Madison McIlwain at Defy VC

Hello, and welcome back to Associated, the podcast where we're making venture capital more accessible. I'm Lois, and today I'm co hosting with the fabulous Francesca. Hey, Francesca, how are you doing today?

Hi there. I am. All right, thanks. It's not so nice in Berlin today. I don't know where summer has gone and I'm missing the sun. Having come back from a lovely holiday. How about you? How's it over there in Old London Town?

Oh, in Old London Town. It is positively autumnal. When I was cycling to work today, there were orange leaves on the floor, and I was like, well, this is it then.

Yep, about right. Europe's like, nope.

Europe's a soda. Absolutely. Let's find out where our guest is and in true British fashion, what the weather is like there. So our guest today is Madison McIlwine, and she's a partner at Defy VC. Hey, Madison, thanks for joining us.

Hi, Francesca.

Hi, Lois.

Pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me on. I am in the slightly smoky San Francisco Bay area down in our offices in Woodside. So there's just a tinge of smoke in the air, but it is generally blue skies, which I can't complain about.

Yeah, no, no complaints there. I think we're all affected by climate change. It sounds like.

Yes. Yeah. Whether it be in Berlin, and I.

Don'T know if there was.

I don't think there was flooding in Berlin, Francesca. But generally in Germany has had a wild natural disaster year, and as always, we're having it over here in California.

Oh, no. Really? Yes, in Germany, it's been really terrible. Thankfully, Berlin didn't have the flooding. But what's happening in San Francisco, just.

In general, this time of year, the fires get pretty bad, typically when we have significantly less rain, and we have had a very low rain year. And so there are just starting to be the forest fires, which typically run from August through November. So it's the beginning of the season, so to speak, which really affects air quality and then obviously for many people, like home security. So it's. Yeah. An unfortunate climate change side effect on the West Coast.

Okay. So it literally is smoky in my mind. I thought you were painting, like, this very romantic, sort of misty morning, but in fact, it's smoke. Oh, God.

Oh, yes. No, by smoky, I meant literal fires.

Oh, goodness. Well, turning it on its head, hopefully this podcast will be hot. And on that note, it'd be great to get a little bit of an introduction on you and how perhaps you ended up at Defy. We'll get all along that trail. But it'd be great to just start off as an introduction to yourself.

Wonderful. So the TLDR on me is that I grew up in the Pacific Northwest, Seattle to be specific. Some people call it the cloud capital of the world. So I'm quite familiar, Lois, with the London style weather. Loved growing up there. Lots of technology and innovation happening in my backyard. Amazon, Microsoft, Nordstrom all started there and really was always interested in the intersection of E commerce and technology because it felt like in the 2010s timeframe when I was really coming into my own buying power as a teenager, it just was. So much was happening and shopping online and different innovation. Instagram was coming on. You're trying to figure out how to connect with your friends there and shop there. So just generally always been really interested in that movement. I went to college, Dartmouth, which is on the opposite coast in the States, in New Hampshire, just three hours north of Boston. I studied history and human centered design engineering. So really bringing together both liberal arts and understanding the past as well as building the future, which I think really informed actually what I did immediately go into out of undergrad, which was product management and kind of what I was saying earlier about innovation in technology for retail. I ultimately joined Gap, which is the exact gap that you're thinking of, the Gene brand, the 50 year old retailer that is really continuing to innovate and how they think about connecting with their customers. And so I joined their technology team to help be a part of that innovation stream and deployed a couple cool technologies at the intersection of supply chain and consumer experiences. And then found myself really continuing to be excited about what was happening at the forefront of E commerce. And I feel that we're in a really exciting time there. And I was looking to join a firm that was investing specifically across technology so as to not narrow my focus too early in my career. That was some advice I'd been given, but also was interested in this vertical that I had quite a passion for as well as some expertise in. And I was very lucky to find the Defy VC team in 2019 and joined them at the time as an associate, now as a partner where I get to invest both in E commerce, supply chain, innovation as well as generally across technology at the earliest stages.

Amazing. Absolutely fantastic introduction. I feel like we've had a whistle stop tour of life. I think we're probably going to delve into Defy a little bit. But just before we do to take you back to maybe Seattle, maybe Dartmouth. I was really interested in what you just said about like in the kind of 2010s when E commerce was coming into its own, around the time that probably the three of us were all doing the same thing, like finding our feet, finding our style, finding our, you know, buying things online. And I, I've never ever thought about it before, but it's so true. Like when we first started to shop online, the experience was so clunky and it was often like you just could not do what you wanted to do. Compared to now, where we've completely forgotten about that. I was just wondering, like, from your perspective, like, what stands out to you from that time? What's something that you, like, carry with you from that pivotal moment in your life?

