 Hi, my name is Ashley Bittner. Welcome to Gender Lens Investing, the LP and GP perspective. I'm thrilled to be joined by some amazing LPs and GPs today. I'll let them introduce themselves in just a moment. Just a little bit about me, my name's Ashley. I'm the co-founder and GP at Firework Ventures. We invest in tech that drives economic mobility primarily at the Series A, and about 60% of my portfolio is led by female founders, and it's a very intentional part of our investment strategy. We have some folks up here who have a full gender lens investment strategy and some who have it as a core component. So I'd love to pass the mic to have them introduce themselves as well as their thesis as it relates to gender lens investing. And just so y'all know, we'll hold about 30 minutes at the end for you to ask questions. So I'll start with Heidi. Hi, I'm Heidi Patel. I'm managing partner at Rethink Impact. So we manage about 500 million to 100% invested in gender diverse teams, and about one third of our founders are also non-white. We, like Ashley, invest in the Series A, Series B, B to B tech companies. So we work on digital health, ed tech, climate and economic empowerment, which is basically helping people move up the economic ladder. Okay. I am Courtney Russell McCray and I am the co-founder of ReCast Capital, which is a platform to both invest in and be supportive of diverse emerging managers in venture. We define emerging managers as institutional funds one, two, or three, and we define diverse as at least one member of the senior investment team is an underrepresented demographic within venture, which is not a particularly high bar. We have a fund investment vehicle, but in addition, we knew that through our fund investment vehicle, we would end up saying no more than we say yes, just because of the way you have to create a diversified portfolio by industry and vintage year. And so we started an educational program tuition-free, cohort-based on Zoom to be as inclusive as possible, broadly around how to make your fundraising process more effective, more efficient, which is what my partner Sarah and I know how to do. We have 78 funds go through that educational program. Of the 78 funds, 78% had at least one member of the senior investment team that identifies female or non-binary and 58% had a senior member of the team that is a person of color. One of the learnings that came out of that program is that, yeah, all this education is great, executive coaching is great, but it still takes women and people of color two to three times longer to raise their funds. And so with the initial support of Pivotal, although we are looking for other philanthropic sponsors, we have a new fiscally-sponsored nonprofit we call Accelerate. And we have identified a independent LP panel of seven investors, Inventor Funds, who have identified 36 female-led emerging managers, including this lovely lady to my left. And we are, in addition to providing the services I just described, we also are paying $100,000 of each of their operating expenses with the idea that that will allow them to stay in market longer. And we will be producing a publicly-facing research report that either proves or disproves, I hope hopefully proves, that more diverse general partners end up investing with more diverse founders. Time will tell. Hi, everyone. My name is Sydney Thomas. I'm the founder and general partner of Symphonic Capital. We're a precede fintech and digital health-focused fund. And we don't have a particular gender lens. It's not on our website, per se. But our thesis is that folks who are solving the most important problems for communities that they are a part of are actually the best founders also to invest in to solve those problems. So there's this proximate thesis, if anyone's familiar with Brian Stevenson's work. And what that means is that largely, the majority of the folks who we back are people of color and women. About 50% have been women so far. And we're excited to continue to track that number as we grow. Thank you. So before we jump into the questions, I thought I'd let them learn a little bit more about each of you, maybe a little bit about what motivated you to invest with this focus and how you came to be in venture or in LP. OK, I can start. So my background is actually in the public sector. So SoCAP is very much my home. I spent the first career of mine in the Bloomberg administration. And so we were doing a little bit of everything, throwing a bit of a ball at the wall to see what stuck, spaghetti at the wall to see what stuck. I'm a little, I don't always get the metaphors right. I hit them in my head, but they don't always come out right. And so what I learned through that process was that there was a lot of magic that happened when you were able to pair both the public sector and the private sector. Everyone knows he's a billionaire. He brought a lot of his friends to invest into nonprofits and other organizations that were supporting government work. And through that, I was able to see a lot of impact. So I decided to come to business school, went to Berkeley Haas, and spent those two years trying to figure out where I would fit in this space, did a lot of internships, did not spend much of any time on campus, and got really excited about venture because of the impact that I saw that it could have from day one, particularly in the earliest stages. It rhymed so much to me with philanthropy because you're investing early and you don't know if these things are going to actually do any good. But you're investing in these people and these organizations that are creating this future that you want to exist. And so that fuels me every day. The folks who I'm backing are building the future that I want to be a part of. And so much of the fintech and digital health focus is also very personal. My dad was the first black chief of staff of Mercy Hospital, a hospital in San Diego, which now I know how I do it as well. And I saw him really from a young age walking dialysis clinics. I would walk with him. And just seeing largely black and brown people on these machines for hours on end made no sense to me. And so started thinking about health and equity through that lens. My mom is from West Virginia. She's one of 12. And I spent a lot of my summers with my extended family there, which was just mostly chaos, but also a lot of fun. And I got exposed to just what life might have looked like for me if I didn't have the privilege of growing up in San Diego with my parents. And so saw also this wealth inequality from a really early age. So the reason that I'm solving both of these problems is very personal, which makes it easy to continue the work as challenging as it is. Because I think it informs a certain level of resilience, which I think I also see in my founders. That's me. My background's a little different. I was born in the Midwest. My father was first generation to go to college. First, and he paid his own way through college. And I was first born, and I became a capitalist. I have been in finance my entire career. I ended up becoming a Kaufman Fellow, part of Kaufman Fellow's three class, which is very different than Kaufman Fellows today. I was a kindergartner when I went through that program. I'm not actually as old as that might represent. But it was very interesting because it was started by the Kaufman Foundation. And the Kaufman Foundation's origins were around a lot of great stories of entrepreneurs starting their very first company