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Venture Capital’s Blind Spot: Why Women of Color are the VC World's Untapped Goldmine with the Founder of Seed to Harvest
124 Plays1 year ago
Update: I recently launched my newsletter, The Sheconomist, and would love for you to subscribe: sheconomist.com - I share so many tools and resources that help young, high-achieving women with radical money and career self-advocacy.
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This week, we sit down with the remarkable Victoria Kennedy, Founder & General Partner at Seed to Harvest Ventures, a Venture Capital fund passionately advocating for women of color founders at the pre-seed and seed stages, ensuring their voices are heard even when they are not in the room.
Victoria sheds light on the alarming statistics regarding Black female startup founders' access to venture capital, underlining the urgent need for change. With only 0.34 percent of total venture capital invested in Black female founders in the first half of 2021, the disparities are stark.
Seed to Harvest's unique mission centers on investing in products and companies developed by and for women of color. Victoria emphasizes that historically overlooked individuals bring a fresh perspective, which can lead to innovative solutions for underserved markets. Women of color are poised to become the next billion dollar consumers, holding significant purchasing power, making them an exciting investment opportunity.
Victoria shares her insights into creative fundraising strategies and underscores the importance of mental health, dismantling limiting narratives and building a comprehensive support network to thrive in this demanding industry.
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Transcript
Hiring Practices: Potential vs. Achievements
00:00:00
Speaker
Women get hired based off what they've done, men get hired based off their potential. I'm Tamina and I'm extending a heartfelt invitation to you as we join forces in reclaiming economic power for women in a world that is often structured against us.
Empowering Women Financially
00:00:17
Speaker
We'll dive into the minds of accomplished female leaders, investors and entrepreneurs to equip you with the confidence and knowledge to build wealth for yourself and other women. So buckle up, get ready to learn and be inspired to take action.
Meet Victoria Kennedy
00:00:32
Speaker
Welcome, everyone. I am so excited about today's conversation with the one and only Victoria Kennedy. Victoria is the founder and general partner of Seed to Harvest, a fund that invests in brilliant women identified founders of color with US-based pre-seed and seed companies. She is a product expert with over 10 years of experience working in startups.
00:00:59
Speaker
Victoria has also worked on scaling over six products and a skilled customer and market research product strategy and managing teams. Victoria, I'm so, so excited to have you on today. Welcome to the show.
Financial Independence & Advocacy
00:01:13
Speaker
Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here. Amazing.
00:01:17
Speaker
Victoria, I like to ask the same question to each of my guests first. As you know, this podcast is all about helping women build wealth for themselves and other women. I always like to say that a wealthy woman can walk out of almost every room she feels uncomfortable in and create opportunities for other women along the way. Because at the end of the day, financial independence is freedom, right?
00:01:46
Speaker
Victoria, what does women supporting women mean to you and how does that show up in your life on a daily basis?
00:01:56
Speaker
Sure. So the biggest thing I think about when I think about women supporting women is I forgot where this was from, but it talked about the difference between having a mentor and having an advocate or a sponsor. So when you have a mentor, someone who might give advice, but like who's actually in the room when you're not in the room talking about you to like, if you're, if
00:02:17
Speaker
this person's in your job, right? Are they talking up to leadership? Are they advocating for you to get new roles or new opportunities,
Investing in Women of Color
00:02:24
Speaker
right? And I think women supporting other women is really focused on that advocacy and sponsorship and not so much in that mentor role. And like mentors are great, right? Like no, no knock to that. But to your point about really generating wealth and generating the ability to make the decisions that you want in your life, that requires sponsorship and advocacy.
00:02:45
Speaker
And when I think about that on our day to day, so Seed to Harvest, the fund that I co-founded with Isabelle Seal, we focus on supporting women and being that advocate every day, which is why we're all about like ownership. So we require it needs to be 50% winner of color on the founder cap table. And we really focus on like providing tactical expertise. And so that we're not just saying like, oh, like, you know, it's great to get money, right? But also like, how do we help make sure that your business is successful long-term? And then,
00:03:16
Speaker
We also think about it in terms of the community that we keep. So we have been so lucky to have so many other women who are new, as well as more established fund managers, give us knowledge, advocate for us when we're not in the room, talk about us to LPs, talk about us to other GPs, talk about us to founders, our founders do that as well. So many of our founders have been introducing those founders, like, they're my favorite investor, I want you to meet them. And so really being an advocate for other women, for me, is really how women support women.
00:03:48
Speaker
I love that because at the end of today, it's all about opening doors for other people, especially to your point just now, when you start investing in other people, but specifically women, to me, something just magical happens because when women stick together and we engage in conversations, vulnerable conversations that
00:04:16
Speaker
revolve around the shared experiences of womanhood, the energy in a room just shifts all of a sudden. When you are in that safe space and you can ask those
00:04:33
Speaker
questions that you might not be comfortable asking when there is men in the room. And I totally agree with you. Mentors are great. And look, I love mentors. I love being a mentor, but I also love spotlighting other women and highlighting other people's work. I mean, that's the whole premise of this podcast. I interview awesome women and get to highlight their work, get to geek out about money with them and normalize conversations about money.
00:05:03
Speaker
Love that you're really, really intentional about that with your own work. Speaking of your work, Victoria, let's dive in. I want to learn more about Seed to Harvest. When I went to your website for the very first time a while back, it was your vision statement that really
00:05:24
Speaker
caught my eye like right away. Let me read that out to our audience members. I quote, we believe companies built by and for women of color are the new unicorns. Mic drop. Love that. I'm a hundred percent with you because
00:05:44
Speaker
Investing in innovation, investing in products that benefit underserved communities,
Addressing VC Funding Disparities
00:05:50
Speaker
particularly women of color, it's such an untapped opportunity in this world that is just run by white. I know you're familiar with those stats, but for our audience listeners, just to really make sure they know what you're talking about.
