YouSaid · the spoken record

Soraya Darabi

lines on the record: 75
first: 2021-10-16
most recent: 2021-10-16
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Diverse managers because in turn we recognize that they are three times more likely to invest in diverse founders. Or we believe that impact investing can be broader than the ESG definition of a decade ago. So we're coming up with our own way to measure what sustainability or what impact means to us. And if they go through those exercises, which I know is hard because certainly I'm not trying to add work to anyone's plate, I do think that the results will more than make up for it.”
2021-10-16 · Masters in Business · Soraya Darabi on Social-Media Startups (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“20 years ago, I was a bit of a Pollyanna, and I thought every wonderful idea that simply is built by smart people and has timed to market correctly will work out. And I will say that I'm slightly more jaded today because of the capital structure that is systematically allowing the biggest firms in the world to kind of eat up a generous portion of, let's call it the LPI, which leaves less capital available to the young upstart BC firms. And of course, I'm biased because I run one, that are taking outsized risk on those non-obvious ideas that we referenced. And so what I wish for the future is that institutional capital kind of reprioritizes what it's looking for. And in addition to having a bottom line of And demonstrable returns on any given investment, there are new standards put into place saying we want to make sure that a portion of”
2021-10-16 · Masters in Business · Soraya Darabi on Social-Media Startups (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Whether it's meeting with entrepreneurs and saying, maybe I only have $3,000 saved up, but I believe in you enough to bet a month's rent in Brooklyn on your concept if you'll have me as an investor. So play with your own money because what it's really teaching you in return is how to follow instincts and to base pattern recognition off of your own judgment. And if you do that early on over time, these all become data points that you can point to and these are lessons that you can glean while not taking the risk of portfolio management. So I guess the real advice to your listeners is more action, please.”
2021-10-16 · Masters in Business · Soraya Darabi on Social-Media Startups (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Venture capital or entrepreneurship. Well, I would say learn as early as possible how to trust your gut. So this could mean a myriad of things. As an entrepreneur, it could mean under the halo effect of an institution, university or high school, or maybe having a comfortable day job, tinker with ideas, get feedback on that idea, don't be afraid of looking or sounding dumb. People who are rooting you on and are also insatiably curious about wonky things. And I would say that for venture capital, similar play on the same theme, but whether it's putting small amounts of money into new concepts, blockchain investing.”
2021-10-16 · Masters in Business · Soraya Darabi on Social-Media Startups (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Just going back to my favorites, I try to reread passing every few years. It just somehow seems to be more and more relevant if I get older. And Juan Odiaz has become so incredibly famous since they first read Drown about 20 years ago, but it's his original collection of short stories that brought in my perspective of why it's important to think about a broader definition of America, I guess. And yeah, no, that was just sort of off the top of my head is a pilfering of a few stories that I really love.”
2021-10-16 · Masters in Business · Soraya Darabi on Social-Media Startups (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Are all avid readers of fiction and history? So I recently reread, for instance, all of my favorite short stories from college, from Dostoevsky's Agile creature, to drown by Juan Oz, passing by Noah Larson, the diamond as big as the Ritz, but Fitzgerald. Those are some of my very favorite stories of all time. And my retirement dream is to write a book of short stories.”
2021-10-16 · Masters in Business · Soraya Darabi on Social-Media Startups (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Okay, so in the biz book world, because I know what your listeners are craving, I'm a big fan of negotiation genius. I took a crash course with one of the authors, Max Bazerman, at the Kennedy School, and it was illuminating. I mean, he's one of the most captivating professors I've ever had the pleasure of hearing lecture. And this book has really helped me understand the concept of the Zopa, the zone of possible agreement, and how to really negotiate well. And then for Adam, whom I just referenced of all of his incredible books, my favorite is give and take because I try to operate with that approach in business. Give more than you take and maybe in the short term, you'll feel depleted, but in the long term, you know, karma pays off. But mostly, Barry, I read fiction. I think the most interesting people in the world, or at least the most entertaining at dinner parties.”
