Impactful Investments: Pivotal Ventures Managing Director Erin Harkless Moore | Seed To Harvest Ep51

Hello everyone, and welcome back to Seed to Harvest with your host, Paige Finn Doherty. I'm the founding partner behind Genius Ventures, and today I am honored to be joined by Erin Harkless Moore, who's the investments director for Pivotal Ventures. Erin, welcome to the show.

Thanks, Paige. It's such a pleasure to be here with you today on the podcast.

Yay, I'm so excited. Well, I would love to get started with, perhaps you can add some context as to the background and mission for Pivotal Ventures as a whole, and then I'm, I would love to dive a bit more into your background.

Sure, sure. So Pivotal Ventures is an investment company that was founded by Melinda French Gates to advance social progress and remove barriers that hold people in our country back. So we're unique in some ways in that we're not a traditional philanthropy. In addition to using philanthropic capital, We also are driving impact through our investment portfolio and our investment strategy. And, you know, one thing I like to say is that while some of our philanthropic work corrects for market failures, our investments, particularly those at the early stages and in venture capital, are unleashing new solutions and new innovation in our country. And for us, we're really driving towards a strategic outcome of advancing women's power and influence. So to do that, it's essential that a diverse group of people are controlling, accessing, and benefiting from investment capital. And we don't need to, I mean, we can pick our statistic. You are familiar and probably many of your listeners are.

Yeah, not many of them are great.

Not many of them are great. You know, 15% of check writers, you know, women, 2% of funding goes to female founders. You know, pick, pick your stat, right? They're not great. And the cornerstone of our strategy is to try to change that by having more women controlling the purse strings and running and leading investment firms and funds. And that will hopefully lead to a more diverse set of founders also getting access to capital.

I love that. One of the interviews that I read while preparing for this conversation mentioned that earlier in your career, you were working on Wall Street and you were also working on outside initiatives in diversity, equity, and inclusion. And, and I, I really liked what you said around, you know, now your role is much more intertwined with both of those large passions of yours. I'm curious, can you share some of your other passions that are also being manifested in the role that you have today?

Sure. No, I, I feel like such a privilege to sit in the seat that I sit in and do this work and drive real impact. So that's incredibly important to me. But I think a couple other passions of mine that sort of show up in, in my job, I, I always love, I love to read. I'm a big reader. Fiction mostly, some nonfiction as well. Oh, I love that. Oh, good. Well, we can talk more about books later, but one of my favorite, you know, things I think to do, I, I, I always consider myself to be an inquisitive person and part of reading is like discovery, you know, learning about something new and asking questions. And that shows up in every day in my job. I mean, a core aspect of this is, this work is doing diligence on fund managers, doing diligence on founders, new products, new ideas. And so I think that, that curiosity that comes through, you know, when I, I'm downloading a new book or in the library. I'm old school. I still go to the library, the DC Public Library.

I love the library. It's so nice.

Yeah, it's so cozy. But just having a, you know, a space to learn and, and inquire. I, I think that's something that, you know, kind of comes through from my love of reading, my love of travel. I love just experiencing different places, different cultures, different people, different cuisines. Friends always joke I have less time for it now with small children, but I, I love going out to new restaurants and trying new restaurants. Yeah. And so just that, I think, constant quest to explore and learn really drives a lot of, you know, why I think I'm, I'm in a job that suits, suits me because I get to do that every day, interviewing and talking to fund managers, learning about their strategies and trying to build a portfolio that meets our, you know, both our return objectives and also our impact and mission objectives here at Pivotal Ventures.

Yeah. And I, I wanna touch on something that you said is Especially when you're investing in non-traditional managers or managers who are earlier in their career, a lot of the diligence that you're doing is more emotional or personal than quantitative. Of course, there's like quantitative aspects to it, but I feel like reading, exploring, traveling really contribute to you having a more holistic view of the managers that you work with. So I think that that is really cool. I'd love to hear more about a fiction book that impacted you or particularly resonated with you recently?