00:06:06
Speaker
In 2021, black female startup founders received merely 0.34% of the total venture capital spent in the United States in the first half of the year. In 2020, only 93 black women had ever raised over a million dollars in venture capital. The fact that you can even precisely count that number is just freaking outrageous. Yeah.
00:06:36
Speaker
So thank you for doing that work. I know it can always be easy and we're going to talk about that in a second. But going back to the premise of Seed to Harvest and the fund that you've built, first to hear what specific types of products and companies built by and for women of color do you envision reaching unicorn status in the future?
00:06:59
Speaker
Yeah. So even just to add a little bit of context to some of the stats you said. So what's also really interesting is there was a couple of recent studies around fund managers. So the people who actually allocate dollars, not just venture, but the thing about real estate portfolios, public markets, all the different ways people invest at like a large scale, globally it is 98% what?
00:07:24
Speaker
So I think it's actually maybe like almost 99% white men. And so even thinking about it, the only way trickle down actually works is that this is like this is going to trickle down, right? So like the asset managers who actually determine how money flows are almost extremely white men and that therefore affects
00:07:42
Speaker
the funds that get created, the people who get investment, which end up being founders. And so a lot of what we think about too is not just who do we invest in, but who invests in us. So we recently started a campaign to get more women of color to become LPs. We did a virtual panel. We had three women of color LPs who have invested in funds from very different perspectives. One was like a former engineer.
00:08:05
Speaker
One is someone who's been in startups for quite a while, the other one has more of a finance and banking background. They all had these different perspectives, but they all wanted to make sure that their dollars actually built wealth for them that they were creating in their roles, but also that they still wanted to invest in women, particularly women of color, in creating that wealth.
00:08:24
Speaker
So just to get more context. So when we talk about type of companies, we like to make it clear that why we really focus on women of color are really like kind of two buckets or maybe three buckets. The first one being, you know, stats really make everything feel really negative. Like, oh, there's just, you know, no money out there for women of color, which is true. But we see that as a huge opportunity, right? Like the biggest funding gaps exist with women of color, but they are the largest group of emerging founders.
00:08:53
Speaker
So they're building companies and they're ready to get venture dollars, but no one's really funding them. So we're like, hey, that's easy for us. If we just make the statement that we're going to do it, people will come to us.
00:09:07
Speaker
and also do some work to reach out. But if you focus on a group that's largely ignored, there's money to be made there. Two, women of color are also building companies where they're focused on profit because they traditionally haven't been able to rely on retro capital. We're seeing companies even at the pre-seed who already have revenue generation where that's actually not very common. We're seeing companies that come in that are really focused on profitability.
00:09:30
Speaker
And so we're seeing companies like now there's been the whole shift from not just growth at all costs to really being focused on being a profitable, long-term scalable business. And actually I was on the phone with an investor relations person from Coinbase last summer. He asked me how I felt as an investor, how my founders were feeling about the kind of moves
00:09:48
Speaker
from growth to all costs to this more really focused on like business fundamentals. And I was like, yeah, so we're not growth at all cost investors. So that's never been the case. And almost none of the founders we talked to have ever thought of it that way as well. Because they didn't think they could just raise $10 million, get a bunch of users in and figure out how to make money off of it. And so now that there's a switch, our founders are already ahead of the game in terms of really figuring out how do I build a business that could even sustain itself possibly from day one.
Women-Led Innovation
00:10:18
Speaker
And then the third bucket that we think about a lot is like, I think there's a rap that women in business in general get around being like lifestyle brands. And when I say lifestyle brands, meaning like not like large, unicorn, super scalable companies, and that they're really only limited to like beauty and wellness. And yes, there are a lot of women of color and women in general, beauty and wellness.
00:10:38
Speaker
We have women are pipeline building cybersecurity companies, payment technology for specialty healthcare, building large consumer platforms for early stage parents. They're building retail businesses that are scaling from B2B. So we're seeing women of color building all types of companies, whether they're FinTech platforms, just thinking about like a shipping company that we've been talking to that does like the technology infrastructure for shipping from the US to countries in Africa.
00:11:05
Speaker
So they're building all of these different companies, but what's most interesting to us is they're building with different perspectives. So one of our first investments was in a company called Philly, and they're basically bringing gamification to early stage, like early stage, well, to early parents. I'm not a parent, so I think still in founder land.
00:11:24
Speaker
But this idea of how can you bring gamification, which is actually one of the first roles I ever had, to the early parenthood and how do you create kind of how Zola did for the wedding market, really all encompassing one-stop shop for people to support parents and the kids that they have through early childhood, right?
00:11:42
Speaker
that doesn't really exist at the moment. And her perspective on that was really interesting, bringing in that gamification, but also understanding the support that women needed. And as soon as we started talking to her, we actually met her. We have these weekly virtual office hours where we offer 15 minutes of free product and design advice for any founder.
00:12:00
Speaker
They don't have to fit our thesis. It's really just a way for us to provide help to the founder ecosystem, but also it's been a great way to just learn what's out there and learn what founders are building and help in any way that we can. But it was so impressive how well she knew her market, how well she knew about how many mothers are in the US, how many kids are born every month in the US. Really understanding that market, but really figuring out how do I attract this market and offer a solution to the problem that hasn't been thought of yet.
00:12:30
Speaker
And so for us, that's really the genius we see with focusing on women of color. Outsiders tend to have a different perspective. You can't really do the way the things that, and we found this even too with raising and fun, right? All the like regular advice, I literally was told in the first couple months we started fundraising that in order to determine my fun size, I should just soft circle the first couple million with my friends and family, and then times are about 10, and that should be my fun size.
