The Exchanges

Q I agree. I agree. Um, challenging for me. Um, tell me, Avichael said, um, about the rise of DAOs and how it might impact the future of VC itself. I actually have Ian Lee on the show later this week from Syndicate, who said that actually venture will be replaced by DAOs. Um, how do you think about the rise of DAOs and its impact on the investing landscape?

A As long as traditional LPs like university foundations exist, traditional VC will continue to exist. There's no question. Um, and it's interesting that you said you would be talking to Ian from Syndicate down the road. Um, at SPC we launched our Founder Fellowship DAO with Syndicate. It was the first DAO of its kind. It's a three C seven DAO that allows for up to 1999 investors instead of the traditional hundred limit. And in our case, we had multiple funds participate. Founders of Solana, Figma, Polygon, Alchemy, OpenSea all participated. It allowed us to distribute tokens to people who held office hours, who did talks at SPC, provided mentorship, added value to companies, and it expanded our resources far beyond our typical partnership. And the DAO itself has invested in 15 companies, and every founder has received tokens allowing them to share in each other's upside.

AI assessment note: “As long as traditional LPs like university foundations exist, traditional VC will continue to exist.”

Q and operate. When we think about, um, you know, some of the research that we did, I spoke to some mutual friends, as you know, and one, um, recurring theme was they said you have zero tolerance for mediocrity. Um, some put it as a strength, some put it as a weakness. Do you think this is a weakness, and how do you think about your zero tolerance for mediocrity?

A So it is most definitely a weakness, and, but I am unapologetic about it. Um, all year of my career, I always just focused on the end result. And if people in my teams could not keep up, they would just fall by the wayside. And that is not a healthy way to manage a team. The journey, you know, is just as important as the end result. It is what allows you as an individual to scale with the organization. And I really had to learn that the hard way. Um, so I, I know this about myself. I'm not good at scaling large teams. I recognize that about myself and I try not to put myself in those situations. Um, I really thrive in chaos. I do best in the zero to one phase. Um, and it's important in that phase that everyone on your team spikes and you don't stand for mediocrity. Um, and, and I've kind of just optimized my career around that.

AI assessment note: “So it is most definitely a weakness, and, but I am unapologetic about it.”

Q Um, okay. Tell me who's your closest mentor and what have you learned from them?

A I don't believe in mentors. I believe in asking people, For advice who are world class on the issues I'm facing. You know, if I go to you with a specific problem or question, you're most likely to respond, um, with a helpful answer. I also learn from osmosis. So, you know, I've learned how to get the best from people, from Mark. I've learned the art of storytelling from Chris. I've learned how to build trust from Shrepp. I've learned how to, you know, balance work and life from my friend Priscilla. I've learned empathy from my colleague Mitra. And my husband and co-founder for most endeavors, Aditya, has been a thought partner all my life. Um, so I think of mentorship in that way, rather than having like a single person who I consider a mentor.

AI assessment note: “I don't believe in mentors. I believe in asking people”

Q I agree. I agree. Um, challenging for me. Um, tell me, Avichael said, um, about the rise of DAOs and how it might impact the future of VC itself. I actually have Ian Lee on the show later this week from Syndicate, who said that actually venture will be replaced by DAOs. Um, how do you think about the rise of DAOs and its impact on the investing landscape?

A As long as traditional LPs like university foundations exist, traditional VC will continue to exist. There's no question. Um, and it's interesting that you said you would be talking to Ian from Syndicate down the road. Um, at SPC we launched our Founder Fellowship DAO with Syndicate. It was the first DAO of its kind. It's a three C seven DAO that allows for up to 1999 investors instead of the traditional hundred limit. And in our case, we had multiple funds participate. Founders of Solana, Figma, Polygon, Alchemy, OpenSea all participated. It allowed us to distribute tokens to people who held office hours, who did talks at SPC, provided mentorship, added value to companies, and it expanded our resources far beyond our typical partnership. And the DAO itself has invested in 15 companies, and every founder has received tokens allowing them to share in each other's upside.

