Paige Finn DohertyFounding Partner, Behind Genius · Founding Partner at Behind Genius Ventures

How did Awesome People Ventures Founding Partner Julia Lipton's operator job apply to her investing?

21 Dec 2022 · 1 min

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In this interview excerpt, Julia Lipton, founding partner at Awesome People Ventures, reflects on her operator background before moving into venture capital. She recounts her early role at Quixly, where she was among the first business hires and led marketing. Quixly once reached a $700 million valuation before collapsing to zero, a failure that taught her the critical importance of product‑market fit and the challenges of early‑stage company operations. These experiences now inform the theses she applies when evaluating and investing in startups.

Chapters

You were the head of virtual visits at One Medical and then head of growth at Rise and the first business employee at Quixly. So you had quite an operator career prior to jumping into venture. So I'd love to hear kind of what are the theses that you took out of that time as an operator that now you're applying in your investing?
Yeah, so our first company, Quixly, I believe at one point was valued at like around $700 million and came crashing down to zero. Whoa. And I was one of the first business hires and ran marketing in the early days, and we were quite good at marketing. Our CEO is a very prolific storyteller, but it really ingrained in me the importance of product-market fit because we never had it. Mm-hmm. And it ingrained in me a ton of things about early company operating.