Meet Dr. Theresa Johnson — from Stanford PhD to data scientist, Airbnb Product Manager, and Angel Investor
Highlights from the AMA with Dr. Theresa Johnson on Elpha
Dr. Theresa Johnson is currently an angel investor and product manager working on financial intelligence at Airbnb where she has previously worked as a data scientist. She also is an Investment Scout for Sequoia Capital and has completed First Round Capital’s Angel Track Investor program. Her education was obtained at Stanford where she has received her BS, MS, and PhD in engineering.
These are the highlights of her AMA on Elpha, where women in tech talk candidly online. You can check out the entirety of the conversation on Elpha.
Q: Can you talk about the transition from data science team to PM, how did it change your work flow? What teams do you work with today?
Theresa: Now that I’m a PM, I’m more of a synthesizer and collaborator instead of being the subject matter expert. I still need head-down focus time, but less of it. And I need to communicate a LOT more with the team and stakeholders across the company.
Since Payments is a platform that powers all of Airbnb, I work with everyone from Policy teams, to Guest Growth to experiences, Trust, Customer Support… there’s a huge list!
Q: Could you unpack the financial intelligence work you’re doing at Airbnb for us?
Theresa: Financial Intelligence focuses on how to use Payments Data to better serve our community. One example is that we build the in-house forecast and forecasting tools for all of Airbnb.
The engineering side of the house has deep expertise in big data — from architecture and strategy. I LOVE talking about AI/ML Product Management strategy as I think its a relatively under explored area. That’s part of why in my move to product I was so passionate about this area.
Q: How do you prioritize your time / focus between your “day job” as a PM, your own angel investing, and scouting on behalf of Sequoia?
Theresa: There are lots of parts of angel investing, but the biggest are relationship building and analysis. For the relationship building part, that’s happening all the time.
We never know who might have a big idea! In my day-to-day work, I’m surrounded by talented thought-leaders across many different types of innovation.
For the part that involves analysis and deep-dives, I spend some free time after hours and on weekends digging into company decks and metrics, or new areas I want to learn about. This was how I made my first scout investment in a cyber security startup, knowing little about the field when I began.
Q: Could you share a story of what led you to become an investment scout, how did you come across the opportunity? What are you proud of accomplishing and what are the limitations for this role?
Theresa: I credit women angel investors I met who are part of #Angels for raising my awareness that the Scout programs existed. Before hearing a talk from them in First Round’s Angel Track, I didn’t know about the scout programs that exist across multiple firms.
For becoming a Sequoia Scout, specifically, I built a relationship with Alfred Lin after his talk at First Round.
During his talk, I heard a combination of data-geek and focus on values driven growth that really resonated with me. So I reached out to chat about some investments I was considering.
After a few chats, he asked if I’d like to join in the next class.So I credit a combination of preparedness on my part plus mentorship (#Angels) and sponsorship from Sequoia.
I feel most proud of being able to influence talented founders who might have homogenous teams to diversify early as a strategy for growth. I don’t see any limitations!
Q: Have you ever had a time when you did something to embarrass yourself, mess up, or not do a great jobs with something the first time? What are some suggestions to recover?
Theresa: I absolutely LOVE this question. I keep a running Failure Resume, which is a concept I learned from Tina Seelig at Stanford.
If you’re not failing, you’re probably not pushing very far out of your comfort zone.
4.5 out of 5 years of my PhD at Stanford was failure. In order to keep pushing the boundaries of space plasma physics, I had to fail more times than I landed on the right answer.
I would reframe the experience as one to learn from, instead of recover from. Mistakes are both an expected and needed part of our careers.
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