AI assessment note: “As long as traditional LPs like university foundations exist, traditional VC will continue to exist.”

Q Got you. Okay. That makes sense. Tell me how, sorry, again, you heard that show with Avichal. I specialize in stupid questions. How do the tokens work then? Like they invest money and they get back a proportional amount of tokens. So I don't, sorry, help me out here.

A Yeah. So you invest capital, you get, um, tokens in exchange for the capital. But you don't just have to be an investor in the DAO to own those tokens. You can be a contributor, a non-investing contributor and helping, um, and that helps the DAOs. And, and for the, for those efforts, you can be granted tokens as well. Participants in the DAO, such as companies and founders who get investments from the DAO can also be awarded tokens so they can share in each other's success. And ultimately the DAO Much like funds have a 10 year life cycle. So when the DAO liquidates, you get the assets of the DAOs as per, um, the amount of tokens that you hold.

AI assessment note: “when the DAO liquidates, you get the assets of the DAOs as per”

Q I was like, I swear my, my memory's not, maybe I'm wrong. Um, that's too funny. I, I do want to finish, um, on, you can choose actually. We can do most recent publicly announced investment and why you got so excited, or we can do next 10 years for you and SPC. Which one would you like?

A Let's talk about our most recently announced investment and that would be Replit. Um, and I guess I should answer the question why. So when we write Amjad and Haya, their stories are just incredible. Um, these are founders when you talk with them, you want to join the crusade and you want to follow them to the ends of the earth. Um, and then on the, and when you think about the product in the company, everyone talks about how software is eating the word, but as, as like, you know, second derivative, one must assume that there will be an increasing number of people who learn how to code and who are coding over time. Um, and, and Replit provides that platform, and not only does it provide that platform, but it has a vision for software building, which is like collaborative, real time, and we already see these trends emerging in companies like Figma, um, and other places. So, so Replit, I would say, is an investment I'm extremely excited about.

AI assessment note: “Let's talk about our most recently announced investment and that would be Replit.”

Q it's, it's just such an innovative model, especially, you know, for me hearing that compared to so many of the VCs I've had on the show before, but it takes me to really a question on the venture landscape, which is when we look at the landscape today, it's often criticized for investing in innovation, but maybe not innovating itself. Do you believe venture is stagnant as a model today?

A You know, I think it's bullshit that VCs ask their companies to innovate when they operate as old school white collar legacy firms. I kind of want to switch that around. I would tell all founders to only work with VCs who think of their own firm as a startup. Those that are paranoid. And for what it's worth, it doesn't just mean new VCs. One of the reasons why Sequoia is so impressive in my books is because they're constantly paranoid and innovating, and that's the same with A-sixteen Z or even Tiger for that matter. I just feel that there's so many ways that you can innovate in. You can innovate on the fund structure, like Sequoia has. You can innovate on how you build your org, like A-sixteen has. You can innovate on how you scale the human element of venture with code, like Electric has. Or you can innovate on how you support innovation like we have at SPC. So I feel like ultimately the VCC's job is to be the allocator of capital. That's true. Um, but it's also, but it's also true that capital is a commodity. So the question as a founder, you really need to ask yourself is how do you bring smart money to the table? And how do you stack all the odds in your favor as a startup founder to actually win the long game?

AI assessment note: “I think it's bullshit that VCs ask their companies to innovate when they operate”

Q Totally. Okay, well then, listen, let's touch on negative, uh, one to zero. So, this is a phrase that you've coined. Can I be blunt and ask, what does it actually mean?

A You sure can. I get a lot of WTFs, um, which, which I think you asked me as well. Um, so, you know, zero to one is a phrase that Peter Thiel coined. It's really popular, and one can simply associate it with product market fit. Negative one to zero for us is about founder market fit. Um, and we have this really eloquent definition at SPC, which is that it's turning the chaos of possibility into the clarity of conviction. You know, it sounds easy. Um, but it's not. It's a horribly lonely journey, and the most neglected part of a founder journey when they are actually thinking about what to build, what markets to explore, how to validate ideas, and how to narrow down the idea matrix. And founders are really vulnerable in this phase. Um, and, and a riddle with self-doubt and unrealistic expectations. So at SPC, we've kind of built this environment, um, that really facilitates learning and exploration. It's the antithesis of an accelerator, um, and it allows you to do that with like-minded individuals, um, which is why we call it the negative one to zero phase.

