I Almost Didn’t Make It To Hera Venture Summit
I was so reluctant to go to San Diego for the Hera Venture Summit earlier this month. For some reason, I kept thinking that I was going to forget to go or that I was going to have flight issues or something. I couldn’t understand the weird feeling. I realized afterwards that the feeling was ease. So much of what I do seems to be done through sheer grit and determination that when something is easy, I feel like something is wrong.
I went to the event to be on a panel called the Future is Female. I didn’t know any of the other panelists and initially thought that there would be too many of us (four plus the moderator) and that it would be too unwieldy. It was a one-hour panel and I was rethinking my plan to travel to San Diego for the day to get to speak for 10 minutes on the stage (cost/benefit analysis). With all that I had going on, I thought my time could be better spent and that with the other perfectly capable women on the panel, that I wouldn’t be missed.
I am sure you are wondering where this is going. I did end up going and I met the most amazing women. I was seated on the panel next to Carolyn Leonard of DyMind. She was in town from Chicago. And while I first noticed her dress, matching coat and gorgeous orange shoes, when she introduced herself, I was completely blown away. Then the moderator, Valentina Vitols, introduced herself and my jaw continued to drop. Then the next two, Mindy Tucker Fletcher and Kim Folsom introduced themselves and I realized that I was on a panel with phenomenal women. I knew the audience was in for a treat and I was honored to be a part of it.
We all had different backgrounds and experiences and I think we provided great insight and value to the 250 attendees comprised of mostly female founders and investors. There was a sprinkling of men in the room and some other folks representing local business support organizations. I know they got a lot of the panel because of the number of people who came up to talk to me afterwards and throughout the day. We had a super positive response.
The biggest win out of the event was that I saw other women creating alternate investing structures to get more funding to women, and get more women into investing into startups. Xandra Laskowski created OSea recently and is now partnering with the Cove at UC Irvine (innovation center) to educate more women on investing, specifically in startups. She and I are in talks to figure out how we can support each other as we strive to achieve our common goals.
I had so many amazing conversations with other women, both investors and founders, and learned about the San Diego ecosystem. I also realized that it is really good to get out of the Silicon regularly to see that other people are doing, see what startups look like elsewhere, see what valuations look like, and what the typical raises are.
I talked to Xandra the other day and we got to the topic of Seed rounds. Seed rounds to us here in SV are typically $1–2M raises with $4–8M valuations. In Orange County, these are Series A rounds. Even within our own state, there is great variability. Although, I talked to a company the other day who is raising a $2M Seed round with a $6M cap on their SAFE note and they are based in St. Louis. Go figure! (Sidenote: while SAFEs have gone out of favor in SV, I learned that they are just moving to St. Louis)
I think angel investors up here in the Silicon Valley have forgotten what angel rounds are and with so much VC money going after Seed rounds, angels are looking for de-risked deals with old-school Series A metrics and traction. So of course, I see that as an opportunity…creating a true pre-Seed, angel investing opportunity in early stage startups. There is a significant gap between a friends and family round of $10K-$100K and a $1–2M Seed round. This may be especially helpful for female founders and other founders who don’t fit the typical founder stereotype here in the Silicon Valley and struggle to get attention from typical investors.
I suppose the biggest thing I got out of the day was that I realized that I don’t need to raise a fund to invest in the startups that I find. I listened to a podcast the week before about syndicates and realized that by doing a combination of what Xandra is doing with OSea and some sort of syndicate (leveraging something like AngelList) that I can find the deals, do the due diligence, and share with other like-minded investors, and that we can invest together, thereby reducing the number of line items on a cap table for a founder AND still have impact. I am working through the details on this and plan to get this worked out in Q4 of this year and launch in Q1/2018.
I love that I was surprised by what I learned at the event. I love that I was presented with options that I hadn’t thought about before and saw that people are making them work. I loved seeing the enthusiasm and collaboration in the San Diego ecosystem. And now, I am combining several ideas into a single concept and while there are some details to work out, I know I can make this happen.
And that would not have happened unless I had gone to San Diego for this conference.
Better yet, I met someone who brought her daughter to the event and she is the same age as my daughter. Next year we will join forces, socialize, and hopefully I am a keynote at the event (Silvia, just putting that out there). We have work to do and I can help to galvanize and motivate the women in the room to do the big things that I know we are all destined to do.
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