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- [00:00]
Kate Brodach
Once they hit fundraising pitch, pitch practices are like a super big thing, like just refining that pitch, going over the pitch deck. It's very interesting how little access people have to that knowledge to be able to really effectively get a pitch done. So that's a big bucket. Intros are huge as you can imagine. So we really try to catalyze as many investor intros as we can.
- [00:37]
Joel Palo Thinkle
Welcome to the Investor a podcast where I, Joel Palo Thinkle, your host, dives deep into the minds of the world's most influential institutional investors. In each episode, we sit down with an investor to hear about their journeys and how global markets are driving capital allocation. So join us on this journey as we explore these insights. So to be one second and then we'll be ready to go. All right, so it looks like we're live here. So Kate, again, thanks for popping in. I know you're super busy. Nobody is more busier than a fund manager, especially someone that's in the process of it. So excited to have you here. Excited to learn from you. Kate here. Kate Brodach is with the W Fund. So really excited to have this discussion. Her and I have had some discussions the last couple weeks just talking about everything, emerging manager, everything, first time fund manager, challenges, opportunities, community, network, all that stuff. So a lot to unpack. But Kate, why don't you just start with maybe a quick intro and give some background and then I'll try to navigate the discussion and maybe we can try to keep it interactive because people probably get tired of me talking for too long.
- [02:05]
Kate Brodach
Perfect. Love it. And thanks for having me today. So I'll do a cliff notes version of my background. I've been in the tech startup space for 15 to 20 years or so and in first half of my career in two main capacities. One is an operator, coo, CMO stuff and then and of course jack of all trades when you're in startups. And then the second capacity has been really actively involved in gender and representation in the space. So again, sort of that first 10 years it was like, you know, the on the side work that I really, really loved and easily could have had, you know, be my full time if there was an opportunity. But I was part of and then for a couple of years ran a large global nonprofit focused on women in entrepreneurship. At the time I was the president for about three years and at the time I stepped down we had about 60 chapters around the world. So did a ton of founder work. You know, everything from just mobilizing and navigating the space to like full Accelerator programs, that type of thing. About five years ago I was fortunate enough I was able to combine both of those parallel paths and I acquired the brand assets to a for profit, for good out of Silicon Valley called Women 2.0 and was able to really structure that in a way that my previous experience, at least in my opinion, was going to be able to tackle this issue of representation or the multiple issues of representation in this space. And so built that for a couple of years and then last year actually late 2019. But I think everybody gets a pass for the big, you know, three or four month hunk of time in 2020 where nobody was doing anything, especially fundraising. So we launched a exact same thesis venture capital fund. And I launched it with a community partner of mine who's run a similar organization for about 10 years. So sage seed, mostly seed, little bit of pre seed, little series A tech enabled companies run and led by women or underrepresented founders. Past tech enabled, industry agnostic. That's strategic. We have, because of our two communities, we have just a ridiculous amount of deal flow. And so yeah, at this point we're really excited to be able to write out checks to these founders. It's kind of the last piece here is being able to write out equity taking checks to these founders that we've been working with for 10 or 15 years.
- [05:05]
Joel Palo Thinkle
That's really great. And I think a huge differentiator because we were talking about differentiators last night with a couple LPs and just being in Fintech is not a differentiator or even I'll be provocative, not just being female or diverse. Focus is not differentiator, but I think a huge differentiator is really the community that you've built. Any advice on how people can build content and community at scale? I think you were really strategic because you built a really strong partnership with somebody. But any other advice, especially for emerging managers, you know, how do you really get people to care? We're seeing a lot of these Twitter VCs, right? We see people that are on Twitter and then like two months later they got 30,000 followers and they're listed as like a 506C, right? So that means they're allowed to talk about fundraising and that really helps and that really boosts community. But what's worked for you? What doesn't scale? I'll be honest, clubhouse does not really work. So I've done a few clubhouses and like some of my old friends from school are like the only people that show up. So I don't think I can do clubhouse. So it's like three people that show up.
- [06:12]
Kate Brodach
I love it.
- [06:12]
Joel Palo Thinkle
Not for me, but what works, what doesn't. How do you start building community?
- [06:19]
Kate Brodach
Yeah, and I'm take this with a grain of salt too, because I think Allison and I, that's my partner at the fund, we've had the benefit of actually coming from community. So we're not a fund that's kind of backing into this. It's really forward for us and we kind of added a fund. That being said, you know, some of the things to keep in mind are to approach communities, whatever the community is that you want to be building normally for funds, it's of course some sort of founder community, co investor community maybe. But take, it's all, it's almost like mentally take the fund out of it. And if you do that, you show up, you know, authentically and with genuine intent and you show up consistently. Consistency is really important. And then really figuring out like, what is the value that you're bringing truly beyond just we're a fund and we can write out checks and really dig in there. And I think it's really important to reiterate, like continue to take the fund out of what you're doing. You will reap the benefits of that. And I, and I think showing up the founders is almost like the founders can kind of sniff out when you're not doing that.
- [07:46]
Interjecting Participant
Yeah.
- [07:47]
Kate Brodach
And, and the broader community can as well. I think you, you know, Joel, it's funny when you're. The example you just gave is all of a sudden Twitter VC, you show up and you got 30k and then you're asking people to invest in your fund. People notice that. So, and, and they, and they kind of get when it's happening. So those are just a couple of the things. And I really do think the value piece of it is important. That's something we've thought about a lot@Women 2.0 is just like what, like what is the true value? The true value and just really dive in there. And then all the basics, like it's relationship building, it's long term and consistency and it's giving back and it's all, you know, all that kind of important stuff.