AI assessment note: “Negative one to zero for us is about founder market fit.”

Q Tell me, what's the most memorable first founder meeting you've had?

A So this is probably not the answer to your question, but let me tell you how I first met Mark Zuckerberg. I had an interview scheduled for nine AM. I walk into Facebook's offices and there's absolutely no one there. I wait for half an hour, and then Jeff Rothschild, who was like, you know, the adult in the room shows up. Um, he is brilliant technically. He was a founder of Veritas. He asked me a bunch of database questions, which I, and we get through our interview in half an hour. And then I wait another two hours and nobody shows up. And then finally Mark walks into the office and Jeff is like, you have to interview her and you need to keep interviewing her till the other folks show up. Um, so there he was in the room and he was asking me a bunch of questions. The interview went on for like nearly an hour, 15 minutes. He was running out of questions to ask. He would ask me esoteric questions like, you know, if you were going to climb Mount Everest, would you take half a bottle of water or a full bottle of water? Um, and it was the most entertaining first time founder conversation that I've had. And then finally people saunter into the office to start the real interview process with me. And the, and, and by then it was like three PM. And the reason everyone was late, um, was because they had like, you know, a bug that they were solving the previous night. They hadn't gone to b…

AI assessment note: “it was the most entertaining first time founder conversation that I've had.”

Q it's, it's just such an innovative model, especially, you know, for me hearing that compared to so many of the VCs I've had on the show before, but it takes me to really a question on the venture landscape, which is when we look at the landscape today, it's often criticized for investing in innovation, but maybe not innovating itself. Do you believe venture is stagnant as a model today?

A You know, I think it's bullshit that VCs ask their companies to innovate when they operate as old school white collar legacy firms. I kind of want to switch that around. I would tell all founders to only work with VCs who think of their own firm as a startup. Those that are paranoid. And for what it's worth, it doesn't just mean new VCs. One of the reasons why Sequoia is so impressive in my books is because they're constantly paranoid and innovating, and that's the same with A-sixteen Z or even Tiger for that matter. I just feel that there's so many ways that you can innovate in. You can innovate on the fund structure, like Sequoia has. You can innovate on how you build your org, like A-sixteen has. You can innovate on how you scale the human element of venture with code, like Electric has. Or you can innovate on how you support innovation like we have at SPC. So I feel like ultimately the VCC's job is to be the allocator of capital. That's true. Um, but it's also, but it's also true that capital is a commodity. So the question as a founder, you really need to ask yourself is how do you bring smart money to the table? And how do you stack all the odds in your favor as a startup founder to actually win the long game?

AI assessment note: “I think it's bullshit that VCs ask their companies to innovate when they operate”

Q seen multi-stage move pretty aggressively into the early stage, and I think, you know, we've seen a lot of challenges for the traditional seed stage firms. When we look at the movement of multi-stage earlier, and the movement of everyone earlier, bluntly, What do you think happens to these multi-stage firms kind of dominating now in terms of like, do the small seed funds survive and what happens to them?

A And I think this goes back to the earlier question you asked. When a large fund writes, you know, one or two million dollar check in your seed round, they're simply buying option value to invest in later rounds. For a one billion dollar fund, one or two million dollars is cheap. Um, and it's a cheap way to buy that option. But when a seed fund leads your round with a one or two million dollar check, it's a big deal, especially if they're a fifty million dollar fund or a hundred million dollar fund. They're really incentivized to help founders get to the next stage and raise their next round of financing and hit their milestones. So from my perspective, there's always room for seed funds. However, there's really no point in playing the same game as everyone else, which is like, you know, pounding the pavement to win deals. I think seed funds need to innovate as well to stay relevant.

AI assessment note: “So from my perspective, there's always room for seed funds.”

