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Soraya Darabi

lines on the record: 75
first: 2021-10-16
most recent: 2021-10-16
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

“That's a good question. TMV celebrates its five-year anniversary this year. So the way we go about finding companies now is a bit different than the way we began five years ago. Now it's systematic. collectively as a partnership there are many of us take over 50 calls a month with tier one venture capital firms that have known us for a while like the work that we do believe in our value add because the partnership comprised of former operators and so we really roll up our sleeves to help and when you've invested with these firms enough times they will write to you and say i found a company that's a little too early for us for XYZ reason but it resonates and you know I think it might be for you so we found some of our best deals that day but other times we found our deal flow through building our own communities and so when I first started as a”
2021-10-16 · Masters in Business · Soraya Darabi on Social-Media Startups (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In Austin, Texas, and the average price for us to invest in the seed round is closer to $5 or $6 million. And so we actually can capture larger ownership of the pie early on and then develop a very close-knit relationship with these founders that might not be as networked in the valley where there's 30 DC funds to every one that exists in Austin, Texas. So, yeah, I think you're right to say that it's about inefficiencies in market, but also just about being persistent and looking where others are not.”
2021-10-16 · Masters in Business · Soraya Darabi on Social-Media Startups (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Public. And when we think of success at TMV, we don't just think about financial success and IRR and cash on cash return for our LPs. Of course we think about that. But we also think who are we cheerleading and with whom do we want to go into business and what's the story on the other side of the fence that we want to tell? We measure non-obvious not just based on gender or race because I think that's a little too precise in some ways. Sometimes for us non-obvious is around geography. I'm calling you from Athens, as you know. And in Greece yesterday, I got together with a fund manager. I'm lucky enough to be an LP in her fund. And she was talking about the average size of a seed round in Silicon Valley these days, hovering around 30 million. And I was scratching my head because at our fund TMV, we just don't see that. We're investing in Baltimore, Maryland.”
2021-10-16 · Masters in Business · Soraya Darabi on Social-Media Startups (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If you look back at our original memo, which I saved, it says figs, now public on the New York Stock Exchange, is a utility business. It's a uniform company that can verticalize beyond just medical apparel. And so we helped value that company at $15 million back in 2016. And this year, in 2021, they went public at a $7 billion market capital. And so, what is particularly exciting for us going back to that conversation around non-obvious.”
2021-10-16 · Masters in Business · Soraya Darabi on Social-Media Startups (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And we got together and we said, We have really unique access, she and I. And the first SPV that we collaborated on back in 2016 was for a young business at the time, started by two women, that was focused on medical apparel predominantly for nurses. Now it's nurses and doctors. And they were offering a solution to make medical apparels of scrubs more comfortable and more fashionable for nurses. I happened to have nurses and doctors in my family, so doing due diligence for this business was relatively simple. I called my aunt, who's nurse practitioner, nurse for life. And she said, oh, absolutely. When you're, you know, working in a uniform at the hospital, you want something comfortable with extra pockets that makes you look and feel good. The VCs that they spoke to at the time, and they've been very public about this in the beginning anyway, were less excited because they correlated this particular business with a fashion company.”
2021-10-16 · Masters in Business · Soraya Darabi on Social-Media Startups (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Absolutely. So, my business partner and I, you know, she and I found each other 20 years ago as undergrads at Georgetown, but we went into business after she was successful in being one of the only women in the world to take a shipping business public with her family.”
2021-10-16 · Masters in Business · Soraya Darabi on Social-Media Startups (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so when you look at that investment over, say, a comparable company, I won't name names that offers for-profit health care out of pocket, you can see why this is an opportunity that excites us as impact investors. But we don't see the diversity of the team as impact. We actually see that as their unfair advantage because they are accessing a population authentically that others might ignore.”
2021-10-16 · Masters in Business · Soraya Darabi on Social-Media Startups (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The bend. For instance, we were early investors in a company called City Blockhealth, which is offering best-in-class healthcare specifically for low-income Americans. So they focus on the most vulnerable populations, which are underserved with healthcare, and they're offering them best-in-class healthcare access at affordable pricing because it's predominantly covered through payer relationships. And this company is so powerful to us for three reasons. because it's not simply offering healthcare to the elite, it's democratizing access to care, which I think is absolutely necessary and paramount for success of any kind. We thought this was profoundly interesting because the population which they serve is also incredibly diverse.”
2021-10-16 · Masters in Business · Soraya Darabi on Social-Media Startups (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Why it was that we're an industry that prides itself on investing in innovation and groundbreaking ideas and the next frontier of X, Y, and Z. And yet, all of those founders in which we were investing collectively tended to kind of look the same. They were coming from the same schools and the same types of families. And so to me, there was nothing innovative at all about backing that Wharton GSB HBS guy who was second or third generation finance. And what really excites me about venture is, you know, capturing a moment in time that's young, but also the energy is palpable around not only the idea in which the founder is building, but the categories in which they're tackling. And that sounds vague. I'll be a little bit more specific. And so at TMV, we try to see things before they're even coming around.”
