My Journey to Investing … and Introducing F7

I left Facebook at the end of 2017 excited about a new adventure ahead. With 7+ years of hard work, unprecedented scale and little sleep, I committed to giving myself some time to explore and think deeply about what I wanted next. Facebook had changed dramatically from when I joined in 2010 with less than 1,000 people to the 40K+ they have now. I had incredible growth experiences from building their Mid Market Sales team to 150 people and over $1B in revenue to managing a global product marketing organization for Ads & Commerce (>$15B business). And I was ready to reflect on the journey, reflect on my own evolution over that time period and figure out how I wanted to contribute to the world next.

As an immediate next step, I joined Foundation Capital as an Entrepreneur in Residence and took a step deeper into the start-up ecosystem. This gave me a front row seat to listen to pitches, meet with start-up founders and think about industries and sectors that were most interesting to me. I watched the art and science of investing play out each week and what influenced decision making. I learned the importance of founder fit, large markets and the challenges of customer acquisition at scale. I refined my own investment criteria and experienced the highs of supporting incredible innovation and passionate founders and the lows of saying no to great people and ideas. And I learned that I want to play a role in supporting incredible founders at their earliest stages. With so few women investing and supporting the next wave of innovation, I want to increase those numbers and “be the change.” We need more women and diverse voices at the founding table and the investment table.

I met with over 50 investors (VCs, angels, incubators) over the past year. (A big shout out to the All Raise and female investment community in particular that have been gracious with their time and advice.) Each person that I spoke with emphasized learning by doing. So that’s what I did. I started meeting with inspiring founders each week and started writing small checks on my own. I also started talking to other women about doing the same. I can distinctly remember one conversation with my good friend, Sarah Smith, sitting at her kitchen stools in her home in Palo Alto … As we talked about angel investing, she spoke of her experience with Graph Ventures over the years and how valuable that experience had been to her investing career. At that moment, I asked what she thought about me starting a small angel fund and if she would be up for doing it together. She quickly said yes and F(x) was born. I reached out to a small group of former female (and fabulous) Facebook colleagues and we quickly assembled our group of 7. With that, I could not be more excited to invest and support founders with this incredible group and introduce you to our new seed fund, F7. Read the details here: https://medium.com/@kkgraz/introducing-f7-ed61ea3eff2f