Ooh, that's a great question. I just finished a book called Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel. She's the author of Station Eleven and The Glass House, and so has written these books. Station Eleven was kind of basically about a pandemic that took over the world. Sea of Tranquility in some ways actually references some characters from her prior book, but it's Mm-hmm. It's really kind of, I'd almost say amusing on like how, you know, there's elements of time travel. It's, it's very speculative and even kind of science sci-fi in some of what it's doing. But it really brought up for me just questions of like, you know, how we communicate, what we see versus what we perceive and what's true, what's true. I mean, I think that was a, a question that sort of permeated throughout. So I, I finished that book about a week ago and it's still It's still looming in my mind.

That's interesting. Yeah. The difference between what you like, I, I guess like content and context, I've been thinking about a lot. Okay. I have one more personal question, then we'll hop into some like nitty gritty manager stuff. But when you go visit a new city, how, how do you like to explore it?

Oh, wow. That's a great question. I like to Again, kind of coming back to food per usual.

I love it.

One of my love, love languages, particularly sweets. And I think, you know, whatever, every culture kind of has its thing or every city, every place. It's like, you know, yeah, we do breakfast tacos. I'm from San Antonio, Texas. Mm-hmm. You know, Tex-Mex tacos, that's our thing. Yeah. I think I try to figure out and find like what that is in the place and like ask locals, ask the guy at the hotel, ask, you know, someone who, who's just like lives there. And, you know, not, don't send me to the place that's like the touristy spot. Like I wanna try and find, you know, what's the real flavor of the city. And I have a sweet tooth as I was just alluding to. So that often will drive me, you know, towards like the ice cream parlor, the gelateria, the donut place.

Yeah.

But, you know, every culture kind of has those things and I feel like the the best ways to, again, ask questions, right? And ask questions from lots of different sources to try and learn and get a flavor of a community.

I love that. I feel like what you said about like getting the flavor of the community is really what you focus on. So I love that. Okay. So I want to focus a bit on like fund manager best practices. So as you've been investing at Pivotal Ventures, what are some of the biggest lessons that you've learned either like investing in fund managers? Well, I guess like As an investments director, you have a handful of responsibilities like investing, and then you also have like managing the portfolio as well. So feel free to dive into either of those 2 sectors as well.

Sure, sure. I think in terms of lessons, I think a willingness to admit maybe when, you know, take in new information and be willing to sort of, you know, go back and interrogate assumptions that you've had, you know, for an allocator, I think that's incredibly important. And, you know, one thing that we look for, I'm trying to suss out from prospective fund managers that we're meeting is, you know, do they have a growth mindset in how they approach and how they think about, you know, the work that they're doing, the business and the fund, the platform that they're hopefully trying to build and scale. And so one big part of that, I think a lesson that I've learned is just to be willing to kind of revisit and come back to things and let people show you how they're learning and growing or not as an investor over time. But a couple of things that I'd say fund managers to do, like, that are very simple. Like we have a meeting and I say, well, you know, let's stay in touch. Add me to your distribution list, follow up. I wanna, I wanna stay in touch this way. Like actually follow up. It seems very simple actually following through on that.

Yeah.

You'd be surprised how many folks do not, you know, you know, do that, right? Like I'm, I'm, as I've gotten to know you, Paige, like you've kept us posted. You, we stayed in touch on what you're doing with the podcast and your investments and other things, right? Like, Very simple in a lot of—

wait, that's so funny because I was thinking, and like in my head I was like, dang, have I been doing that? So I'm happy to hear that I have been doing that.

'Cause I was like, yeah, no, you have, you have. It's, it's sort of just, it's very simple doing what you say you're gonna do. Right. And, you know, if you're gonna put, assume that if you have a reference list or you founder, you know, we're gonna check on that. And so just being very thoughtful and, and clear in articulating your strategy and your value add and your sourcing capabilities, all those things are important. But, you know, knowing that what you put out there, you know, we're gonna, we're gonna, as an, as an investor on the other side of the table as an LP, are really gonna kick the tires thoroughly. So don't be surprised, you know, when questions come up that are digging deeper into some of those core, core aspects of, of what you're building.

Did you ever think about going into journalism? I'm always curious. I, I like, I love asking investors this because I feel like it's like you're on some FBI investigation stuff when you're doing due diligence.

Yes.

I'm curious, you ever explored that?