Absolutely. Well, partially because you guys are in the uk. So my thought went to asos, that was a brand that I just discovered online when I was in middle school and was like, this is a company, they do fast fashion, they're based in the uk. But I can get this delivered to me in Seattle, halfway around the world. This is so interesting. And the reason I found that brand, which none of my friends were shopping at, was because I got really into the blogger community. I'd have to kill you if I told you the name of my old blog, but I did have one that I, you know, created on Blogger and I posted little outfits of what I was wearing on my way to school that really honestly no one wanted to see. But I was just so excited about the creativity and the expression that was going on that was tied to commerce. Like, I went and shopped at ASOS because my favorite blogger was shopping there. And I think that that was something that I stepped into as a really interesting source knowledge and exploration for fashion. So to your question, Lois, I think the idea of creativity online and blogs and self expression was a part of that e commerce maybe 1.0 movement, if we can call it that, where people were literally just doing what they would already do offline or on magazine spreads or in stores and attempting to do it online. And albeit a clunkier way, but still a really exciting way.

So there's something about like collaboration and sharing that was intrinsically linked to that movement for you?

Yes. Did you guys have blogs or early Instagrams or anything that you were exploring at that age?

I very embarrassingly spent probably 12 to 18 months absolutely obsessed with beauty blogs and I would just like religiously look at beauty blogs. Like, I didn't even wear that much makeup. I did get good at it from, from those blogs, but like I remember doing like swap tunes on my Hands to copy bloggers and having an Instagram where I'd post, like, pictures of my freshly painted turquoise nails. So, yes, very much how to identify with stuff.

And I think this maybe indicates what degree I ended up doing. But I did have a little blog, and it was all about all the tips and tricks I learned from my mom that were like home remedies for treating our animals. You know, there are a lot of, like, if you're a real animal lover and those who are listening will get me. Like, every family has these tricks where you don't have to pay a small fortune for the animal version of the product. And again, I will similar to you, Madison. Like, I won't tell you the name because I read it the other day. I was like, that language is a Polish.

Yeah.

I mean, I'm going to totally nerd out here because this is one of my favorite topics to talk about. But I think what we're kind of touching on is the power of technology to allow people to be individual and be creative within the broader context of a fashion industry, which can be somewhat the same. And I spent my senior year studying the history of denim, which ended up working out well because I went to work for Gap, which is kind of funny. I didn't plan to work for Gap when I started that project and then ended there. But I think there's this idea of in fashion and in retail that everyone wants to be themselves. They want to be the individual, but they also want to be a part of the collective. This is super theory nerd for you. But I see that to be true with social media too. It's. We want to have our individual page, we want to have our blogs, we want to have our TikToks that express who we are. But we're using the same trends, we're using the same filters, we're using the same music to express what we view as our version of the collective. And so I think social media, how it related to E commerce in the early 2000s, was giving people that platform for one of the first times, alongside the rise of the iPhone and, like, the ability to also take, like, decent images, right. Because it could show where you were in real time. So that, for me, really informed what ultimately became what I wanted to do. And I had had a number of internships, like, in between those worlds. I interned at Theory, which is just a retailer based in the US Owned by Fast Retailing. And then I worked at Rent the Runway, which at the time was one of the most innovative startup brands innovating both on supply chain and on fashion and access that ultimately, you know, brought me to Gap. But there's so much happening and I think there's even more happening today.

Yeah, absolutely. I could really nerd out with you about like the collective and community, but I am going to exercise some self restraint and move on to venture capital. Maybe we can talk about.

That's what we're talking about today. Okay, great.

So maybe you can tell us a little bit more about Defy vc. So like, you know, what's the thesis? What kind of people do you like to hear from? And at the same time, I don't know, maybe you can tell us a bit more about your journey as well. Like you've had a recent promotion that we'd love to hear about and you've been there for a couple of years now.