2021-10-16 · Masters in Business · Soraya Darabi on Social-Media Startups (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For about a decade and a half now. And she's also really leaning into the TMV portfolio and has become a patient to partially health and early investment of ours and also an official advisor to the business. So people like Adam and Beth certainly come to mind. But I don't know. I just, I'm not sure mentors really exist outside of corporate America anymore. Part of the reason why we started Transact Global is to kind of foster the concept of the peer mentor, people who are going through the same thing as you at the same time and allowing that hive mentality with an abundance mentality to catalyze people to kind of go further and faster.”
2021-10-16 · Masters in Business · Soraya Darabi on Social-Media Startups (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's going to sound ungrateful, but I don't think in like a post-lean in definition of the word I've ever truly had a mentor or a sponsor. Now, having said that, I've had people who've really looked out for me and been incredibly gracious with their time and capital. And so I would absolutely like to acknowledge that first and foremost. I think about how generous Adam Grant has been with his time and his investments for TMV in Fund 1 and Fund 2. And he's the best-selling author and worked in his highest-rated business school professor. So shout out to Adam if he's listening or Best Comstock, the former vice chair of GE, who has been instrumental in my career.”
2021-10-16 · Masters in Business · Soraya Darabi on Social-Media Startups (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, my family has been binging on 100 foot wave on HBO Max, which is the story of Big Wave Surfer Garrett McNamara, who is constantly surfing the world's largest waves. And I'm fascinated by people who have a mission that's sort of bigger than success or fame, but they're driven by something. And part of that something is curiosity and part of it is insanity. So bananas, but also at the same time, so brave and heroic. So highly recommend. I am listening to too many podcasts. I listen to, I don't know, a stream of things from a big Karis Wisher fan, Ezra Klein fan, so they're both part of the New York Times these days. And of course, you have a podcast, Barry.”
2021-10-16 · Masters in Business · Soraya Darabi on Social-Media Startups (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And with that in mind, it doesn't have to be impact like your grandpa's DC. It can be impact for a modern generation that simply thinks and behaves differently, then votes with their dollars. You know, people often say, oh, well, my ESG portfolio is underperforming. But then if you dig into the specifics, are you investing in Tesla? Did you back beyond meat had a great year? And so when you kind of redefine the public market not by a sleeve in a bank's version of a portfolio, but rather by companies that you think are making demonstrable change in the world, then you can walk away realizing, oh, had I only invested in these companies that are purpose-driven, I would have had outsized returns. And that's what we're trying to deliver on at TMV. That's the promise.”
2021-10-16 · Masters in Business · Soraya Darabi on Social-Media Startups (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Lowercase higher R and Iris plus measurement, and it's so hard to have just a standardization of what it means to be an impact investor. And so at TMV, we bother, but we don't bother. Rather, we kind of come up with our own subjective point of view of the world and we say, what does impact mean to us? Certainly, it means not investing in SIN stocks. But then those sin stocks have to begin somewhere. It has to begin with an idea that somebody had once upon a time. Rather, we are investing in the way the world should look from our perspective.”
2021-10-16 · Masters in Business · Soraya Darabi on Social-Media Startups (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You for saying that, and I will return the compliment by saying that I've really enjoyed getting to know you on our wonky economist Zoom. And I think that you're right. I think that ESG investing, certainly in the public markets, has had diminished returns historically because the definition has been so bizarre and so all over the place. I've read incredible books from people like Anthony Bug Levine, who helps coin the term Rockefeller Foundation originally coined the term, you read about”
2021-10-16 · Masters in Business · Soraya Darabi on Social-Media Startups (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Exactly, exactly. And so, you know, what you do, Barry, is quite similar. You host an exceptionally successful business podcast and you're also an allocator. You know that it's interesting to do both because I think that being an investor is a lot like being a journalist. In both professions, you won't succeed unless you are confidently curious. If you are having conversations to listen more than you speak.”
2021-10-16 · Masters in Business · Soraya Darabi on Social-Media Startups (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's incredibly difficult to be a startup founder. More than 50% of companies fail and probably for good reason. And so yes, I hosted business school season two and three and potentially there will be more seasons. And I'm very proud of the fact that at one point we cracked the top 20 business podcasts and people seemed to be really entertained through these conversations with insightful founders who were vulnerable with me about what it was like to build their business. And I like to think they were vulnerable because I have a good amount of compassion for the experience of being a founder and also because I'm a New Yorker and I just like to talk.”
