Executing Change
Great panel promoting women founders and capital allocators in the Batgirl Cave 🦇🏍💥 at Google in San Francisco!
I was joined on the panel by Laura Lucas, GP of L'ATTITUDE VENTURES, Joy Mbanugo, J.D., MAcc., CFO of CXAI (NASDAQ CXAI), Julie Castro Abrams, Managing Partner of How Women Invest/CEO How Women Lead, and Azin Radsan van Alebeek, Co-Founder and GP of Emmeline Ventures. Giselle Valdez Jackson, Executive Director in the Wells Fargo Tech Banking group was a terrific moderator as usual.
Topics discussed ranged from personal journeys as founders, operators, and investors to advice for everyone on the role they can play in facilitating and benefiting from a more inclusive economy.
CAN YOU MAKE A DIFFERENCE?
For sure.
We have heard the numbers or experienced directly how non-inclusive the innovation economy is. Women, people of color, Hispanics, people over 50 starting over, parents and other caregivers who have taken a break in their careers, etc. are underrepresented and don’t deserve to be.
We are not talking charity. Extremely talented, energetic, experienced, go-getters are looking for a chance to build, scale, invest … and flourish. And so many of us are deeply committed to making our efforts meaningfully impact people and the planet. It’s a HUGE opportunity.
Yes, it is values. It is shared values to be inclusive and socially AWESOME while enabling innovation and driving great returns for investors.
Great opportunities abound to hire, invest in, and enable teams of talented people that can blow away the old economy to smithereens with incredible insight, hussle, and solutions that many people have been waiting for. It’s about living our best lives, collectively.
Cool. There is a pile of money waiting to be made by doing the inclusive thing.
HOW IS IT DONE?
Founders, network early and often. You will be telling your story over and over. Focus on your unique insight into and positioning on a problem that many people have, for which you have or are creating a solution that is uniquely innovative that many, many people will pay for, and SHOW ME THE DATA. Your data. No one else has this.
Slick talking can get you far, but it is not enough for smart institutional money. Show insight that can be verified, make meaningful partnerships, build lean and what people tell you they want/need. And… SHOW ME THE TRACTION.
Get stuck? Fall flat? No problem if you can show what you learned and how you will fix it and build better. Do it faster, better, and with a clearer mission for outsized returns for all stakeholders involved.
Pitching an alien? 👽 If you are pitching someone you think can’t relate to you, remember that person can relate to an opportunity to make stacks of cash 💰, clearly presented. Speak the language an investor can relate to and prove you are the one. Get people the investors trust to love what you do.
Investors, do your diligence outside of your comfort zones. Get to know the undervalued. Don’t go soft, source more widely. It is always about the sourcing. Listen before you judge. Let the undervalued prove to you what can go right and how they mitigate risks. Small checks before big checks. Small steps before big steps.
Invest according to your values.
A big thanks to Google Cloud (Farris Pine), Wells Fargo (Giselle Valdez Jackson), FEI | Financial Executives International (FEI- Josette Ferrer ), and How Women Invest/ How Women Lead (Julie Castro Abrams) for sponsoring this panel and another well-received screening of the full feature documentary Show Her The Money. What started as a 50 city tour became a 100+ city global movement to keep the conversation going for getting inclusivity and equity in the innovation economy. The film spotlights the path to greater opportunities for women on both the investing and founding/ venture building side.
Let’s do this thing!