- [08:34]
Joel Palo Thinkle
And with your community, you just talked to, you know, probably thousands of founders. So what is the most valuable? Right. I mean, for me, I try to use my superpower powers where, you know, I'm a product person. So I'm always happy to play with the app and play with the website and I'll give them like A mock up. I'll give them like a marked up deck with like 20 revisions to their app. You know, it's up to them if they want to take it or not. I'm not expert, but, you know, that's kind of my superpower. There's other people that are like financial modelers. Right. They can help you with your financials. So, you know. But what's the most important, you know, is it fundraising? Is it anything else? What's kind of the common pattern that you're seeing that the founders need help with?
- [09:16]
Kate Brodach
Yeah, well, first I'll say, like you, you just did an exactly like that powerful thing right there. As you said. Look, I'm really good at X, so not everybody will have that problem. But that is what I can offer to the world, you know, generally speaking for founders. And keep in mind most of the founders that we're working with are earlier stage. So like pretty.
- [09:39]
Interjecting Participant
Yeah.
- [09:40]
Kate Brodach
And so it depends on their journey once they hit fundraising pitch. Pitch practices are like a super big thing. Like just refining that pitch, going over the pitch deck. It's very interesting how little access people have to that knowledge to be able to really effectively get a pitch done. So that's a big bucket. Intros are huge, as you can imagine. So we really try to catalyze as many investor intros as we can.
- [10:18]
Interjecting Participant
Yeah.
- [10:19]
Kate Brodach
And then outside of. When companies are outside of the fundraising stage, the variations actually kind of of what you just said, Joel, those are the big, the bigger buckets is you have a lot of. When you get a founder, generally speaking, they're good at one or two things. They have an experience in one or two things and then they have all this other stuff. They don't, they don't really know. A lot of times it's finance. So finance is kind of a bigger bucket.
- [10:48]
Interjecting Participant
Yeah.
- [10:49]
Kate Brodach
Where you don't often have, you know, you don't often have like a CFO unless they're building a product around that you don't also have. You don't often have a CFO jumping in as a founder. Right, sure. And legal is another one. And so I think, I think filling in almost like the business basics is, is really helpful for people. And people don't get that a lot. There are a lot of really great programs out there, accelerator programs, etc. But if you haven't run through one that is a big, big gap is like the basics, like how in my next 12 months of running this business, what am I doing literally with everything? So being able to give them that so we At Women 2.0, for instance, we have an accelerator program. Really, at the end of the day, it's. It's a readiness program.
- [11:46]
Joel Palo Thinkle
Sure.
- [11:46]
Kate Brodach
It runs them through, like, accounting 101, you know, and that type of thing. And. And those are really the things. And then the last thing I'll say is specialized communities. I think. I think there's a. At least I'd say a desire for that. And what I mean by that is, if you are specifically a SaaS product, is really being able to have those, like, Okay, I have 10 other SaaS founders that I can regularly sit down and talk to. And we are just, like, going through this journey together. That's something we've been thinking about lot. But I think that's another. That's another aspect is like the really close, specialized peer network.
- [12:38]
Joel Palo Thinkle
So, you know, I've been learning. I've never launched an accelerator before, but with the fund accelerator, I've been getting a lot of candid feedback, and I've been having mentors like yourself ask about how to do an accelerator. And I think one of the biggest things is the programming. So I guess with the educational content, did you just build that yourself or did you get some help, like, some CFAs? Because you probably have to have, like, a good structured programming. And how many hours should that be a week? Because the founders are busy. Right. So I'm secretly, like, asking, because it's something that I've been thinking about. So, like, what's the cadence? You know, what's. What's too much and then what's too little? Like, when you're trying to build an accelerator?
- [13:22]
Kate Brodach
Yeah, great question. The approach that we took is that we. We took a layered approach.
- [13:31]
Interjecting Participant
Yeah.
- [13:31]
Kate Brodach
And so we have sort of the core curriculum, and we do try to keep that to your point to tops six hours a week.
- [13:42]
Joel Palo Thinkle
Okay, that's good. That's a good rule of thumbs.
- [13:44]
Kate Brodach
Or, you know, sessions much like you run. Yeah, yeah. Because to your point, these companies aren't stopping everything and doing this. And we're also. We are also not set up like techstars is. Techstars is like a full drink from a hose. They've developed that over the past two decades program. Right. So. And you know what you're getting into kind of when you go to techstars. But. Yeah, so. So that's the core curriculum. Then what we do do is we layer on essentially, like, optional additions. And so. Yeah, and that comes in a couple different formats. So we'll do, you know, additional guest speakers. We'll do office hours. And then the other thing we like to do is that we also, we have lead mentors for every single founder they meet with weekly. And then we have an outer layer of mentors that basically can engage in however they kind of want.
- [14:40]
Interjecting Participant
Yeah.
- [14:40]
Kate Brodach
And then the last thing that we kind of insert there is that we do have specialized points of engagement. So you just mentioned like finance, financial projections, for instance. We have someone who is basically available if you would like to go through the process of working through your projections, which pretty much everybody does.
- [15:03]
Interjecting Participant
Sure.
- [15:04]
Kate Brodach
Set up some time with this person. If so. So then we try and it's really. So we basically have like a core and then like engage at your will.
- [15:15]
Interjecting Participant
Yeah.
- [15:16]
Kate Brodach
Set of stuff. Yeah.
