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00:00:01
Soraya Darabi
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To keep up with or connect with Soraya:
✨Soraya’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sorayadarabi/
✨TMV’s Website: https://tmv.vc/
✨Email TMV: team@tmv.vc
To stay in touch with Meredith and Medbury:
Follow Meredith on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/meredith-farley/
Follow Medbury on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/medbury_agency/
Subscribe to the Medbury newsletter: https://meredithfarley.substack.com/
Email Meredith: Meredith@MedburyAgency.com
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Transcript
Mutual Support and Reciprocity
00:00:01
Speaker
Hi, Soraya. Hi, Meredith. How are you? I am really good. I was looking forward to this and thank you for doing this. I appreciate it a lot. We admire you and Meburi and I'm looking forward as well.
00:00:13
Speaker
Before I jump into a question, I do want to take a sec to say, feel like I've known you for I don't know, like a while, maybe seven six years now. And I just, I feel like you, like lots of people will talk the talk about supporting other women in business, et cetera. And from the jump, you have just done nothing but support me, made crazy intros, been such a kind, helpful, crazy, connected, intelligent person to know. And I'm like, really grateful for that. I'm glad to know you. So thank you.
00:00:43
Speaker
Glad to know you too. And ah from jump, because I thought highly of you, it made me want to do the work.
Balancing Work and Family Life
00:00:50
Speaker
That's something that people don't talk about enough in terms of sponsorship, which is a two-way street.
00:00:55
Speaker
You know, it should be reciprocity. And when you give, you get. And I don't know why they don't teach that in school, let alone business school. But it's so true that all of this All of what we do is a give and take.
00:01:07
Speaker
So yeah, what you give. Thank you. So how do you usually describe what you do if people ask? a reluctant venture capitalist. Anyone who began their career in investing as a founder probably gets the ick when they describe themselves as a VC because it doesn't fully encompass who we are inside.
00:01:28
Speaker
Yes, I'm an investor by trade. I raise capital from external LPs and I redirect that capital like Robin Hood. No, I'm joking. I redirect that capital to founders who are deserving of it.
00:01:43
Speaker
But there's so much more to what I do than that trade, which I'm sure we'll get into. Yes, I'm an investor by way of bio. But in earnest, I think anyone at our team at TMV would call themselves a go to market leader, probably.
00:01:59
Speaker
What does the average day in your life look like right now? right. I'm not going to give you the aspirational version, which includes a workout on my Peloton because that's just not where I am in my life. I have a three-year-old and a five-year-old and they're both sleep progressing. So truly my day looks like this. I do wake up like clockwork at five without an alarm.
00:02:21
Speaker
Oh, it's weird. But I've been trained by two adorable Pavlovian monsters. And I allow myself what some folks call putter time. I allow myself time to do all the things, the skin regimen that I'd like, the coffee the way I like to make it, headlines on my phone probably before I should have screen time.
00:02:45
Speaker
And and that lasts a solid 90 minutes. But I'm also the first to be up dressed and packing snacks, packing lunch.
00:02:58
Speaker
Bea and the girls get up at around 6.45.
00:03:03
Speaker
And then it's a mad dash. Between that and 8.15, when we get them out the door, it's a constant... tug of war in terms of who was wearing the unicorn shoes today. And did i remember that she only eats white cheddar cheese or yellow cheddar cheese? so there's that. And it's its own time and place. One day I'll miss that moment so very much.
00:03:27
Speaker
We each take one girl to school. I'm usually taking our littlest to school, which I love. And I try to savor that walk, which has recently become a scooter ride. Just really trying to take it in because of the adorable questions she asks on the way to school, which isn't that far from our home. And just, I don't know, if you could be nostalgic in a moment, that walk to school encapsulate encapsulates it, I think.
Gender Lens and Time Valuation
00:03:51
Speaker
After that, like a light switch, by 8.30 the dot, I'm turned on to work. And between 8.30 and 6, it's just nonstop putting out exciting fires. And fires in our world can be really compelling. A fire could be we have...
00:04:12
Speaker
Three days to run hard at a deal, which means getting smart on that opportunity, wooing a founding team, edging our way into something, and then having a right to win it.
00:04:24
Speaker
Upon winning it, helping them navigate an an increasingly complex world. Yeah. Part two of the workday sometimes begins at eight.