You know, it's, it's so funny you ask that. I, I actually did. I was a, I wrote for my college newspaper all 4 years and did some programs and internship at the local San Antonio newspaper also in, you know, kind of high school and in college. And at the end of the day, I, it wasn't the right path for me. But like we were saying earlier, I, I do think there are elements of that kind of journalism mindset, right? Yeah. And the communications, telling a story too, right? Like making the case to our investment committee, to our principal, et cetera, of, of why Fund A is the fund that we wanna invest in, or Fund B is the fund that we, that we wanna, we wanna back. There, there are journalistic elements, storytelling elements to, to that for sure.

Yeah. Mm-hmm. And speaking of stories, I would love to hear the story of like the first time that you met Melinda French Gates. I would love to hear that story.

Oh, wow. Well, it's interesting. When did I first meet Melinda? She was, had stopped by our, our office here in, in Washington, DC. This was the first time I met her face to face. And it was so fun because we were all kind of awaiting her arrival that day. And as soon as the elevator opened, she said, she said, oh, hi, I'm Melinda. And we were all like, hi. And so, you know, We just had a very nice chat and, you know, she is a phenomenal leader, philanthropist, investor, and it's just, again, you know, she sets the tone. Having someone like her in the seat that she's in, using her voice and her capital of all forms to drive real change and greater equity and more power for women is tremendous. She could be doing a lot of things and the fact that she's doing this is so powerful.

Yeah, she is definitely someone that I look up to as well. I'm curious, and this can be in your investing or reading or who are some of the role models You know, and I, I think it's so important when you can look at and see people that, that look like you doing the work that, that you do or aspire to do.

And, you know, there are a couple of, of women, particularly Black women on Wall Street that I, some of who I've gotten to meet personally and get to know a little bit that I've always admired, including Mellody Hobson running Ariel Investments, Carla Harris, who was a senior director at Morgan Stanley, Kim Wu, who's the chief investment officer at Columbia University.

Yeah.

Columbia's endowment. I mean, I think all 3 of them show up in such important ways and have blazed trails in the work that they do. But if, you know, from my, my perception and what I know of them and time spent with some of them, you know, they live authentically as well. You know, Carla has written books, she sings, like she, she's, she's herself, right? In all the ways. And also leading some of the biggest client relationships at, at Morgan Stanley and giving back with her time and, and her treasure and her, her capital to the communities that she cares about. So it's awesome to me, and I, I hope that I'm on a path to continue to do more of that and, and be a role model to others that are coming into this space, like some of those women have been for me.

Yeah, I love that. I'm sure that you already are. I feel like that's, it's, it's interesting how like that can be so important is just to show up and be yourself in spaces where people haven't seen someone that looks like them. I think it's, it's just like, yeah, sometimes you can like underestimate the importance of just showing up. And I feel like it's, it's really important, you know, even on the days when you're not feeling great, you're like, all right, it's important to show up because someone 10, 20 years down the line might see that and get inspired and go and do something great because they saw that representation. So I so appreciate you sharing that. Totally. Um, and I think in terms of like your investing strategy, are there folks that you kind of emulate a similar either like portfolio strategy, the people that you select to work with? Is there anyone that you look up to from a more, I would say like tactical perspective specifically?

Sure. I mean, I, I, uh, there are quite a few like-minded travelers, I, I like to call them, that I think are investing and deploying capital to emerging managers, to diverse managers. Those don't have to necessarily always be the same, but I think that are being really thoughtful about how they approach this work and, and wanting to create space in their portfolios and, and build new portfolios that, that bring those managers to the forefront. And it's, yeah, I, I could probably list like a dozen folks and firms. I mean, there's so many great, you know, some of the fund of funds out there that are investing with a lens around emerging managers like Recast Capital and Include Ventures and Fairview Capital. I mean, these are all, you know, we share notes with and, and have some overlapping managers in our portfolios. I think there are a handful of other family offices and, you know, prominent individuals that are, that are investing with this lens that we collaborate with a fair amount. And then some of the big endowments and foundations that have, you know, kind of impact, you know, DEI-focused mandates as well, thinking like the Kellogg Foundation and the Ford Foundation that have really been pushing and allocating more capital to diverse managers are all folks that, that, that I would count again in a network of investors that we share deals with, trade notes with, often show up on the same cap tables and as LPs in the same fund.

