opportunity to showcase what they can do.
Our conversation traces Ezechi's own entrepreneurial journey and the opportunities that made it possible. We reflect then on the fact that "distance traveled" to the starting line is far from the same across different groups - in that some have to overcome significant hurdles just to get to the starting line - while this, when successful, can build resilience, it can more often act as a deterrent. Now that he is a venture investor himself we speak about how he backs both the "jockey" and the "horse", but that still there are vast swathes of founders that he cannot back due to capacity constraints. There are a range of different phenomenons affecting this segment - the critical difference in a friends and family round, the absence of a "rich uncle" phenomenon, the lack of social capital, and the lack of "freedom to fail". We move then to discuss the cultural approach to failure, and examine how far the UK approach to it has come over the years to nurture more of a entrepreneurial culture.
Code Untapped is committed to changing the way underrepresented technology talent is found, developed & showcased and is committed to innovation through diversity. More information can be found here: https://codeuntapped.com/
This series is brought to you with the kind support of Wellington Management, one of the world’s largest independent asset managers, focused on delivering long-term investment excellence for clients and their beneficiaries, as well as Nile Capital Group, a sector-focused, operationally-oriented private equity firm based in the Los Angeles Area.
The life of a founder of a business is riddled with hard work, hope, disappointment, failure and hearing the word "no". When that founder comes from a less well represented group, the process of building a business and capital raising can be even more challenging. Sometimes this is due to "distance travelled" to get to the starting line - less well represented founders may have less access to "friends and family" capital, to have less of a network and less social capital and may not have the "freedom to fail" which may affect their risk appetite.
It was clear from our discussions with venture capital investors and founders of firms that the landscape for diverse founders had certain unique challenges that exacerbated the risks of entrepreneurship and altered the chances of success. Inspired by compelling articles on the area, such as “The Delusion around Inclusion” by Austin Clements (https://medium.com/@austinlac/the-delusion-around-inclusion-34bc30e89694) and a VCs Guide to investing in black founders by James Norman (https://hbr.org/2020/06/a-vcs-guide-to-investing-in-black-founders) we set out to develop a series focusing solely on this issue and incorporating a global perspective. Hear from:
Yvonne Bajela, who is an investor in early-stage companies at Impact X Capital, which invests in start-ups across Europe, the Middle East and Africa. She was listed as a member of the Forbes 30 Under 30.
Ezechi Britton, who a Founding Member, Principal and CTO in residence at Impact X Capital. He previously was the co-founder of Neyber, a financial wellbeing provider where he was also Chief Technology Officer. He is the Co-Founder and CEO of Code Untapped, a digital skills accelerator, which runs ideathons, innovation labs, coding workshops and other events to give underrepresented and diverse technologists the opportunity to showcase what they can do.
Austin Clements who is a partner at Slauson & Co. a Los Angeles based venture capital firm that provides pre-seed and seed funding to a range of founders. He is a Kaufman Fellow, and has a strong interest in economic empowerment. He was previously Chair of PledgeLA, an alliance between LA’s venture capital community, Annenberg Foundation, and the Office of Mayor Eric Garcetti.
McKeever (Mac) Conwell, II, who is Managing Partner at RareBreed Ventures, a venture capital firm based in the Baltimore area. RareBreed Ventures is a pre-seed fund that aims to invest in exceptional founders outside the large tech ecosystems earlier than everyone else.
Shalom Lloyd, who after a career of over 20 years in the pharmaceutical industry has gone on to found two businesses - she is the founder of Naturally Tribal skincare, a beauty line based on traditional remedies including shea butter, which she developed initially to cure her son’s eczema. She is also the co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer of eMQT, described as “the Bridge between the Pharmaceutical Industry and Africa” which facilitates clinical trials for pharmaceutical companies in Africa.
Mark Mwangi, who is the founder of Amitruck, a Kenya based company which connects transporters (whether a motor-bike, pick u, van or even a large articulated truck) directly to clients, and aims to ensure convenient pricing and cut out a large part of the costs of goods.
James Norman, who is CEO at Pilotly, a market research platform for creative content. He is a Partner at Transparent Collective, a group of founders dedicated to increasing exposure and access to Silicon Valley for African-American and Latino/Hispanic men and women. He is a serial entrepreneur, who built his first company at the age of 16.
Shruti Van Dyke Gandhi, who is General Partner and Founding Engineer at Array Ventures which invests in enterprise deep tech early-stage companies. She spent her early career as a developer on mainframe security, collaboration tools, and data analytics.
This series is brought to you with the kind support of Wellington Management, one of the world’s largest independent asset managers, focused on delivering long-term investment excellence for clients and their beneficiaries, as well as Nile Capital Group, a sector-focused, operationally-oriented private equity firm based in the Los Angeles Area.
Shalom Lloyd had a career of over 20 years in the pharmaceutical industry and then went on to found two businesses. She is the founder of Naturally Tribal skincare, a beauty line based on traditional remedies including shea butter, which she developed initially to cure her son’s eczema. She is also the co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer of eMQT, described as “the Bridge between the Pharmaceutical Industry and Africa” which facilitates clinical trials for pharmaceutical companies in Africa. She has been a keynote speaker on the topic of innovation and was a fellow of the Start-Up Leadership Program in London until 2020.
Our conversation starts with Shalom's upbringing in Nigeria and her taste for adventure which saw her leave for Russia to study pharmacy at the age of 16. Returning from there she found her passion in the pharmaceutical industry and her realization of the gap in use of pharmaceutical trials in Africa was the spark for her business venture eMQT.
Just as necessity is the mother of invention, Naturally Tribal was borne out of kitchen experimentation, and then sourcing the Shea Butter for that saw Shalom embark upon a journey back to her roots in Nigeria, and in particular to the Kingdom of Essan in Nigeria where Shea Butter is sourced. Shalom's mission is to make an impact on the women in this area, ensuring economic empowerment and a sustainable future. Naturally Tribal was launched in Harrods in Milton Keynes at the end of April 2021. I can't think of a better definition of impact than that.
See this inspiring video for more information about Naturally Tribal and Shalom Lloyd's journey. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dq8mWKNwJg0
James Norman is CEO at Pilotly, a market research platform for creative content, based in the Bay Area. He is a Partner at Transparent Collective, a group of founders dedicated to increasing exposure and access to Silicon Valley for African-American and Latino/Hispanic men and women. He is a serial entrepreneur, who built his first company at the age of 16.
Our conversation traces James's exceptionally early entry into running his own business, which started with baseball cards and video games, then looks at the mindset that it takes to be an entrepreneur. We speak about his work at Pilotly, and the Transparent Collective, a group that provides not only incubator-type support but also social capital and fund-raising firepower to underrepresented founders.
In mid 2020 James wrote a powerful article in HBR, entitled "A VC’s Guide to Investing in Black Founder", in which he set out the four key challenges they need to overcome:
- Different Problems requiring Different Solutions
- Different Surroundings, Different Resources
- Different Culture, Different Communication
- The Continuous Threat of Unconscious Bias
We discuss the ramifications of this for the next generation of founders, and how the right framework and capital can pave a way.
There is more information about Transparent Collective at:
James's HBR article is available here:https://hbr.org/2020/06/a-vcs-guide-to-investing-in-black-founders