Q What do you think of traditional funds hiring a crypto partner? I have so many general partnerships who are like, Harry, who should we hire? We need, we need crypto. We need web three. Who's the partner that we should hire? Do you think that these funds can kind of add on an ancillary partner to do crypto and web three and compete in this new world?

A You know, I'm a big believer in web three. One of the things, though, that I do not like is how exclusive the Web Three Venture community is. There's this odd belief that if you aren't already in it, it's super late, you have to structure yourself differently, you have to be Web Three native, you have to build from ground up. Um, so my belief is that it's actually pretty early and there's still a ton of value and upside to capture. So, and if you look at tech's history over time, every time there's a platform shift, there's a steep learning curve, and that applies to venture too. So I do think it is possible for traditional venture funds To get into crypto, to hire the right set of people, and the nuances around identifying opportunities, diligencing them, holding onto an asset, staking them, figuring out tax repercussions, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. It's not rocket science. You can definitely learn and pick it up. In fact, you know, we ourselves at SPC, even though we're small, we've had some pretty great performing crypto assets, like Alchemy, Compound, The Graph. So, I personally think it's possible.

AI assessment note: “I do think it is possible for traditional venture funds To get into crypto”

Q I do want to start though. Pre-sales part days, and you know, this is very unusual. Normally we start with, you know, how you made your way into investing, but you have such a fascinating background. I wanted to kind of decouple it a little bit. So you were the first female engineer at Facebook and the first female exec at Dropbox. What was that like first? Let's start there.

A You know, I joined Facebook right out of college. I was optimistic, raring to go, working 24 seven. I didn't really understand the concept of a ceiling. Everything was possible, and I wasn't afraid of anything, let alone being the only female engineer. Um, at Dropbox, I was a grown-up who was hired to scale the company. So if you recall the world from Pulp Fiction, you know, he was the fixer, and that was my role at Dropbox. I managed functions like recruiting or marketing that didn't really have leaders. I created or built new teams like communication and international, and eventually hired people to run these functions who were exposed. So the goal really was to work myself out of a job. Um, so the roles were quite different. Um, in one role, I was the kid, um, you know, the, the individual contributor, um, and then the other role, I was the manager who was brought in to manage all the kids.

AI assessment note: “I wasn't afraid of anything, let alone being the only female engineer.”

Q seen multi-stage move pretty aggressively into the early stage, and I think, you know, we've seen a lot of challenges for the traditional seed stage firms. When we look at the movement of multi-stage earlier, and the movement of everyone earlier, bluntly, What do you think happens to these multi-stage firms kind of dominating now in terms of like, do the small seed funds survive and what happens to them?

A And I think this goes back to the earlier question you asked. When a large fund writes, you know, one or two million dollar check in your seed round, they're simply buying option value to invest in later rounds. For a one billion dollar fund, one or two million dollars is cheap. Um, and it's a cheap way to buy that option. But when a seed fund leads your round with a one or two million dollar check, it's a big deal, especially if they're a fifty million dollar fund or a hundred million dollar fund. They're really incentivized to help founders get to the next stage and raise their next round of financing and hit their milestones. So from my perspective, there's always room for seed funds. However, there's really no point in playing the same game as everyone else, which is like, you know, pounding the pavement to win deals. I think seed funds need to innovate as well to stay relevant.

AI assessment note: “from my perspective, there's always room for seed funds.”

Q kind of the nuances and the deep granular differentiators between funds. For founders, I didn't, you know, I didn't think it's as obvious, and I didn't mean that patronizingly, but they don't live in the world. How do you advise founders in terms of truly determining which VCs are innovative, which think differently, and which they should ultimately select? Like, what questions to ask? How should they play that out?

