YouSaid · the spoken record

Jennifer Fonstad

lines on the record: 101
first: 2018-02-21
most recent: 2018-02-21
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Well, you know, and the advantage of being an introvert is that I can think things through in great depth in a way that's, I think, super helpful to some of our companies and our team. That's the positive side of that. So, you know, celebrating and not giving up on the positive element of that while continuing to grow is.”
2018-02-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jennifer Fonstad, co-founder, Aspect Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Are you? I'm good at growing it up. I can see. I can see that challenge for me. Well, I think I'm still learning even today. I mean, again, we're all learning beings. And so I still learn how to make sure I'm communicating well. And, you know, particularly with everybody that I interact with, I want to make sure that they know that I care about them. But sometimes because I'm an introvert, I get, you know, I'll go inside my head sometimes. It's always a challenge.”
2018-02-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jennifer Fonstad, co-founder, Aspect Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Honestly, I'm an introvert. And so I would say that I really struggled not being able to understand that really early in my career, I think changed the way I related to people early on.”
2018-02-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jennifer Fonstad, co-founder, Aspect Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right. That's the point they're right. Listening to the younger generation, they're right. I mean, we are constant learners. We are always learning. And so for me, I found that I took a risk in that and it's enabled me to be a constant learner and brought and continue to broaden my horizon.”
2018-02-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jennifer Fonstad, co-founder, Aspect Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I'm lucky to have that richness because now I can, I learn from my kids about technologies that they're excited about and things that they're science that they're excited about. So that's the role of your children to talk about technology.”
2018-02-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jennifer Fonstad, co-founder, Aspect Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I think that I was really nervous about starting a family when I was young. I had only been in venture for less than a year and the sort of press to being a partner, pressed to getting deals done. You know, there's a real pressure, particularly as a young woman in a firm that had never had a woman before, certainly didn't have a maternity leave policy and may have even wondered whether I'd show up again after I gave birth. So I thought that that was a real risk that I took. And then I kept repeating that with having four children. But I think that that was the best decision that I ever made because DFJ was super supportive of my building a family.”
2018-02-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jennifer Fonstad, co-founder, Aspect Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Lend itself to hype. All right. And last question. I always ask people what thing have you done that's been super successful as an aspect of your personality versus something you've done that you wish you had done differently if you had to give an advice to young venture capitals or someone thinking about it.”
2018-02-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jennifer Fonstad, co-founder, Aspect Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Do I think it's overhyped? Well, certainly there's a little bit of hype around cryptocurrency. Right. Despite the fact that it's going to change a lot of how we think about our business and our world, a lot of it's getting back to fundamentals about problem solving. So when you migrate away from that to a speculative nature, I think that tends to lend itself to hype. All right.”
2018-02-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jennifer Fonstad, co-founder, Aspect Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“If you have breast cancer and a particular treatment would be likely to be successful or not. They can determine that through that when you have that marker or not. Simple, simple. But you're just going to have an explosion. You're going to have an explosion of that and then your ability to do diagnosis and not radiological diagnoses where”
2018-02-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jennifer Fonstad, co-founder, Aspect Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I think they're starting to, and I think that's what's exciting. Once you get access to this data, what can you do with it? And we talk about the unknown frontier. I think that we're at the cusp of that. I mean, there's some applications, like I was a seed investor in a company called Nanostring, which is a public company now, but they use a marker in their lab system for identifying.”
2018-02-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jennifer Fonstad, co-founder, Aspect Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But bear in mind that modern medicine really was only invented towards the end of the 19th century, like the first medical school was really the end of the 19th century. It's like 130 years old, they're super young fat.”
2018-02-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jennifer Fonstad, co-founder, Aspect Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Where is it? He's got a piece of paper somewhere, which is near another piece of paper that relates to it. And I kept thinking the date is all in places it can't be. Like it's not being able to relate to each other.”
2018-02-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jennifer Fonstad, co-founder, Aspect Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Do You never had before. Well, you know, I had a blood problem when I was pregnant, I found out when I was pregnant. And when I was getting my blood drawn because of it, one of the people who drew bill, oh, this happens a lot with pregnant women. And I'm like, how do you know that? He goes, oh, I just see it. And I'm like, where is that information?”