on the kitchen table using their last welfare check. And so long before this became popular, the Kaufman family and the foundation decided that they wanted to start getting more diverse venture capitalists into the ecosystem with the belief that if more diverse venture capitalists were in the ecosystem, they would back more diverse founders. And it's very interesting to see that somehow fast forward, I'm now doing the same thing. And so I ended up joining a growth equity fund. I was the only woman as a general partner in that firm. I was always throughout my career in finance, the only woman. And believe me, female gender was the only diversity that was represented. And so I, for 10 years, was investing in venture capital funds, including brand name funds, Excel and Andreessen. But we always had an open door for the next generation who had the ability to put up better performance. And largely, the performance of our commingled vehicles was driven by emerging managers, not by the brand name firms. And there's many reasons why I believe that to be the case. And I'm happy to talk about that. But I believe that it was very important that institutional investors have thoughtful, diversified exposure to emerging managers in venture to get the return they want to get out of their venture portfolio. But then if you fast forward to today, the emerging manager community is so much more diverse than the incumbents. And venture capital has only gotten harder. It has not gotten easier. It's much, it's very competitive. And so we fundamentally believe that the best performance comes from those diverse emerging managers because they see opportunities that others don't. There's great yield flow coming out of Stanford, but I can assure you it is not proprietary even if it's coming out of the math department. So, which I've had a venture capitalist tell me to my face. And so that's really fast forward to what we're doing today. But being a part of SoCAP, being a part of the philanthropic community, creating a nonprofit is brand new territory for someone like me. And it does make me feel good every day to wake up. And it is so fulfilling to me, not monetarily, but emotionally, to have really awesome people say great things about us and what we're doing to give back. So, glad to be a part of it. Those are great stories. Well, I guess I'll touch on San Diego too. I was actually, I think at the first SoCAP and I was living in India as an Acumen Fund Fellow when the term impact investing was coined. So I made the switch a really long time ago. But as Sidney mentioned, grew up in San Diego. And both my parents were lawyers but I wanted to do anything but that. And luckily they gave a lot of examples. So my dad was also a first generation college. He actually paid his way through as a professional drummer. And then he became a soldier and was a Green Beret arranger and went to war. And he was in the Army Reserves for the next 30 years. And so he was also a city attorney for all these small Coronado, La Jolla or kind of Del Mar and Sinitas. So he took this very much both and approach to life. So did my mom. So she was the first female chair of the board for the San Diego County Water Authority. So she was an attorney but also was working on water issues which is anyone that knows anything about San Diego is a really, really big deal in Southern California. So I was always raised like have a career but really give back and a substantive way to your community. So I took that with me through college, became an investment banker, became a venture capitalist three years out of college. And I felt as though that second leg of the stool was just totally missing. I had no connection to the community around me. I was working for AOL Time Warner. I was 24. We were, there were three of us under 30 running $500 million investing in enabling technology companies. And I was like, this is all this blood, sweat and tears and this doesn't move the world forward one inch. So I went to the business school of Stanford with this idea of how do I merge these worlds? And so fast forward, I was in India and I was working for a venture back startup called Delight and I was sitting with Sam Goldman, the CEO and I was listening to him talk about his venture capital investors. And so he said, this group is really good at taking videos and marketing and shining a light on me. And that was his impact investors. This other group is incredibly good at building talent, opening up their networks, hiring, business development, sales. And I just had this, you know, why on earth are your impact investors not acting like investors? Why aren't they bringing this same rigor and discipline to their work because that's what we need to move the needle. So I came back to the US and all I could think about was impact, rigor, discipline and democratization, right? So I had this teensy, tiny 401k plan or whatever it was called at that point, four or three B and it's like, why, this is the vision I want for this world. Why can't I invest any of my own paltry dollars in this way? Why is this only captured by the ivory tower? These incredibly large foundations, this should be democratized. It should be professionalized. And I basically have dedicated my whole career to that sense. So in addition, and again, I think this having multiple legs of the stool is an incredible way of bringing some of these dreams into fruition. So I've been teaching impact investing at the Business School of Stanford now for as be my ninth year. It's the class I always wished had been there when I graduated. And so it's been incredibly powerful to see hundreds of students coming through these institutions and launching new funds, launching impact ventures. And it's just incredible to watch them do what they do. So that's my backstory. Educator lived in India. Army, Brett. Thank you. Yes, please come visit. I think this is how it works for me. Does this one work? Okay, cool. I'll give you just a brief background so we can jump into questions. But college me, if you would have told me then that I'd be in venture capital, I'd say one, what is venture capital? And then two, absolutely not. Back then I was studying sustainability. Very much thought that policy was the way that you make impact. I grew up in South Florida. My first job was actually, I had this scholarship called The Truman which is around public service and I went to go work in government before I went on to Teach for America. From Teach for America I got really interested in thinking about tech as a way of solving issues at scale. And that led me to Business School at Wharton where I studied impact investing and I went to the Harvard Kennedy School to study social policy. From there I was at BCG for a stint to learn, quote unquote, business and then was in the Obama administration working on how the government invests in innovation before I worked at the very first venture fund that I joined. Never thought I'd live in San Francisco. Was definitely thought I'd be in DC my whole life until I got an offer to move across the country and start with this fund one that was starting in a sector that I really deeply cared about. Had a great experience there but also saw as the only woman on the investment team and we had two investments out of $600 million that were led by a woman. So when I went on to start firework it was really important to me that we were purposeful in our sourcing and how we ran our investment committees and how we supported those founders