00:12:57
Speaker
God, I don't even know what to say right now to that because that's just such a messed up statement and that's a statement that probably only like a
00:13:09
Speaker
entitled white man could make. Exactly. And like the first thing about it, not only does it, you know, come from a place of like access to wealth that I am like not winning women of color. And honestly, sometimes even women in general have, but also like a lack of strategy. My thing is like you're supposed to be managing millions of dollars and your strategy to create your fund is just like soft circle and times by 10. Like not thinking about like how many portfolios do I want to have? Portfolio companies do you want to have? How do I think about follow on investments? What is the actual like,
00:13:39
Speaker
industry sector, how much am I going to need to write the checks in order to make the returns? It's just like, nope, there's not much money I can raise, so then that's what I'm going to do. For me, I think what we're so passionate about in Women of Color is we do see it as a huge opportunity. One, people aren't looking there, so there's money to be made. They're serving markets that other people aren't serving. Women of Color is slated to be the next billion consumers both in the US and globally. Even right now, control about 80 percent of household purchases.
00:14:06
Speaker
So this doesn't just affect consumer technology, but also affects B2B technology in terms of what kind of employees people will have, what kind of expectations there now are from companies in terms of being mission-driven and not just being able to be shitty and ignore things like diversity and the climate. And so employees want to work at companies that are mission-driven and make money. Women of color tend to build these type of companies. And so for us, we're pacing what we think of as a kind of obvious bet,
00:14:35
Speaker
on a group of people who have the signal to really be outperformers long-term. I was already sold before and now I'm like a hundred times more sold. So great job there, Victoria. It's so funny because as I was listening to you, like the theme that kept coming back over and over again was the theme of being over-prepared.
00:15:01
Speaker
Yeah. You're mentioning that some of the companies that are approaching your seed rounds are oftentimes already companies that have generated revenue, which is not unheard of, but rare, right? Oftentimes, you know, white men, they
00:15:21
Speaker
raise eight, nine figures just on an idea, right? Without actually having a track record or oftentimes having a bad track record of having lost a gazillion dollars, like other people's dollars before, right? So it's so interesting, but going back to like, you know, the full circle there, then it ends up being a no-brainer, right? Because you have these incredible founders that know their markets really well.
00:15:47
Speaker
They have an established community or customer base and they already made the numbers work because they've already been operating successfully for some time, right? So why then as an investor would you not want to go in and make
00:16:06
Speaker
a bet that is a lot more educated because it's based on a track record of success and actual data, like data that makes sense and data that is based on actual revenue.
Building a Venture Fund
00:16:20
Speaker
I'm totally here with you, so thank you so much for sharing that. I want to learn a little bit more about the operational side of things. Yeah, absolutely.
00:16:31
Speaker
I know that you're in the process of raising for fund number one, which is super exciting. Can you walk me through what that process has been like? Were there any maybe creative or unconventional strategies that you use to raise funds for seed to harvest that were particularly successful? Yeah, so what's interesting is unlike
00:16:57
Speaker
starting a company, whether that be a restaurant or a tech startup or accounting service or a consultancy. When you are building a venture fund, the only way to get paid is to raise the money. You can't build revenue beforehand because you make money based off fees. The second thing is that there's no real standard process. Again, for a company, you create an LLC or you can create a corporation.
00:17:27
Speaker
if you have any IP, you trademark it, and that's pretty much it, at least to get started. For a fund, you have to figure out a bunch of things already, and the best advice, and this is something I wish we had done a little bit more, is really get some soft commits before you
00:17:47
Speaker
You don't necessarily need to have the legal paperwork done in order to start raising money. And a good rule of thumb would be to call it soft committed, but people saying they're interested and have a specific amount that they're interested in before you do any paperwork. And it kind of builds out over time where you like file certain paperwork. Like the basic documents you usually need are LPA, which is like the limited partner agreement. So this agreement between you and the people who are investing, the fund managers and the people who are investing in the fund.
00:18:17
Speaker
The second, the things that you really want to focus on are like the fundamentals of what your fund will be. So the first part is like thesis, and it's really around like the thesis is just what you're going to invest in and like what your hypothesis is about the world. So for us, our thesis is women of color building software technology, right? For all people, it's like FinTech in South America. Whatever that is, it just helps people understand what you plan to invest in.
00:18:41
Speaker
And then the other parts that you want to think about are what's called your portfolio construction. So it's how much you're raising, what kind of check sizes you're writing, at what stage, and how many companies do you plan to invest in in total, and therefore all of that determines what your returns could look like.
00:18:59
Speaker
I say could look like because we all model out for 6x, 7x, whatever it is. But just like everyone's saying with all the banks and the world in general, you can't really plan for everything to go as planned. So it helps you though figure out what's your plan for success. So those are the basic things that you want to have.
00:19:19
Speaker
And then as you do the LPA, which involves lawyers, you do the LPA, you do a term sheet, which is kind of like a shortened version of your LPA. Once you get people to start signing everything, you do what's called a first close. And the first close is the first close on the money you're raising. So for us, we're raising 25 million dollars. And then when you do a first close, you can kind of do it at any amount you want, but it starts the clock for when you need to finish your fundraise.
00:19:45
Speaker
The good thing about all of this, and I think the thing too, that is both great and not so great when you're a newcomer about this is all extremely flexible, right? So normally you do a first close and your LPA would just give you about a year to finish the round close. And so I was like, say you like raising $50 million fund, you do a first close of $10 million, then you have 12 months to raise the next $40 million, and that starts the clock.
00:20:11
Speaker
The clock for most venture funds is 10 years, and that's your investment, the period of time you have to raise, deploy, and then get returns on the investment thing. You can always extend things, but that's the general timeline. The agreement that you're creating is, what's the agreement between yourself as fund managers and the LPs who are investing you for the next 10 years? Think of it like that.