I love that. I feel like it's really exciting. I don't think that people often see the behind the scenes as well of allocation, but I deeply believe like the more dollars that get allocated to diverse checkwriters, like the more that that flows down to backing diverse founders and changing those not great statistics. Totally. So I so appreciate the work that you all are doing. I'm curious, can you share a story of how either you met or have worked with one of the fund managers in your portfolio that has surprised you in some way?

Oh, let's see. Many surprises. How to, how to pick, how to pick just one. It's like that, I mean, that kind of tired line of, you know, I feel like I, if you have children, you're like, you don't have a, I love all my children. I, I love all of our, yeah, yeah, yeah. All of our partners. That's what I wanted to include, the surprises. All of our founders.

It's not necessarily like pick your favorite person. It's like, who surprised you recently?

Who has surprised me recently? I mean, I think, you know, one that's maybe just Top of mind because she just announced her, her close of her fund is, you know, Monique Woodard at Cape Ventures. You know, we have— Yeah, she was just on. Yeah. Oh, awesome. Okay. So your, your listeners have heard from her. Maybe I should pick another example then, but I—

No, no, no. Please tell a story about her.

Yeah. Yes. Well, I think she's just been so— her focus on her strategy from the moment that, you know, we met her now several years ago at Pivotal. Has just been razor sharp and clear on what she is executing towards with her different layers of the cake. You know, aging, rise of new majority, and the, and the power of, of women and just continuing to refine that and back great founders building in that space. You know, I think she also brought a great group of institutional LPs to the table. But one thing I really respect about where she landed with this fund was that, you know, she said, I wanna just get to work. I wanna, Just get to investing and her fund size, I think she's gonna punch above her weight. You know, she closed on $17 million, but I'm just really looking forward to seeing where she takes that portfolio initially and, you know, putting points on the board. So I think, you know, a surprise was just that, you know, she recognized the market, recognized she had great partners around the table and was willing to just go with that and start keep building and keep scaling and again, building a world-class investment strategy at Cake Ventures. So I'm really excited for what she's up to.

Yeah. Yeah. She is an incredible inspiration. I so enjoy our conversations as well. I think some of the demographic shifts that she's investing in are so, I just like, like you mentioned, like I love the layers of the cake and how she's blending those different demographic shifts. I'm curious from your perspective as an LP, what are some of the demographic shifts that, that you are seeing or you're investing in at Pivotal?

Sure. We are many, but I think one area that's been very much a focus for us at Pivotal is around the care economy. We've done a lot of work there, both with programmatic strategies and philanthropic capital to seed innovation, support, you know, advancing policies to support caregivers that are, you know, all of us are caregivers at some point in our, in our lives. But typically, you know, women bear the brunt of that. And so it's a space we've been doing a lot of work, but I see tremendous opportunity for innovation at the early stages. And, you know, we're leaning in both with our fund investments. We anchored a fund called Magnify Ventures that announced their close last year. They have a thesis around technology for modern families and really centering again the care economy in their work. And we are, you know, doing some direct investing and co-investing ourselves at Pivotal, you know, around that theme, really focusing on a broad spectrum of areas, childcare, you know, kind of Household, future of work, mental health, women's health, and aging and longevity. So, you know, we sized it, Pivotal supported some research that sized the care economy as a, a $648 billion market.

Wow.

That's huge.

Yeah.

I think I'd hazard to say a lot of investors are not looking there. And so where other people are not looking, I think that creates great opportunities for founders, particularly those with lived experience to build.

Mm-hmm.

And we're excited. About seeing some of those opportunities and, and, and, and backing them.

Whoa. That's, yeah, it's really incredible to hear your market sizing around the care economy as well. It's a, it's a space that we've looked at. We have one company in the portfolio, Adily, that connects caregivers to tax benefits. I think annually it's around like $4 billion that goes unclaimed by in-home caregivers, which is the rising majority of folks are wanting to stay at home longer and have at-home care, but The majority of those caregivers are uncompensated and part of the family, and as you mentioned, often women. So really excited about the work that they're doing there. And I think there's an incredible amount of opportunity in that space, unfortunately or fortunately, whichever way you see it. I'm excited for it to improve in the future. I think I'm— and speaking of the future, I would be curious to hear like, what is your vision for your future? Not just like Pivotal, but what is your— Future for Erin?