after we invested in them. It wasn't just here as a check. We'll see you at the board meeting. It's actual deep investment in the founders themselves. Okay, a little bit about me. So I'm gonna go pass it back to the panelists. The first thing I wanna actually start with is we hear a lot of, oh my God, 2% like there's a lot of the negatives that are happening as it relates to investing in women. I'd actually love to hear your perspective on what's changed. What are some bright spots as it relates to the industry from your perspective? I think there's a lot of bright spots. I mean, I think as you mentioned, there's so many, there's so much more diversity when it comes to the check writing community and that's a really good thing. And I think consistent with what Sydney was describing about this adjacent strategy, I forget the frame that you use, but at Rethink Impact, we're trying to solve some of the biggest problems. Like how do you set kids up to thrive? How do you help families receive quality care and childcare for their elders and for their kiddos? How do we get the healthcare system to actually work better and be more effective, higher quality, more affordable? How do we protect our one precious planet? And so we invest in women because we think that they know these problems inside and out, they have an edge. Talk about founder market fit a lot around Rethink and they are really good at building diverse teams around them and defining and dominating new categories. That's what Impact Investing and Venture Capital, frankly, needs to move it forward. So for us, women is the starting point, but what we're seeing in the data, which has been really interesting. So we're seeing 800 deals a year, we pick four. So this is incredibly untapped market. There's so much opportunity. 80% of those deals or those companies are led by gender diverse teams, if not a female CEO. And we just ran, we got inspired by the announcement out of Newson's office about tracking diversity and I'm super excited for the entire industry to have to do this. So I know that funds like ours are likely to bubble up to the top, which is, I'm here for that. And so what we learned was, okay, 100% female CEOs, that's great, right? But what was more important was what they did with their teams. So we looked at the C-suite across our entire portfolio of like 30 plus companies, 50% of the C-suite were women, 36% of the C-suite were people of color. Like, these are the teams that we actually need to solve these problems. And so like what's working, that's working, right? The deal flows there, the opportunity is there. The problems are massive enough to drive venture-style returns and have lots of winners in these categories and they're building the diverse teams that are necessary to actually define and dominate these new categories. So that's what gets me up every day and gives me a lot of fire for this work. So I agree with everything Heidi said. I'll tell you the one thing that has really blown me away are the number, the amount of dollars and the number of foundations in this country and in Europe that have enormous amounts of wealth and they're using it to try and create change. And there's probably some of you in this room. It is really my hat tips to people who make enormous amounts of wealth and they decide what they're gonna do with it is to try and right some of these wrongs and is what's happened since, frankly since George Floyd and all the tragedies of that year, they're saying on the investment, on the programmatic side of our house, we've cared dearly about these gender and equity inclusion and making the world right in Minneapolis and across our country. But now we want our investment side of the house to reflect our values on the programmatic side. And to me that is unbelievable and untapping that amount of capital on the investment side is really a game changer I believe within capital markets. That's number one. Number two, I firmly believe that in this current timeframe, we are uniquely positioned to have female led venture funds. It takes time for this to happen but female led venture funds are gonna end up being in the top 10 best performing funds for vintage years. And that's what's really gonna move the needle for institutional investors to start saying, you know what, this is a different, the venture capitalists of today look different than the people who had made money for me in the 70s and the 80s and the 90s. But this is who's making money today and I need to start having an open aperture to having them, I have to be able to meet them, I need to be able to invest in them and I'm cautiously optimistic that that's gonna change. I love that, I love both of those. One thing that is now in vogue again are fundamentals. And I know right, yes, thank God. For folks who are not in the venture community, catching you up a little bit. In 2019 and 2020, a lot of the folks who got a lot of money hadn't really done anything. They I think had really great stories. I think they had really great, like exactly PowerPoints. And but there was just so much money. There was so much money that it was, I think over invested in organizations that hadn't actually built much. Compare that to women and people of color who are traditionally, I think almost over indexed on being really, really strong builders and really focused on the fundamentals because they have to be. They don't know when that next check is coming or if it's coming at all. And that's where we are now. And so I actually think the types of builders that women and people of color have had to be are actually a perfect fit for this moment that enables us, I think to just kill it. And so I'm really excited about investing in companies right now. I'm really excited about the things I'm seeing. I'm really excited about the fund managers who I get to be building with. I just feel like the folks who are in it now have the mindset that I really resonate with and that I think mirrors my own. And so it's really fun to be building alongside them. Actually, I'm sorry, I'm gonna jump in again. The other thing that I think is really, really great about emerging managers, especially women and people of color is they're collaborative with one another. I have not seen anything like it. The 78 funds that have gone through our program, the 36 going through our nonprofit, they lift up each other. They are doing events with each other where they each bring two LPs to a dinner. They are comparing notes on service providers. They're comparing notes on discounts you can get so DocSend isn't so expensive. But I'm serious, it's a very collaborative group and I'll tell you the incumbent managers who are predominantly white heterosexual men, they don't collaborate. They're competitive with one another in fundraising. So I do think that it positions women and people of color in a really positive way, collaborating with one another. It's a great point. Just to get a sense, how many folks here are working out of venture fund or worked in venture? Okay, a lot of you, awesome. And then founders, venture back founders or founders? Cool, what else do we have other folks in the room just trying to get a sense for some of the questions? Other? Cool, okay, awesome. So a lot of you have this context, but just to Sidney's point, we saw in 19, 20, 21 is typical investment period is three to five years. We saw people coming back to market in less than a year, raising $500 million. There's no obviously like marks or anything real in