00:20:35
Speaker
And so those are kind of like the pieces that you need to figure out. How that all comes together though is where the magic and confusion and the fun stuff happens. And so there's a lot of different ways that people can take approaches. The really interesting thing is that
00:20:51
Speaker
As most people know, VC has been very white and male for most of its history. Really, that's only started changing in the last decade to 15 years, and it's gotten increasingly more diverse. What's been really great in doing this in the past couple of years is meeting so many amazing emerging managers who have taken so many different approaches to fundraising, but also to how they do investments.
00:21:15
Speaker
So like usually a venture fund gives a startup money for a certain equity, aka ownership in their company. And what they're betting on is that they can basically, you know, buy low, sell high. So they can buy at a certain stage. They expect you to grow a certain amount so that when you either, when you have an exit, either you get acquired by another company or you IPO, it's at a higher amount. Therefore their shares are worth more. And so therefore when they sell those shares are just like when they think about like the assets they own.
00:21:45
Speaker
It is worth more than it was when they initially purchased it. As you know, that doesn't always go to plan, but that's the general idea of it. What's been really interesting with all of these, particularly women, have been just such
00:21:59
Speaker
Isabel and I joke a lot of the time, we're like, if we could just work every day and not have to talk to a man, that would be great. Because the women that we've been able to meet have just been so helpful. I literally talked to this woman, this is the last spring, and it was just when we were playing things together, we hadn't started fundraising yet, and we were really interested as people that worked and started. So me and Isabel's background in product development. I've been a product manager for over a decade. She's been a designer and engineer.
00:22:26
Speaker
for over a decade, and we've seen all of the fun effects of VC funding and technology. So the results of growth at all costs, the results of not really focusing on the problems of white males between New York and San Francisco, right? We've seen health consequences, we've seen the loss opportunity, we've seen the frustration, and that's a big reason why we want to build seed to harvest.
Networking and Fundraising Challenges
00:22:45
Speaker
But we were also interested in, are there other alternative ways to invest? And there's this idea called a redeemable warrant where you would go in, make the same equity purchase as a normal VC would, but a founder could actually buy back that equity at a certain rate, given they hit certain growth milestones. And so I was talking to this woman who that was what she was doing. They were using a redeemable warrant. And I was like, oh, that's really interesting to us. She was like, yes, we spent about $40,000 building this out. I'm just going to hand it to you because I don't think anyone else should have to spend this much money.
00:23:17
Speaker
So that's the kind of help you get from women in this industry right now who are just willing to be like, just because I had to do the hard work, I don't want anyone else to have to do it because I know that the more women, the more
00:23:29
Speaker
people who are doing the type of work that I'm doing are able to do this work, the easier it's going to be for all of us. And so we've just seen that time and time again. And that's really gone into like how we've approached fundraising where we have an amazing group of other funds that we work with to just get advice. We've been in the recast program, which is an enablement program where I've learned. And I think the biggest hurdle though, for me,
00:23:50
Speaker
as the person kind of leaves up our fundraising is really just like making the ask. I think for myself, I really struggle with the idea of like asking people, especially people I know for money, like that's never been a thing I've done, but also it is obviously much larger amounts of money. And I've also had the support of like amazing friends or the other inventors, just like friends of mine who've been really helpful in helping me realize like, this is an opportunity, like you are going to build wealth.
00:24:17
Speaker
And you want that for the people in your life as well. And this is a great opportunity. If they believe in that opportunity as well, like why wouldn't they put up that money? And so I also just think like,
00:24:29
Speaker
the biggest learnings for myself have really been just making the ask and seeing how much knowledge isn't available. One of our LPs is actually someone I went to college with. He's been a CTO multiple times, and we were talking one day and he was like, if I want to invest in your fund, do I have to just give you $100,000? I was like, no. He was like, really? I was like, don't you know anyone I've ever talked to before? He's like, no, no one's ever asked me to be an LP or fund or explain any of this to me.
00:24:58
Speaker
And I realized how many people in my life, and that's actually what's been the kind of women of color focused LP campaign is like how many people just don't have access to knowledge. And I think that's really a big barrier to wealth that I don't think a lot of people talk about. It's just the knowledge even know. Like I also was on a call and there was a woman who was a former GC at Google who had actually like advised a couple of VC funds.
00:25:23
Speaker
and had only recently become an LP and a woman-led fund because she, who was brilliant, like, where for a long time just didn't think she, like, could do it. Like, she didn't think she was the right person. No one ever asked her, right? There's so many people who just aren't asked to participate, who aren't told that they could participate, including even building out a fund.
00:25:45
Speaker
And that pisses me off. And so a lot of like the work that Isabelle and I do with our podcast and just in general was like, how do we help people understand the opportunities that are available and make sure that they can make the decision that's best for themselves?
00:26:01
Speaker
preach, Victoria, preach. That's exactly where 100% are aligned here because that's also what I want to do with my work. I think we're like so, so aligned. In fact, what prompted me to start this podcast was, okay.
00:26:16
Speaker
I think the world of venture is very elitist. Opportunities in that space are usually reserved for very privileged, very well educated, very well connected individuals and mostly white dudes, right?
00:26:33
Speaker
Yes, the industry is changing, but not quickly enough. And even the amazing funds that have emerged, I had Elizabeth Galbet, who's the co-founder of SoGal on recently, and her and her co-founder Pocket Sun were arguably one of the first women in the space, right? And we're talking about, yes, it's great that things are changing, but the problem is that the
00:27:03
Speaker
The amount of money that all of these women-led funds are raising are still pretty minuscule in comparison to the traditional male-led funds, right, who oftentimes
00:27:18
Speaker
have nine figure funds, like that's, that's absolutely crazy, right? So yes, it's great that things are changing, but it's a completely different league that these white men are in,
Women Investing for Global Change
00:27:30
Speaker
right? So where I'm coming from with my community and this podcast is like, Hey, I want to equip a broader set of women with the knowledge and the access to all of this information so that I can help them first start building their wealth.