2021-10-16 · Masters in Business · Soraya Darabi on Social-Media Startups (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Synchrony bank came to me a few years ago with a very compelling and exciting opportunity to host a podcast with them that allowed me a fortunate opportunity to travel the country. I went to just under a dozen cities to meet with founders who have persevered past their startup days. And what I loved about the concept of business school is that the seasons that I hosted were really focused on founders who didn't have access to BC Capital. They put money on credit cards or took out SBA loans or asked friends and family to give them starter capital. And then they made their business work through trying times. And when you pass the five-year mark for any business, I'm passing it right now for TMV, there's a moment of reflection where you can say, wow, I did it.”
2021-10-16 · Masters in Business · Soraya Darabi on Social-Media Startups (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When you look at the outsized valuations coming out of YCOM, it's easy to think that starting a company is as simple as sort of downloading a company in a box Excel and running with it. But from where we sit, we're scorching the earth for really compelling ideas in areas that have yet to converge and we're looking for businesses that may have never pitched a VC before. Maybe they're not even seeking capital. Maybe it's a company that isn't so interested in raising a penny of venture because they don't need to. They're profitable from day one. Those are the companies that we find most exciting because as former operators, we know how to appeal to them and then we also know how to work with them.”
2021-10-16 · Masters in Business · Soraya Darabi on Social-Media Startups (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Prefeed and seed investing isn't a science, and it's certainly not a science that anyone has perfected. There are people who are incredibly good at it because they have a combination of luck and access. But if you're a disciplined investor in any asset class, and I talk to my friends who run hedge funds and work for hedge funds about the 10 bets that they take a day, and I think that's a lot trickier than what I do, because our due diligence process Average takes an entire quarter of a year. We're not making that many. Of fruity when you look at a Y combinator or demode, Y com is the biggest accelerator in Silicon Valley and they produce over 300 companies three or four times a year.”
2021-10-16 · Masters in Business · Soraya Darabi on Social-Media Startups (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“CRM for oncology patients that help them navigate through the most strenuous time of their lives. And by doing so, get better access to healthcare. And we just wrote that check a couple of months ago, but already it's becoming a company that I couldn't be more excited about because if they execute the way I think Shirley and Victor will, this has the power to help so many people in a profound way, not just in the Silicon Valley cliche way of this could change the world, but this could actually help people receive better care. I'm proud of having been an early investor in the Caspers of the world. Certainly we're all getting better sleep. There's no shame there, but I'm really excited now, today, at investing in financial inclusion and the care economy and so on.”
2021-10-16 · Masters in Business · Soraya Darabi on Social-Media Startups (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Did bring me into pre IPO, and I'm grateful for that. But when they were starting Cloudflare, I really should have jumped on that moment. Or when my buddy Ryan Graves, whom I still chat with pretty frequently, was starting out Uber in beta with Travis and Garrett as another opportunity that I definitely missed. I was in Ireland when the Series A term sheep assigned. So there's such a long laundry list of name, drop, name, drop, missed, miss, missed. But in terms of what I'm proud of, I'd say far more. I don't like Sophie's choice. I don't like to cherry pick certain investments to just brag about them. But we've talked about someone the call today. I'd rather kind of shine a light. Less than my track record, right? There's a large realized IRR that I'm very proud of, but more on the opportunity of the companies that we've more recently backed. Preventa, which is a”
2021-10-16 · Masters in Business · Soraya Darabi on Social-Media Startups (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, gosh, the FOMO list is so long and so embarrassing. Let me start with what I passed on that I regret. Well, I don't know if she really would have invited me to invest, but certainly I had a wonderful conversation with a peer from high school, Katrina Lake, when she was in beta mode for speech fix. I think she was still at HBS at the time or had just recently graduated from Harvard. And Katrina and I had coffee in Minneapolis where we went to high school. And she was telling me about the Netflix for clothing that she was building. And certainly I regret not really picking up on the clues that she was offering in that conversation. Ditchfix had an incredible IP and I'm a proud shareholder today. And similarly when my friends were starting Cloudflare, which luckily they”
2021-10-16 · Masters in Business · Soraya Darabi on Social-Media Startups (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I think that given the proof points between Fund 1 and Fund 2 and a conversation that my partner and I recently had five years out, are we in this? Do we love this? We do. Okay, this is our life's work. So you can see larger and more demonstrable sized funds, but not in an outsized way, not just because we can raise more capital now, but because we want to build out a partnership and the kind of culture that we always dreamed of working for back when we were employees. So we have a very diverse set of colleagues with whom we couldn't operate and we'll be adding to the partnership in the next two or three years, which is really exciting to say. So, yes, the TNV will be around for a while.”
