From Product to Venture

I joined the PJC team in February 2020 as an investor focusing on early stage enterprise and b2b SaaS investments. I spent the majority of my career working with products on the operator side, first at Epic and then at Toast, so leaping to venture capital was a pretty dramatic career shift, and something that my friends, family, former teammates — even strangers — are super curious about. One question I get a lot is “why did you choose PJC?” I love this one because it’s easy and fun to answer — our team is super approachable and authentic. It also doesn’t hurt that we were co-founded by a woman 20 years before it was in vogue to do so 💁‍♀️. But no doubt, the question I get asked most frequently, especially from other women exploring the next stages of their career, is something like, “How did you make the transition to VC?” It’s usually then followed up with a request for advice on how to prepare for a similar career move. These are great questions, and I feel like after a year and some change in the world of venture capital, I can humbly take a crack at answering.

I think what people are trying to decode when they ask how I ended up in VC is, “How can someone with a ‘non-traditional’ background get into VC?” My answer is often … anticlimactic. I’ve just always enjoyed building new things and working hard alongside really smart people. I’m curious and inherently gravitate towards people who are fantastic storytellers and great executioners (the most important traits of excellent founders), but the rest was kind of serendipitous. When I analyze my experience and distill it down, I’d say there are three things about my career background that really helped me make the transition into VC.

✨ 3 ways to optimize your PM experience for a career in venture capital

Focus on relationships 👥

It’s becoming more widely recognized that the hard skills and sensibilities needed to excel in product management are transferable to a role in early stage VC. Every time I evaluate a potential investment opportunity at PJC, I draw upon the skills I built as a PM working through a new product or initiative. In both worlds you need to:

• understand what an envisioned product actually does and decide if it solves a big enough problem
• evaluate what the overall market trends are for the industry (is it growing, is something unique happening, is there room for another winner?) and if it’s worth pursuing
• analyze different business models and key metrics
• have an opinions on the best go-to-market and user acquisition strategies

This usually needs to get done expediently and without all the data, which means you need to ask the right questions and rely on good instincts. Same goes for a PM who is synthesizing data from an urgent customer conversation — you need to have good intuition and make decisions quickly. But the best preparation that product management gives you for a role in VC is being great at relationship management. Julia Austin, a Harvard professor who studied characteristics of the best product managers wrote:

“By forming authentic and trustworthy connections with both internal and external stakeholders, the best PMs inspire people and help them reach their full potential. Relationship management is also vital in successful negotiation, resolving conflicts, and working with others toward a shared goal.”

As a PM, there are myriad stakeholders to answer to — executives, engineering, customer success, other PMs, partners, marketing. Think about all the people you need to influence when launching a new feature or product. The list is huge. How do you ensure that everyone on that list feels great about the product you’re launching? You make them feel good about you, however that needs to happen. A similar set of stakeholders exists in VC — founders, other investors, board members, your partners. Being authentic and trustworthy to all these folks can be the difference that creates buy-in for a deal or helps a founder decide that your fund is the right capital partner.

Own a compelling product area 🤝

My early product days were spent shoulder to shoulder with the head of business development building products to scale integrated partnerships. We believed that the company would grow faster and the product would be stickier if we offered a robust ecosystem of integrated products. When you’re building products to support integrated partnerships, you zoom out and analyze the entire industry landscape, not just direct competitors and adjacent companies, because you’re looking for opportunities in new(ish) markets. Each partnership is almost like a mini product you need to go out and make successful so I learned to think more broadly about markets and developed empathy for our early stage founders working to find product/market fit. Working in partnerships also exposed me to a ton of different companies, and helped me build a strong diligence muscle. For each potential integration partner, I evaluated the business model, leadership team, customer traction, pricing, product quality, support models, fundraising, and marketing approach. Building products to drive partnerships and new business ventures is an excellent experience for anyone interested in VC.

Work at a hyper growth company 🚀

Easier said than done. I joined an early stage startup in 2015, shortly before they raised their Series A. They quickly closed a Series B less than 6 months later. I was at the company for about five years, during which time they raised 6 rounds of venture funding and grew from 50 to 3,000+ employees. This company was blitzscaling, knew how to raise money, and was super transparent to all the PMs about it. My product experience was shaped tremendously by the founders’ vision whose thinking was in turn greatly shaped by their VC backers. We spoke constantly about “10X ideas,” prepared board materials, and were regularly schooled by the founders during product team discussions about how the company’s investors (VCs) made money, and what it would take from the product team to solve problems worthy of a multi-billion dollar valuation. Whether I knew it or not at the time, I was being trained in a VC mindset. Seek out exposure to the fundraising process, in whatever way you can, at a transparent, hyper-growth, venture-backed company.

✨ 4 practical tips for a PM interested in VC

So, after chatting about my background, the next question I always get is, “What advice do you have for someone with a ‘non-traditional’ background who is interested in VC?” Not sure I will ever feel fully qualified to dole out such advice, but here are some friendly thoughts.

❓Tell people you’re interested and ask questions. Evaluate your network, see if there’s anyone even tangentially related to the VC space, and ask if they’d be willing to chat with you about their own career path. I get a lot of requests for these kinds of conversations and am happy to make time for them when I can. Within your own company, can you reach out to someone on the corp dev or partnership team? Offer to take them out for coffee in exchange for their thoughts on how to get exposure to your company’s business development process. Maybe they’ll think of you next time they are looking for extra help on a new project or are hiring on their team.

🏦 Take a crack at diligencing and making an investment. This doesn’t have to be super serious, it can be anything — something you’re interested in, something you want to learn more about, something your friends are starting. For me, this looked like evaluating an investment in a friend’s cannabis dispensary and making an investment in a neighborhood restaurant — no VC returns there, but they were great learning experiences.

🤔 Have an opinion on things. And then write about them. Even better, find people to challenge your opinions in a healthy way so you can grow and learn. How do you see the world? Are there any trends you are noticing or areas that seem underserved by tech or capital? Having thoughtful opinions differentiates you and is excellent practice for developing investment theses.

🛠 Start something. No one knows better how to start and grow a successful venture than someone who’s done it, and it’s also a great way to meet and build relationships with VCs in your industry. While my experience building and launching new products affords me a ton of empathy for the founders I meet and work with, it is the one area where I wish I had more experience (maybe one day I will)!

A year+ in and I am even more excited about my leap to venture with the PJC team. If you’re thinking about a role in VC, want to learn more about raising early stage capital or just want to connect, 🤙 I’d love to hear from you.