Absolutely. So my firm, Defy vc, we were founded five years ago by my partners Neil Sequera and Trey Visalo. Neil had been at General Catalyst and Trey had been at Kleiner Perkins. So pretty storied venture capital firms in the Bay Area and really the US and they had brought and started Defy under the guise of we are going to build a venture firm the way venture firms used to be. You used to always be guaranteed to work closely with your partner who invested with you and sat on the board and have a close relationship that was founded upon 10 plus years of building a company. These days you don't really know who you're going to get. And sometimes venture firms don't have that capacity with the capital they're deploying to be the true partner for entrepreneur. And we believe that at the earliest stages of growth, whether it be seed or Series A, that that's really what entrepreneurs need to help build and get to that escape velocity type growth. And so Defy invests with that in mind of being true partners to our entrepreneurs. We're 415 million under management and are deploying out of our second fund. So we have quite a lot of capital to work with. But these days capital is a commodity. You can basically sneeze and get like probably like 100k check from. And our check sizes tend to be a bit bigger, you know, 3 to 7 million for the Series A. But we think it's less about the capital and more about the people. And true to our name, we really are looking for entrepreneurs who help defy expectations and are quite literally maybe the best or the only person have that innovation in that sector in their area of expertise and say, wow, I'm going to Go out and build and solve for this problem that I see in the world. And I'm uniquely capable of solving this problem because of X, Y, Z. That's happened to me a along my life journey. And so that's how you can think about us at Defy. And we're five partners now, including myself, as you alluded to. And I think there's so much exciting things ahead for firms like Defy who are at 4 or 5 years old and really starting to make a name for ourselves and have an incredible community of entrepreneurs who we've helped to build and helped to grow where they are today.

Absolutely. And maybe you can take us back to the beginning a little bit. What attracted you to Defy above any other funds, specifically to grads to, I suppose, strategy and operations.

I think in general in your career, whether it be VC or starting a company or, you know, being in operations, it's all about the people people work for people who work for people. Even though we're all kind of building technology in between there. Ultimately, you know, I helped build chat bots at Different Gap. I didn't really work with the chat bots. Right. I worked with the people who built the chatbot. So when I met the founding team at Defy, I was just blown away by their vision and of community they wanted to build around the Defy ecosystem. It was really in line with the type of community that I try to build in my own social life and my own network around me is Madison. And to just find a firm that valued people in that way and who they are and allowing them to lean authentically into what their passions are and then ultimately believing that that's what drives better returns was just spot on with my personal thesis. And I was really energized by every single person I met. I literally met single person on the team when I went through this interview process and as well as their entrepreneurs and by the end of it was a little tired but also super energized by the potential to get to help build alongside these individuals. And so for me, ultimately it just came down to the people and the unique opportunity to help really build a fund that has a legacy and ecosystem that we can be proud of in 10 years.

Francesca just did a mini series I've associated about interview processes and getting the job. Sounds like you went through quite an interesting one with Defy. Do you have a view on how it differs from like, more traditional processes?

I think Venture tends to be a little ad hoc. Most funds, as I understand it, have varying levels of Processes. It definitely differed from my other more formal investment banking processes where they have like rounds and rounds of structure and structure and you have to do this and that. In case studies, I did versions of those with defy. But generally, I think when you're working with people so closely, as you do in venture, there does tend to be this kind of conversation to conversation style of interview where no one particularly wants to grill you on how to do a dcf, but rather they just want to get an understanding of who you are and how you relate to people. Because ultimately that's. That's what we do every day.

Yeah, no, I think you're absolutely right. And one of the really nice things that I learned from a previous episode, Daisy from Bakt, is how she views the world and people is that everyone has a superpower. And whenever she meets a person, she tries to think, okay, this is this person's real amazing superpower or superpowers. So maybe a little bit of self reflection time that during those interviews, what were the sort of things that you put forward to the table and say, you know, look, I think not only would I be a great cultural fit, which is obviously integral when you're working so closely with people, but these are the sort of things I'm going to be bringing to the table, which is going to make the VC fund stronger and more valuable to founders.