00:04:35
Speaker
Woof. But I'm not alone in this routine. Yeah. and And we find ways, my family and i to carve out moments for community and to carve out space that we might need if one of us is running hard at something professionally. Yeah.
00:04:58
Speaker
This window in time to be with small children is finite. And so I fully imagine that whereas I might not be as productive in the classic sense as some may who are doing the 996 thing,
00:05:13
Speaker
I know that the amount of time I have to contemplate big strategic ideas, whether I'm watching a tennis class on a Saturday morning or Taekwondo or ballet, these are moments where I'm actually thinking in some ways about the thornier issues, ah the meatier issues.
00:05:34
Speaker
And I'm so grateful for that time. I'm so grateful for that time to be able to come back to work two days later, let's say, and to be like, oh, I've really contemplated this. yeah So in some ways, the multitasking of it all has made me a more thoughtful and intentional person.
00:05:50
Speaker
I like I appreciate the like everything you just said there. I'm reading something. it was about it was a woman who ran a law firm. It was an interview with her. And she said that she noticed that And I don't know why I'm feeling pulled to pull us into like gender things. But she noticed that the men who were lawyers would bill for the time they thought about something in a shower, like they're showering and they're thinking about the client. And she noticed that the women lawyers were more likely to
00:06:21
Speaker
not track as valuable the time that they were thinking about their cases outside of work. And I really appreciate, I totally understand what you're talking about when you're like, I'm doing something, I'm out in the world. But that's actually where a lot of the really good thinking is happening.
00:06:34
Speaker
First of all, never apologize for bringing a gender lens into conversation because everything is political and everything is gendered. yeah Now we can try to operate in a world where that's not true and call it a meritocracy.
00:06:47
Speaker
That's framing And I feel like it's illegitimate framing because we have a lived experience to bring to the table. And that lived experience shapes all of our beliefs, all of our value systems and all of who we are.
00:07:02
Speaker
So I really appreciate that you cited that example. Two things popped into my mind when you did, Meredith. The first is an eye opening experience I had at age 26 when striking out on my own. It's crazy for me now at 42 to realize that I haven't had a conventional boss in in that many years, 16 years.
00:07:25
Speaker
Wow. I know it's so insane. But at 26, I was striking out on my own for the first time. I was leaving a pedigreed logo kind of corporate career where not only could I have comfortably stayed there for three decades, but most people do like the classic tenure at the New York Times where I was leaving is probably more or less 12 to 15 years. Somebody I spoke to today who's ah an executive at Microsoft said Microsoft does track that and the average tenure is 12 years. Okay.
00:07:53
Speaker
So I was embarking and and striking out on my own, I should say. And a friend of mine who had never had a corporate career, who had always worked for himself, started teaching me about billable time.
00:08:06
Speaker
And he did a day in the life audit where he said, how do you wash your clothes? And the time I was living in a New York City high rise, there were laundry machines in my basement.
00:08:20
Speaker
I found that somewhat therapeutic and I would go and take my own clothes to the basement and wash them. And he said, you live across the street from laundromat. So here's what I want you to do. And he got their phone number in my apartment.
00:08:32
Speaker
He plugged in the phone number. And he said, comparatively, it's not that much more expensive for them to wash, fold, press your laundry and occasionally dry clean it.
00:08:44
Speaker
And the amount of time it takes you just to think about laundry, go across the street, ask for certain things, etc. is actually time that you could be spent focusing on work.
00:08:57
Speaker
So instead, I want you to invest that time in yourself. And on repeat, he called up the laundromat and asked if they on a weekly basis would come to my house, pick up my laundry for me. So it'd be like every Monday morning, return it on a Tuesday, move pay that three dollar tip for the across the street time that it would take.
00:09:18
Speaker
And I would more or less convince myself to reinvest. Let's call it that accumulative two hours a week that I would spend. Yeah. Doing something that I found enjoyable, actually.
00:09:30
Speaker
Mentally reinvest that in myself. And he said it's not so much the outsourcing of this thing in a bougie way to somebody else. No. What it is, a mental reframing of how valuable your time is to you.
00:09:44
Speaker
Do you think your time is worth more than 25 bucks an hour? Let's say I'm making up that number. It's an approximation. Yes, I do think my time is worth more or less more than that. What could you be doing with those two hours a week that would move your business forward?
