Different Ways to Create (Notes from June 10 - June 16, 2019)

3 fantastic sounding women to start. One in VC and finance, discussing the difference between NYC and SF for her. The second compared in-house marketing strategy and outside influence. What's that look like? How much control is there? Last, but certainly not least, was an author who discusses something that I've seen with family and my sister - the challenge of raising a child while balancing some semblance of normalcy in work. What's expected from yourself? What should be reasonably expected from work? What's a balance?Those women: Erin Glenn, Julie Scelzo and Lauren Smith Brody.A few sportsmen discussed data and capital. Sixers Innovation Lab and former exec for And1 mentioned how they think about growth in Philadelphia and the brand, who can they support in the community that can also help with the team. John Urschel, former Baltimore Raven, is a published mathematician now who discussed the influx of data collection and analysis among all sports and teams. What they can do makes a great athlete experience, fan experience and overall performance improves.A plethora of rising stars followed, from Kanyi of Collaborative Fund to Sofia Colucci of Coors and the co-founders for SHINE text. Hope you enjoy my notes and you check out the podcast episodes!

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  • Entrepreneur as kid - day business for summer camps, then management consulting, IB and took a company public (econ consulting firm)
  • Got bug to start own thing in 2010 - joined KIXEYE in SF for 4 years, video game company
  • Wanted to go to NYC (as kid in OK) - went to meet w Betaworks, fell in love with Quire
  • Mutual conv to join Quire - loved it - equity crowdfund co
  • Venture-back co's enabling portion to raise for community & mission Min. investment is $2500 - supporting larger investments as well, up to $250k
  • Likelihood for investors to get taken advantage of - Title III discussion (investors with <$100k income/net worth can invest up to $2k or 5% of income)
  • Mattermark study on investor bases that exist and why people do invest Investor and diversity - minority, gender, big differences in those that follow Mattermark or others
  • Crowd won't provide scaling / grow money (the $50mil+ rounds), but community can help participation at a lower level
  • Motivation to invest, other than financial incentive - supporting company's mission + founders, spurring economic growth + innovation Real commitment to realize dreams, grow economy
  • Benefits with crowd investing for company - moral and psychological Supporters of the company can invest, which is reinforcing for doing it - customers that are owners of the business spend more, loyal, etc
  • SF vs NY startup ecosystems and CEO role
  • Had joined Quire with 2 suitcases, dog and air mattress after 2 days there
  • CEO role - really fun and exhilarating with challenges daily, gained confidence at eliciting feedback from ideas Coming up with better solutions and getting them to help because we don't have all answers
  • Intensity and vibrancy, competitive spirit in NY even though it's smaller-feeling
  • Want to take on SV and not give up the competitiveness
  • More female founders in NY - fashion, finance, media in senior executives trying new things
  • Favorite book: Magic Mountain ahead of WWII in Europe, Switzerland
  • Favorite blog: Fred Wilson's and Tim Cook as favorite innovator
  • Gimlet Media (first investment), Kano, Duel as others
  • Julie Scelzo, executive creative director at McGarryBowen (Wharton XM)
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  • Talking about marketing difference between in house and outside Going from Creative MD for Pandora to take on MGB AMEX
  • Moving from agency to internal at Facebook - not even a salary bump, but just felt right Worked helping clients was rewarding but she missed creating
  • Lauren Smith Brody, author of The Fifth Trimester (Wharton XM)
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  • Discussion of parental leave in the workplace - if uneven with your partner, mixing it up or staggering
  • First 6 months as crucial for development - how to best alleviate this
  • Every person is different and has different attitudes
  • Nobody can generally be told how something may feel for them
  • Having the partner available in the first 6-9 months provides evidence that they're capable, and can understand some of processes
  • First day of work being scary - moreso as a parent - train whole life to be in workplace Can be comforting back at work, not so much for first days as a parent
  • Dilip Goswami, Molekule Air Filters (Wharton XM)
  • Being his father's son, a typical engineer
  • Developing and deciding what part of product to have in house vs outside Hybrid model
  • Having customer support and knowing it worked - shipping and using that as validation
  • Seth Berger, founder and CEO of And1, Sixers Innovation Lab (Wharton XM)
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  • Discussing how coaching basketball to young adults was so helpful
  • Marrying And1 with his passion for basketball and teaching and being around it