2021-10-16 · Masters in Business · Soraya Darabi on Social-Media Startups (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, not obvious is a term you hear a lot when you go out to Silicon Valley. And I don't know, I think it was coined by a well-known early PPO employee turned billionaire, turned investor, who actually had a conference centered around non-obvious ideas. And I love the phrase. I love thinking about investment these are contrary because when you have a contrary point of view, contrarian point of view, you often have outlier results because if you're right, you're taking the risk and you're capturing the reward. When you're investing in non-obvious founders, it should be that exact same outcome. And so it always sort of befuddled me as a person with a hard to pronounce name in Silicon Valley.”
2021-10-16 · Masters in Business · Soraya Darabi on Social-Media Startups (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We invest in men and women equally. We invest in diverse founders almost all of the time. And we track this with data and precision to make sure that our investments reflect not just one zip code in California, but rather America at larger.”
2021-10-16 · Masters in Business · Soraya Darabi on Social-Media Startups (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We invest in purpose as it pertains to transportation, so not immediately intuitive, but companies creating transparency and efficiency around global supply chain and mobility. I can talk about why we picked that category in a bit, and sustainability. So tech-enabled sustainable solutions. This is our companies optimizing for sustainability from process to product. With these five verticals combined, we have a subs, which is a diverse founders and diverse employee bases and diverse cap tables is not charity, it's simply good for business. And so in addition to being hyper-specific about the impact in which we invest, we also make it a priority and a mandate at our firm to invest in the way the world truly looks. And when we say that on our website, we link to census data.”
2021-10-16 · Masters in Business · Soraya Darabi on Social-Media Startups (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, the word purpose, I suppose, especially in the VC game, could come across as somewhat of a cliche. But we try to be as specific as possible when we allude to the impact that our investments can potentially make. And so specifically, we invest in five verticals at our early stage New York City-based venture fund. We invest in what we call the care economy, which is companies making all forms of care from elder care to pet care to health care, more accessible and equitable. We invest in financial inclusion. So this is a spin on fintech. These are companies enabling wealth creation, education, and most importantly literacy for all, something I think is really important, the democratization of finance. We invest in the future of work. Our companies creating better outcomes for workers and employees alike. We invest in the future of work, which are companies creating better outcomes for workers and employers alike.”
2021-10-16 · Masters in Business · Soraya Darabi on Social-Media Startups (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We did. We raised tremendous investors like Ivan Sanket of Felicia's Ventures, whom I think of as being one of the best angel investors of the world. He was on the board. But we didn't raise that much capital before the business was ultimately sold. And what I learned in some of those early conversations, I would say, but may have ultimately led to LOIs and term sheets was that so much of M&As about whining and dining And as a young person, particularly for me, you and I discussed before the show Barry, were both from New York, I'm not from a business-oriented family, to say the least. My mom's an academic. My father was a cab driver in New York City. And so there are certain elements of this game, raising venture and ultimately trying to exit your company that you don't learn from a business book. And I think navigating that is a”
2021-10-16 · Masters in Business · Soraya Darabi on Social-Media Startups (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“App Store. It was we and Twitter and Foursquare. So there was a first mover advantage. Looking back in hindsight, I think we sold that company too soon. Open Table bought the business a year and a half later. Priceline bought OpenTable. Both were generous liquidity events for the founders that enabled us to become angel investors. But sometimes I wish that that app still existed today because I could see it being still incredibly handy in my day-to-day life.”
2021-10-16 · Masters in Business · Soraya Darabi on Social-Media Startups (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so by following that lead, we basically built an app of round an activity that continues to take place every single day. I still see food photos on Twitter every time I open up my stream and decided to match that with an algorithm that showed folks wherever they were in the world. I think Greece, I might want to ban a copita or I mean Japan, Okinawa, we helped people discover not just the Michelin rated restaurants or the most popular local haunt in New York City, but rather what's the dish that they should be ordering and then what the app was extremely good at was populating beautiful photos of that particular dish and then mirroring them with accredited reviews from the Zagets of the world, but also popular celebrity chefs like Marcus Hamilton in New York. And that's why we took off because it was a cult beloved app of its time. Back when there were only three geolocation apps in the iTunes.”
2021-10-16 · Masters in Business · Soraya Darabi on Social-Media Startups (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Pardon still today, very relevant and very successful venture capital firms. And in particular, they were backing a lot of the most interesting ideas in the Web 2.0 era. When I joined this particular startup in 2010. Well, that startup was acquired by Facebook, and I often say no thanks to me. But the mafia that left that particular startup continues to this day to co-invest with one another and help one another's ideas succeed. And it was there that I began to build the confidence, I think, that I really needed to explore my own entrepreneurial ideas or to help accelerate ideas. And food spotting was a company that I was advising while at that particular startup that was really taking off. This was in the early days of when Instagram was to run beta, and we observed that the most commonly posted photos on Instagram were of food.”