a portfolio at that plate. So just crazy pace in those years. Okay, so once you continue on a point that Sidney was making about the change in the market. So I'm curious, how has this changed the market affected gender lens investing? How have you seen LP behavior change? Any of the questions changing? How is this market impacting our world these days? Who wants to start? I can start. I'm 506C, so I can talk, yeah. It means I'm openly marketing. So it's okay if I talk about fundraising. One of the things that I've actually back to my last point have been able to educate some of my LPs who are not women about is actually how women fund managers outperform when there are market corrections like this. And so there actually is data to back this up. And so that's been really fun. To be able to say actually, I believe this. I think this is true. And also there's data to back up this claim. And folks have been receptive to that. So I talk openly about, if you haven't noticed I'm a black woman. And I think that the way I also approach fundraising is it's a relationship. And so so much of it is personal. And so if you don't resonate with my story back to how I talked about the fund, it is very personal. So there's so much of me and my story that is baked into each part of it. So it's hard to pull apart one layer from another. So I know we're trying to be all really positive and roses. So I apologize that for this topic, I'm gonna actually, we get loss of information from our community. And it isn't always up into the right. So one of the things, this story just still blows my mind. And by the way, I do not understand this marriage, but that's a different conversation. Husband and wife, both emerging managers, two separate funds, talking to exactly the same LPs and talking to each other about very specific, the same person, same firm, what questions were asked. And this is a family office. So I'm not talking about other forms, other groups. Consistently, he was asked about what could this fund look like? What is the future of this fund? What's the possibility of this fund? And consistently, she was asked questions about what did she actually do in that prior role? What was her actual responsibility in that prior role? Very different conversations. And so it's hard to give advice on how to handle that. And the other thing that I'll say is that one of the interesting things, we culminate our educational program in an LP day. And we also have panels of LPs that actually invest in emerging managers. One of the pieces of feedback that consistently comes to folks that have a gender lens in their investing or have a, they're investing in more diverse founders. The foundations and individuals who care about that do not want four pages on why you should back female founders. They don't want four pages on why you should back people of color. They already get it. They don't want four pages on it. They want to talk about you and why you're the right practitioner to pursue this strategy. And one of the stories I tell is that I was backing brand name venture funds that often would be three white men that went to Stanford. And not once in their deck did they say they were only gonna back white men. They just said that we're gonna back the best entrepreneurs. You already are being biased. We have women who are all female teams that do not invest only with female entrepreneurs. And yet investors consistently assume that they will always invest with only invest with female entrepreneurs. So I think, and given, and we're gonna talk about the lawsuit and all the debacles of that, but I do think when it comes to investing, you already scream what you are by walking in the room to a certain degree. And so you just say, I'm gonna back the very best entrepreneurs. They just are all gonna be people of color or they're all going to be women. It's just what my view is as the very best entrepreneurs happens to be this. So you don't necessarily have to broadcast that you're only gonna be backing people of color or women. You did not derail it. You actually brought up the fearless funds. So why don't we go there? You wanna speak to some of the challenges we are seeing and the impact on the space? I'll just say, I think it's really, really sad. And I think it's really sad to pick on three women of color who are trying to move the world in this way. I mean, if you wanna pick a fight, you pick it with Melinda Gates and Pivotal and only focused on women, right? You pick a fight with somebody who actually has the resources to fight it. And don't get me wrong, they're getting a lot of support from the community and I get it. And I think their biggest issue is that it's philanthropic giving. So anyways, I hope you have a better answer. I wish. I mean, it's pathetic. It's just pathetic. And I really hope, so when we were raising fund one back in 2016, every single meeting was about Elizabeth Holmes. Every single one. So I walked into a room last night about regenerative ag and clearly the powers that be are destroying our planet. And we can go on and on about ag's role and also regenerative ag's role in bringing the planet back and why that's a really good thing. And women and people of color are leading that effort because I think the others have had their fair share in terms of time and resources. When I was introduced around the very first thing people were saying to me last night was, well, what about the fearless fund? Are you gonna be toning down your messaging at Rethink Impact? Yeah, so it's pathetic. Also, like we don't run a nonprofit. We pay taxes. We're not taking taxpayer dollars and doling them out. We are a private institution who pays taxes, right? So this should not be a topic of conversation. We'll stop, but it's so easy I think for people who are scared about how power is shifting to grab on to these narratives and inflate them. And so my druthers would be that this story just goes through its media cycle and doesn't come back. I think what both of them are touching on is this lack of individuation slash lack of almost like creativity or imagination that some folks have when they see us and learn about our investment strategies. It's like, oh, well, okay, you're probably just like this other person who's kind of similar to you. And so you're now in this box. Instead of getting the freedom or liberty or like free range to be like, actually there's this whole other population that exists that maybe you just don't know exists. And I think that's something that I talk about a lot too through our own investment strategy is that the reason why I'm investing in overlooked communities is because I don't think they're overlooked. These are my communities. I hang out with them all the time. These are my friends. But they're overlooked for a certain population that has a certain amount of concentration of power and wealth. And so there's this, it's not that these other people don't exist or that they're unique or that they're individuals and I think could each one have a 10X fund but there's this lack of imagination that there's actually that many different people out there. Well, it's also, what you're talking about is pattern matching, right? Which is what a lot of people in venture have used to make a lot of money for themselves and their investors for decades because it works. It's also very intellectually lazy. We all do it as venture capitalists, right? It's how you sift through 1,000 opportunities and settle on four. Your job is to say no. So you're