2018-02-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jennifer Fonstad, co-founder, Aspect Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Probably, but what I find exciting about that is that because we've been able to unlock so much more of that data now, you're going to see the capacity to use that information in new and novel ways to solve health problems. And so for me, I think we're really only at the beginning of that. Oh, I would agree. And it's super exciting. Some great entrepreneurs coming out of existing biotech companies, but then also out of human body, it's all”
2018-02-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jennifer Fonstad, co-founder, Aspect Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, so another area that's very promising is all our genetic code is essentially data and how we think about using that genetic code as data to solve a lot of health problems. So getting back to that fact that we have this large amount of data, we have a huge amount of data that we're still learning about at an incredibly rapid pace about our own bodies and how our bodies work. And I think that that is full of...”
2018-02-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jennifer Fonstad, co-founder, Aspect Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And that's what aspect tries to do. Right, right. So I want to finish up just talking. I know you have a hard stop where you, areas that you really would like to get into, you talked about what you're in now, but what do you see as super promising that's maybe further down the line and stuff that you think is overblown right now?”
2018-02-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jennifer Fonstad, co-founder, Aspect Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“People have a hard time getting their heads wrapped around opportunity lost. That's certainly true. And I think that the only way you can talk about, you can demonstrate opportunity lost is if someone else finds the opportunity. And that's what aspect tries to do”
2018-02-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jennifer Fonstad, co-founder, Aspect Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's what I mean. We don't know who we didn't know, right? But of course, that's used as an argument for C, look at all the successful people look like this, or they present like this, which I think is, you can't prove to something that didn't happen. You know what I mean?”
2018-02-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jennifer Fonstad, co-founder, Aspect Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“For sure. I mean, in a lot of ways, you know, people are talking, someone, I'm sure you've heard this when women will have more money in the system of entrepreneurs is when there's a Marcia Zuckerberg versus a Mark. And I was like, well, maybe there was one and you missed her because she didn't look like Mark Zuckerberg. You know what I mean? Like she didn't physically present the way you imagine things to be. And so I have this vision of this small little girl in, I don't know, Tanzania who can solve cancer and we don't when she's never going to get to do it. You know what I mean?”
2018-02-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jennifer Fonstad, co-founder, Aspect Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, they like, yeah, it depends on who you ask, but we like to think that it's an informed gut, but it's data-driven based on pattern matching.”
2018-02-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jennifer Fonstad, co-founder, Aspect Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Think that's a possibility. I think that how that gets compensated and again, how you're compensated for risk even for the folks that bring capital to us is going to be evolving over time as well. So yeah, I think that that's going to be one of the biggest trends. We also have acceleration of data and how we use data in unique and powerful ways. A number of venture firms are using data as a driver for how they make decisions or at least more of a factor in how they make decisions”
2018-02-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jennifer Fonstad, co-founder, Aspect Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, so the truth is we're not dumb money when you find really talented people to help you build a business. I mean, entrepreneurs take incredible risks and put an incredible amount of their heart and soul and energy and time into building company, but it still takes a village. To build successful companies. And we play a small part in that and in the role we play on the board. But”
2018-02-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jennifer Fonstad, co-founder, Aspect Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Which is essentially what equity based economy is about You're going to see that be those who understand that shift, I think, will do really well because”
2018-02-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jennifer Fonstad, co-founder, Aspect Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think the biggest trends will be around this new monetary system that's emerging. I think that how entrepreneurs think about that in a way where they're still bringing in the company building support. Adventure has provided and venture capital evolving to recognizing that there's a lot of different ways of.”
2018-02-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jennifer Fonstad, co-founder, Aspect Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So speaking of that, where do you imagine? Let's finish up talking about where venture capital is going and where do you think the, when you look at the overall business of venture capital, how do you, again, as I said, it hasn't changed that much. There's parts of it that have changed. There's definitely more professionalization of the seed area. There's obviously a ton more money in the top area. But how do you, and you referred just sideways to the idea of cryptocurrency changing that too. When you're thinking about where you're going in the next 10 years, what do you imagine the big trends that you have to watch out for as a venture capitalist?”
2018-02-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jennifer Fonstad, co-founder, Aspect Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I think the hashtag Me Too movement has sort of brought a lot of transparency more generally across many industries, venture capital being one of many. And the number of law, we haven't talked a lot about law firms, but law firms also are smaller organizations that a lot has been the promotion cycle is such that it's hard to navigate that. I think we're seeing a broader movement about transparency. And I think there's a broader recognition that there is more impact on performance by having that diversity. And as that gets better understood and people feel they're missing out, I mean, there's almost an arbitrage play, right? If you were really smart, you'd bring diversity in early because you're taking advantage of that. Sure. Yeah. There's more customers that way. So the smart firms today in the venture industry recognize that they're missing out on an arbitrage play.”