  • Sixers Innovation Lab - knew Josh from the 90s working on a failed internet co originally Helping with capital up to $1mn and seeing 10x returns so far
  • John Urschel (@johnCurschel), Former lineman with Ravens, MIT mathematician (Wharton XM)
  • Talking about the lifelong balance of math / football from his memoir
  • Thinking about where analytics may be super exciting in sports - real-time strategy if they're allowed the computers / data on-field/court Tracking data is so strong, it'd be interesting to see what coaches may do to get there
  • Nathan Furr, Curtis Lefrandt, Innovation Capital author (Wharton XM)
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  • Author discussing how innovation costs resources
  • Talking with Marc Benioff and others for the most innovative leaders
  • Sofia Colucci, VP Innovation of Miller Coors (Measured Thoughts, Wharton)
  • Introducing a new brand, Cape Line, into the world
  • Usually a 1.5 - 2 year process for a corp this size
  • Cut it down and released in 2019, dropped the other project (Project Sprint)
  • Had already done market research, wanted a more healthy, alternative to beer for women - cocktails in a can Packaging and what that would look like after tasting
  • Jennifer Pryce (@jennpryce), President CEO of Calvert Impact Capital (Wharton XM)
  • Impact capital and how they grade different companies on the degrees for investment
  • Infrastructure, seeing them surpass $1bn
  • Marah Lidey (@marahml), Naomi Hirabayashi, co-founders of SHINE app (Wharton XM)
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  • SHINE as a wellness app for meditation Gaining ground with their superusers - seeking feedback
  • Self-care platform, weren't sure how they attracted so many men - but it's definitely catered to their experiecne Reached out to one of the first superusers that was male to get his input and to have influencers help
  • Product-market fit and development was always based on how they wanted the app to be- what they were searching for
  • Kanyi Maqubela (@km), Partner @ Collaborative Fund (20min VC 094)
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  • From South Africa originally, investments into CodeAcademy, Reddit, AngelList, AltSchool, TaskRabbit
  • Founding employee of Doostang, attended Stanford Uni & worked on Obama campaign in 2008, as well
  • Dropped out of Stanford, compelled by interest to see other part of world - did a startup, $20mil of VC funding for a couple startups
  • Being young, decision to leave was easy but once he'd left, it was tough
  • Making friendships and lasting connections easily in college - some communities outside, in pro world, was rough
  • Met his partner, Craig, while finishing school and doing work in design - convinced him to help him with CF
  • Investors are those that believe in collaborative economy - nodes, peer-to-peer and nodes for networking
  • Every consumer/employee/companies have obligation to align interests and value sets
  • Looking at companies to focus on impact and values - aspirational culture as outcome of collaboration
  • For the fund - stage specialization or theme? Theme may be time-efficient-oriented. Reminder that many of most successful people have skipped on massive wins multiple times over. Altman mentioned about having a point of view and heuristic to drive decisions (whether it's stage or theme)
  • Being a partner at 30 - GPs with skin in the game
  • As young, have to have been very successful early or came from money to get into the fund
  • Needs to prove himself but as younger, may have been very risk adverse in the sense he wasn't free-swinging Facebook went public 7 years (quick for industry, but not necessarily quick for a fund) - feedback loop timeframes
  • Million ways to market as investor, drive value as portfolio, data, theme or stage specific Blog as high leverage marketing for himself, writing is how he clarifies his ideas to himself and the public
  • Limits and is very prescriptive for the networking aspect of VC, conferences - wife in medical school so when she's free, he makes himself free
  • Accelerator / demo days as good for investing - he likes being first institutional round, but thinks demo day to discover is not their best way
  • Sometimes the due diligence for demo days of seeing what's out there
  • He uses them to talk to other VCs, see source and deal flow - coopetition - high leverage, high marketing channel
  • His best way in is likely the portfolio companies under them - he looks for connections for new places and vouch for them
  • Naming Fidelity markdown of a bunch of companies - saying that private companies are being treated like they're public companies
  • Realtime prospects that are valued - can go up or down, financing or not
  • Private crowdfunding to create liquidity, getting to cash flows and thinking about dividends, debt, crowdfunding - IPO bar is so painful
  • Fav book: Brothers Karamazov - Dostoevsky as "fiction bible"
  • Union Square Ventures as the one he looks up to - Benchmark, also (Read ebooks)
  • Concept of Founder-friendly - agency from founders holding them responsible, but becomes messy / complicated
  • Most recent investment at that time: CircleUp was series C, crowdfunding platform for CPG - other forms of financing for orgs will be transformed