A I think that when you talk to a VC, it's, it's much like a relationship. You need to ask questions of the VC as a VC would ask questions of you. You know, if you are a successful founder who has a fantastic idea, a great product market fit, it's inevitable that you're going to be able to raise financing. So instead of just believing in, um, the PR out there or doing what all other founders have done in the past, the question you really should be asking the VC is how are you going to help me Get to the next stage of evolution. How are you going to help me build my key milestones to be able to raise the next round of financing? And, and identify for yourself, what are the areas that you could use help from VCs? It could be anything. It could be recruiting. It could be company building. It could be having access to resources. It could be customer development. And, and moreover, does that particular venture fund Have the time to support you, not just in this particular round of financing, but in future rounds of financing.

AI assessment note: “the question you really should be asking the VC is how are you going to help me”

Q I get you and I get that. I, I think one thing that I struggle with is also a little bit, honestly, ego management. I am quite young and I've been doing this for a long time and I've done well in youth. Um, you did very well, very young. Did ego management become a problem for you in your earlier days?

A I think of ego slightly differently because I was successful so young. I felt like I had a lot of answers. Um, and a lot of knowledge to share. So I became a little arrogant and, you know, would, would think of problems, would think that basically like all problems were essentially the same. They could be broken down in the same way. You just had to, um, you just had to modify the solution to fit the problem at hand. And, and I, and I got really arrogant and I got bored, um, and, and everything just felt uninteresting. It felt that, you know, I could leave and come back after six months, and conversations would start where they had stopped off earlier. Um, and, and that's, that's the kind of ego, um, that I had, which I had to really work on, um, and change my mindset around that, and enter every conversation with the mindset that I was going to learn something new from this conversation and was going to be worth my time. Um, so that was the kind of ego that I struggled with. I didn't really struggle with, um, having a lot of money or having a lot of early success. Um, it was really, it was really, you know, having more humility, um, and, and understanding that there was a lot more that I could learn.

AI assessment note: “I became a little arrogant... that's the kind of ego that I had, which I had to really work on”

Q Any, you, the company that someone's at, say a founder aligning their identity to their company, so for you it would be SPC, but you know, how do you think about and reflect on the alignment of your identity to SPC?

A Um, Alright, so in, in the tech industry, and especially in Silicon Valley, I think we have a very unhealthy practice where our identities are aligned with our work. There's so much more to a person besides what they do professionally. Um, but it's really hard for people to shake that off. So when we have members come to SPC, the first thing that I tell them is that you're going to have to introduce yourself at least half a dozen times in the first two weeks that you are at SPC. And it's going to take you nearly three months to get really comfortable saying, I don't do anything. I'm thinking about what I want to work on next. And break apart your identity from what you used to do and your work at Um, so, and, and I think that's extremely healthy because that frees you. So again, when you ask the question, like, how do I, like, identify myself as it relates to SPC or as in a company, it's, it's almost as though I'm telling people to no longer do that. Um, and as such, I've had tremendous practice in not doing that over the last five years.

AI assessment note: “I've had tremendous practice in not doing that over the last five years.”

Q crypto, which I do want to touch on, because, you know, when we look at the landscape today, there's Andreessen, there's Paradigm, there's Electric, there's Katie's new fund, there's the four dominant funds above a billion, and then there's a bunch of 20 to hundred million funds, Would you agree with this kind of bifurcated view of the landscape? And is there any changes or additions that you would make?

A That sounds like mapping the web two universe to web three. I find that there's a lot more diversity in crypto venture funds, who the GPs are, the geography that they come from. It feels very dynamic, um, and evolving. For example, corporate VCs weren't really a thing in web two, but quite a few web three companies have funds that invest in startups to develop the ecosystem. So some of them even lead rounds like FDX. Um, there's a huge emphasis on community. So web three founders like having a really large cap table with angels, influencers, analysts, multiple funds on their cap table and party rounds are not really frowned upon as is the case in web two. And then if you look at the largest crypto companies, um, or token projects, there's a pretty healthy mix of traditional venture capitalists and crypto venture capitalists in the early rounds. So I think it's quite dynamic and changing and it's evolving as we speak.

AI assessment note: “That sounds like mapping the web two universe to web three.”

Q Okay, so it's a weakness, uh, in that case. Other friends mentioned the unwavering ambition. How do you think about ambition in different stages of your career, starting there?