2018-02-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jennifer Fonstad, co-founder, Aspect Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“When you look at some of the controversies around venture capital, a lot of them has to do with sexual harassment and behaviors and things like that. Is that a product of this or just the way things are?”
2018-02-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jennifer Fonstad, co-founder, Aspect Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Say that women require a lot more information before they're willing to take risks. And that's getting comfortable with taking risks and imperfect information is something that I'm actually quite comfortable with and always have been, but I don't know that everybody is. And so helping bring the next generation along and help them, you know, feel more comfortable with that will be part of the mentorship exercise.”
2018-02-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jennifer Fonstad, co-founder, Aspect Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“10% to 7% You know, so it's not exactly sure what the underlying trends were. I think you mentioned we talked about how there's always our industry every eight to ten years goes through a boom and bust cycle and people leave the industry during the down cycles. And so I think that there was perhaps a lot more women that left the industry during the down cycle than this been picked up on a percentage basis. Because remember, these are all in percentage basis. So the absolute numbers may be increasing, but they're not keeping up necessarily on a percentage basis. And so there's a lot of us that are working hard to try and change that today. What's the underlying cause of it? I can't speak to that. I can only speak to my own experience. And I do think that we've had the opportunity, I had unprecedented opportunity at DFJ. I was very lucky. I had great mentorship with Tim Draper. I think mentorships really matters a lot. I think that I have also been willing to take risks. And many people...”
2018-02-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jennifer Fonstad, co-founder, Aspect Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Communities. I get that. It's one, it's the right thing. Two, it's probably good for business. Three, it gives you more perspective and more innovation, presumably. But four, it still stays the same. Like the numbers remain. As you said, the number went down from, what was it, 10% to 7%. Why?”
2018-02-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jennifer Fonstad, co-founder, Aspect Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Was co founded by a woman, but many of them were never married, or if they were married, they didn't have children. And so, you know. Success in the venture industry and or bringing in a deal that someone couldn't have gotten otherwise, you're going to start to see a lot more firms recognizing there's real value to having that diversity in their own internal communities.”
2018-02-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jennifer Fonstad, co-founder, Aspect Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Think there's a lot of reasons for it. I was reflecting on, so I joined the industry, as I mentioned, 21 years ago. And even the group of women, there were a number of women that were senior women before me. But many of them, for example, they were very senior in their firms, and many of them were involved even co-founding firms Foundation Capital, for example.”
2018-02-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jennifer Fonstad, co-founder, Aspect Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But there's no, I want to get to why that is. Why haven't there been more women founded firms? You could look at, there's lots of reasons, starting with sexism and things like that, but what do you imagine? Is it just that women haven't started them or there's a bias against women from the LPs?”
2018-02-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jennifer Fonstad, co-founder, Aspect Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so I think what's really interesting about it is we think of ourselves more as a next generation firm where we're both pretty experienced venture capitalists who have done a lot of company building and who happen to be women. And it does lend itself to bringing different networks to bear. It does lend itself to seeing having a different perspective at the table many times. And I think that's been a hallmark of both Teresa's and my success in our careers. And so that's what we've brought into building aspect, and we've brought into it as we talked about, this notion of collaborating and building the right syndicate and being very entrepreneur first in how we think about building our own teams and how we manage internally and externally.”
2018-02-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jennifer Fonstad, co-founder, Aspect Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, so I think that there haven't been very many firms founded by women only. And so I think there's a little bit of a novelty to that.”
2018-02-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jennifer Fonstad, co-founder, Aspect Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Now we're bringing that together in a very collaborative way for our industry. And it's been fantastic. We've over half of our deal flow comes from is from other venture people.”
2018-02-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jennifer Fonstad, co-founder, Aspect Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Just in terms of everything from how to get a company funded, I think between Teresa and I, we have over five we've helped over the over 500 follow-on financings. That's getting a company through that process may seem easy, but no company ever goes exactly straight and up to the right. And when they do, they still have some rocky periods. And so we're able to navigate a lot of that and have a lot of experience around that. We typically bring very different networks. Even Teresa and I, when we came together, had very different networks that we brought to aspect. And we've now built out a team of eight professionals with great deep expertise in some of these areas.”
2018-02-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jennifer Fonstad, co-founder, Aspect Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Financial mechanism is whether it's a token or equity. What's really important is the exercise of company building. And when you're a company that still is trying to figure out what its growth pattern is going to look like, who are its early customers, that skill set of what it takes to build those companies is what venture capitalists excel at. And I can't think of a successful company where it didn't have a really great board and group of investors around the table who really understood how to help that entrepreneur along the way Every single company that's been successful that I've touched either at DFJ or through Aspect or seen, it's not to say that the entrepreneur can't be successful, but it gives them a huge leg up.”