2021-10-16 · Masters in Business · Soraya Darabi on Social-Media Startups (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Somehow works out because we do put in that extra effort. I think the metrics certainly for fund one have shown us that we're in this for the long haul now.”
2021-10-16 · Masters in Business · Soraya Darabi on Social-Media Startups (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Lesser fees for sidecars or direct investments. So that's kind of how we stay in business. When you think about an emerging manager starting their first fund, management fees are certainly not so we can live a lavish rock and roll life on the $10 million fund with a 2% management fee. You're talking about 200K for the entire business to operate. So Marina and I not only anchored our first fund with our own capital, but we didn't pay ourselves for four years. It's not glamorous. I mean, there's some friends of mine that think the venture capital life is glam. And it is if you're on Sandhill Road. But if you're an EM, it's a lot more like a startup where you're burning the midnight oil. You are bartering favors with your friends and you are begging the smartest people you know to take a chance on you and to invite you into their cap table.”
2021-10-16 · Masters in Business · Soraya Darabi on Social-Media Startups (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Investors are usually in private equity or VC funds locked up for 10 years. That's not unusual. We have shown liquidity faster, certainly for Fund one. Well, in the black, and it's only five years old, less four and a half years old. So, you know, how do we make money? We charge standard fees. 2120 is the rubric that we operate by.”
2021-10-16 · Masters in Business · Soraya Darabi on Social-Media Startups (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We have two funds. They're both considered micro funds because they're both under $100 million. And then we operate in parallel for SPVs that are relatively evergreen, and they serve as opportunistic investments to continue to double down on our winners.”
2021-10-16 · Masters in Business · Soraya Darabi on Social-Media Startups (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Exactly. It should help your garden grow. So, yeah, so that's what I would call a Mars shot in some ways, but in other ways, it's just common sense, right?”
2021-10-16 · Masters in Business · Soraya Darabi on Social-Media Startups (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To make plastic but biodegrades. And so it's a Mars shop because it's a materials business and it's a food science business rolled up into both a CPG business and an enterprise business. This particular material can wrap itself around industrial pellets, even though it's audacious. It's not really a Marsh shot when you think about the way the world is headed. Everybody wants to figure out how do we consume less plastic and recycle plastic better. It would be a no-brainer. And then if you add to the equation the fact that it could be maybe not less expensive, but of comparable pricing to the alternative, I can't think of a company in the world that wouldn't switch to this solution. Right. So this is plastic.”
2021-10-16 · Masters in Business · Soraya Darabi on Social-Media Startups (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We just backed a company that is focusing on food science. Oh gosh, I can't get away too much because they haven't truly launched in the US, but maybe I'll kind of allude to it. They use... Crushed produce like crushed potato skins.”