00:27:47
Speaker
through more traditional avenues such as investing in the stock market, for example, and just being more mindful about their personal finance in general and building that self-confidence. But already I want them in their 20s. My community consists mainly of women in their mid 20s to early 30s. I want to start thinking about, okay, how can I start building wealth?
00:28:09
Speaker
so that I can put myself in a position where eventually I can leverage my own personal resources to pay forward to other women, become an angel investor, become an LP in a fund like Seat to Harvest, for example, without necessarily having to write 100K checks or like 500K checks, right?
00:28:30
Speaker
Starting out maybe with 5K or 10K or even there's SPVs, special purpose vehicles these days. There is alternative investment platforms such as Republic where you can start investing with as little as 50 bucks. So many opportunities in the space, but
00:28:50
Speaker
These spaces don't have enough people and specifically women and women of color in them yet because historically we haven't been invited to the table, right? So I absolutely love that we're so aligned on this because it's just like really, really
00:29:07
Speaker
virtuous cycle, right? People or women of color start building wealth, then they can invest it in other women. And because women are more likely to invest in organizations, companies, and causes that are more likely to benefit their own children, their communities are planned as a whole.
00:29:24
Speaker
This has the potential to have this really, really gigantic global domino effect where we could tackle things like climate change, for example, and hunger and poverty, and really invest money in those places, but also in for-profit companies that
00:29:46
Speaker
can change the way we think. This new community, especially like they call it emerging managers of women, they've even thought about that from like, there's something about people coming in with new perspectives that really makes you rethink a system. And that's something Isabelle and I talk about a lot and that's what we connected on. We're both really systems thinkers. Like we're root cause people, like we hate a band-aid, we hate treating the symptoms. It's really about, if you're looking at the venture capital ecosystem and the tech ecosystem that exists within it,
00:30:16
Speaker
There's issues that we see, and we talk about this a lot in terms of growth at all costs, really focusing on one type of founder and therefore customer. And we break it down to like, if we want to create this as a medic chain is like change. It's like who gets to be a founder and who writes the check. For us, it's like really focusing on women of color and also being check writers that have practical, tactical,
00:30:37
Speaker
product development experience at the early stage. Like I've done multiple zero to one products. Isabel has also done product microfit to scale. We know the common pitfalls. We know how to make sure companies succeed product wise and set them up for success long term. But we think about check writers and expand that, right? There's so many women already thinking about like, how do we go after just like, cause the ecosystem won't change, right? If we don't even have those top funders change, right? If the top funders and funds are still majority white,
00:31:04
Speaker
men in white male led institutions. And so there are women talking about smaller check sizes, like we're participating in something called the new table campaign, which is through how women invest, where they're specifically focusing on like lowering the amount of check sizes. And like, I know plenty of women who've even taken like five, $10,000 checks. And like, again, these aren't checks that you give out day one, even if you were to do a $25,000 check, like for instance, with us, like we have a four year period. So you'd be writing six and a half grand, you know, every year.
00:31:34
Speaker
over a four-year period, right? Same thing with any time you invest in a fund, it's usually not all upfront. It's like you break that up over a certain number of years, right? And so what's really important to realize is that is like not only just that understanding of how it actually works, it's not like angel investing, we have to give up the money all upfront, it comes out over time, so you're able to plan more.
00:31:53
Speaker
But two, the women in our circle and the women that I've seen are really focused on creating more access because the great thing about crowdfunding, it gets you started at $501,000, so you see how it works, and you build the confidence to write bigger and bigger checks. I think what we're all hoping is not just for the sake of our funds, you get in early, start writing bigger and bigger checks, but for yourself, the more that you curate that conviction, the more you're willing to participate, the more likely you can generate the vote that can really set you up for success long-term.
00:32:24
Speaker
It's so funny that you mentioned how women invest because I had Julie on the podcast fairly recently as well. We all get it, right? And that's why I love having this conversation with you because we need to make sure that more and more women, women of color, young women,
00:32:42
Speaker
Get to listen in on these conversations so they can then start having these conversations with their own friends and their friends and their friends over and over and over again, right? Because you, you so more than me, but I've been slowly getting into the space myself as well. Like we have pre-established networks at this point, but a lot of the people that listen to our podcasts don't necessarily.
00:33:05
Speaker
Have that access right so it's all about education and breaking down barriers and so I absolutely love that and I think what you mentioned there about you know smaller checks and
00:33:18
Speaker
they being written over the course of four years. I think that's also so, so important to note because historically the minimums, again, were like six, sometimes seven figure checks, right? And so it's just not accessible whatsoever. Even for women, and this is what Julie and I actually were talking about a lot, even for women who have that kind of cash. Yeah.
00:33:45
Speaker
They don't want to write 500k checks because they're not more risk averse, but more risk aware, more risk aware. And they see the value in diversifying their investments and spreading them across many different companies and founders and industries and whatsoever. So yeah, 100% aligned there. That's an interesting thing too. It's like, I've really...
00:34:10
Speaker
Oh, this sounds so corny, but I don't care. But I really never understood how much knowledge is power more than I have in the past year and a half. Because even if you're thinking about writing those checks, you assume you have to have $100,000 or $500,000 and the bank are ready to go, right? But you actually don't. You could invest, and this is still a more wealthy thing, but a donor-advised fund, if you guys ask to, you can actually invest in an IRA. IRA. There's so many ways to do this.