- [15:17]
Joel Palo Thinkle
Cause you gotta be sensitive to both. You gotta be sensitive to both parties too. Because the founders, you're like, hey, six hours, that's time that you gotta commit. But then it's scalable too because you're not asking too much of a commitment. Because each of the modules might be just an hour for each person pretty much. Right. Like the financial person, their module may be like one or two hours. And then, and then the VCs. Do you guys something that I've seen which seems to make sense. And that's gonna be really aggressive with like some type of fund manager accelerator. But some of these accelerators I've seen have had like venture investor sprints where they will actually line up like tons and tons of VC meetings. And I think that's helpful too. Cause if you're doing early stage, just lining them up for like series A, that's also helpful. But that's like a full time job. I don't even think you can fundraise and do that at the same time.
- [16:07]
Kate Brodach
Yeah.
- [16:09]
Joel Palo Thinkle
Because that's like a program manager.
- [16:10]
Kate Brodach
We actually do. Oh yeah. So we actually do a par down version of that. But we already kind of have that process built in at Women 2.0.
- [16:23]
Joel Palo Thinkle
Sure.
- [16:23]
Kate Brodach
And our accelerator, just to confirm or just to clarify, we are meeting them where they are in their fundraising journey. We are not one of the accelerator programs where you're expected to like be going out and fundraising at the end. For those who are we, we, we actually do go through a little bit of that process. But we again, we kind of have the process down already because we have like weekly pitch sessions and all this stuff. We've got the investor network set up, so we, we kind of have that already done. But yeah, it can be a lot.
- [16:57]
Interjecting Participant
Yeah.
- [16:57]
Kate Brodach
But you've probably found, Joel, like those are oftentimes some of the most valuable things that you can do.
- [17:05]
Interjecting Participant
Yeah.
- [17:06]
Kate Brodach
Are those intros, you know, so we try to, you know, we try to just be the good stewards.
- [17:13]
Joel Palo Thinkle
Yeah. And it's only going to help everybody. Right. It's going to help you because you're, you know, you're helping them kind of get to the next level. And it's helping you help them pretty much. Right. Because you're lining them up with other mentors and connectivity to really grow and accelerate from where you drop them off on. And, and it's just a catalyst for just future growth. So I think that community is huge. If you don't have the community, you're not going to get to the goals and the milestones that everybody's trying to march towards. So, you know, kudos to you for building that community. And you guys are completely global too. Right. So you guys have kind of like, I guess everything is virtual now. Right. But do you plan on in person at some point or is it just better and scalable to just stay virtual?
- [17:56]
Kate Brodach
It's a good, it's a good question and it's something we actually were thinking about pre Covid is the idea of access is one of the big things is we do want these things to be accessible if you can't go somewhere.
- [18:11]
Interjecting Participant
Yeah.
- [18:12]
Kate Brodach
Though we know the power of being in person and so we're actually sort of trying to figure that out a little bit and we, we have a couple of ideas, but I don't think we have like quite an answer just yet. So.
- [18:27]
Interjecting Participant
Yeah.
- [18:28]
Joel Palo Thinkle
Do you think it's also helpful? You know, there's one accelerator that I specifically building a friendship with. They. One of their LPs is just one anchor single family office and they like to bring the LPs in the, in the events too, because the LP, some of them are like entrepreneurs. Right. So they actually are the same way. Like some of them are like me. They're kind of like, hey, let me roll up my sleeves and add my 2 cents. So do you think, have you had some LPs and I guess it depends, right. If they're super institutional. Right. They may not care about product, market fit and try to do like a cohort analysis on a social media marketing campaign. But what are the type of LPs that you think have been really good partners and what's their level of interest with your community? Have you seen them kind of really be involved or do they just want to hear performance numbers?
- [19:20]
Kate Brodach
Yeah, no. Love that you're asking this question because we love LPs who want to get more involved. Yeah, and 90%. I almost really want to say 100%, but I'm just going to solve for whatever, say 90. They are the types who have already, on that first phone call, they're already asking us what type of involvement can I have? Yeah, so we, we actually really don't have any LPs who just sit back and wait for, like the quarterly update. Yeah, they engage at various levels. You know, we have one LP who is an exec coach and she's just running, you know, quarterly CEO roundtables for our founders. We have a couple of really specialized, you know, just like sort of CFO type of stuff. We have some really specialized LPs. And then because Alison and I both then have these larger communities as well, we're able to allow them access. But most everybody comes to us and that is like very central to kind of what they want to get done out of the experience. Now, Most of our LPs right now are individuals. We have a couple of family offices, but usually that lead same thing gets kind of excited about being involved. So that right now is the profile. But we very much open that obviously, within reason. We don't want anyone jumping in and starting to get into due diligence and investment decisions. But. But yes, it's a pretty porous line that we have.
- [21:16]
Joel Palo Thinkle
Yeah, that's, you know, that's something. That's funny that you mentioned this because we were actually talking about this yesterday. It's like you don't want to get micromanaged and, you know, they're going to add their own 2 cents. So there's either the blind pool or there's the, you know, hey, let's share and get your feedback. And then, you know, again, wearing the product manager hat. Right? I mean, you get a lot of feedback. You get quantitative, qualitative data, and then you, as the fund manager, slash product community person, have to make the best decisions. So there's a lot of onus on that. But it's also liberating too, because you can kind of have the power and be empowered to make the decisions, but try to synthesize as much feedback as you can. Right. You're going to get a lot of inputs and a lot of opinions, and you got to cut through that noise. And I guess that's something that your partner works on. And I guess we talked about this too. I guess how do you cut the noise? And this is, you know, a big hot topic, just finding LPs. You know, we don't have to name any specific communities. But what are some signals that you're like, man, this. This conference is like a waste of time. You know, any hacks to meet LPs, and I'm going to bring one up that I think is brilliant that maybe you may not know of and maybe you already do because you've tried it. It's a funny hat trick. It's kind of cheesy, but I'm gonna. But any. Any, you know, advice you have for kind of meeting LPs, building LPs. I know you're still in the process. It's a CRM business. That's what I've been hearing.