A You know, when I left Facebook, I tried to look for a better Facebook. And, and that was impossible. And then when I left Dropbox, I tried to look for a better Dropbox, um, and, and that was impossible. So instead of chasing something bigger and better, it was important to me to reinvent myself. And then on the flip side, I find the tech industry is extremely ageist. Things advance so quickly, um, that most people end up fearing being irrelevant. So if you take your foot off the pedal or you take a break, you kind of need to start from ground zero all over again. And, and as a result, you're like constantly chasing things, struggling to keep up, striving, you know, there are always companies to start, companies to invest in, problems to be solved, conferences to attend, conversations to influence. Um, but my father who recently passed away, um, from cancer, Asked me a very, um, important question. He asked, are you living life or are you chasing life? And I've been mulling over that question quite a bit. And as I think about that question, I realized that I've built a life that I'm content with and there's really no shame in that. But when you talk to most folks in tech, they, you know, they would say that I've lost my edge. But the truth I came to is that no matter how much money I made or how much influence I wielded, it was not going to materially change my life. So now, you…

AI assessment note: “So now, you know, I kind of like ruthlessly prioritize. I define impact for myself.”

Q kind of the nuances and the deep granular differentiators between funds. For founders, I didn't, you know, I didn't think it's as obvious, and I didn't mean that patronizingly, but they don't live in the world. How do you advise founders in terms of truly determining which VCs are innovative, which think differently, and which they should ultimately select? Like, what questions to ask? How should they play that out?

A I think that when you talk to a VC, it's, it's much like a relationship. You need to ask questions of the VC as a VC would ask questions of you. You know, if you are a successful founder who has a fantastic idea, a great product market fit, it's inevitable that you're going to be able to raise financing. So instead of just believing in, um, the PR out there or doing what all other founders have done in the past, the question you really should be asking the VC is how are you going to help me Get to the next stage of evolution. How are you going to help me build my key milestones to be able to raise the next round of financing? And, and identify for yourself, what are the areas that you could use help from VCs? It could be anything. It could be recruiting. It could be company building. It could be having access to resources. It could be customer development. And, and moreover, does that particular venture fund Have the time to support you, not just in this particular round of financing, but in future rounds of financing.

AI assessment note: “the question you really should be asking the VC is how are you going to help me”

Q So a couple of different questions. Uh, in terms of, like, tooling, what tooling do you use for yours, and do you see DAOs using? Is this, like, Telegram and, I don't know, WhatsApp and traditional tooling, or is there a new generation of tooling that is created to make DAOs more efficient?

A There is a new generation of tooling, and, and there are many. Um, in fact, like, you know, I like, Let me just give you the list of tooling that exists out there. Um, everything from Syndicate to AstroDAO to SuperDAO. Um, and, and, and the list is actually endless because a lot of folks are realizing the potential of DAOs and, and the tooling that will require, um, to put the DAO on chain, to, to figure out membership, to assign mint tokens, um, to think about like, you know, Airdropping NFTs for membership, etc. So there's just like a ton of stuff around it and a lot of potential, and people are figuring out how to build the tooling as DAOs themselves evolve. Um, does that answer the question?

AI assessment note: “There is a new generation of tooling... everything from Syndicate to AstroDAO to SuperDAO.”

Q and operate. When we think about, um, you know, some of the research that we did, I spoke to some mutual friends, as you know, and one, um, recurring theme was they said you have zero tolerance for mediocrity. Um, some put it as a strength, some put it as a weakness. Do you think this is a weakness, and how do you think about your zero tolerance for mediocrity?

A So it is most definitely a weakness, and, but I am unapologetic about it. Um, all year of my career, I always just focused on the end result. And if people in my teams could not keep up, they would just fall by the wayside. And that is not a healthy way to manage a team. The journey, you know, is just as important as the end result. It is what allows you as an individual to scale with the organization. And I really had to learn that the hard way. Um, so I, I know this about myself. I'm not good at scaling large teams. I recognize that about myself and I try not to put myself in those situations. Um, I really thrive in chaos. I do best in the zero to one phase. Um, and it's important in that phase that everyone on your team spikes and you don't stand for mediocrity. Um, and, and I've kind of just optimized my career around that.