2021-10-16 · Masters in Business · Soraya Darabi on Social-Media Startups (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My age could build a business, raise VC. He was the son of a VC, and so he was exceptionally attuned to the changing landscape adventure and how to position the company so that it would be attractive to the RREs of the world and the BFJs. To find those for us.”
2021-10-16 · Masters in Business · Soraya Darabi on Social-Media Startups (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In New York City alone. And so it was there that I met some really brilliant people. And in particular, a gentleman my age who was building a cloud computing company that was essentially arbitraging AWS to repopulate consumer facing cloud data services for enterprises, B2B2I. And we all thought it would be Dropbox. The company ultimately wasn't, but I will tell you the people with whom I worked at that startup because I left the New York Times to join that startup to this day remain some of the most successful people in Silicon Valley and Alley. And actually one of those persons is a partner at our firm, now Darshan, who was the co-founder of that particular company, which was called Drop.io. So I stayed there very quickly. I was there for about six months. But at that startup, I observed how a young person”
2021-10-16 · Masters in Business · Soraya Darabi on Social-Media Startups (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, five to six nights a week after my day job at the New York Times, I would go to networking events with technologists and entrepreneurs after hours. I saw that as a priority to be able to partner from the earliest infancy with interesting companies for that media entity. I needed to at least know who these founders were in New York and Silicon Valley. And so without a true agenda other than a keen curiosity to learn what these businesses were all about, I would go to the New York Tech meetup, which Scott HypermanoMeetup.com, who's now a cherished LP in my fund, would create. And back then, the New York Tech meetup was fewer than 40 people. I believe it's in the tens of thousands now.”
2021-10-16 · Masters in Business · Soraya Darabi on Social-Media Startups (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There was a true opportunity as well for social media founders, founders focusing on convergence in any industry really, many of which were predicated in New York to begin tinkering on an idea that could ultimately become quite powerful because if you're at the earliest stage of the riskiest asset class being venture, there's always going to be seed funding for a great founder with a great idea. And so I think some of the smartest people I've ever met in my life I met at the onset of the aftermath of that particular era in time.”
2021-10-16 · Masters in Business · Soraya Darabi on Social-Media Startups (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was a very interesting time. I remember having quite literally 30 second meetings with Sorkin as he would run upstairs to my floor on the eighth floor to talk about a deal book app that we wanted to launch and then he'd run back down to his desk to do much more important work, I think, in between the financial crisis to the world. The 30-second meetings aside, it was considered to be in some ways a great awakening for the Web 2.0 era as the economy was bottling out like any recession it also offered a really interesting opportunity for entrepreneurs, many of whom had just been laid off or were looking at this as a sizable moment to begin to work on a side hustle or a life pursuit. And so there's, you know, it's unsettling, of course, any recession or any great awakening, but lemonade lemons, when to opening door, closing.”
2021-10-16 · Masters in Business · Soraya Darabi on Social-Media Startups (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's true, although I don't remember the dot-com implosion. So maybe that naivete helped because all I had was enthusiasm, unbridled enthusiasm for these new companies. And I operated then and now still with a beta approach to business, you know, testing out new platforms and trying to track the data, what scaling, what velocity is this platform scaling, and can we hitch a ride on a rocket ship if they will so allow? But a lot of our partnerships then and now as an investor are predicated upon relationships. And so, you know, as most, I think, terrific investors that I listen to, who I listen to on your show at least, will talk to you about the importance of believing in the founder and the founder's vision. And that was the case back then remains the case today.”
2021-10-16 · Masters in Business · Soraya Darabi on Social-Media Startups (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Unknown. The Facebooks and the Twitters, of course, but also platforms that really took off for a while and then plateaued potentially, you know, the tumblers of the world. And it was my responsibility to understand how we could effectively generate an understanding of the burgeoning demographics of these platforms, have a kid potentially bring income into the times for working with them, but more importantly, how the journalists could authentically represent themselves on new mediums. And so that was a really wonderful role to have directly out of university and then introduced me to folks with whom I still work today.”
2021-10-16 · Masters in Business · Soraya Darabi on Social-Media Startups (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, absolutely. I was fresh-faced out of university. I had recently graduated with mostly a journalism concentration from Georgetown and did a small spint at Conte Nast right around the time they acquired Reddit for what will soon be nothing because Reddit's expecting to IPO at around $15 billion. And that experience at Reddit really offered me a decent understanding of convergence, you know, what was happening to digital media properties as they partnered for the first time with nascent but scaling social media platforms. And so the New York Times generously offered me a role that was originally called manager of buzz marketing. I think that's what they called social media in 2006. And then that eventually evolved into manager of digital partnerships and social media, which in essence meant that we were aiming to be the first media property in the world to partner with companies that are household names today, but back in the day were fairly”
2021-10-16 · Masters in Business · Soraya Darabi on Social-Media Startups (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source