00:34:38
Speaker
But so much of the information is not available to people. It's not easily accessible. And it's something we're really working on and making things more accessible to people. But obviously, we're only one fund, and there's more funds doing it. And so that's great.
00:34:53
Speaker
But just having the knowledge, the understanding of what's flexible, even when we did our Women of Color LP event, one of the women on the panel, she was talking about how even though it was minimal, she was like, honestly, if you're really interested, just push back because if a friend really wants you, they'll work with you. And that's true, right? Like for us, like we have our minimum, but for people that we know could provide really good value to us, like so say there's someone with a really strong financial background, like
00:35:18
Speaker
We are amazing at building products and we have enough financial expertise to be dangerous, but having more of that is only going to help us be a better fund or somebody with even more practical expertise around PR or marketing. That's not only helpful for us as a fund, but also helpful to our portfolio companies. So maybe we give you the opportunity to come in at a lower check because we know you can provide additional value. The strongest thing about women,
00:35:43
Speaker
I've seen a lot of those like the mass challenge, I believe like first rounds overview of their investments as well. Like women deliver higher ROIs, about 30% higher than men do. And I think that is not just in investment dollars, but in just in general, women come
00:35:58
Speaker
with receipts. We've been forced to be over prepared, as you mentioned, to know that we have to be able to deliver results when men get hired based off what they've done, men get hired based off their potential. And so when you bring women on to be investors, I'd much rather take a lower check size from you, but know that you're going to help market our fund and help market our portfolio companies. Or you're a lawyer, you're going to look over some of these contracts for free. Like I have one of my best friends, she's been a lawyer, I actually have a lot of lawyer friends from some reason.
00:36:26
Speaker
She's been a startup lawyer for years and she has frequently looked over our deal contracts for free because she's committed and she's amazing at what she does and she makes sure that we have the support that we need. And so I have no problem taking a smaller check when I know the benefits are going to make more than make up for the actual cash that might not be there. So like never stop what people say is the rule from you actually trying. If you want to invest in a fund and you know you can't do
00:36:55
Speaker
$100,000 or whatever they're saying that that is, but you have a skill, market
Blending Social Impact and Profit
00:37:01
Speaker
it. Because the best thing you can do is get that practice for yourself, show that value and get that confidence so that you can keep doing it, keep making money off of it, and keep building not only just that wealth of money, but that wealth of reputation, that wealth of knowledge, that wealth of connection. That's so important. And what I've seen as I've really gotten to know more and more
00:37:22
Speaker
very wealthy or very well connected to people. It's not just the money, it's that knowledge, it's that confidence, it's that network of knowing that if this person succeeds, I succeed, that I think people are really trying to build even now, which I love being a part of, but also what we want to build to see to harvest too.
00:37:43
Speaker
Again, preach, preach, preach, and to your point just now, at the end of today, it's all about building something together with other people, you know, and learning from each other and growing. And yes, I mean, when you're in the venture world or in the entrepreneurial world, at least for profit, you know, yes, money matters. We talked about it in the beginning, like money equals freedom, like a hundred percent, but making good money and
00:38:12
Speaker
social impact, having a positive impact on people's lives, like those are not mutually exclusive. And speaking of social impact, I want to pivot our conversation a little bit, Victoria. When you build a social impact organization, I definitely consider C to harvest a social impact organization. And when you're very vocal in that space, it costs a lot of energy.
00:38:37
Speaker
Yeah, activist burnout is real. I think both you and I probably have lots of experience with that, especially once you've become aware of all of these different layers of discrimination, particularly the covert forms of discrimination, which are even more dangerous and harmful than the very overt ones.
Mental Health and Resilience
00:38:56
Speaker
That's impossible to unsee once you've seen that. And that's particularly challenging for individuals whose identities intersect with multiple marginalized social dimensions, such as race and your case, for example. When you hear those types of stats, like the ones that I read out earlier, added additional ones, you hear that all the time.
00:39:19
Speaker
And I'm sure that you were leveraging those as a source of motivation. And then we've talked about how you do that over the past 40 minutes or so, but it's probably easier on some days than on others. Victoria, curious to hear how do you take care of your mental health in this process and what recommendations do you have for other women of color who probably feel defeated more often than not?
00:39:45
Speaker
Yeah, so there's a couple, just the context. So what's interesting and why I'm saying this is we're actually not an impact fund. We don't consider ourselves an impact fund, but by the very nature of who we invest in and who we are, we make impact and that's just like a given. And I think that is probably the hardest part and like something I've struggled with personally and in this kind of newer role, and even previously professionally my entire life, it's like,
00:40:12
Speaker
having to always be different is so straining, so draining. One, it's like I walk in a room, I look different. I remember my first consulting role, I was working at a large airline, I was meeting the team that I would be taking over, and one of the clients looked at me, he was just like, where'd you go to school? I was like, okay, yeah. The first part of his mouth, right? But I was like Stanford, and he was like, okay, and I was like,
00:40:39
Speaker
I also look like I will be even with my gray hair people. So like you're 22, right? I'm like, I mean, thanks, but absolutely not. So that, that's one thing, but I, but I think it's really hard to even be aware of how much just being new creates a barrier to entry or more need to explain or get people being like.
00:40:58
Speaker
You should be impactful and it's like, no, like we're trying to make money. We're trying to change the world, but we know we have to do that with money. And we also aren't trying to be beholden to, for lack of a better phrase, charity dollars. We're making investments with people and we expect these to be invested returns, like a regular investment.
00:41:18
Speaker
You know, some days I'm better at it than others. I think Isabel and I have been amazing accountability partners. She's really pushed me. We worked together seven years ago at a company called Hustle, which is a protection company. We built enterprise products together and teams and blah, blah.
