IOVC General Partner Shuo Chen on Investing and Richard Branson's Island | Seed to Harvest S1 Ep1

Hello everyone, welcome back to Seed to Harvest with your host Paige Finn Doherty. I'm a founding partner behind Genius Ventures and author of Seed to Harvest, an illustrated children's book about adults. I'm here today with my friend Shuo Chen, who I'm super excited to be here with. She is a general partner at ILVC, previously Agile VC. She's a faculty member at UC Berkeley and Singularity University. She's also a former Air Cadet, voice actress, Guinness World Record holder in pipa, which is Chinese guitar, and a gardening geek. So we have a lot to dive into here. You have such an incredible background. But first, I really want to start with one of the reasons I was super excited to talk to you is when we met in New York earlier this year, you had shared this incredible story about being on Richard Branson's island and feeding lemurs. So I want to talk more about that. How did you get there? What was the experience like? And then any key learnings you took away from both feeding lemurs and being on Richard Branson's island?

So thank you so much for having me here, Paige. I'm so glad we're starting off with the fun stories. Oh, there's, there's so many stories from that particular experience that I can share in addition to feeding lemurs, particularly subspecies that are now extinct in other places around the world. And where do I start? So let me start, I guess, at the beginning of that particular experience. We had the fortune of co-investing with Richard Branson on a particular company that we're still very involved in. We did actually their seed round, and they're now post-Series C. So it's been really rewarding to see their journey and growth throughout the way. They are now the largest high-performance computing startup in the category, 10x larger than the second runner-up.

Wow.

And so as a result of this particular investment, because of how much work they do on the back end for a lot of aviation and aerospace companies, we had the fortune of being invited to join Richard Branson to spend a week with him at his private home in the BVI. He owns 2 of the main islands there, and it was just a ton of fun to spend time there. The main island where his home is is called Necker Island. He also owns an island not too far away called Mosquito And we certainly had a lot of fun swimming between the two. It's actually quite a few miles apart. And it was only after that I had done the swim that I had learned that some of the most aggressive sharks in the world actually live in that particular sea. So I am glad that I am alive to share the tale with you afterwards.

Yeah, and that you learned that before you made the swim. I feel like I definitely wouldn't have made it. If I had known that in advance.

I think it was definitely more motivation to be like, I gotta swim fast and get out of here. Yeah, so that was how we had gotten invited. There was about a dozen of us who had gotten to go and really bonded over the experience. You know, the first day that we spent together was all just kind of basking in awe of being there in the first place. And, and of course, subsequent days after, as we got to know each other really better, we had much deeper conversations. That was back in 2016. So it was at the very beginning of blockchain and crypto. And I remember we were at the top of Richard's guest house and there was a really big hot tub there. And a couple of us were just hanging out in the bathtub, in like the hot tub together. And we were joking like, when is the next time we're ever going to be in the middle of BVI and then hanging out on like in the middle of the night talking about blockchain and crypto? So. Those were fun days.

That sounds like such a surreal experiment. Was that when you get— was that when you got crypto-pilled, or did you get crypto-pilled on that journey?

So actually, I had been investing in blockchain even before. I actually ended up investing in Ethereum end of 2015, so quite early on. My business partner ended up buying Bitcoin actually way before I even got into Ethereum. So fortunately, I had known a lot of the foundation. I think at the time there were only like 3 or 4 of us who were— well, 2 of us who were really— 3 of us were really into crypto. And then I think the whole journey was us explaining to everyone else why this is really exciting.

You guys crypto-pilling the other people on the trip. That's awesome. I'm curious, like, what other experiences for you have been very fundamental in your business life that you didn't think about at the time or just seemed very like synchronous— or not synchronous, but like serendipitous?

Mm-hmm. So many things. Well, the first thing I would say is that I think earlier in my career, I thought that there is this image of being professional and being formal and all of that that came with. Whereas over time, I think I not only developed the confidence, but also comfort level to just be myself more naturally. And I think that's something that comes with time and track record, that you actually have the confidence to just be yourself and know that you are going to be accepted as you are. But I wish I had more role models to look up to who were proud of just being who they were. So I didn't feel like I had to hide the more personal parts of me and then focus on the more professional parts. I really admire a lot of the work that you do, Paige. I think you do an awesome job of being genuine and just being who you are. And so that's probably one of the top things that I had learned. People that I had identified with or who that I found inspiring, I thought that, you know, I had to hide other parts. For example, my random hobbies of really liking to garden, which is a really geeky kind of thing to do, right?