00:09:59
Speaker
It was just a shocking exercise for me. This particular friend took it to an extreme that I have some respect for. You can call it biohacking or you can call it health and well-being for folks who are longevity Experts in work, we don't have the same kind of nomenclature yeah for what it takes to, we call it productivity hacking, but we don't have the same sort of experience or shared language around the concept of investing in oneself.
Evaluating Time and Productivity
00:10:31
Speaker
And for women, bringing it back to that gender lens that you referenced earlier, actually think there's an opportunity there.
00:10:39
Speaker
You mean an opportunity for women to dig in and look carefully at how they're evaluating their and valuing their own time? Yeah, I've read great books about this. Fair Play is one. The Family Firm by Emily Oster is another.
00:10:52
Speaker
And more or less, these books are one part illuminating, but they're either bringing business language into the home or talking about what it would take to make everything ah fair landscape for both genders.
00:11:09
Speaker
I don't think it needs to be as expressly pragmatic as that always, especially for solopreneurs or people who have small businesses or who work for themselves.
00:11:21
Speaker
But I do think having going through the exercise that I just mentioned with my friend who was looking out for me and saying, here's something that I do and I'd like you to think about applying it to yourself. Yeah. It was...
00:11:34
Speaker
literally game changing for me um because then I began to evaluate a lot of my life through the concept of time being our most precious commodity. And I would hope that, but especially since COVID,
00:11:48
Speaker
Women are more likely now to leave their corporate careers, sadly, but also potentially that's for their best. For those who stay in the workforce, reinvest that time into a portfolio career or um some version of an entrepreneurial experience.
00:12:08
Speaker
Right. Let's say. And so there could be i had a podcast for a while called Business Schooled that I hosted on behalf of a brand, but there could be a business school just for that particular archetype of a worker.
00:12:22
Speaker
Yeah. And and the framing that my friend gave me, I don't think of it as particularly masculine. But what I will say is that. my male pals do speak that way more easily with one another than my female pals do.
00:12:38
Speaker
And maybe that's ah an opportunity um to look at it with an optimistic lens. I'm going to go read those books I haven't read either that you mentioned. And i love everything
Challenges Women Face in Leadership
00:12:49
Speaker
you're saying here. I think for me, sometimes, think in general, I'm pretty good at, I don't know, product i don't know productivity hacks is the right thing, but creating processes that are supportive of like me not being in the weeds of execution when not necessary. But I do notice that for myself, when I was in a corporate role, that came very easily.
00:13:13
Speaker
And in a founder role, sometimes more personal guilt gets attached to things and I have to be more vigilant than I used to. And I think it has to do with the concept of being more a good, nice person? And is it mean to ask so-and-so to do X, Y, Z when, of course on paper it's not, that's truly their job, and what they're paid for. But like personal, I feel like sometimes it's like little personal unconscious hurdles that can pop up, least for me, but interested to read what you've suggested.
00:13:43
Speaker
I relate to that. I appreciate what you just said, and you're not alone. The nice trap is a real trap. Yeah. And i would venture to guess it's especially real for most women for whom their whole life they've been condition conditioned to be good.
00:13:59
Speaker
Because there is such a reward system in society for women who stay in their place and who are considered good. Yes. I love that you just said reward system. Have you read The Authenticity Trap?
00:14:10
Speaker
But I'm getting, actually, no, I think I saw that woman come and speak at ah at an event I went to. She was phenomenal. Do you like that? I loved it. And i think it's helpful to be honest about the fact that niceness and helpfulness are rewarded. And when you stop being super nice and super helpful,
00:14:31
Speaker
you will pay some penalties and you have to learn to navigate that too. And it's not toughen up, set some boundaries and things are gonna be great for you. It's gonna be hard sometimes.
00:14:42
Speaker
I think you're also oftentimes rewarded with the status quo, but like in a corporate matrix, you're not necessarily rewarded with upward mobility. So yes let's say you're nice and helpful.
00:14:52
Speaker
People appreciate you. Everyone thinks you're a team player. You're, as you mentioned, likable. and considered to be earnest and hardworking, everyone's favorite word in America, you're considered to be humble, right?
Inside Venture Capital Strategy
00:15:06
Speaker
And yet with those same attributes, and there's been countless papers written about this, are you also in parallel perceived to be a leader, perceived to be somebody who can take risk, um who's up for any challenge or in an in it to win it mentality, an achiever?