00:41:33
Speaker
But we both knew a lot about working with each other already. And so when I'm pushing myself to her, she's like, you need to take a break, you need to go on vacation, let's make sure that happens. Or when she's pushing herself to her, I'm like, you gotta chill, do these other things. So we've been really good accountability partners. I will say for me,
00:41:51
Speaker
a couple of things that have really helped. The first is really not letting these narratives around what is expected of you as a woman, particularly one of color, be internalized as much as possible. And I think about everything from assuming that for women of color, they have to write smaller checks.
00:42:12
Speaker
to assuming that women of color only build certain types of companies or that, you know, there's not enough of them, right? People are always like, are you sure? That's like, seems like really niche. And I'm like, we have a, we've built a pipeline of about 300 companies within a year. So yeah, we're confident they're out there, right? These narratives become, which is unfortunate, more important than facts sometimes, right? There's so many studies around how people repeat facts that they've been told aren't true, but they've heard it so much and they just don't care anymore, right? That's not what your brain absorbs. Your brain absorbs stories, not data.
00:42:43
Speaker
Just checking in with yourself and seeing what narratives are you absorbing that you don't want to absorb and try to figure out with yourself or with your support circle how to let go of those. The second thing is really building in time. We both agreed in the beginning that we each take a vacation at least once a quarter for at least a week, right? Building in times to take a break, making yourself accountable to that is really, really important in doing that before things get crazy because once they get crazy,
00:43:11
Speaker
You're already on the crazy train, right? It's hard to like get off, right? I think something that's been especially important for me is building a really comprehensive support network. And that includes like, chosen family. That includes having a therapist. That includes we got executive coaching through the recast program, which was a fucking godsend.
00:43:33
Speaker
I am all supported up. I think that's especially important for women of color because I think we're often pushed. This is hopefully not too big of a tangent. But when I think a lot about the narratives of being strong and being able to take care of yourself,
00:44:00
Speaker
Like what I found is like so much of like what's talked about with like white womanhood is like figuring out how to be strong, how to take care of yourself versus women of color. It's like already assumed that you are strong and that you know how to take care of yourself, which means it's really hard to build a support system because everyone thinks you're fine. And like for me myself, at times I've internalized that like, Oh, I should just be able to do it by myself. And like, I just assume I have to do everything by myself.
00:44:22
Speaker
But this is the hardest thing I've ever done and it has forced me to really take stock and build real support around me because you can't do this. You can't do something, you can't go big if you don't have a strong foundation to do it off of. So building that and really letting my friends love me, take care of me, that means staying with them because I was like, I really need to save money, so I'm just going to stay with you.
00:44:44
Speaker
or more, or, you know, Miami dinner or just talking to me, telling me I'm doing what I'm doing makes sense, even when it's really hard. Like that has been so important for me to be able to continue this work. Because if I didn't have the people in my life to rely on, I wouldn't be able to do this. First of all, thank you so much for being so vulnerable, Victoria. I really, really appreciate it. You know, as a white woman, I'm not gonna sit here and say, I know what you're going through because I never will. So I just want to say,
00:45:15
Speaker
It was important for me to hold that space for you and I hear you, I see you and thank you for sharing that. And I know that this will be very, very helpful to a lot of women of color out there who are listening. So thank you for.
00:45:30
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. What I loved about what, I mean, I loved everything that you just shared, but seeing how I want to talk a little bit about Isabelle as well. What I love about what you were just mentioning was the fact that you are each other's biggest accountability buddies, which is incredible. And the fact that you hold each other accountable for taking at least a week off per quarter is incredible. How un-American of you. I love her.
00:45:58
Speaker
I know. The first time I traveled to Europe, I was gone for three weeks. They were like, wow, you're an American traveler for three weeks. I was like, I love that we had this reputation because you're not wrong, but this is hilarious to me. No, it's amazing because I'm from Europe originally. So to me, I don't get it. Why people don't take vacation, I don't get why people only take one week of vacation at a time. It just, I don't get it. I was in Costa Rica recently just for a week, right? Because I live in New York, so I don't have a destination, unfortunately.
00:46:26
Speaker
But there we went on these guided tours through the cloud forest and we met a bunch of Germans. I'm from Germany originally, so meeting a bunch of my people all the way in Costa Rica was just very funny in and of itself. But then we got into a conversation and I asked them, so like, yeah, like how long are you here for like two weeks? And like all of them were like, no, 18 nights. And I'm like, okay, all right, good for you. Good for you. I love it.
00:46:51
Speaker
Yeah, so I mean, there's a lot of things I miss about Europe, but that's probably one of the bigger ones, the number of occasions that they have.
Cultural Dynamics and Partnerships
00:47:00
Speaker
So I loved hearing that, but on a more, I don't know if serious is the right word, but for lack of a better word, serious note, your fun partner Isabelle, I believe is white or at least she is white passing. Yeah, she's white. She's white, okay.
00:47:16
Speaker
How do you navigate the dynamics of having a white partner in terms of decision-making and understanding the unique challenges that women of color face that, again, she will probably never be able to fully understand by virtue of her white privilege?
00:47:32
Speaker
Yeah. So what's interesting about our relationship, first on like, we talked about this a lot, sometimes with investors don't seek it to a certain level, but we both grew up with like really diverse backgrounds. So I went to this small private Catholic school in Atlanta that we used to get this like diversity award every year for like excellence of diversity, like a national award. I was like, what the...
00:47:57
Speaker
I mean, I was a child, but I was like, why are we getting this? It's so silly. But I grew up in a very small class, but it was still very diverse. And we talked about and celebrated diversity all the time. Isabelle similarly grew up in Indiana and really had a diverse background. Her mom was really focused on having her kids understand all religions. So she's practiced multiple religions. She had a very diverse upbringing.