You do that? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You do like it too?

Very cool. Yeah, I mean, like, my whole brand now is kind of built around gardening, like the seed to harvest. And it's honestly, I got into it last year and I've been thinking a lot about how gardening is so much about leaning into your intuition and You can read as many articles on the internet as you want about how it works, but you never really know how it truly works until you're like dealing with mealybugs and you're like, oh no, how does this work? And you're like getting the rubbing alcohol. I'm like looking at my poor Monstera plant that has them right now. I'm just like, sorry, buddy. But I'm curious, like, have you gleaned any other insights from gardening that you've kind of applied to work?

So many different things. So number one, I do think that One of the top things that I've learned over time is it is important to not just be patient, but really invest in the long game. There's plenty of— so let me explain. My kind of gardening is a really geeky kind of gardening, not like the super cool. I like to grow a lot of things that I can eat. So I grow a lot of heirloom varieties of vegetables and fruits. So heirloom varieties, as you know, are varieties that have been around for more than 100 years. So they've not been genetically modified or anything like that. And I like growing stuff that you can't buy in grocery stores. So, I have all sorts of colorful carrots. Like, I literally have all colors of the rainbow. And it's just a lot of fun eating carrots that you kind of grow out of your own garden. Same thing with baby tomatoes. Now, I don't have a huge garden. It's a tiny space, but I have literally over 100 varieties of different types of vegetables and fruits.

Wow!

And so, one of the top lessons I learned there is that it really takes a very long time of being patient and really working with the soil. with the plants over the years to have them grow. Asparagus, for example, is a perennial and it takes many years for them to produce a really healthy crop. I have a particular variety called Purple Passion. You can tell, like, I'm really geeky about this.

No, I love it.

There's this type of Purple Passion asparagus that actually takes a long time before shoots grow up the first year, but every single year after that, it is just such a bountiful harvest in the spring every year. So not that there's Not that when I started gardening, I drew any parallels to the world of investing, but I think that's certainly one of the lessons of the things that you start out thinking it's going to turn out great don't necessarily always turn out great in the end. And things that seem to be doing nothing in the beginning, but are really investing in deepening its roots actually end up turning out really well in the end. So having that kind of patience to invest in solid fundamentals and foundations. So that's probably the first thing. And then the second thing is, I think I've learned a lot about the more meditative zen-like state, because oftentimes we get so busy in our day-to-day lives that we forget to appreciate the little things. So sometimes I walk around in the garden and I'm like, wow, there's this new leaf, here's a new flower, there's a new fruit. And all of those kind of put time into perspective. And I've really valued that. I think earlier in my career, I was all about how do we get stuff done fast? And I think over time, it's— Enjoying the process. And the last thing is probably the importance in investing in the basics, the very basics in gardening. There's only 3 things that are important, right? Ultimately, when you look at things, it is just the sun, the water, and the nutrients. That's it. So when you look at all of these fundamental factors, a lot of people come to me with gardening questions and they're like, oh, this is so complicated. But I'm like, okay, let's take a step back. There's only 3 things you need to succeed. How do we figure out what these things are? Same thing in the venture world. Everyone talks about all of these different topics, but I think fundamentally at the core of a business, there's only 3 things that matter. It is whether or not you can raise money, how to raise money, make money, hire people to make money. That's literally it. At the foundation, you have to have a really strong business model. Of course, we can talk about things like barriers to entry, technological advancements. We can talk about patents and all of this complicated stuff. But really at the core, do we have a business that is functioning and scalable? So I don't think I've ever thought about the parallels of gardening and venture capital this way. So really, really good question.

Yeah, absolutely.

Now that I've had to.

Yeah, I've been thinking about it more is I think it's that patience piece is a big part because you can go days and days without seeing any change. But honestly, if you look a bit closer, like there are baby changes every day and then sometimes like My plant grew a new leaf, and I was like, oh my goodness! This is insane. Like I'm so happy. I like texted picture my mom. So I guess my next question is when you mentioned that some of the companies that you thought that would do really well, like initially didn't, and then some of the companies that didn't do as well, but you invested in the basics there. I would love for you to talk through kind of like. how you found that spark early on when you were investing in The Basics and how that felt to see their progress as they truly blossomed into what you thought they would be when you invested.