AI assessment note: “So it is most definitely a weakness, and, but I am unapologetic about it.”

Q I get you, but like, have you ever been complacent before?

A Yeah, I go through, I go through it, and I mean, I go through phases really. I, I don't understand balance. Um, I'm really poor at understanding balance. So I will work at a 200%, um, run rate and then finally burn out and need to take four to six months off. And then when I do that and decide to come back to work, it's actually really hard to get back into it. It's really hard to dive into it. It's really hard to learn everything that you missed in the last six to eight months. It's really hard to stay disciplined about it. Um, but that's the way that I operate. So it takes a lot of stamina and effort to get back into the work mode once I've taken that break.

AI assessment note: “Yeah, I go through, I go through it, and I mean, I go through phases”

Q I get you and I get that. I, I think one thing that I struggle with is also a little bit, honestly, ego management. I am quite young and I've been doing this for a long time and I've done well in youth. Um, you did very well, very young. Did ego management become a problem for you in your earlier days?

A I think of ego slightly differently because I was successful so young. I felt like I had a lot of answers. Um, and a lot of knowledge to share. So I became a little arrogant and, you know, would, would think of problems, would think that basically like all problems were essentially the same. They could be broken down in the same way. You just had to, um, you just had to modify the solution to fit the problem at hand. And, and I, and I got really arrogant and I got bored, um, and, and everything just felt uninteresting. It felt that, you know, I could leave and come back after six months, and conversations would start where they had stopped off earlier. Um, and, and that's, that's the kind of ego, um, that I had, which I had to really work on, um, and change my mindset around that, and enter every conversation with the mindset that I was going to learn something new from this conversation and was going to be worth my time. Um, so that was the kind of ego that I struggled with. I didn't really struggle with, um, having a lot of money or having a lot of early success. Um, it was really, it was really, you know, having more humility, um, and, and understanding that there was a lot more that I could learn.

AI assessment note: “that's the kind of ego, um, that I had, which I had to really work on”

Q Any, you, the company that someone's at, say a founder aligning their identity to their company, so for you it would be SPC, but you know, how do you think about and reflect on the alignment of your identity to SPC?

A Um, Alright, so in, in the tech industry, and especially in Silicon Valley, I think we have a very unhealthy practice where our identities are aligned with our work. There's so much more to a person besides what they do professionally. Um, but it's really hard for people to shake that off. So when we have members come to SPC, the first thing that I tell them is that you're going to have to introduce yourself at least half a dozen times in the first two weeks that you are at SPC. And it's going to take you nearly three months to get really comfortable saying, I don't do anything. I'm thinking about what I want to work on next. And break apart your identity from what you used to do and your work at Um, so, and, and I think that's extremely healthy because that frees you. So again, when you ask the question, like, how do I, like, identify myself as it relates to SPC or as in a company, it's, it's almost as though I'm telling people to no longer do that. Um, and as such, I've had tremendous practice in not doing that over the last five years.

AI assessment note: “I've had tremendous practice in not doing that over the last five years.”

Q Can I ask, you know, Josh Koppelman before said about the importance of the pick, and when he says the pick, he means the idea of, the idea that you choose and the idea you pick. Um, how do you think about, like, increasing the quality of decision making in negative one to zero around the pick?

A So typically when you think of traditional accelerators or even founders who decide that they are going to start the founding journey, they have this unrealistic expectation that they are going to pick an idea, they're going to validate it, they're going to do some basic customer development, and they're going to raise their seed financing all in the span of three months. Um, and if you can't get it done in three months, then you have essentially failed. Um, but as we see, We actually believe that it is really important to move slow to be able to move fast. So typically our members spend on average about nine months picking that idea and that goes, you know, and they do everything from time exploration to identifying problems that are key in those spaces to identifying solutions that might be valid to figuring out What competition might look like, or whether it's nascent or not, and, and to identify if they have the skill sets to actually solve those problems. Um, so I think that picking the right idea takes time, and it actually takes a lot of work.