This is a fun question. I wish I could say, you know, mind reading and flying were my superpowers, but in the absence of being bitten by a radioactive active spider, I guess I'll have to kind of draw on some things that have always been core to who I am. But probably the first of which is my central energy around people. I'm quite the extrovert on my Myers Briggs type. I can instantly get like aggressively, and I think that is something that I really pride myself on, which is being able to have a conversation with a wall and therefore being able to have a conversation with an entrepreneur. Yeah, I joke, but it's like maybe true and, you know, you never knew who you're going to meet on the other side of a zoom or in person in coffee. And I really view our role as venture capitalists to put people at ease. I know we can be intimidating in some regards, but we're really not. And I really think that I try to help put people at ease and be genuinely excited about what they're building, even if from the first 10 minutes, I know it's not going to be a good fit for our fund and really hopefully leave someone with A positive impression of who we are and what we stand for. For me, that's really important. And I try really hard to always have that kind of perspective going into a conversation. So kind of extroverted. The ability to hold a conversation and communicate would be like one superpower for me. I think the other is to generally just have a lot of energy. I've actually gotten this feedback on most of my reviews for my whole entire career is just like this word, energy. And I don't really know where it comes from because I don't drink coffee. I actually think if I did drink coffee, I might be, like, actually crazy. And as a result, I think this energy really gets me excited about anything and allows me to step into kind of any work situation or any moment and just get jazzed, which hopefully kind of seeps into the whole room and makes everyone feel energized. And so those are two superpowers, kind of extroversion and people in conversation and then general energy and enthusiasm for life or whatever it may be.

That's amazing. And I think it really does make a big difference. You have the ability to put founders at ease and so they can open up and tell you more about their business rather than see it almost like a battle, because that's not the objective. But you mentioned there that you had a number of reviews, and those are the two words that they were saying, or rather the word that they were saying was energy. And as someone that's very ambitious and wants to sort of progress, and I'm sure a lot of our listeners are the same, I wanted to know what your journey was like in getting from that associate to partner position. Were you quite upfront in your review sessions and asking, like, what do I need to have achieved? Did they put certain milestones in place? Like, really curious to know what the format was in order for you to sort of. Of get to that point of, yes, you're ready for a partner. Like, what does that journey look like for you?

Absolutely. Well, you know, a lot of it is a lot of luck and timing in general and finding the right firm. And so I'm super grateful to have found, defy and be in the right place at the right time. So I don't want to put it all on me at all, but I think there are a few things that I tried to do that did help kind of move that career advancement ball forward, and I'm happy to talk about those a little bit more. And so in general, general, when it comes to venture, I think it's a pretty Laissez faire career development industry. And what I mean by that is there isn't a lot of HR structure. There's not like mountains of career development paperwork you're going to do. Which is in sharp contrast to a company like Gap, where my manager had this goal sheet that the whatever team at Gap's whole job, it was to create our goal career development sheet. And it had the five layers of management. And if you hit these milestones for management, you would be hitting this next milestone for management and then Vice venue kind of keep going up. And so I came from a role where it was laid out in black and white what it would take for me to get from product manager to senior product manager to director of product, right? And so when I came to defy, I was like, oh, great. Like, where's the structure? This is my second job out of college. They're like, oh, well, we'll just like have, you know, weekly conversations with you. Like, it'll be great. I was like, oh, okay. So there's no syllabus right here. So I took a step back and I said, well, I really work well with the syllabus, so I'm going to create my own. And so as a result, kind of went to my senior partners and said like, hey, this is what I would like to grow in. Does this sound aligned with what the firm needs are, how you need to be supported and where you see me going? And they signed off on it. They were like, great. This is super aligned.

I love this.

Here's maybe adv, that section.

Great.

Sounds good. And so that was really where I got started because then it gave me both a framework and how I grow and learn best. But it also gave us something to react to in six to a year, months time to say, hey, this is what we laid out. And I think I've hit these milestones. Now let's talk about what's next. Right? And so I think every associate or junior employee at any firm, but particularly in a venture firm, should feel empowered to create milestones for themselves and get alignment with their management on what those milestones look like. Because without that alignment, both of you are going to be kind of shot in the dark come a year time of your review cycle if there's nothing on paper.

Yeah, I would definitely second that. I think in my experience and experiences that I've heard friends talk about, there's a lot to be said for being proactive. It probably comes back to your extroversion and energy and desire to kind of get stuff done I suppose that I think oftentimes when you're early on in your career, you can be deferential to a process, and particularly a hierarchical process that you think will get you somewhere. And I think the quicker you can realize that actually your destiny is sort of in your own hands with that. It's really empowering, isn't it? And I think it's a really good thing for listeners to think about.