- [22:40]
Kate Brodach
Oh, yeah. I am not gonna have the golden ticket on this. This is something that we are, like you said, still chipping away at. Where we've been successful is, first of all, we are able to publicly solicit. So we're on the angelist rolling fund.
- [23:00]
Joel Palo Thinkle
Oh, sure.
- [23:01]
Kate Brodach
And so that means. That means in every single one of my weekly women 2.0 newsletters, I can ask people. And we've gotten some LPs from there, so I'll just sort of broadly put that out. But we have the community to bring that in.
- [23:15]
Interjecting Participant
Yeah.
- [23:16]
Joel Palo Thinkle
So the structure, I think one, and sorry to cut you, I was just going to pull one nugget from that. It's kind of like the structure. Strategically structuring it in the right way could also help you be set up to have certain advantages.
- [23:31]
Kate Brodach
Yes. And we benefit from that because we had that community that we were able to solicit. Taking that out of the equation, because that actually isn't the majority of where we get our LPs. One large bucket that we have an advantage with is that we have a lot of LPs who are essentially like successful women. They now have assets in their hands and they want to put their assets to work. They have somehow, maybe they've followed our work before, maybe we know them, maybe they just get introduced, but they like the idea of putting that money into the hands of women founders. So that is kind of a big bucket that we have a little bit of a uniqueness. But I would say that you could translate that into what is your strength. And therefore, you know, how can I leverage that? We have a lot of new money, and I think there's a lot to be said about new money. People who have not been LPs before, you do have to spend time with them and talking about what it means to be an lp. And we try to be as responsible as possible and we spend time when they need it. But if you start just chasing the same LPs who are being asked by 10 different funds, like that's when you're going to get into the sales dilemma. Right? Yeah, we still have some of those. Right. We have your Silicon Valley successful founder. Hey, we're going to dunk a bunch of money. And we have a couple of those. But I think there's something to be said about new money and, and really catering to that group for the, for once you start getting out of the individuals. For us, that is where we are still kind of chipping away at. You know, you can't really Google too many family offices. And so. And we were not well networked in that space either. And then there's the, and then there's the reality that we're fund one. And so once you get further into institutional, you know, you're just going to be looking for the needle in the haystack.
- [25:45]
Interjecting Participant
Yeah.
- [25:46]
Kate Brodach
So we've just really kind of grassroots. We've been just trying to get the intros, ask for intros. We've been pretty aggressive on like asking intros. We even ask the people. Most of the people we get a no from, if it makes sense, we actually ask them for intros. And so that is, that's kind of how we've been doing it. I have been part of a couple of emerging fund manager programs sort of similar to yours. I have found those. I have started to ask about that connection point because I have found those to be a little less helpful.
- [26:27]
Interjecting Participant
Yeah.
- [26:28]
Kate Brodach
On the lp. So I really dig in on what they mean when they say there are LP connections because those have. And don't get me wrong, I love those from an educational standpoint, but that is one, one area where I've started to dig in on.
- [26:49]
Joel Palo Thinkle
Yeah. Because you got to make sure that each of the. I was going to say that's a good point. I think also one thing that you mentioned too, which, which is related is that community can help filter that as well. Right. Because the community could be like, look, you know, here's a program, it's an educational program. It's taught by like fund admins, you know, so it's like, Are there real LPs? There are people. And then a big thing is too. It's like these LPs, are they too big for like the $10 million funds? You know, that's something that you gotta balance too. Is it worth it to meet an institution if you're on fund one? Yeah, I guess. Long term. So That's a question that maybe it's good to get feedback on from your peers too. And hopefully all these platforms, these emerging fund manager platforms, they take the feedback and they incorporate it and they roll it into the next batch.
- [27:44]
Kate Brodach
Yeah, absolutely. And to your point, Joel, I'm in a couple of the sort of emerging fund manager communities as well. Whether it be like, you know, women fund managers or whatever it is, first time fund managers, whatever, they're really helpful for like qualifying some of these, you know, it, it'll be something like, hey, I got approached by so and so or I got invited to do this program. Has anybody found value?
- [28:14]
Interjecting Participant
Yeah.
- [28:15]
Kate Brodach
Out of that. And the nice thing is that most people are pretty respectful, but they'll give you the honest feedback that you need. And that has been really helpful, I think is just being in that community of like the people who are doing the same thing that you are and talking to the same people and they're, they're very helpful.
- [28:35]
Joel Palo Thinkle
Yeah. And your reputation, you know, really carries through. And I think another big piece is it's a small community, right. You just, if you just ask one person, you know, like if I ask, if I mention your name to Ariana, right. We, you know, you know, Ariana. And then there's probably five other people that know our second connections, right. So I think it's just such a small community. And even with the LPs, right. I mean, LPs is even smaller, right. They're all in the same exact deals. Half of them are. They're all, you know, LPs and some of the same funds. So I think just trying to have that goodwill and you know, good intentions in general I think is helpful. And yeah, I think that also helps with community building too, with deal sourcing also, you know, when you're trying to find deals, there's probably somebody that already did, you know, much further diligence. So you might even save your time. So it's, you know, I think some people are kind of a little concerned that it's, oh, it's competitive because we're sharing too much information. But at the same time it's like if you don't share, it's, it's kind of. You're like frenemies, right? So you kind of are sometimes competitive but at the same time you have to work together to kind of make sure it's a good, good opportunity for everybody.
- [29:45]
Kate Brodach
Right?