AI assessment note: “our members spend on average about nine months picking that idea”

Q How do you advise founders on when to give up with an idea? This is one I struggle with, which is like, you know, How long is enough data to know that it's not working, but also we're trained on this persist, uh, keep going. You know, the market will see your vision. There's two kind of competing ideologies. How do you think about when to give up?

A I do strongly believe that if you're smart, um, and you're playing in the right market with the right set of problems, persistence is the key ingredient. And if you persist, you will figure it out. Um, I think the time, uh, and this is especially true in, in early stages of company building, and especially, you know, right around the time of pre-seed and seed, that if you have a great founder, and you have an interesting market with interesting problems, it is inevitable that the founder is going to pivot. I think the time to give up is when you have run out of ideas, and there is no room in the idea matrix to navigate, um, and, and you're getting concrete signals from the market, whether it's customers, whether it's like, um, financiers, whether it's, um, Uh, whether it's your peers, um, that it is not working, I, I would say that that is the time to give up.

AI assessment note: “the time to give up is when you have run out of ideas”

Q So a couple of different questions. Uh, in terms of, like, tooling, what tooling do you use for yours, and do you see DAOs using? Is this, like, Telegram and, I don't know, WhatsApp and traditional tooling, or is there a new generation of tooling that is created to make DAOs more efficient?

A There is a new generation of tooling, and, and there are many. Um, in fact, like, you know, I like, Let me just give you the list of tooling that exists out there. Um, everything from Syndicate to AstroDAO to SuperDAO. Um, and, and, and the list is actually endless because a lot of folks are realizing the potential of DAOs and, and the tooling that will require, um, to put the DAO on chain, to, to figure out membership, to assign mint tokens, um, to think about like, you know, Airdropping NFTs for membership, etc. So there's just like a ton of stuff around it and a lot of potential, and people are figuring out how to build the tooling as DAOs themselves evolve. Um, does that answer the question?

AI assessment note: “There is a new generation of tooling, and, and there are many.”

Q uh, I also see the challenge in terms of them being diametrically opposed. I do want to ask, kind of, is the next step beyond that, you know, obviously now we're at South Park, and what an incredible journey that's been, but when I spoke to many of your friends, they told me that you didn't want to start a fund, but obviously now run one. How did that happen?

A When I left Dropbox, I was itching to start my new thing. Um, work was my identity as is with many folks in the tech industry. It was a really tough time for me. I was sitting on my couch, all my friends, including my husband, we're going to solve the world's most important problems, the perceived most important, perceived most important problems. But I really wanted to stay disciplined. I wanted to create the space and the time to think about what I wanted to work on next. So to help myself do that, I created a learning group, and they were all people like me, folks who had either worked in, in technology and startups early in their careers, or had like, you know, started companies and sold companies like Meraki, um, and, and I had three requirements. They had to be technical, they had to be unemployed, and they had to be willing to commit 20 hours a week to this learning group. And the idea was that we would study a topic at a time. So in 2015, we were studying AI when there were only 20 papers published then. Ironically, there are 20 papers published a day to day in AI. We would read these papers, we would play around with open source software, we would conclude the month with a very robust discussion on what we had learned, where we see the field going in the next two years, in the next five years, in the next 10 years. And in this way, we visited Multiple topics that were …

AI assessment note: “So to help myself do that, I created a learning group”

Q I get you, but like, have you ever been complacent before?

A Yeah, I go through, I go through it, and I mean, I go through phases really. I, I don't understand balance. Um, I'm really poor at understanding balance. So I will work at a 200%, um, run rate and then finally burn out and need to take four to six months off. And then when I do that and decide to come back to work, it's actually really hard to get back into it. It's really hard to dive into it. It's really hard to learn everything that you missed in the last six to eight months. It's really hard to stay disciplined about it. Um, but that's the way that I operate. So it takes a lot of stamina and effort to get back into the work mode once I've taken that break.

AI assessment note: “Yeah, I go through, I go through it, and I mean, I go through phases”