2021-10-16 · Masters in Business · Soraya Darabi on Social-Media Startups (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This kind of modern solution And last but not least, we invest in transportation, in part because of the unfair advantage my partner Marina brings to TMV. She comes from a maritime family, and so we can pilot transportation technology within her own ecosystem. That's pretty great. But also because we're just fascinated by the fact that 90% of the world's commodities move on ships. And the biggest contributor to emissions in the world outside of corporates is coming from transportation. We can solve a lot of the problems that our generation are inheriting. Now, these categories might sound massive, and we do consider ourselves a generalist firm, but we stick to five core sectors that we truly believe in. And we give ourselves room to kick out a sector or to add a new one with any given new fund. For the most part, we haven't needed to because these remain the categories that are not only most”
2021-10-16 · Masters in Business · Soraya Darabi on Social-Media Startups (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's 10.99. About issues like DEI and inclusion and upward mobility and culture setting and what to do when you're all of a sudden working from home. So that's an example of a future of work business. And then in the Tech Enabled Sustainable Solutions category, it's a mouthful. Let's call that sustainability. We are proud to have been early investors in a company called Ridwell out of Seattle, Washington, focused on not just privatized recycling, but upcycling and reconnaissance. Where are our things going when we recycle them? For me, always been a pretty big question. And so Ridwell allows you to re and upcycle things that are hard to get rid of out of your home, like children's eyeglasses and paint and battery and single-use plastic. And it shows you where those things are going, which I think is super cool. And there's good reason why it has one of the highest NPS scores and net promoter scores of any company I've ever worked with. People are craving.”
2021-10-16 · Masters in Business · Soraya Darabi on Social-Media Startups (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Financial mobile apps are always going to be capitalized, especially in a post Robinhood era. But we're specifically interested in the democratization of access to financial information. And we're specifically interested in student debt and alleviating student debt in America because not only is it going to be one of the greatest challenges our generation will have to overcome, but it's also prohibiting us from living out the American dream, 1.7 trillion dollars of student debt in America that needs to be alleviated. And then we're interested in the future of work and long have been. This certainly was very much accelerated during the pandemic, but we've been investing in the 1099 economy and remote work for quite some time. And so really proud to have been the first check into a company called Bravely, which is an HR chatbot that helps employees inside of a company chat anonymously with HR reps outside of that company.”
2021-10-16 · Masters in Business · Soraya Darabi on Social-Media Startups (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And that company is now valued in the hundreds of millions. And for us, it was as simple as following our intuition as women fund managers. We know what our peers are thinking about because we talk to them all the time. And I think the fact that we're bringing a new perspective to venture means that we're also bringing a new perspective to what has previously been called STEMPEC. We invest in financial inclusion. Everyone in the world is investing in fintech. The self-directed”
2021-10-16 · Masters in Business · Soraya Darabi on Social-Media Startups (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Plus it's expensive. And so we saw that as investors as a really interesting opportunity and jumped on the chance to back Gina Barkosi, who's incredible, when she came to us with a way to make fertility preservation less expensive. So she followed the B2C playbook and she started with a mobile clinic that helped women freeze their eggs, ostensibly. That company has gone on to raise hundreds.”
2021-10-16 · Masters in Business · Soraya Darabi on Social-Media Startups (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Care as it pertains to women alone is a multi-trillion dollar opportunity. And so when we think of the care economy, we think of healthcare, pet care, elder care, community care, personal care, as it pertains to young people, old people, men, women, children, we bifurcate, and we look for interesting opportunities that don't exist because they've been undercapitalized and undervalued for so long. Case in point, we were early investors in kind body, a reproductive healthcare company focused on women who want to preserve their fertility because if you look at 2010 census data, you can see that the data has been there for some time that women in particular were delaying marriage and childbirth. And there are a lot of world famous economists who will tell you this, you know, the global population will decline because we're aging and we're not necessarily having as many children as we would have in the past.”
2021-10-16 · Masters in Business · Soraya Darabi on Social-Media Startups (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm most excited about five categories for which we've been investing for quite some time, but they're really being accelerated due to the 2020 pandemic and a looming recession. And so we're particularly fascinated by not just healthcare investing, as I've been called in the past, but rather the care economy. I'm not a huge fan of the term Femtech. It always sounds like FEMBOT to me, but”
2021-10-16 · Masters in Business · Soraya Darabi on Social-Media Startups (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Family office and so on for those family offices, we come to them, we invite them to events in New York City, we give them personalized introductions to our founders.”