00:15:23
Speaker
Like on the Enneagram scale, those are two totally different numbers. We're talking about a nine, an Enneagram, that's a peacemaker, and a three, the achiever. And yeah this won't shock you, Meredith, but I'm very much a three. And yet, yeah let's not count out how absolutely essential it is to have nines in the workforce.
00:15:45
Speaker
Yeah. So like anything, there's a yin and yang to all that we do when we try to bring our full selves to work.
00:15:55
Speaker
I need to go back and listen to some of your old podcasts. Can you say it again? Was it Business School? Business School, yeah. Business School is, this was a podcast that I hosted for Synchrony and Synchrony Financial. It's an incredible organization, formerly GE e Capital.
00:16:10
Speaker
um And the two season arc actually took shape during COVID. So just before COVID, when I was pregnant with my first, I think is when we did the first season. And then 2021, when Clara was one and in some episodes were taping it from my home during COVID, my old home.
00:16:27
Speaker
You can actually hear my baby crying in the background. But it was very interesting experience where we set out to interview founders who had made it past the five-year mark because so few founders do.
00:16:37
Speaker
Wow. And we talked to founders who had seriously scaled to their companies and some who had achieved profitability and some who were still trying to reach a critical inflection point.
00:16:48
Speaker
And the most fun for me as a professional investor was talking to founders who were building tactile and brick and mortar type businesses, many of them. um Somebody who had a boxing apparel company. There was a guy who built tiny homes, for instance, with like small cabins that you could hitch to the back of a trailer and take with you.
00:17:07
Speaker
I loved that. It felt like going out into the real world and talking to people who have just such different ways of life than the founders with whom I work with on a daily basis.
00:17:19
Speaker
And obviously, I think every founder within our portfolio at TMV is a superstar. There is, of course, by virtue of the fact that we invest into AI, health and bio, supply chain and logistics with venture aspirations.
00:17:32
Speaker
There is a particular type of founder whom we may be attracted to and it doesn't exclude any kind of excitement for people building in the real world so that that dichotomy was just very cool for me at the time that's amazing I'm definitely going to go back and listen to some of those I want to talk about TMV a little bit too please I'm really what would you say you and your team are the best at We at TMV like to think of ourselves as go-to-market experts.
00:18:05
Speaker
We are first and foremost a team of investors who have unique insights as to where the world might be headed across three categories. So we invest across health and bio.
00:18:15
Speaker
We invest into supply chain and logistics with a heavy slant toward business. Maritime import technology, given one of our partners' backgrounds and expertise. And then we invest broadly in AI and automation.
00:18:28
Speaker
And when we find a company that fits our mandate, that company typically looks like a two to four person founding team because we try to be the earliest investor onto a capital table.
00:18:40
Speaker
And so we call that a cap table in VC. And we like it best when the equity split looks something like founder one, certain percentage, founder two, certain percentage. Potentially there's already a carve out for employees, potentially not.
00:18:54
Speaker
And then friends of family capital, maybe, be but otherwise new investors. And that allows us to come in. And to create a real partnership from the start. Of course, we're talking about in BC land, the riskiest stage of the riskiest asset class. And it is.
00:19:11
Speaker
We know that as we invest, we are surmising that as many as one third of our portfolio might not survive past two more rounds of financing, if that.
00:19:24
Speaker
What we're underwriting investments for is the potential for any single company in our portfolio to become a whale. Right? That's venture math. And our hope is that with strong support from a bevy of go-to-market experts on our team, they can get to that next critical inflection point faster.
00:19:44
Speaker
So we invest as a team with unbridled enthusiasm. That means everyone on the partnership has to agree there's a real opportunity here to chase. It creates a weird culture and dynamic. If one person on the team feels strongly, this is not a great opportunity for us. And because we are so hands-on, because we do become quite connected to the founding teams with whom we work.
00:20:06
Speaker
It's important that we like those founders as well. And we try our darndest to underwrite for things like authenticity and commitment yeah and perseverance.
00:20:17
Speaker
When we invest, the partnership, which includes my colleague Tim Shea, who led Branded Duolingo through IPO, it includes my colleague Emma Silverman, who was at Bain for many years. And after that, one of the earliest team members at a company that went on to be a unicorn twice over in the consumer space.