Oh, wow. Well, I think, you know, having time to read more books and eat good food, that's, that's definitely in my future personally. But I, when I took this job, before I took this job at Pivotal, I was really pushing myself to think about what kind of impact I wanted to have with, with my career. And I think we spend a lot of time at work, right? So that is, that is a lot of your life and your, is your work, right? And as you said earlier too, Paige, like I was trying to seek greater harmonization around the technical aspects of kind of where I had come up and been trained with the type of world I wanted to see. And so, you know, I aspire again to a world where those sad statistics that we alluded to earlier are no longer the case, where there are more and more women, more women of color sitting on the Midas list, whatever list someone comes up with. I want more women on there. I want, I want us running the show and seeing great founders again, building wealth. And scaling their businesses, that's success for me. So in the next 15 or 20 years, even if I'm, I mean, hopefully I'm at pivotal ventures for a long time, but if I'm not, these seeds that we planted today and some of the fund managers that we have been backing in the companies and their portfolios or those that we are supporting directly will be some of the game-changing businesses and platforms again, creating and seeding innovation in our country for the years to come. So that's, that's the future I hope for and. I have a daughter that, again, if she's, you know, wants to build a company, there's a bunch of amazing women that are willing to have the capital and the platforms to support her. So that's what I'd love to see. That's the future I'm aiming for.

I love that. If you were to go back and tell yourself anything when you are at the age that your daughter is now, what would you go back and tell yourself?

Oh, wow. You know, Take risks that, I mean, and it's kind of a thing that is easier said than done. I, I, I think particularly, you know, you can find, one can find themselves, and I was this way too in some instances, like on a path of, you know, getting to the next, the next school, the next job, the next internship, the next this or that. And being, you know, comfortable doing something that others are not doing. I think if I had done maybe more of that, probably would've had a slightly more interesting Life. And yeah, perhaps just, but being okay to take those risks, but do it in a smart way and have fun. You know, I, I like, I love that I can come to work and have fun with what I do. Um, that's maybe not always been the case. Again, I've been on this march. I think over time that's been more and more, but that's what I love. You spend a lot of time around your colleagues doing this work. And so if you're not having fun, I think it's, life's too short. So I would, yeah, tell my younger self just Just, you know, keep having fun. Ask questions, take risks, and have fun.

I love that. Aw, well, thank you so much for sharing your time and your insights and your stories with us, Erin. I so appreciate it. If folks want to— Thanks, Paige. It's been fun. Of course. Of course. If folks want to follow you or your story, where should they find you on the internet?

Oh geez. Well, I'm, I'm an old millennial, so you can find me, you can find me on LinkedIn, Erin Harkless Moore on LinkedIn. You can find me on Twitter still, Erin_Harkless. Those are probably the 2 places to find me. On the interwebs. Instagram, TikTok. I'm on, on the interwebs. I love it. Yeah, probably LinkedIn and, and, and, and Twitter are, are, are the, are the 2 best platforms.

Perfect.

And follow Pivotal Ventures as, as well. We're on all the channels, Instagram, LinkedIn, all of it. So follow Pivotal Ventures there as well. Twitter.

Yeah, we'll link those in the show notes. And again, Erin, thanks again so much for your time. And for those of you listening in, please let us know if you have any questions in the comments, like and subscribe, and thank you so much for listening. Special thank you to producer Riley Jennings and podcast editor Tate Doherty for your help on this episode. If you're listening and you'd like to connect with me, follow me on Twitter or LinkedIn, Paige Finn with 3 N's. Thanks again for listening. I really appreciate it. You can look out for new episodes every Monday at 5 PM PST. And if you'd like to learn more about the strategies and tactics of seasoned institutional investors and rising venture stars, check out our YouTube channel at Seed to Harvest. Also, my TikTok channel is Seed to Harvest, where I post a lot of behind the scenes. And if you like this episode, please rate and review this podcast wherever you get your podcasts. That's on Apple or Spotify. Anyways, thank you so much for listening. I hope you have an awesome rest of your day.