00:48:25
Speaker
And so we both had this kind of like...
00:48:28
Speaker
diverse perspective growing up and that really we came to our adulthood when. The thing I've always appreciated about Isabelle is that she is someone who speaks up for things without trying to get credit for it. So when we worked together, there was issues like pretty much every company around race and gender. There was a particular company meeting where a lot of the black employees were talking about issues that were going on.
00:48:56
Speaker
I can't remember exactly who it was, but they said something and this white guy stepped up and he was like, I don't think we should be talking about the dollars that are committed to this thing. It's really about people's time. And she like said, she was like, what are you talking about? Like, that's just like not the case at all.
00:49:11
Speaker
but this wasn't someone thing told her to do. She wasn't like, hey guys, were you impressed by what I did? She's just always been a person who speaks up for things without wanting to get credit for it and who's just had a really diverse experience without ever being like, so I had this black friend or I had this whatever friend, I was talking about taking my braids one day and she was like, oh yeah, I used to help my roommate take out her braids all the time and she would have the same issue. And I was like, well, if you were helping her take out her braids, I know she is someone who won't,
00:49:40
Speaker
at least that I've never seen and hopefully won't ever make the women that we want to invest in, that we want to help, that we want to work with, ever feel like they are less than or that she doesn't believe in them and she's never made me feel that way or any other people in my life. And so for me, it was very important that I had a partner that I could trust to be alone with women of color. If I didn't trust her to be alone with women of color, she wouldn't be my partner. And I remember when we first originally started Seed to Harvest,
00:50:07
Speaker
We were generally focused on all underrepresented founders. And then the more research we did and we realized how large the funding gap was and just how much of opportunity there was to just focus on women of color. We decided to change that. And I was talking to her about, I was like, Hey, are you okay with this? Because the thesis, you know, you could have some personal stake in it. But now that's not happening. She was like, I don't care. This is what's best. And I'm really excited about this. Right. And so.
00:50:31
Speaker
For me, that's really built the confidence both previously and throughout this journey to know that we have the right partner and also that she's aware of what it looks like to be the white woman and focusing on women of color and aware of how she should navigate that and what that should look like and open to feedback if it's not working the way it should be. For me, that's really important that she's both aware and that she
00:50:59
Speaker
doesn't center herself because I think that's the hardest part about having a white partner or whiteness in something, especially when you focus on diversity, it tends to focus the whiteness instead of the people who we're supposed to focus on.
00:51:13
Speaker
I think she's aware of that and that's something that like she makes sure doesn't happen. And so that's really important to me. And like, I think why our relationship has been so successful, but you know, we'll continue to see it. I have no doubt, even if something does happen, that we can't work through it because she showed me to be the type of person who's more focused on the mission and the work that we're doing than her own sense of ego and importance.
00:51:40
Speaker
That's wonderful to hear. And I think the most important thing here is, you know, having a growth mindset because like she might have a very high level of awareness, but she's going
Learning from Mistakes
00:51:55
Speaker
to fuck up. Yeah. You know, but like owning that, like I've had my fair share of white fragility moments for sure. And, uh, luckily I was being called out on them not too often because again, white privilege, but
00:52:08
Speaker
my best friend, who's a black woman, straight up called me out on some of that stuff. And that hurt at first, but then I had to take a step back and be like, Tamina, this is your white fragility. Take some time to reflect. Yes. Take this as a learning opportunity, and then, you know, you come back stronger, you know, as two people who love each other, who care about each other, who trust one another, and it can be a really
00:52:32
Speaker
Not like pivotal, but a milestone in a relationship that allows you to grow together even stronger and evolve as friends and allies. So I love, I love hearing that. One final question for you today, Victoria. What's a financial milestone that you have achieved that you're most proud of?
00:52:50
Speaker
I'm going to sneak a sack and say two just because one's short. So when the first one was in my mid-20s when I paid off my student loans, I definitely worked being a consultant and to be like, I don't pay for anything. Let me just pay off these loans. I don't think about this every. But the second thing is I actually started building my own personal portfolio in 2020. So it's funny, my friend joke about this, but it's like sometimes I prepare for things and don't really realize what I'm preparing for.
00:53:14
Speaker
My financial advisor through a job I had told me in my late 20s, they're like, you should not be having this much cash. You really got to do something with this. And I was like, okay. Ended doing things for a couple of years. But then I really sat down. I was like, I kind of just had this inkling that I was going to be doing something. I was like, let me kind of move around my money so that it's making money while I might not be making money, if that makes sense.
00:53:36
Speaker
And so I set up different things where I had like a general like welfare account, but I also started making some, my own like a couple of angel investments. I also like set up like a REIT investment, like, which is a real estate investment portfolio. And I also explored mental like masterworks and investing in some paintings, but really just figuring out, okay, what do I.
00:53:56
Speaker
think about as an investor, what do I want to achieve outside of just financial goals? It was really important to me to be able to set myself up to success, especially now when I'm like, money's tight running, trying to raise money and all that stuff, that I know that I have money out there still working for me even now. That just makes me really proud of myself and really grateful that it's helping me new to just set myself up for the long-term.
00:54:24
Speaker
As you should, you should be so proud of yourself. And it's all about making that money work for you in the background without you having to lift a single finger. Exactly. Victoria, thank you so so much for joining me today. This was a blast. I really, really enjoyed our conversation. And thank you for all the important work that you do. Thank you so much.
00:54:46
Speaker
Hey there, not so fast. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you've listened in from today. Reviews are a podcaster's most important currency. It helps me create visibility for the incredible women who join me on this show. And if you've made it this far, I'd like to believe that supporting women is one of your favorite pastimes.
00:55:10
Speaker
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