Yeah. And I would just want to echo in this sense that I have incredible partners who were willing and excited to engage with me in that way and listened to me when I said, hey, this is how I grow best. Can we do this? And then it ultimately led to where I am. And so some people aren't going to have the partners who are as compassionate and care as much about that, and that's really unfortunate. I would maybe ask you, maybe you should be at a different firm if those people aren't super excited about your career development, because the best managers are and really want their employees to succeed. My manager at Gap, who I was quite close to, he had this perspective of, if you were leaving my team, I've done my job, which I think is so powerful because most managers would be upset or disappointed that you want to leave their team. It's like, well, I raised you, I've trained you, I've made you who you are. Why are you leaving? But his perspective was the opposite. It was like, if you are leaving, it means I've prepared you for whatever's next, and I'm super excited, excited about that. So I do think ultimately you can be as proactive as you want, and I would encourage everyone to be. But I'm hopeful and optimistic that whoever's on the other side of you being proactive is willing and able to listen and be excited to engage there with you.

Nice. I do really love a good framework as well, and it makes so much sense to ensure that everyone's aligned and what the expectations are.

Right.

But you didn't really stop there in terms of your goals and aspirations, because then you also decided to start a side hustle, which a very long time ago now, it seems, when we first started off a conversation, I was giving you a little bit of tips and tricks on how to start a podcast, and I would love to hear how that's gone. I have listened to a number of episodes and really, really enjoyed it. But I'd love to hear what was the reasoning behind starting your own podcast.

Well, I could not be here without Francesca's support, so. Associated listeners, big thanks to your fabulous co host, Francesca Point. She sat me down and I said, how do I start a podcast? And she said, well, you need this, this, and this. And I was like, great, I don't have any of that, so I better get to work. And here we are a year later, and a big part of wanting to start a podcast with my incredible co host, Claudia. Well, first of all, I would say do it with a friend, because I really would not have gotten to where we are without Claudia. So I'm sure you all feel that way as well. But was this idea that we are two young women in the tech industry? We met through mutual friends in San Francisco. She was a product manager at Uber. I was at Gap. We both love retail. We just had a lot of personal synergies and then had also at the time, been on this kind of career milestone path.

Right.

So I was figuring out how to do venture in a pandemic and understanding what that looks like. And she was figuring out, well, I have a lot of ideas. Is now a good time to start a company? It's the middle of a pandemic. Again, not so sure. And so we were just constantly asking each other these questions and digging in and learning from one another. And what we realized that was when one of us had a question and one of us couldn't answer the other question, we could go talk to people. I could talk to my partners at Defy, she could talk to her managers at Uber. We could go ask other people in our ecosystem. And then we realized we were incredibly well connected and lucky to be able to actually have these questions answered for us in real time. And most people don't, especially women. And so we were just sitting there like. Like, well, we could answer these questions for other people and why don't we do that? And so that was really the genesis of the room. If anyone's watched Hamilton. The idea is that everyone wants to be in the room where it happens, but most of us are not because of, like, experiences like gender, race, age, or otherwise. And we love to interview founders who were in the room where it happened and were oftentimes the only one in the room who looked like that them and share those stories of what it was like to either be a founder, a funder, or an operator in hopes of inspiring more individuals who don't look like every other founder to ultimately be in the room and kind of bottoms up, change our industry. So that's us. And it's been four seasons now, which has been quite fun. And we've had some really cool guests like Sierra, the R and B pop sensation who's also a founder and CEO of her own label for her own record, or Michelle Zatlin of Cloudflare, who was one of the only women to take your company public in 2019 as a founder herself. So really cool guests that you guys.

Can go check out.

That'd be great. I'm so glad you touched on the guests, because I wanted to know how appropriate it was to ask you how on earth you got Ciara on your podcast, because that is literally sick.

Well, thank you. I happen to know someone who's on the board of a really cool company called Amparity, which is a customer data platform company based out of Seattle, and they were generous enough to make the introduction. So, basically, shamelessly ask for things in your career whenever you need anything. The worst someone can say is no. And the best someone can say is yes. And then you have Sarah on your podcast.

That's the recurring theme of the podcast. It's take the plunge and ask.

Yeah, I mean, in general, I think, why not? Right? And if you. Like I said, if you don't ask, the answer is definitely no. And if you do ask, the answer could be yes.

Yeah, absolutely. I think it goes back to the point about career development as well. Like, I think I'm probably paraphrasing some research that was. That was very well done. But I think I saw something once about like how perhaps women and people who are from underrepresented backgrounds expect to be rewarded for hard work. And they expect that if they get their heads down and kind of do, do, you know, a good job of something, then someone will come along and give them a reward for that at some point. Whereas, you know, in reality, that doesn't actually tend to happen. People don't just give you things without asking. Yeah, I know.