00:20:36
Speaker
Or i could go on and on describing our team and all of the incredible superpowers they bring to the table. But each one of us has seen something truly scale from jump to some sort of successful exit.
00:20:49
Speaker
And those eggs look different. One exit for one partner on our team looked like a $30 million dollars acquisition by a publicly traded business. For another partner, it was selling his company and then seeing that next company IPO.
00:21:04
Speaker
Now, With all that said, we take that discipline go to market, which for us at TMB, it really describes everything from branding and communications to recruiting early team members.
00:21:19
Speaker
Investor relations, I would say critically, this is what early teams want from us. A lot of investor relations strategy work. But it also can include some of the softer skills we're talking about today, like co-founder coaching or people relations. So we lean in heavily there because for so long across the 50-year time horizon that VC as an asset class has more or less existed,
00:21:44
Speaker
Traditionally, the go-to-market engine has been secondary in importance or prominence to what has been kingmaking in tech, which is tech itself and product.
00:21:59
Speaker
The bravado around that archetype of genius developer partnered with a genius visionary. Let's call that the Wozniak and the Jobs, right?
00:22:10
Speaker
That prevailed. And that concept basically trickled down into anyone who went into investing so that if you wanted to find your next Apple,
00:22:22
Speaker
Like a mirror, you needed to go back out there and find a product visionary and a world-class developer. In 2026, QuadCode is riding the majority of startups that are prototyping visionary ideas for us.
00:22:41
Speaker
So right out of the gate, while it still might be incredibly useful to have an extraordinary tech wizard on your team, very useful, it might not be as essential. And then in terms of that pattern recognition, another great book is Biased by Iris Bonet, Harvard Business School professor. But the pattern recognition of, oh, this founder reminds me of Steve Jobs, that has actually been extraordinarily debunked, right?
00:23:09
Speaker
Because even that visionary archetype that everyone looks up to and aspires to become like was flawed. There's so many flaws.
00:23:21
Speaker
And so we're not actually out there hunting for the next Steve Jobs because we know through history that that would be in some ways a disservice to the person who actually is the new Steve Jobs. And the new Steve Jobs doesn't look like the Steve Jobs of the eighty s the 90s the early aughts.
00:23:42
Speaker
All to say, when you focus on the go-to-market engine, what you're saying is we've unearthed, like let's call it a gemstone that needs to be dusted up. We've unearthed something really special.
00:23:55
Speaker
It's not aware that it's a gem yet. It's passed critical litmus test for us as partnership. The tech is there. The idea is sound. It's the first of their name.
00:24:07
Speaker
And we want to allow them that first mover advantage coupled with the kind of support they would only have otherwise received in the past with gobs of funding and some sort of like ah consultancy belt.
00:24:23
Speaker
Thank you. My next question was going to be, what do you think people get wrong in your industry? And I wonder if your answer would be pattern recognition for antiquated patterns that are even just two or three years out date, but significantly off now. And if you, so you don't need the tech to your point, like super valuable, but maybe the tech genius is not a necessary component.
00:24:46
Speaker
The, you flawed great man archetype Steve Jobs is perhaps not it. Do you have a sense of what the new emerging like class of leaders are today?
00:25:01
Speaker
I would say that obvious is better than leaders, to be more specific. It's human nature to want to grab on to something that has been headlined in the past or built up in the past and to believe in that hero arc.
00:25:16
Speaker
Right. Joseph Campbell style to believe in the hero's journey and to want to find that hero before others know they are, in fact.
00:25:25
Speaker
Exceptional. I am the child of a demographer, and so I grew up around the dinner table hearing conversations around what we now call data science, but also just causation and correlation.
00:25:37
Speaker
It's pretty easy to draw shapes and patterns and to say that you were the first to discover that shape. I simply think it's more important to live in the in-between, to live in a gray zone, and to say there aren't there aren't actually patterns.
00:25:53
Speaker
Maybe this gets a little, but patterns don't exist. Patterns are stories that we tell ourselves because it's convenient to do. What we look for and underwrite are exceptional people.
Integrity and Humility in Leadership
00:26:06
Speaker
And by the way, I sometimes get that wrong. Our team sometimes gets that wrong. Like everyone in the venture landscape, humans are fallible and we are fallible as decision makers. But what we try to discover are people who have what it takes to commit themselves to 10 to 15 year journey at minimum to build something audacious that has never been built before.