2021-10-16 · Masters in Business · Soraya Darabi on Social-Media Startups (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Actually, for the first time in history, over 50% to 51% of those asset inheritors are actually women. And so as my business partner could tell you because she herself is a next gen, in prior generations, women were encouraged to go into the philanthropic or nonprofit side of the family business and the sons were expected to take over the business or the family office. And all of that has just completely turned around in the last 10 years. And so my anchor investor is actually a young woman. She's under the age of 35. There's a little bit of our firm that's indie rock because we're not playing by the same rules at the establishment is played by. But certainly we're posturing ourselves to be able to grow into a blue chip firm, which is why we want to maintain that balance of 50% institutional and 50%, I would call it bespoke capital. And for the LPs that are bespoke, we work with an Australian family office and a Venezuelan family office and a Chilean family office in Mexico.”
2021-10-16 · Masters in Business · Soraya Darabi on Social-Media Startups (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“RLP set is crafted with intention and so 50% of our investors are institutional. This includes institutional sized family offices, the family offices in the multibillions. We work with three major banks, Fortune 500 banks. We work with a couple of corporate Fortune 500s as investors are LPs and a couple of funda funds. So that gets really run of the mill. our investors, that's why I'm in Athens today, are family offices, global family offices that I think are reinventing what venture is going to look like in the future because wealth has never been greater globally. There's a trillion dollars of assets that are passing through the hands of one generation to the next. And what's super interesting to me as a woman is that historically a lot of that asset transfer was from father to son.”
2021-10-16 · Masters in Business · Soraya Darabi on Social-Media Startups (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of their earliest employees. We have a PR woman. You've met Leah. She's exceptional with whom I don't know how we would function sometimes because she's constantly writing and re-editing press releases for the founders with which we work. And then Anna, our copywriter who came from IAC and Sean, our creative director, used to be the design director for Rolling Stone, and I could go on and on. So some firms call this a platform team, but we call it the go-to-market team. We promise a set number of hours for every company that we invest into. And as a result, go ahead.”
2021-10-16 · Masters in Business · Soraya Darabi on Social-Media Startups (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, what they want is more like 24 7 services for a period of time. And they want to know when that relationship should start and finish. So it's sort of the Montessori approach to venture. We're going to tell them what we're going to tell them, tell them what they're telling them, tell them what they told them. We say to founders with a reverse pitch deck, so we pitch them as they're pitching us. Here's what we promised to deliver for you for the first 18 to 24 months of your infancy. And then we promise you we'll mostly get lost. You can come back to us when your business is growing. If you want to do a tender and we'll operate an SPV through you, or if you simply want advice, we're never going to ignore you. But our specialty, our black belt, if you will, Barry, is in those first 24 months of your business that go to market. And so we've staffed up TMV to include, well, it's punching above our weight, but the co-founder of an exceptionally successful consumer marketing business, a growth marketer, a recruiter who helps one of our portfolio companies hire four.”
2021-10-16 · Masters in Business · Soraya Darabi on Social-Media Startups (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of LPs. And what they want is crystal clear. The value that they derive from us is through community and connectivity and co-investment. And that's it. It's pretty cut and dry. Call me up once a year when you have an exceptional opportunity. Let me invest alongside you. Invite me to dinners four times a year. Give me some information and a point of view that I can't get elsewhere. Thank you for your time. And I love that. It's a great relationship to have with incredibly smart people. It's cut and dried, but it's so different. What founders want is something more like a family. They want a VC on their board that they can turn to during critical moments. 2 a.m. on a Saturday is not an uncommon time for me to get a text message from a founder saying, what do I do?”