Even for those who love words of affirmation, which is definitely one of my love languages.

But what.

I don't know if I totally answered your question, Francesca. Around the value of the side hustle. It definitely is a lot of work. And as you ladies know, sometimes there are days when it's literally the last thing you want to do. But I think as young women in our careers and young people in our careers, there's so much value in creating an identity for yourself, not just within work. And whether that be a podcast or some nonprofit or something else, I just think our generation is a little bit too tied to an identity and work and values that too much as, like, the core of who they are. And I actually have found it incredibly helpful and balancing to have other things that I'm passionate about that I'm excited about that I can pour energy into that are not necessarily just work related. Now, of course, the value of the podcast is it is both outside of work and inside of work because it thankfully has been a great feeder of meeting incredible founders, other funders, and an opportunity to get to know these incredibly impressive individuals in our ecosystem. So this is a little bit work light, I should say, but I really enjoyed having kind of multiple avenues for energy and ownership and creativity. And I would say for any young person, adventurer like myself, it's really nice to have multiple things that get you excited to get out of bed in the morning.

Yeah, definitely. And is there anything else that's kind of on your hit list, things that you want to do? Like, you know, you've made Partner a VC at a pretty young age. That's amazing. I don't mean to, you know, push that to one side and ask you what's next in any sense. It's more in the sense of exactly what you just said about, you know, if your identity isn't tied to the that and you're thinking about other things to like, enrich your life, like, what are the. What are the things Feel like they might be on the horizon for you.

Thanks for asking. I think partner is just the beginning. I was really just promoted and I'm still very young and I have a lot to learn, so I'll be doing this for quite some time and then I'll get back to you, Lois, in a couple years. But, well, I am excited. Next week I'm helping to start an all girls school in San Francisco and it's going to be the only independent all girls school in the San Francisco city proper, which is odd that there isn't and it's actually part of the reason we're starting it. But it's also focused on stem, so really making sure that young women are educated from an early age and how to code, how to understand science and math in a way that's really concrete and allows them to feel empowered to go into that career themselves. It's something that is close to my heart for my own life. I went to an all girls school and I really valued that education throughout my career. And so actually that's what's next. That's opening next week and I'm just so excited to have our inaugural class of 30 girls coming in to be empowered and learn more about why they can change the world. So that's something else that I'm excited to continue leaning into.

That is amazing. How did you find out about this? How did you get involved? Because it's not just the run of the mill side project. Like this is a school, this is big, amazing.

I know, I know. So this is fun. My mom's like New York City roommate when she was in her 20s is the one who's starting this school. And they've known each other obviously for 25 years. I was the flower girl in her wedding. And it's just cool to see how female friendships and probably friendships in general, but for the purposes of this call, I'm going to call them female friendships. It really can stand the test of time and have compounding impact on generations. And so for Karen, this is the woman's name. This is her school that she's starting with her co founder. When I moved to San Francisco, I just reconnected with her after many years as she was my mom's friend and my mom was kind of like, I'd like to have someone looking out for you in San Francisco, like reconnect with Karen. But then from there, because of my experience, original girls school, Karen was generous to kind of wrote me in and I've become someone who can speak at open houses and kind of share about my experience. I also sit on the audit committee, but sitting and supporting on that multi generation. Karen actually has daughters and her daughter I had as our intern this summer for Defy. And so it's just really fun to get to pass the baton, so to speak on the next generation. And so that's the story behind the all girls school. And the lesson is keep close to your amazing 20 something girlfriends because you never know where they'll be in 25 years.

You hear that, Lois? Yep.

For all our listeners, Francesca and I are just sort of looking at each other with like heads down, eyes up, remember that? No, I think that's so cool. That's a really good point, isn't it? Like if I think at the time of our lives that we're in a reminder like that is actually quite pertinent because friendships sort of ebb and flow and life moves in different directions and things like that. But you know, you never know where opportunities for yourself or to help others will come from. So I think like, I think that's really cool and it's nice to see that you can, I guess, give back to a community that you've moved into as well.

I love that opportunity to get to do so and have a localized impact Here in San Francisco, I think in general our job tends to be how can we impact the world? And that's incredible. And I love that entrepreneurs are empowered to do so. There's also so much worth in building where you are and helping to grow your local community too. And so finding that balance has been something that I really enjoyed, even through a pandemic, which is kind of a crazy science experiment, but has been interesting nonetheless.

