Entrepreneurial Empathy: Working at Chingona Ventures and Startups
For the past few months I’ve had the pleasure of working with the Chingona Ventures team, investing in overlooked founders at the earliest stages. I met Samara Hernandez around this time last year and was so impressed with her story and drive to start her own fund after years of working at larger investment firms.
Until last year, I hadn’t ever considered myself a potential investor. From 2015–2018 I worked at EdTech startup Clever in San Francisco, and to this day it’s been one of the best jobs I’ve ever had — I never imagined moving into another area of the tech industry. I loved the feeling of knowing every person on my team, the collective passion we had in working towards a common mission, and the sense of possibility that came with an almost terrifying degree of autonomy. I came to business school planning to return to startups and entrepreneurial ecosystems but have realized through my work with Chingona Ventures that newly created venture funds are actually startups in their own right, with all the possibility of an early company.
A Small But Mighty Team
Samara, Kinsey and I made up the small-but-mighty Chingona Ventures team the past few months. By my rough estimations, we vetted over 200 companies and met with over 90 of them, across industries as broad-ranging as sexual health, financial services, education, and enterprise software sales. The only way this kind of range was possible was because of how small and tight-knit our team is. We started each Monday morning off with a two and a half hour Zoom meeting. While to many that might sound (very) long, it was one of the highlights of my week — hearing about the interesting deals each of us was reviewing, debating back and forth about its merits, and uncovering additional questions for diligence. Much like my time at Clever, knowing each person on my team and working closely with them each day helped us deliver beyond what we thought three people possibly could.
Mission Driven Focus
Chingona Ventures’ thesis centers around investing in overlooked companies and entrepreneurs at the earliest stages. At our core all three of us believe in and understand that mission — for me, I’ve worked in startups and tech for years and was excited to join an investment team that considered overlooked founders as a huge opportunity. The mission is broad enough to encompass everything from democratizing financial access and education to creating more engaging sexual harassment training and even more culturally relevant content and educational materials. Having a common vocabulary and tight thesis around what values we are looking for in companies made it easy to advocate for or debate certain deals, especially those traditionally overlooked by most investors.
Entrepreneurs Investing In Entrepreneurs
At our core, Chingona Ventures is also a startup. I’ve worked for other venture firms (Kapor Capital and Plug and Play Ventures) over the past year, but this was the first experience where I saw how raising your own fund is much like starting a company. Samara raised her first fund in 2019 and recently announced PayPal Ventures as one of the LP’s in her second fund. I watched her diligently prepare for potential LP meetings, meticulously reviewing decks and email correspondence. In the same way that we were evaluating potential investments, LP’s were evaluating our fund. It gave me a special empathy and understanding for the preparation that goes through each founder’s meeting with an investor and made me reevaluate how to best use an entrepreneur’s time during meetings.
I’m grateful for the opportunity to have worked with this entire team, and to have learned from Samara — for helping me develop a lens towards evaluating overlooked companies and founders and helping me realize some of best investors are entrepreneurs as well.