constantly looking for the things that make it an easy no rather than taking a beat. Really digging down intellectually and being creative as Sydney's talking about. And it's really hard to get people who've been in power for a long time and who've made a lot of money to do new things and to do things differently. Which is why I think to what Courtney is saying we're gonna start to see a huge shift in who's running the funds that outperform in the next decade or two. And it's those that have this mental flexibility can be dynamic and nimble intellectually and don't rely on old patterns that actually aren't serving us anymore. And I think the LP community is, I've been talking about this for a long time is consistently underpricing risk. They think I'm not gonna get fired if I go invest in this fund to 16. Guess what? When that fund starts triggering headline risk because of all the lawsuits they're going through or because the old partners won't let go and support the next generation or they can't keep a woman on staff. Risk looks and sounds and feels a lot different. So the wave is coming, which is really good. It's still gonna be a super bumpy ride between here and there. You know, I will say, I echo everything. Pendulums do swing. And I think, you know, we can all feel a heavy heart for the fearless fund. We can feel a heavy heart for the public pensions in Texas and in Florida. And yet all those things would only be happening if there was a lot of things happening on the other side of that pendulum. And so I think it is equally important to recognize all the great things that are happening, that, I mean, a room full of people that look like you that are venture capitalists and entrepreneurs. I mean, and you're not the only ones. And that's part of what is making the pendulum swing and that's a good thing. It's well said. Is there anything you'd like to add on the emerging manager scene right now? You started to talk about it, Heidi, where all of us are emerging managers by that definition. Any tips or I'm curious about changes in the emerging manager LP appetite for it, given the market? I would just echo something that Sydney said about relationships. So I think I've always thought about fund managers as entrepreneurs. And what do we tell our entrepreneurs? Like it's about relationships. They're investing in you. Tell your story. What sets you apart? And so I think certainly when I came in to do fundraising for the first time seven years ago, I'd worked at a family office and then investing in corporate balance. I had never raised a dollar or sold anything in my life. So thank God I found a partner who is super good at that. Don't underestimate the energy that LPs might have to form a relationship with you and to go on to this entrepreneurial journey with you and want, they're investing in us, yes, for the returns that they want, but also because they want to be part of building something new. They want to be part of that community. And so I think what's been really one of the most fun parts about Rethink is activating and engaging our incredible LP base who, if they're interested in us, probably have really fascinating backgrounds and skills and networks of their own. And they've made their money, right? If they're given a chance, people love to give advice and they love to help and make connections that makes them feel good, right? So give them a chance to have a dopamine hit. So don't underestimate your personal connection and them seeing you as an entrepreneur yourself, not just as a fund manager and a check writer. I love that. I think that one thing I learned actually at the Accelerate event is that across the board, investment managers are investing more into IR. And so investor relations, whether that's hiring someone full-time, whether that's spending more time with their investors, because this current economic situation is very rocky. And one thing that I think is just more natural to me as a fund manager, and I'm assuming is actually more natural to women fund managers in general is seeing my LP's as collaborators instead of these like antagonistic partners. Unnecessary evil. Yeah, right, exactly. That's like scary person who I can't talk to and like sits behind the wall on the other side and just like she gives me a check every now and then. And I think that the collaborator instinct is also just makes the job a lot of fun too. Like we just had a LP Q&A on this different type of financing model we were planning to do a few weeks ago and it was great. We just had an hour long conversation with these really smart people to ask for advice and ask for feedback. And that's also I think a different type of fund manager which is really cool. Yeah, I'll just echo that. It's been, it was one of my most pleasant surprises is the depth of relationship I have with many of my LP's and working with them as collaborators. It's been one of the best parts of starting a new fund. Okay, can I ask a question? Is it 75 minutes or 90, 75? Great, that's helpful, thank you. Okay, so switching gears just a little bit. Post investment, I'm curious. I know what you talked a little bit about your program to support your managers, but do you have any different strategies or how do you think about portfolio services as related to your entrepreneurs? I imagine it's not just a check and I'll see you later. I can start. So I mean, I think we do the workshops four times a year where we bring experts in, they're peer led. I think one thing that we've done really well at Rethink is create a platform that's very peer led and also built on collaborative and communal success and collective success. So our entrepreneur, we do not invest in competitive companies. And so we just had our annual meeting last Thursday and Friday and we brought all our founders together for an entire day and a dinner. And they're in there sharing investors, sharing leads, talking about comp, talking about culture challenges, talking about sales. I mean, they want each other to succeed. And so fostering community very intentionally and thinking about how do you deliver services to them? So it's, we don't do any cocktail parties, right? We just, that's just not, that's just not our vibe, but we will bring people together for a half a day or for an hour long just to form, just to have that space to connect. It's something I learned at Pacific Community Ventures when we were working with hundreds of small and medium sized businesses that were providing highly quality jobs in long-term neighborhoods in California. The CEOs just want to be together. They want to form that community. And so I think just letting that happen and getting out of the way, providing that scaffolding is incredibly valuable. It does not have to take a lot of money. It does not have to be fancy or flashy. You don't have to have a lot of expensive swag to do it. But just giving them that scaffolding around making those connections to each other. And so we oftentimes, we've heard from our LPSA to founder calls on us like, oh, what we think is really available. They're the hardest working people we have on our cap table. Like, I think serving on boards and being a board observer and being there to assist these incredible leaders in their journey is such a privilege. And so it's definitely the biggest joy I have in my role at Re-Think. It's just getting to have that front row seat to something amazing happening and doing whatever we can to kind of push them forward. So it doesn't have to be high