- [29:46]
Joel Palo Thinkle
So.
- [29:47]
Kate Brodach
Yep, yep. Yeah.
- [29:51]
Joel Palo Thinkle
And you know, with your, with your thesis, I guess with your community, this might be good for some of the people in the community that are, you know, emerging managers or looking to break into vc. What are some of the top characteristics that you guys look for when you're trying to invest in an opportunity? You know, what's your vetting criteria to get them accepted into the accelerator? And then how many people do you. Can you accept at a time with the bandwidth that you have for cohort.
- [30:18]
Kate Brodach
Yeah, yeah. And just to clarify to the accelerator, and I know this can get confusing when I talk about it, but the accelerator is separate from the fund. So that's in Women 2.0 and our fund is sort of over here as a side thing. And I'll answer what I think is your question. Second, so the accelerator, we don't necessarily look at the ability, we don't necessarily look at the invest. The immediate investability on that one. You really look for, you know, there are a bunch of different application criteria. Are they generally high growth? Do they have enough that we can work with? Is the founder motivated? All that good stuff. Then they kind of go on their trajectory. We might talk to two or three of them for the fund, but that's about it. What I think you're. Or I'll turn it into this for our fund. What we look at for investment criteria is a couple of things. First, our basic thesis, just to make sure it lines up and we have tech enabled as our bottom out basically. And what we mean is that technology has to be the core innovation. So things like E commerce, it doesn't cut it, you know, that type of thing. But that's pretty broad. We are explicitly generalist, but we have some things that get us excited. So that's the first thing. Yeah, we have some things that don't get us very excited.
- [31:52]
Joel Palo Thinkle
What gets you excited?
- [31:53]
Kate Brodach
So we, we start, we talk a lot about access and so if, if the core innovation is basically opening up access to a market group of people, whatever it is that didn't normally have access to that, you know, two big ones might be geography and price or something like that. That is, that is excellent for us. We really like that. So fintech, Ed tech, health tech, all that, all that type of stuff.
- [32:23]
Joel Palo Thinkle
Sure. Especially probably like one thing underserved the market. Yeah. No, one thing could probably also be like maybe insurance tech. Right. So if people are able to get like access to an insurance policy through an app that is growing in popularity in the States, but there's still emerging markets where it's still brand new. The unicorns already IPO'd in the States, but there's still unicorns like Some of those other countries that could still open up access to fintech as well.
- [32:57]
Kate Brodach
Yeah. Although I will say for insure tech we actually have a. Not we the funds but working with a cool very early stage so need to wait on a little bit. But she's offering in the States more affordable health care for freelancers which is a huge hole.
- [33:16]
Interjecting Participant
Yeah.
- [33:18]
Kate Brodach
And that is exciting. It's a hole I felt personally she's felt. So there's. Yes, so but exactly that, Joel. It's like, it's like she is dealing with millions of people in this country who are pissed off at their lack of health care options or haven't even left their full time job because of healthcare and that's huge. But yes. So insuretech is legal tech would be another one I think too. We actually just invested. On Friday we closed the deal with a Canadian company that has built an AI powered trademark registration. That's it. Straightforward platform for small and medium sized businesses. If anybody here has ever tried to register a bloody trademark, it is awful. And they have leapfrogged that by several steps and it's fantastic. So we're really excited about that one. So we love Access, we love Mother Earth. So you know things in the sustainability space to the extent that we can. We have a great advisor on for that too. We love that. And you know we have some fun companies like we have a portfolio company that does it's stock market for sneakers.
- [34:36]
Joel Palo Thinkle
Oh, wow.
- [34:37]
Kate Brodach
Fantastic team. Yeah, like really fun, really fun company to be in. They're doing some really cool stuff they're getting into.
- [34:44]
Joel Palo Thinkle
Are they using, using the blockchain to track the performance?
- [34:50]
Kate Brodach
Not yet. Okay, not yet. But that's on the roadmap.
- [34:54]
Interjecting Participant
Yeah.
- [34:54]
Kate Brodach
So, so cool company. And then you know there are some things, like some things that don't get us very excited are you know, marketing and ad tech. So like advertising tech.
- [35:06]
Interjecting Participant
Sure.
- [35:08]
Kate Brodach
You know, ag tech, agricultural tech. I tell you is very exciting.
- [35:13]
Interjecting Participant
Yeah.
- [35:14]
Joel Palo Thinkle
There's been some robotics, agriculture companies. I don't know if you guys been looking at that.
- [35:19]
Kate Brodach
Yeah, yep. Cool stuff, cool stuff. And also again one of those markets that's been so low tech there's a lot of room to play in there.
- [35:30]
Interjecting Participant
Yeah.
- [35:31]
Kate Brodach
And then you know something like future of work is so busy that we're just really careful there. We generally won't look at like pre seed future of work companies because it's just so hard to figure out if they're going to be the one and then ethical boundaries. So you know, are how are you using your data Are you good to your humans or are you, you know, the next Facebook? That's big. You know, we don't touch, we don't really touch things in like the defense space. So a couple of those boundaries.
- [36:06]
Joel Palo Thinkle
That makes sense.