00:26:34
Speaker
So now what you're really underwriting are things like integrity and in early meetings with a founding team, I wouldn't call them tests, but we do ask questions about past experiences.
00:26:48
Speaker
It can be as simple as from a young age, my family didn't have much in terms of means. And so I committed myself to becoming a straight A student so I could get a scholarship to a great school.
00:27:01
Speaker
The only school that would give me a full ride was my local state school. Ended up being a great experience. That state school was wonderful. And maybe to some investors, they're lacking the pedigreed logo that would normally be like a first checkmark.
00:27:15
Speaker
Oh, this founder went to Harvard. Therefore, I get it. Harvard people are smart. And rather, what we're listening for is I committed myself to my studies from a young age because that was my escape hatch.
00:27:27
Speaker
And it worked out because I was able to fulfill an education that I had always sought out to fulfill. It's not that easy because a lot of people end up going to college or to a four-year institution.
00:27:38
Speaker
But also, it doesn't have to be a four-year institution. That same story might apply if somebody said, I knew from get go that I wanted to be an entrepreneur. And so I set up a small business in my high school selling snacks at the local football game.
00:27:53
Speaker
And that taught me X, Y, Z. I skipped the formal education process over the next four years and devoted myself to becoming a student of entrepreneurship.
00:28:04
Speaker
During that time, I set out to achieve X. I achieved X. I set out to achieve Y. achieved Y.
00:28:11
Speaker
So I would say that it's a weird business to be in. It's a weird business to be in because it requires decent IQ, but a much higher EQ to be able to underscore people who whom you believe.
00:28:28
Speaker
are willing to stick it through when things are tough. And we're battling investing in this era when success looks automatic and when especially funding cycles are rewarded.
00:28:41
Speaker
And so if you're starting out of the industry and your goal is to have a hyperbolic evaluation within 12 months, you might not be the founders for us, actually. I can unpack why that is.
00:28:53
Speaker
But rather, we listen for, this is my life's work, this is North Star, And also, we are investing in innately kind of good spaces, I would say, trying to make supply chain cleaner, trying to find ways in which health intelligence can unlock a healthier living, cures for major diseases, a faster path to get the right pharmaceuticals cleared. These are, in my mind, inherently good spaces.
00:29:23
Speaker
And so we often underwriting people who are in it for the right reasons. Thank you. Yeah. You strike me as someone who's very adept at both the hard and soft sides of work. One thing I'm curious about would be what are the things that come very naturally for you?
00:29:42
Speaker
And what are the areas where you feel like you maybe don't have as much natural facility and you have to like more mindfully coach yourself through them? First principles must guide how we operate as leaders.
00:29:55
Speaker
I'm the co-managing partner of our firm. And with that bears the responsibility of being a fiduciary first and foremost, even though we are in a people business. And I like to think it's nothing but roses.
00:30:10
Speaker
investing in people and riding alongside them as there are great successes. Of course, there are thorns in every rose. And those thornier moments took me a minute to navigate.
00:30:21
Speaker
But it's actually my job to navigate the thorny moments and to figure out the right soft landing for a company that didn't hit a critical inflection point from from day one. It's my job to call out a founder who is acting irresponsibly with capital that we back. Now, luckily for us, those are rarer moments.
00:30:43
Speaker
I think we pick and choose extraordinarily well. The data shows that we believe it. But it doesn't come naturally to me. In part because I was raised in a both informal and formal family.
00:31:04
Speaker
In part because confrontation takes time to get used to. And in part because it's not always clear in venture how to do the right thing. It's not always clear.
00:31:15
Speaker
There are.
00:31:19
Speaker
endless blog posts to sift through. But every experience you have as an investor is incomparable to any other experience because there are too many variables involved.
00:31:30
Speaker
But I'd say what doesn't come naturally to me in business is the grandiosity and the puffing up of one's chest and the declarative statements of, I know with certainty the where the world is headed.
00:31:47
Speaker
Sometimes the industry rewards the loudest voices. yeah Certainly capital follows and favors the bold.
00:31:58
Speaker
I like to believe in the classic adage of the tortoise and the hare. I like to believe that tortoises have their place in venture, that people who not necessarily are the slowest to get to the finish line because we're all focused on a compressed time frame.