budget. There's a lot you can do without a very heavy lift. And exactly what Heidi said is exactly how we feel about the emerging manager community. It's just, it's the same story. I just love getting to know other emerging managers. When we ask for feedback on our program, consistently community, getting to know other emerging managers and having candid conversations rises to the top. And it could just be as simple as creating Zoom rooms. It could just be as simple as having a facilitated conversation on Zoom. Certainly in person helps, cocktails do help. But it doesn't have to be a heavy lift. In these days, a lot of service providers will pay those bills for you. Your fund administrator might, but really the banks, if you bank with whatever, or your attorneys. So, and they'll even off, Cooley apparently has phenomenal office space throughout the country. So have events at their locations, please. I'll come. It's a little bit empty. Yeah, it was empty. We're gonna bring you home with all these coffins. I think you need to add something. Liz, I think that was great. We're just starting. And so we have a first cohort of founders and it's been really cool to workshop. What exactly is our value add? Where are we gonna focus? What are we learning about what is useful? What is not useful? We were really excited, I'd say six months ago about this like HR, like hiring support. And that ended up not being useful at all. And what actually was really useful was this outsourced COO type of support that we give our founders. And so it's been fun to learn as we grow. And I'll just add for us to the areas that I really focus on with founders. One is fundraising and the other is getting them outside support with coaches who are appropriate for what they're kind of reaching for. So on the fundraising side, just to share a little bit with the founders who would like in our portfolio actually work with them on structuring their raises, meeting with them weekly throughout it, finding mission line investors, all of that kind of thing. So many founders feel alone in their fund raises. And it's often something that they're gonna do one, two, three, four times maybe in the course of their time as a founder. And it often creates huge amounts of stress. Lots of whatever is up for you comes up when you're fundraising. We can all probably attest to that as people who fundraise. So it's something that is not part of my thesis, but it's something that we specifically focus on with those founders. And the second piece is around getting them coaches, sometimes they're around leadership skills and sometimes it's folks who are helping with some of the patterns that come up as a founder. And we kind of see them through the company, and these are outside groups, so they have that safety to really work on those challenges. But we've found that there's stats, like 65% of startups fail because of HR issues. Like there's so many things that impact a founder beyond just the, not just the, lots of things impact a founder. Let's leave it there. And that's something that we really focus on is like the individual support that they need. And actually that's the other thing that's very highly reviewed by the folks that go through our educational program is we provide six sessions of executive coaching for free. And it's a private conversation between you and your executive coach. They love it. It's a lonely business being a emerging manager. Often you're a solo GP. There are issues about, we don't ask for specifics about what those conversations are, but we do ask for overarching topics. And consistently imposter syndrome is a conversation that's taking place. Consistently, work-life balance, not in the annoying conference kind of a way, but in a, this can be, an emerging manager can be a 24 seven job. And how do you make room for a life beyond your fund? And so I do think that a lot that can be said about entrepreneurs is also true with emerging managers. Very much so. Okay, so in order to give y'all time to ask questions, I think I'm gonna turn it back to the audience. I don't know if we have a mic with audience. You can hear? Okay. We can also repeat it, yeah. So if you wanna, go ahead in the front and then we'll move to the back. So the question was micro funds. Like I say, a 10 million or less fund, just so you can prove you're good at this business. But there's a more nuanced issue which is being an emerging manager in an emerging market is even harder than to be in California raising a $10 million fund. So there are lots and lots and lots of folks raising $10 million funds. And in fact is the rough rule of thumb is you can raise a $10 million fund in the United States way faster than you can raise because you're normally raising from high net worth individuals whose message resonates. And so you can often do it on a Zoom call. You can do it at a coffee. It doesn't take months. Like institutional investors do. I would think that the same thing is true for you. I think when it comes to folks raising their first fund, raising $10 million to prove they're good at this, it always comes from people that believe in you and people that really care dearly about what you're investing in either because they think it can generate outsized returns or because they really wanna see something awesome happen in Africa. And so, and those people can be in Europe, they can be in the United States. I think it's a totally high net worth individual sale and you just accumulate $250,000 checks, $500,000 checks, and you get it done that way. And maybe a few foundations, but even foundations I would be hesitant to waste your time. So not everybody can make the transition. I will give you that. But if you can get some kind of evidence and it's not necessarily realizations, but you can get some evidence and you can story tell in a way that can convince foundations. Not all institutional investors can commit to a $50 million. Not all institutional investors can write a check into a $100 million fund. It is a numbers game and you need to find the right investors. I like to say you gotta find your people. If you get to know it's a blessing, move on. Pick up the phone and go to the next one. But you need to have a story that says here are the companies that I've invested in and this is why they're phenomenal. And either it's a story about why you invested in that company and what your vision is for that company that I can't see on a piece of paper or it's the quality of your co-investors or your follow on investors or the world class CEO that you got into that everybody wanted to get into but you got that spot. There needs to be a story that convinces me that you have good judgment and you are investing in a geography or in an area of investment that can produce venture capital returns. And if I can't get money from your old institution and you can't get money from recast, you move on and there's someone else. There's so many pockets out there and it is a numbers game and you have to kiss a lot of frogs before you find your prince but your princes are out there. I would also add as someone who is fundraising there's a newer community of fund to funds now that are solving for exactly that problem. I think that one thing that I tell every high net worth individual who's looking to invest in me is to not invest in Goldman Sachs' fund to funds, JP Morgan's fund to funds like any of the brand names because they actually are not investing in me. And so I think there's also a bit of this