Definitely. And you mentioned there that you had an intern and I wanted to understand a little bit more about whether you have an internship program, whether that's open at the moment and are there certain people that you're looking for to hire at the moment or for this internship program and how do they go about getting in touch with you and exploring that further?

Absolutely. So that's a summer internship program that we typically do for students and it's pretty low key. But if someone is already thinking about their next summer internship and wants to chat, feel free to DM me. I run our intern program. In general, we're not hiring at Defy, although those things change. But while Defy is not hiring right now, our amazing portfolio companies are. And you can actually check out our website to see all of our companies for what they're hiring right now on the careers tab. So I would encourage anyone to go check that out. First and foremost, two companies that I would highlight that I know quite well would be our company Thrilling and our company Pro Shop. Thrilling is a company that I helped to source and bring into our community and was founded by Sheila Kim Parker, who is an incredible woman who really saw a vision for helping bring local vintage stores online through a streamlined marketplace. So if you are tired of going from thrift store to thrift store, vintage store to vintage store, or in the pandemic or browsing from your couch, check out thrilling.com because they have incredible clothes that are verified vintage that deliver right to your doorstep and they're hiring ahead of marketing, ahead of growth right now, now as well as I think a few engineering hires. So if something you're passionate about is closed loop supply chain e commerce disruption and working for a really kick ass female founder, definitely go check out Thrilling. And then another is a company prive prize, actually co founded by my podcast co host. No surprise, Defy is also an investor there, which is an incredible honor. And they're hiring engineers right now, so go check them out too. They're early, early seed stage. But if you wanted to always be a part of a founding, that's disrupting e commerce infrastructure particularly in pricings and promotion for Shopify enabled brands. And then I would encourage anyone who's interested to learn more about Defy honestly to reach out to me. You can find me on LinkedIn, you can shoot me a note, find me on Instagram. Honestly, wherever I'm pretty around there are any founders who are listening, come chat if you're US based. Love to love to meet you or not. Can always explore but I'm always happy to chat about this journey specifically for me joining Defy and also share tips on my thoughts on more tactics in the interview process as well. Or make introductions to other friends that are hiring at other firms. I really love to be able to do that and I know a warm intro could go a long way. Whether it be just a quick note over to someone, I'm always really happy to do so. And so that would be my plug to people is let me know what you're up to. Happy to chat as well as make any introductions where I can to us helpful and helping you break into the venture market. I'm not at all plugged into the UK market though are a UK listener probably should DM Francesca and Lois yeah.

We could echo the same thing on this side of the pond.

Amazing. That I think is a wonderful way to finish the episode and I suppose in my head the summary is energy is amazing to bring to any conversation and so thank you so much Madison for everything that you have given us in this episode. It's been so much fun network and using it not to just in your work but also to follow your passion is something that is also really lovely thing to be able to do. And don't forget the power of your friends. And I think it was such a nice thing to note down of not only your personal friends but also your parents friends like you, all the friendships that you have because I don't know about you both but I have to say one of my greatest assets, if not the greatest assets, are my friends and I've just spent as I said, a week in Majorca with four amazing women and it's just fantastic to see them grow as individuals and I can't wait to see what they end up doing in the future and whether we can work together would be an amazing experience like I get to do with Lois the past few years. So thank you so much Madison for drawing all those things up and making me reflect on how fortunate I am to have the network that they have through work, friendships and this podcast. So it's fantastic and very inspiring to hear how you've really built all those things yourself over time and Flection is the wonderful person you are and the partner position that you have at defy, which is very, very inspiring. So thank you so much.

Thank you both for having me on. It was such a treat to be on the other side of the interview table as well as get to share about DEFY and all that we're doing here, but as also kind of my winding path and career to get where I am. So such a treat to get to share. And thanks for doing this. I love the mission behind Associated and I'm honored to be a guest.

Thank you so much for joining us. Madison I'll just echo what Francesca said. Such a good conversation. Really, really interesting to touch on some topics that we don't usually get to touch on in this podcast. So really, thank you. And to all of our listeners, thank you so much for tuning in to Associated. Remember that you can get updates on the latest guest and episode on Twitter. We're Associated and you can always email us if you have feedback or suggestions for Future episodes on associatedpodcastmail.com so with that, please do subscribe and leave us a rating wherever you're listening to this podcast and we will see you next week.

Sa.