Broadening the On-ramp for Women-run Companies

In investing, and in life in general, an ability to foresee potential pitfalls has served me well. However, being able to see what can go wrong can prevent me from seizing an opportunity. I sometimes forget that most of my successes have been the result of seemingly impossible feats.

Jocelyn Goldfein from Zetta Venture Partners joined the Fund81 podcast to share her approach to investing in artificial intelligence (AI). With the cost of creating software continuing to decline, Zetta believes the companies of the future will need to build more than just great software to thrive.

SC Moatti joined the Fund81 podcast to talk about how to discover and vet products in venture capital. We talk about how VCs can spot indications of future product success, creative ways to look under the hood before investing, and the product-related questions most venture capitalists fail to ask.

Dave Balter, the CEO of one of our MergeLane portfolio companies, Flipside Crypto, shares his perspective on investing in the cryptocurrency space. Dave is obsessed with and extremely knowledgeable about cryptocurrency, and has an interesting perspective from both sides of the table.

It has been a great few weeks for the MergeLane fund. When people ask us what our criteria are for investments, we always talk about team as the distant number one priority. I wanted to share this recent, wonderful interchange with TomboyX after a great week for them:

Venture capital funds are typically structured to have a 10-year lifespan, but venture-backed companies often take more than 10 years to achieve an exit and return capital to their investors. In this Fund81 podcast episode, we discuss solutions to this problem with our our guest, Roland Reynolds.

This year, I decided to do an experiment. To build our MergeLane investor and mentor network, I dedicated four months to exclusively focus on meetings that involved skiing.

Gaining an understanding of venture fund legal terms can be a bit like learning a foreign language. In this episode, my guest, Mark Weakley, helps us navigate some of the more complicated terms commonly seen in venture fund legal documents.

In this podcast, I spoke with Bill Maris, the founder of Google Ventures (GV) and Section 32, who happens to be an introvert. I am also an introvert and have been doing a lot of thinking about how my introversion plays into my life as a venture capitalist. We explore this topic in this episode.

Venture Capitalists are increasingly looking for ways to differentiate themselves and produce better returns. One popular path to this is specialization according to geography, industry sector, etc. Nick Moran, GP at New Stack Ventures and host of the Full Ratchet podcast, shares his insights.

Venture fund legal terms can sound a bit like a foreign language to new venture capitalists and venture fund investors. In this Fund81 podcast episode, Liz Meade, a new angel investor considering venture fund investments, interviews me to decode some of the lingo in venture fund offering agreements.

As an early-stage startup investor, I like to use the first meeting to ask some fairly unconventional qualitative questions. Here are 18 of my favorites.

Most startup investors look for entrepreneurs who know their business inside and out. Historical financials are rarely a good predictor of future startup success, but entrepreneurs’ understanding of their financials and key metrics can be. In helping our MergeLane teams prepare for Demo Day last...

Entrepreneurs often ask me: what kinds of companies are likely to be funded by angel investors? Because angel investors are individuals and all individuals are different, it’s really hard to answer this question. However, from my experience reviewing thousands of angel investment opportunities...

I’ve seen thousands of entrepreneurs pitch in dozens of different pitch formats, but the following is the format I’d recommend. I’ve compiled this through my own experience as an investor, the best of the existing resources I found, and input from several angel investors.

In preparation for our next MergeLane accelerator class, we’ve been searching high and low to find the most promising startups with at least one woman in leadership. As of today, I have reviewed over 1100 AngelList profiles. By the 527th profile, this admittedly became a bit tedious, but it was...

The only thing I know for certain about early-stage companies is that there will be uncertainty. Even the best opportunities often twist, turn and pivot thousands of times before they produce a return for their investors. As an angel and the Chief Investment Officer at MergeLane, I focus most of...

The valuations set for each round of financing can have significant consequences for startup investors and entrepreneurs. Thanks to new and improved startup resources, it’s now much easier to understand how high startups can value their company. However, the question of how high a startup should...

I frequently find that entrepreneurs fail to provide all of the information I need to execute a wire to invest in their company. To save time and hassle for entrepreneurs and startup investors everywhere, I’ve created a simple template. See below or download this word doc. You’re welcome.

As an active angel investor and the co-founder of MergeLane, an accelerator and fund focused on companies with at least one woman in leadership, I’ve made 24 investments over the past year. All 24 of those entrepreneurs followed different investment-closing processes, many of which created...

I was recently asked to speak at two Boulder Startup Week sessions on startup diversity to provide my perspective as a female investor with experience investing in women-led companies. Admittedly, when I was asked to speak on these topics, I was a little miffed. Two more invitations to speak...

As an active angel investor, former angel group leader, and the co-founder of MergeLane, an accelerator and fund for high-growth startups with at least one woman in leadership, I’ve heard thousands of investors ask tens of thousands of questions. I’ve also learned that startups’ answers to these...

The amount of money a company raises to finance its operation is an important metric, but I’ve learned that entrepreneurs and investors often calculate this differently. We recently sent out our quarterly survey to the 25 investments we’ve made through the MergeLane accelerator and fund...

Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR) is perhaps the most-referenced startup metric, but MRR is only applicable to companies that provide services to their customers through an ongoing contractual relationship, e.g., SaaS businesses (For more on MRR, read my previous post: MRR – The Definition...

This post is the fifth in a series summarizing guidance for how to calculate key metrics for startups. This series focuses on the metrics that are the most critical for entrepreneurs, angel investors and venture capitalists. These critical Key Performance Indicators for startups...

Dear Mr. Trump, Thanks to the hard work of many before me, I, an entrepreneur born in the same year as your daughter Ivanka, have grown up believing I could do everything my brother could do. I’ve never really felt the weight of the glass ceiling. I co-founded MergeLane, an accelerator...

I had the opportunity to meet the former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright last week. The experience made me realize that I’ve taken the opportunities paved by generations of women before me for granted. To Dr. Albright, the grandmother I never knew, and the women and supportive men...

At MergeLane, we (and most of the startup investors I know) subscribe to the philosophy that startup success is determined by team, team, team, market and idea, in that order. We look for incredibly tenacious founders with a track record of making the seemingly impossible possible, a deep passion...

Hear MergeLane’s Sue Heilbronner and Foundry Group’s Seth Levine in an open and intimate discussion of the sexual harassment news that emerged from Silicon Valley over the last two months. Seth has been an instrumental advisor and personal investor in MergeLane since day one. Foundry has made...

Paying legal fees and organizing paperwork are not typically entrepreneurs’ favorite things to do. However, getting things in order now will help you avoid headaches in the future like tracking down a signature from an investor hiking in Peru with a 24-hour deadline for an acquisition offer...