communication gap that we all I think need to have some ownership on around communicating directly to people who might be investing in those institutions that aren't investing in diverse fund managers that whatever they're telling their clients is not accurate because we don't know a single person who has received capital from them. Just I mean full stop. So I think there is just a certain level of opportunity that comes from rooms like this where we can be really honest with each other and share the notes so that we're actually talking to the people who are have the highest likelihood of investing in us. I would encourage them to talk to the women at the Fairless Fund because they have assembled I don't know the actual numbers but it's the institutions, the banks that have given them funding have come to support them financially there have been lawyers that have come on and pro bono to help with the initiative. And so I would encourage everyone who's under siege to be talking to each other about how to do this. And I agree with you, it should be a collaborated I mean an effort and I would reach out if there are any deep pockets around Hello Alice to see if they would support that kind of an endeavor to support the company but I don't know of anything off the top of my head. I would say that I think that All Raise is gonna, I don't know if anyone's familiar with All Raise but I'm hearing that they are starting to think about some organization on this front so that's probably a good place to check and the more they're getting pinged about it the better because that means that there's it's easier for them to go and raise funding to do some of that work. There's a lot of room, a lot of opportunity to affect change here. So it's not just the management fee on a micro fund that's the challenge. It's also this GP commit, right? So it's really challenging to get out and launch a fund without having independent wealth which is just like totally upside down for where we should be going. So what we did at Rethink because we didn't have those funds is we partnered up with a platform and not everyone would do that and we get critiqued from LPs like, oh, why are you part of this platform? Why don't you just go do this on your own and show that you really have skin in the game? It's like, well, because my skin is currently paying my mortgage and paying for my kids and food and that kind of thing. So there's enormous opportunity. I keep having this vision like one day when Rethink's on like Rethink 10 and I'm there that my purpose in life will be to fund GP commits for diverse managers because that's a problem that needs to get flipped upside down. So I'm actually gonna jump in here. We wrote an article on this and I tell all emerging managers, the GP commit, I'm not a tax attorney. So talk to an attorney but that 1% was drawn out of thin air. It is not a thing and you will never, as the whole point of a GP commit is that LPs feel like that you are aligned with them in your fund being a success. There is not a single $10 million fund out there or a fund one out there where I'm not unbelievably aligned with those founders. Much more so than Andreessen Horowitz putting in 1% into their fund. If you are not successful in your $10 million fund, you gotta go find a day job. So you cared dearly about creating out performance in your first fund because you might be able to raise your second fund but you're sure not raising your third fund. And so I am more aligned with you than I will ever be and Andreessen Horowitz, it doesn't even matter what the GP commit is, it doesn't matter. It just doesn't matter. And so I think you've got the best argument ever for my GP commit is zero. Now again, talk to an tax accountant because you might actually end up having ordinary income instead of carried interest for your investment. So that's my only footnote on that comment. But I will send me an email. I will tell you how to make this argument to institutional LPs. The bigger issue is you're without salary. You're fundraising. Luckily Zoom and COVID has been very helpful to your situation because it used to be that you had to fly to Philadelphia to get three nos. And that was very expensive. It's even more expensive now. Now you can do those first calls on Zoom and make sure you only get on a plane for a real investor for final due diligence. But it still is gonna be very expensive for you to go without income. There are folks out there that will have a job on the side and the secret to the job on the side is to find a way to spin it that's where your deal flow is coming from. That is priming the pump for your deal flow. That's priming the pump for your value add to your portfolio. You can spin that and you use that for part of your pitch and you do all your calls on Zoom, but it's still gonna be a lift because you need, I mean, not only that, but how do you have a job? You're fundraising, you're taking care of kids or you're taking care of your parents and something's gotta give and healthcare and so. But I would just like keep at it, right? Like it's an apprenticeship business. Venture is all about playing the long game and how many years were you at precursor? Seven, right? So keep at it because every day that goes by you're getting smarter, right? Every landscape that you produce or like thought piece that you put out there, you're getting your brand, you're honing in on your message and the work you wanna do in the world. Every founder you meet is a chance to have a founder referral on you. Every founder you help, same thing. It doesn't have to be your own fund or bust, but be ready to pounce, right? When you meet that LP is like, you know what? I think you're ready to spin out. I think I'm ready to be your anchor, but it does, it takes time. Yes, I'm gonna just add, you know, both Cindy and I do not come from finance as a background, right? We both were in public policy before and for myself developed like expertise in an area that allowed me to kind of make a jump. It's like still surprising me that Venture is the thing I've been doing the longest. It's like very, very, it doesn't make sense to my brain but it's true. So there are lots of ways to your point to get involved in the industry and the thing that I also encourage folks to do if you're out of fund and your partners will let you is to be part of fundraising and to be part of the LP meetings and to be part of the meetings with founders because those references are really important and some of my LPs that came invested in me early knew me for years from a prior fund and it's because I was speaking at the LP meeting. I was making the decks. I was, you know, so there are ways that you get exposure that really can help bridge if and when you make that jump and you don't have to come from a pure finance background to be in this industry. It takes a lot of different backgrounds, a lot of different expertise to support these companies. I would really fast, I think, less on the monetary side and more on just like the personal side. It is really scary. This is, I think, a terrifying job. You're most of the time getting told no. You're traveling around all these places not having great sleep. This is my, that's my thing. I love sleep. I miss sleep and so I do think there's a certain level of like who has your back? Like who do you have in your corner? Who's taking care of you? Really solidifying that first before you even talk about the monetary side because I think that it's also just a really personal