2021-10-16 · Masters in Business · Soraya Darabi on Social-Media Startups (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I came up with an idea that I floated by Marina back in the day where our original deck for TMV Fund 1 began with the slide marketing is the future of venture and venture is the future of marketing, meaning if a VC fund were to position itself more like an ad agency, but rather than charging for its services, its go-to-market services, you offered them free of charge, but then you were paid in equity, and you could quantify the value that you were offering to these businesses. And back then people laughed at us even though all around New York City, ad agencies were really doing incredible work and benefiting from the startups in that ecosystem. And so we sort of changed the positioning a bit. And now we say to our LPs and to our founders, you're both clients of our firm. So we do think of ourselves as an agency. But on one side of our marketplace,”
2021-10-16 · Masters in Business · Soraya Darabi on Social-Media Startups (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Years ago, I had the pleasure of meeting a world class advertiser, and I was at his incredibly fancy office down on Wall Street, his ad agency, and he described to me with pride how he basically bartered his marketing services for 1% of a unicorn. And he was sort of showing off a bit about how, for very little time and effort, a few months, he walked away with a relatively large portion of a business. And I thought, yes, that's clever, but for the founder, they gave up too much of their business.”
2021-10-16 · Masters in Business · Soraya Darabi on Social-Media Startups (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And you promise with integrity that you're going to work very hard for that company, they will increase the size of their round and they will carve out space for you. And so we do those types of investments rarely, 10 times in any given portfolio. But what's interesting in looking back at some of our outliers from Fund 1, it came from those initial interest checks. So that's our model in a nutshell. We're pretty transparent about it. What we like about this model is that it doesn't make us tigers. We're off the board by the B, but we're still owning enough of the cap table to be a meaningful product.”
2021-10-16 · Masters in Business · Soraya Darabi on Social-Media Startups (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then we follow on through the Series A, and at maximum take our prorata at the B. So our goal by a series B is to have on average 10% of a cap. And then we give ourselves a little bit of wiggle room with our modeling. We take Mars and Moonshot investments with smaller checks. So we call these initial interest checks and initial interest means I'm interested, but your idea is so audacious it won't prove itself out for three or four years we weren't the first to get into this cap or you're picking a sequoia over us and we understand but let's see if we can just promise you a bit of value add to edge our way into your business and oftentimes when you speak as a former founder yourself with a high level of compassion”
2021-10-16 · Masters in Business · Soraya Darabi on Social-Media Startups (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So it is a predominant receipt fund. We call our investments core investments. So these are checks that average between 1 and 1.5 million. So for about 1.25 million on average were capturing 10 to 15 percent of a cap table. And in this era, that's called a feed round. It would probably be called a series A 10 years ago.”
2021-10-16 · Masters in Business · Soraya Darabi on Social-Media Startups (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Really has helped. And so I hosted a podcast and I've worked on building up what I think to be a fairly organic Twitter following over the years. And we surprise ourselves by getting some really exceptional founders cold pitching us on LinkedIn and on Twitter because we make ourselves available as next-gen EMs. So that's a sort of long-winded answer to your question, but it's not the traditional means by any means.”
2021-10-16 · Masters in Business · Soraya Darabi on Social-Media Startups (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so I decided to start a network specifically tailored around helping women fund managers connect to one another. And it began as a WhatsApp group and a weekly Google Meet and has now blown into something that requires a lot of dedicated time. So we're hiring an executive director for this group. It's called Transact Global. 250 women ex fund managers globally from Hong Kong to Luxembourg to Venezuela, Canada, Nigeria, you name it. There are women fund managers in our group, and we have one of the most active deal flow channels in the world. As an example, came from this WhatsApp deal flow channel. So I think creating the community, being the change, so to speak, has been incredibly effective for us as a proprietary deal flow mechanism. And then last but not least, I think that having some sort of media presence.”
2021-10-16 · Masters in Business · Soraya Darabi on Social-Media Startups (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“An emerging manager of a VC firm. Roughly 30% of LP capital goes to EMs each year, but that's sort of an outsized percentage because when you think about the leaf fixels of addition capital taking 1.3 billion of that tie, then you recognize the definition of emerging manager might need to change a bit. So when I was starting as an EM, I recognized that the landscape wasn't necessarily leveled. You weren't what's called a spin-out, somebody that has spent a few years at a traditional established blue chip firm, then it's harder to develop and cultivate relationships with institutional LPs who will give you a shot, even though the data absolutely points to there being a real opportunity at capturing lightning in a bottle if you find the right EM with the right idea in the right market. Conditions, which is certainly what we're in right now.”
2021-10-16 · Masters in Business · Soraya Darabi on Social-Media Startups (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source