- [36:08]
Kate Brodach
Yeah. So then, so if it gets us excited, we definitely put a lot of weight on the founder from a couple different angles. We really like founder market fit. So they may have never started a company, they may be coming straight out of corporate, but if they have maybe deeply felt the pain point they're solving for, if they have been in the industry and just can absolutely navigate the heck out of it, awesome. And so we really like that. We also really need to have like, we really like our founders. We spent a lot of time with our founders. We love our relationships with founders. And so this is going to sound cliche, but, you know, coachability, I think, is really a big thing for us. And we see that as being the sweet spot of humility plus conviction. It's like the ability to say, I want to take in information because I know that people do this better than I do. But I can also synthesize that and make very, very decisions within my leadership role that are going to be positive and beneficial to my company. So that's important. And then we just have a couple of your sort of standard, you know, we look at all the sort of standard things that everyone does. What's your go to market strategy? How are you going to be using the money? What's the, you know, what's the market size? We're not necessarily one of those companies that have to see or funds that have to see like a unicorn status and everything that we do. We actually feel really comfortable having a couple having a portfolio that's getting up there. But we don't want to be the portfolio that's just leaning on the three unicorns. And everyone else is like, you know, one and a half X or sale. So we're, we're, we still get excited if it's not necessarily like, are you going to be a unicorn?
- [38:20]
Joel Palo Thinkle
A lot of times we don't even know until, you know, I guess talk to me in like seven years. Talk to me in seven years. Right. And, and I'll let you know.
- [38:27]
Kate Brodach
Exactly, exactly, exactly. So those are just a couple of the things that we look at.
- [38:35]
Joel Palo Thinkle
No, that's really helpful. You know, maybe I'll open it up for questions, I guess. Anybody in the audience have any questions?
- [38:47]
Audience Member 1
Hello. I may have one, if that's okay.
- [38:49]
Kate Brodach
Sure.
- [38:53]
Audience Member 1
Hello. Hey, Kate, thank you very much for the discussion really, really, really helpful. And I really like your points around building communities and I think that is really important and really difficult and hard to navigate. Like if you want to start a startup, you can find many books and many people who have done it and you could easily learn. But to build a community is really, really difficult. So my question for you is that how was that possible during the Zoom live, like during the epidemic and was it really struggling to do that? And you know, when you want to build something and you have this online communities, it's very difficult to fit people. I think while if you see them face to face, it's easy to understand yes or no. So I don't know if you have some thoughts around that.
- [39:55]
Kate Brodach
Yep, great question. I'm going to preface that by saying that I have essentially in some capacity or another been working remotely for 10 years. So I did have a comfort level with that built in.
- [40:13]
Interjecting Participant
Yeah.
- [40:14]
Kate Brodach
That being said, you know, for women 2.0, first of all, we went into 2020 with probably four. We had just in 2019 for the community done basically like these marquee core events in person events, summits and we were going into 2021 having six of those on the docket as also as main revenue streams and ways of course to be serving the community and that sort of thing. So we have scratch all of that. However, I think what we immediately dug into was okay, everybody just got all of the in person community aspects stripped away from them. So how can we replicate at least some of those that are going to be the most valuable to our community and just go with it? So one example is all the founders who are fundraising and then Covid hit, they lost all of their, all of their one to one pitches. We had to cancel our own pitch event that had been scheduled for the end of March. They lost everything. We popped up starting in April. We popped up weekly pitch sessions live on Zoom 5 minutes. We invited our entire investor network to them. Only goal was to pitch, get intros and hopefully you will get a term sheet because this is about the best that we can do right now. Those were so successful, we're doing them still in 2021. We've had many term sheets signed, like 200 plus intros made. So one of the things that did happen in Covid is that I think people actually understood that they could be doing these things. Virtually a lot more people started to make deals and, and, and, and accelerators. All of the accelerators that were running all of tech stars, they had to all of a sudden do Everything, all of their little, what do they have, 100 accelerator programs? I don't even know. But they had to. They all virtual, yc, virtual everything. And so I think it almost got forced on them. And I am excited about at least some of that sticking around long term. I do think it's going to be very valuable when we can start bringing in the in person stuff. I think people need that. There's a lot, like you said, there's a lot you can't do when you're not in person or that's, you know, just can't do it as well. And then in terms of kind of assessing people, we, and I think a lot of other firms, you know, for example, from the investment standpoint, we kind of lean a little bit more on things like founder references and spending more time with them than you might in person and that type of thing. If you think about it, when you're not, when you are in person, you have that access. You also have a lot fewer meetings. Right. Zoom actually gives you the capability to line up a lot more touch points and you can actually get some different but more exposure points to somebody's personality or how they make decisions or how they communicate to people and that type of thing. So kind of like weighing the pros and cons a little bit. But I'm excited for like the merging of both of them now because I do think virtual has opened up a lot.
- [44:08]
Interjecting Participant
Yeah.
- [44:09]
Joel Palo Thinkle
Do you think, you know, and I'll. I'm sorry to jump in, but I think this is an important topic. Do you think loneliness is an issue? You know, like just when you talk to founders, or are there a lot of founders tackling that? Not only with the pandemic, but look, I live in New York City, right? And you know, there's just people are trying to date people are trying to meet people and you know, there's just a whole mental health piece. So do you think, you know, number one, as an initiative from founders, are you seeing that increase a lot and then, you know, as an investment technology opportunity. Right. Are you seeing any innovation with that, with like digital software and stuff?
- [44:53]
Kate Brodach
Yes, on all of this. And part of it too is that I think even just a little bit pre Covid, this idea of mental health, especially in the startup space, was like bubbling for sure, like this idea of hustle, 80 hour work week, you know, all that stuff. And then I absolutely think it got exacerbated and I think like loneliness. But. But then on the other side of the coin, five people stuck in a Manhattan Two bedroom apartment and homeschooling and like. And I don't even want to talk about it.
- [45:32]
Joel Palo Thinkle
You just mentioned, you just, you just described my life right now.
- [45:37]
Kate Brodach
There you go. Yes. So I absolutely. Mental health in the past year has been across the board, really important. We started the fund at least thinking about that anyways and pre Covid. Because we have mainly because we just, we want founders who are founder. Being a founder is already so lonely.