toll that you're taking and a huge risk that you're taking for yourself. The last little thing I'll add to that is just the fiduciary responsibility is real and like really feeling the weight of that and both for your founders, you care about what happens to them and if they make it but also for every dollar that you accept, you feel it. And I think it's something that I haven't heard other panels like composed of other types of people say before to say it that way, but it is a real thing and it's real stress and I feel that every day. I want to make sure I'm, it's not our money, exactly. And like I am, it is my job to manage. My fundamental job is a money manager as much as I'm talking about portfolio services. It is to return capital. There's no feeling like somebody is willing to give you that kind of money and that they trust that you do good with it and you're gonna be a good fiduciary. Like there's nothing like that. I 100% agree with that but also just wanted to say it's a thing. So I'll jump in quickly. Corporations are very, very big supporters of emerging managers and it usually is if you have a very specific climate tech or you're very specific, not a broad industry and they do want to get the deal flow. They want to see what innovations are happening at the earliest stages. Some of those are high maintenance LPs and others are less so. You know, it's interesting. The fund-to-funds, more diverse mandate, there are some practitioners who very much are all about making the world a better place and believe that returns can be generated here. There are a couple of players who are incredible fundraisers, exceptional fundraisers have always had utter disdain for backing diverse VCs. I mean utter disdain. And yet they found that there was an opportunity to raise some capital around this today. And so they've raised a lot of money to do this and they're the ones who are backing Mary Meeker and backing Equal Ventures, you know. So just be careful about the fund-to-funds that you actually approach and whether or not I'd get money from anyone you get money from, but. That was good, that was good. I think the biggest education that I've had in fundraising is how much money exists. I know. As someone who did not also come from significant wealth. And so what I think you learn is just how many different pockets there are and figuring out which pocket is, resonates most with your thesis is also part of the learning journey of launching a fund in fundraising. And people will talk about the fact that you should have a diversified limited partner base. And let me just tell you something. When you're raising fund one or fund two and you get money from a not very smart football player and all of his friends now want to invest in your fund, you have an entire LP base that's all football players. And then you prove that you're a good investor and you start to diversify away from football players. But not everyone has the luxury of having a totally diversified LP base. Done properly, it's a very lucrative industry. But more importantly, it is incredibly fulfilling because you get to work with entrepreneurs. You get to help them on their journey. And also you get to be your own CEO. Like you can do incredible things like I'm sorry I've got a meeting at two o'clock and your meeting is you have to pick up your kid from school, right? Being your own boss, there's something to be said for that. And there's something to be said for in your own little way, making the world a better place. So. Yeah, I was part of the Senate generation until I had parent died each of my fund raises. Now I'm no longer in a sandwich. And I've got two kids. I started at Rethink when I had a two year old and a six month old. So now they're eight and 10. And I have a spouse who also runs an early stage fund. So we tried to stagger our fund raises. But I would say like, when things like George Floyd happens, when we see these catastrophic weather events, right? When we see wars start, it's incredibly helpful that I can go inside and say I know every single day I'm doing my own small part to push things forward and to empower people who are gonna push things forward. And so it's really, really energizing because I live and breathe what I do. And I live and breathe these problems, the problems that these women in our portfolio are trying to solve. So if you're in it for the money. I agree, it better ways. I mean, there's a better way to make money. I'll tell you where it's at. But like if you live and breathe this stuff and it really does truly bring you joy, I feel like I have the best job I could ever, I can't even believe that I have the job that I have. And I work all the time. And I'm still there all the time for my kids because we set the pace, we set the schedule. Like I'm happy to do three shifts. It means I can go like volunteer at the lunch room or like drive carpool and like bond with my kids. So that's, it's actually a fan. That's what makes me so mad about how few women investors there are. It's actually like an amazing job if you are a caretaker because you set the pace. And like that's the little secret that I feel like the conventional VCs like don't want that to get out. I think that, so agreed. I feel extremely privileged to have this job and I'm very grateful. And I think that you have to be, I just lowered the bar for myself. Like there's just, I don't have a lot of responsibilities. I think it's really cool that you guys have children. I do not have children. And I needed to be really realistic about what I had capacity for and just start stripping away the things I didn't have capacity for anymore. So I have a house. It's in Oakland. I realized I was telling, we had some a combo before that I couldn't take care of that house anymore. It was a lot of work. It's an old house. And so I got a renter. She's amazing and I don't live there. And so there's just, I think, it's hard to do that with kids. It's hard to do that with kids. Yeah, so I have some privilege here. I totally recognize that. And I think that there's something that you just need to be honest with yourself about what do you, how do you wanna spend your time when you have the privilege of being able to say how you wanna spend your time and shipping away what you don't have capacity or interest in spending time on anymore. I also, back in my single days, I actually was a 11-time female CEO, Julie Wainwright, who went on to do RealReal. But she had a lot of failures along the way. And before she did RealReal, we were having drinks and I had offers to become a CEO. And early stage companies that really just wanted me to do fundraising. And she turned to me and she said something that I'll never forget. She said, you're only an entrepreneur when you have no other options. And I didn't really understand what she meant until I started recast. I kept talking to people about jobs and I kept thinking, oh, I could do that. Oh God, I don't wanna do that. I could do that. Oh, I really don't wanna do that. And then I finally met my partner, Sarah, because I would not, for my personality, I would not start a business by myself. It's just not who I am. I applaud all of you who can do that. But I found my partner, Sarah, and I'm like, okay, I can do this. So that's my version. And you have no other options. Any things in here? How do you like to add to that? No? Okay. Well, I think with that, we're at time. Yeah? Okay. Thank you so much for joining us today. We really appreciate it. Thank you.