00:32:15
Speaker
To be a venture backable business, you need to some somehow go from the classic sort of framing as zero to 100 million and let's call it ARR within five to six years, because that would be historically a publicly ready company.
00:32:31
Speaker
OK, but even within that framing, There's still a place for a tortoise. yeah And I think the tortoise for us metaphorically are the founders who are committed to the grit, the founders who don't give up when the race feels insurmountable. The tortoise is somebody who I just like I picture a tortoise with glasses. The tortoise is inherently more intellectual than the hare.
00:32:56
Speaker
We're still at a moment in time where the hares are currying favor, particularly with the media. And I think that as an investor, my challenge is unearthing the why or the compelling reasons to believe in the power of the tortoise.
Media Influence and Business Perceptions
00:33:14
Speaker
interesting do you think it'll shift at some point do you think perhaps the media will become more nuanced in how it evaluates and supports different types of companies growth or founders or do you feel like no it's always kind of reminds me of social media when you talk about posturing it's like social media rewards black and white thinking because it rewards the quickest response so if you can be polarizing you can have significant impact it doesn't mean that the message is thoughtful or helpful or right
00:33:47
Speaker
Look, everyone needs to sell a newspaper in the media world or the equivalent of the attention economy fares better when there's a salacious story to sell. Clickbait.
00:33:59
Speaker
Yeah. And there's also hero-worshipping clickbait that builds up certain types of leaders into people that they themselves would admit are impossible to be.
00:34:10
Speaker
I'm less concerned with what the media thinks is right or wrong when it comes to creating dynacism around a founder.
00:34:22
Speaker
I'm much more interested in being right and being proven right over time by metrics that matter in my industry. So metrics that matter in venture are DPI, realized returns matter. That's how my LPs come to appreciate our hard work.
00:34:38
Speaker
And I think that the other metrics that matter are once that founder reaches the finish line, are they proud of their successes? Are they grateful for the work that TMV has done? Or if not grateful, which is fine, can they at least to some extent, appreciate the hard work that our team put in. We actually think the greatest measure of success as investors is what a founder who whom we have backed before returned to us when building the next company and ask us to invest again, whether they did well very well or badly the first time around, we take it as a mark of success when those founders return to us.
00:35:15
Speaker
In our most recent fund, we're very proud to have backed a founder named Andrew Firestone on his new company. Two more examples that we'll be announcing very soon of fund one company founders who've come back to us in our third fund and said, would you take a shot on my next idea?
00:35:32
Speaker
And it's thrilling. and And I hope that it's the beginning of a beautiful trend.
Open Communication with Founders
00:35:39
Speaker
What would you say are some founder green flags when you're evaluating investments?
00:35:46
Speaker
When we are meeting with a founding team, we throw a softball test to them. And that test is, you benefit from an introduction to such and such business or so and so?
00:35:57
Speaker
The founder may or may not need that introduction, but that's not really what we're testing for. What we're testing for is their willingness to follow through on the offer. Because business is entirely about asks and offers, a two-way street.
00:36:13
Speaker
And it's a test on communication. Does that founder respond ideally within six hours, but maybe 24 hours? do Do they respond with a thoughtful note saying, I listened, I heard that you made that offer, and we will take you up on it.
00:36:29
Speaker
Perhaps we won't, but within this timeline. And here's why. It's way too easy, especially with the superhumans of the world crafting emails for you. It's too easy to follow up with folks. It allows us to understand if somebody is thoughtful and operating with intention.
00:36:49
Speaker
I also like to think that our offers for introductions are pretty damn good. So we are looking for people who believe in the give and take. And we are looking for folks who are wanting to work with a hands-on firm.
00:37:04
Speaker
We're not for everybody. Yeah. yeah we We do and don't mind our own business. But there is a wealth of information that we hope to provide. And we like to seek out founders who are willing to accept that invitation.
00:37:20
Speaker
That's really good. Where can people find you who want to get in touch and or just follow you in your work? I'm on LinkedIn more than most social networks at this point in time. It's just my first name, last name combined on LinkedIn.
00:37:33
Speaker
Similarly, you can write to team at tmv.vc and we will do our best to respond in a timely fashion. Thank you so much. I love getting to to chat with you for an hour and I really appreciate your time. Thank you very I appreciate yours. Thank you, Meredith.