- [46:09]
Interjecting Participant
Yeah, it is.
- [46:11]
Kate Brodach
It can be. Anyways. And so we already were thinking about the. Just the personal well being of our founders going into it and now I think even more so.
- [46:25]
Interjecting Participant
Yeah.
- [46:25]
Kate Brodach
And then. And I think there are quite a few funds starting to kind of do that with their founders. And then to your last question about innovations in the space. Oh my gosh, there's so much. One of my, one of my classmates from my grad school program, he's in Sweden now, but he's running an entire fund that just invests in the mental health and wellness space. And so there's a lot of technology that is coming out to address anything from again, like access to mental health professionals.
- [46:59]
Interjecting Participant
Yeah.
- [47:00]
Kate Brodach
We have a woman in our accelerator program right now that is building a product specifically for professional women just around being a community focused on the mental health of your professional female peers.
- [47:17]
Interjecting Participant
Yeah.
- [47:18]
Kate Brodach
So I do think it's really another cool area of, of innovation right now, for sure. And that's exciting.
- [47:28]
Interjecting Participant
Yeah.
- [47:29]
Joel Palo Thinkle
Yeah. And I, you know, the people that are kind of trying to find the tribe, if they're able to find some type of tribe or community that they can relate to, I feel like that in itself is a huge support system. So, you know, I'm just really excited to hear that you're doing that and, and really helping people out, you know, with the community. Because I think you're helping on all different fronts. Right. It's founders, it's females, but then it's just kind of the community as well to support all those things intersecting. And I think it is strategic that you have two different entities. Right. You got the community. But then the fund is also kind of driving against its own mandate. So kudos to you on that. And I know we got about 10 minutes left, so hope that's all right with you, Kate. I know we might have a couple questions here, so I guess I'll just open it out to the audience. Does anybody have any questions for. For Kate? I wanted to give you guys a little bit of time if you guys had any.
- [48:22]
Rob
I actually have one. Sorry. I have one.
- [48:26]
Jude
Go ahead, Rob.
- [48:28]
Rob
Hi, Kate, this is Rob. Thank you so much. When you mentioned about how you structure the accelerator program earlier, that's really helpful. And when you mentioned about the lead mentor and the external mentor, along with pairing with such a meta expert from the industry contact, I think that's pretty interesting. So what I want to exit essentially, when you advise startup founders, how do you advise for product solution fit or like problem solution fit? Because when they are looking for product market fit with the mvp, how do you recommend that, hey, maybe you're on the right problem, but then your solution might be different. How do you look at the signals and how do you determine when's the time to do an action?
- [49:11]
Kate Brodach
Yeah, so the first thing I ask is whether that founder has done like basically customer discovery. So the end goal is that you're serving a customer with your solution. And so the first thing is whether you have a product or not, understanding of like that person who's going to be paying you at the end of the day actually needs what you think they need. So that I make sure that that's already happened. Is it just your problem or are there, is there actually a lot of people out there who are having the same problem? So if that is, if they've done that and they're like, yep, definitely that type of thing, I, I always kind, I always advise, like, listen, one thing I do love is the movement of kind of like no code, low code and just being able to pop something up to start getting those customer, potential customer proof points and understanding, okay, what pieces of this could go into a product. So it doesn't matter if you're doing things on like a combination of like Google sheets and a WordPress and like a landing page and whatever, but can you actually build in there the proof points that you need to then further build on that product and get to your MVP stage and really kind of tackle it from a feature perspective beyond that. And then I always really appreciate, like don't try to tackle everything. Be really figure out what you think the core is and then do something very simple around that core. Whether you think you could do five things with this product in the future, like just start with one and then continue on that. And again it's all, this is all about proof points. And in my opinion, it's all about proof points because that is what you need from customers. You need yeses from your customers. So when you're building that product, you have to figure out how to get those yeses from them. And yeses, I'm not saying they're actually going to say yes to you, but they're gonna engage in your platform, they're gonna, whatever it is. So I don't know if that quite answered your question, but that would be kind of the conversation that I would have with a founder who maybe doesn't have a product set up yet and they're trying to get on that pathway to an mvp. And then I would say, Rob, also that I, I have a couple of people who I would also that who are product experts, like Joel. Maybe I'll send somebody to Joel next time. But I also have a couple people who are like, you know, I wouldn't call myself a product expert. If they're really in this, then in that serious realm, I might, I might ask one of my colleagues who's a product expert, hey, I've got this great founder, I spent a little time with them. Sounds like they're in a really great spot right now. Do you have 30 minutes to spend with them? And that is kind of. Founders love that. They don't need all the stuff from you, they need information. And if you are the connector and you can also save yourself 30 minutes, that's really valuable to founders.
- [52:43]
Rob
Thank you. That's very comprehensive, the second part to it. I know. I just want to say one last thing is what are your thoughts on the future of marketplaces? Are they going to intersect between E commerce and social media? What is your thesis on that?
- [52:58]
Kate Brodach
Yeah, marketplaces are hard, especially two sided. Right? I get. Oh God, yeah. I mean, man, you've got to line up so much to even execute on a marketplace. And that is not me saying that they aren't going to work at all. But, but I think that is where, and like Joel said, especially on the two sided marketplaces is like really understanding what your customers, whatever the sides of the table, are needed and how you can deliver. Because the thing with marketplaces too is you often have like one shot to prove your value once you get people in there. Like if you, if they, if they come to you and you're, you're not matching them or whatever it is that your marketplace is going to do, you will probably not get that person back as a potential user. So you've really got to have your ducks in a row. So that's me being like maybe a little cynical because, because I've actually worked in, in a startup that was a marketplace and it is very difficult if you can figure out that nugget and you can start showing user growth. And then in addition to that, making sure that at some Point you're going to have people opening their wallets then. Fantastic. So. But that's my answer on marketplaces.