2018-02-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jennifer Fonstad, co-founder, Aspect Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Know it's a really great question, and I think it's what's really great about that question is that, you know, there's a lot of discussion around cryptocurrency and how that may change venture capital over time. And actually, what's interesting for me, when I look at these opportunities, is it doesn't really matter what the underlying”
2018-02-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jennifer Fonstad, co-founder, Aspect Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so it's typically different from coming from a different perspective. We often come from deep experience in many of the themes in which we're investing in. We have some of the most experienced investors in digital health security and blockchain out there today. And that experience lends itself to finding good entrepreneurs that we want to work with. And then we want to build the right syndicate for them. And so that collaborative piece has been. Super welcomed by the entrepreneurs because for them”
2018-02-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jennifer Fonstad, co-founder, Aspect Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, aspect is a little different in a couple ways. One is that we're highly collaborative. So we think we're trying to build the right syndicate for the entrepreneur. So we actually work with other firms. Right. So we can lead a deal or we can full lead or we can go alongside. So, we're not trying to, you know, we're not trying to get push a certain amount of dollars into a deal or use sharp elbows to get to a certain ownership level. We're trying to build the right syndicate for the entrepreneur and we're a different perspective typically around the table than they might otherwise come across.”
2018-02-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jennifer Fonstad, co-founder, Aspect Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's still an area where it's an art, not a science, and that's understanding the patterns of what's likely to work and what's not likely to work and how to help those companies navigate that is still an area that I think too high risk for the growth folks. And for the seed folks, they typically try to get all their ownership early on, so they don't want to or need to take on that additional risk at that stage. And so that's an area where I wouldn't say that there's an abundance of capital that's pushing or skewing that in a meaningful way. Even in this market.”
2018-02-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jennifer Fonstad, co-founder, Aspect Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, it's interesting. So I think there is a lot of, there's still a lot of capital to get companies started, and I think that there is still capital available on the bulge bracket. And I still feel, though, as if that fundamental company building. In the early stage where there's some proof points, but how do you cross that chasm? You're in the middle crossing that chasm.”
2018-02-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jennifer Fonstad, co-founder, Aspect Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I did. It sure enough to be my neighbors, my cheap neighbors who were going to my network. I must have given them access years ago. Now they're not. No, they're not. Sorry neighbors. Sorry, Bob. So when you're thinking about venture capital, one of the changes obviously happened is the enormous amount of money in the system. You have SoftBank on one end with their giant funds, which I think is really shaking up a lot of people. Do you think about that a lot? The amount of money in the system, because there's a lot of money, as you said in the early stages, and that still continues. That seed area is still full of money. And then you have now the growth area, full of money. Do you worry about what's occurring with all this money shoving into the system?”
2018-02-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jennifer Fonstad, co-founder, Aspect Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Absolutely. I have an Ero thing, and I'm shocked by how many people are hanging off my network. I'm like, who is this? And I just cut them off like one after the other, which I enjoy doing. It turns out my name is you take your.”
2018-02-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jennifer Fonstad, co-founder, Aspect Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm trying to take care of you here. But what will happen is that Vox may think that they have a certain number of devices hanging off the network and through the Four Scout technology, which is an agentless technology, meaning it doesn't have to, you don't have to put something on a device to discover it”
2018-02-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jennifer Fonstad, co-founder, Aspect Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, so for example, we had a company of ours go public a couple months ago for Sc Technologies, which is done very well in the public markets, but the problem they're solving is they can go into a security framework. A large company like Vox Media, for example”
2018-02-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jennifer Fonstad, co-founder, Aspect Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, so we typically invest in themes, so we'll have three or four themes that we're investing in a particular time frame. So that's why I mentioned security software is one that's been emerging. Digital health is being emerged.”
2018-02-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jennifer Fonstad, co-founder, Aspect Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Very complex algorithm on the platform to do that. So you're all over the map in these kind of things, but do you have to now venture to capital get particular about an area or not? You just feel like...”
2018-02-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jennifer Fonstad, co-founder, Aspect Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, so again, you're trying to understand what is the long term competitive advantage of that type of a play. So what is it about their platform or their approach or their business model that's different? So Hotel Tonight really was very innovative.”
2018-02-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Jennifer Fonstad, co-founder, Aspect Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT