Going to Seed

So I'll move to starting Cowboy Ventures. So in 2012, I started a seed fund called Cowboy Ventures. Kleiner Perkins had grown pretty big over the years that I had been there, the 12 years, and we had different practices and I was a senior partner at the firm. So all of the senior partners were getting pulled into a lot of internal meetings just to try and make sure that we were making good decisions for the venture practice, for the growth practice, for the green tech practice, for the life sciences practice. For China, for things we were doing in India a lot and then— and the venture environment was changing where this new category of seed was starting and a few of us at Kleiner were advocating that we should be doing some seeds but we had a very big fund, we had a very big team, it's kind of sometimes it's hard to justify making small investments when you're at a big fund. And so my husband and I were at dinner with a couple that are both entrepreneurs and One of them knew Kleiner very well and she asked me how things were going and I was like, well, you know, sometimes it's hard to navigate, we've gotten bigger and she and he both said, when are you going to leave and start your own firm? And I have to admit, even though I have been working with founders for 20 years and working with entrepreneurs for 20 years, it had not crossed my mind to start my own firm. And I think some of it was like, really, you guys think I could start my own firm? And they're like, yes, we definitely think you could start your own firm. And I think this is actually apparently very consistent with research on gender differences, that a lot of times women have to be like told that they should run for— like men, you know, if someone's running for office, he's like, oh yeah, where do I sign up, right? But a lot of women, the studies show, have to be told you should do this. And they do a great job when they do it, but— and I'm sure a lot of it is because of how we're brought up and what— how society does treat different genders differently as they're growing up. So I went back home and I talked to my husband about it. I was like, do you really think I could do that? And he said, yes, you should totally— you should think about it. You should try it. And so I spent 3 months working on basically a deck describing what we would do at Cowboy Ventures and how we might be different. And the things that I wrote about how we would be different, well, one is I actually am a woman. And that's just different in venture capital, sadly. By definition, then you are definitely like, you know, you bring a different perspective to the table. That I had operating experience both as a venture-backed founder and also in kind of in corporate America. I also have like some marketing and consumer experience which is also a little bit different. And that I think over the years because I had been in venture and as a Series A and Series B investor for 12 years before starting Cowboy, I've just gotten to know a ton of people in the venture ecosystem and I've also helped and worked with a lot of companies that have scaled past seed. And so the ability to actually work with seed companies and be able to work with the founders and explain to them how is a Series A investor going to think about this company, how is a Series B investor going to think about this company, how is a Series C investor going to think about this company and being able to coach the founders both for helping scale themselves and their teams but also making sure that they can survive and don't run out of money is pretty unique because there are not a lot of people who have been traditional venture investors who moved into seed. I think like personality-wise at— At Cowboy Ventures, we're a small shop. We're not like a giant firm with lots of people. Two of my awesome colleagues, Amanda and Jemaya, are here today, and then my partner Ted is not here today. But we're a small shop, so when you work with Cowboy Ventures, you really just get us. So it's really about personal relationships and personal chemistry and that we are risk takers and we— half the time when we make a seed investment, there is no product. It's a founder with ideas, maybe slides, but they haven't shipped it. They need the money to actually build it. And so that takes a considerable amount of gut and taking a leap on people. And I think that's pretty unique versus being very metrics-driven and making sure that all the numbers pencil out during an investment.