- [54:39]
Rob
Thank you. I really appreciate it. I'm doing a marketplace. That's why I asked about it.
- [54:44]
Kate Brodach
Okay, keep going. Just. You got it, you got it.
- [54:51]
Rob
Thank you.
- [54:52]
Joel Palo Thinkle
Yeah, good question and good advice, I guess. Jude, did you have a question? Might have went off for a second.
- [55:04]
Jude
Sorry, sorry.
- [55:05]
Joel Palo Thinkle
Yes, no worries.
- [55:06]
Jude
Yeah, I do. It's. Hi, Kate. It's more related to.
- [55:10]
Kate Brodach
Hi, dude.
- [55:12]
Jude
Hi. It's more related to basically the personality traits for some maybe that an LP may be interested in for, you know, someone that's sort of, you know, a VC coming from a pre seed compared to a growth sort of front. Do they have particular personality traits that they tend to look for from pre seed to growth, or does it all sort of blur and it's all one type of person, type of, you know, communication style that they prefer?
- [55:49]
Kate Brodach
And let me just clarify, are you talking lp's looking for personality traits in fund managers?
- [55:57]
Jude
Absolutely.
- [55:57]
Kate Brodach
Yes or. Okay. I think from my experience, I think this varies on the type of LP and how they kind of function for individual LPs for individuals. I think it's very much just like a. If they believe in what you're doing, it's a personality mesh. You've got to convince them and they either like the full package or not. I don't mean to oversimplify that, but to me, like the one on one thing is just very kind of individual. For family offices, I actually got really great advice when I started fundraising. I don't know if anyone knows Charles Hudson. He runs Precursor. He's like Fund 3 now. He's one of my advisors at Women 2.0. So I had a couple chats with them and I was thinking about starting this fund and Charles, like, stupid. If you ever get to like listen to Charles talk, he's just super practical. He's like, look, here's the flipping deal. And so he told me the deal with family offices and he said they all function on like their own set of things that they get excited about. And he told me this example of when he went in for his first. He had gotten an intro to his first family office conversation when he was raising fund one. And he had like, you know, he had the presentation deck with the return profile and the. But you know, all the money stuff, right? And luckily his friend was there in the waiting room and his friend pulled him aside. He's like, he's like, no, no, don't do any of that all this guy cares about is honestly like if you can get him tickets to the frickin NBA game or something like that. And so in 15 minutes Charles just completely changed his pitch and he ended up not investing in fund one. They weren't a fun one investor, they got him in fund two. And he just, he was like, I had no idea. Like you just, you have to, you know, everybody functions differently. And then I think at the institutional level they're much more data driven and performance driven. And where we've had the most success is when we can, when we can really communicate how they can overcome the risk that they perceive in investing with us. Because ultimately that is a long shot of an investment for institutional to invest in a first time fund manager and fund one. And so if we can, and those are long term relationships. So if we can just continue to feed that relationship. Be very gracious when you get, you get a couple of no's. I think is important, keep engaging with them. We have one we're still working on. I, I'm, I say to him, hey listen, I've got a really cool fintech deal I'd love for you to look at. It seems like it would be a good fit for your fund. Like I'm still doing all of that and I think it's just back to that relationship and I do think graciousness really matters there and, and, and, and, and being in that conversation for the long run. So I don't know if that answered your question, Jude, but those are a couple of things.
- [59:32]
Joel Palo Thinkle
Yeah, I posted that blog with Elizabeth. Yeah. You know, whenever you guys get a chance. And Kate, you probably read it but I mean it's just, you know, that blog was interesting because there was no correlation. Like she just met so many LPs and she just didn't see a correlation. She just, it was really kind of a, it's a sales CRM strategy from what I'm seeing from a lot of people. But everybody's different, right? I mean it also depends on how you're targeting the LPs. If you're, if you're only pinging institutions, you're probably just too small for them. So really kind of doing the exercise of like who, who is the profile of like who I should target as an lp.
- [60:11]
Kate Brodach
Yeah. And Joel, I'll add super quickly a piggyback to that. What you just said was being, being very realistic about who you can get is we were, we got so many times the advice of like listen, you're probably not going to get an institutional investor. But most people said start the relationship now, which 100%. So. But we don't expect no's from that. And then it's about where you're going to put your time. Because if you, I mentioned needle in a haystack. If you put all your time into trying to get institutional investors and you've got, and you've, you're going to land one out of 200, whereas if you talk to individual piece, you're going to land, you know, 10 out of 50. You can figure out the math. So.
- [61:01]
Joel Palo Thinkle
Yeah, good question. I know we're over time, I guess. Kate, do you have maybe one minute if anybody else has a final question? Yeah, okay, I guess I'll. Yeah. Does anybody else have anything? If not, we'll, we can wrap up, but just want to see if anybody has anything else.
- [61:21]
Rob
Thank you so much.
- [61:23]
Joel Palo Thinkle
All right, then I guess, you know, Kate's put her LinkedIn there if you want to connect. And Kate, I know you're super busy, so really appreciate you coming in and doing some storytelling with us. Have a good one and we'll catch up soon, hopefully.
- [61:36]
Kate Brodach
Thanks for having me.
- [61:37]
Interjecting Participant
Yeah.
- [61:37]
Kate Brodach
Have a great day or whatever. All right, bye.
- [61:42]
Joel Palo Thinkle
Take care.