Absolutely. So fortunately, up until now, we haven't had the really, really slow growers. Everyone has been kind of down the pretty stable growth path. I would say there's definitely been some surprises because On the one end, we've had founders who started with literally nothing. So there was no kind of series of successful exits in the past or really amazing track record for how much recurring revenue they've already grown. So really starting from nothing, from scratch for the very first time, but just having solved such a core problem that there is just a scalable demand in the market for it. In fact, One of our best investments. We've worked with the founders since their very early seed days. I guess compared to now, you would call them pre-seed. And back then, really, when we looked at the product, it was just very ugly software. That was literally it. But when they were still very ugly software, they ended up being ranked the number one productivity app on the App Store. And they spent no marketing dollars but landed clients like Mercedes, Unilever, and McDonald's. And so I think it's really those plays that are surprising where You just need to identify a need in the market. So they completely focus on mobile-first maintenance software for blue-collar factory workers who otherwise have no software that they can rely on. And it had humble beginnings, but they grew so quickly. And so they're actually post-Series B now as well. And I think it's really rewarding to see their work over time, also because they're working with a population that's otherwise underrepresented. When we talk about enterprise SaaS or future of work, I think we tend to forget non-white-collar jobs. And so we spend a lot of time really looking at opportunities there as well. And of course, Paige, as you know, we focus on future of work. So we're always trying to find these relatively undervalued opportunities to look at. And of course, there's other opportunities that have turned out the other way around too, where you have a founder who has had multiple exits, raised a ton of really successful funding. And then when we look at their pre-seed round, the valuation is extremely high. Proud to say most of the time we've not invested in those deals, even though those founders may be really good personal friends of mine, because we do think that reasonable valuation is still a very important part of the journey. So we've invested in competitors of startups like that, where at the time it didn't make sense because you have a founder who's really successful and proven track record and building a really good company that has all these tier 1 investors in. But fast forward a couple years later, actually our portfolio company is still growing with solid annual recurring revenue. The other competitor at the time has unfortunately declared bankruptcy. So I do think that stable growth is super, super important. Of course, we're always targeting for outsized returns, but I do think that one of the differentiating factors is not sacrificing growth at the expense of Unsustainability, essentially.

That's a super interesting investment. I'm not sure if you had like necessarily planned it that way where you saw it and you're like, I'm going to invest in a competitor. But I think it's really interesting to look at what's being like built by serial entrepreneurs who have had successful exits. Most of them are often like looking to build an even bigger company, and so they'll go after massive markets. So it's a really interesting strategy to look for Maybe first-time or other entrepreneurs from different backgrounds that are working in the same market. That's super cool. I hadn't thought about that before.

Absolutely. In fact, it's almost the same logic as investing in emerging managers, right? You and I are both still emerging managers in our own way. And I do think that is a huge advantage for a lot of LPs and allocators looking to get exposure because while it is true, you could invest in all the successful track records and much larger funds, there's also that much bigger of an exciting opportunity to be working with some of the more emerging managers in this space. So, I guess we try to apply the same logic to founders as well.

Yeah, I love that. I love that. Well, to bring it out more to the meta level, like, how do you think about growing your business as a firm manager?

Very much entrepreneurial in our own way. I think both my business partner and I are former founders. We both ran B2B startups and then went into later stage. I was at Goldman Sachs in investment banking and covering tech, and my business partner was co-running a tech private equity fund. So having seen everything from super early stage all the way to very later stage, I think we appreciate how exciting the opportunity it is here for us to not just grow and develop this fund together over the multiple funds that we've managed on, but also to work with our founders and portfolio companies over time. I think in my role as a fund manager, I think first of all, I have to be an entrepreneur because we are running our own own fund. We're not kind of an already very established platform that has huge teams behind us. So we're constantly thinking about what are the things that we're doing really well that we should continue to do and in fact double down and do even better on? What are the things that really didn't go very well that we probably should stop? We have a series of questions that we sit down and reflect on together every single year and just ask these very basic fundamental questions on how we want to run our business. And then of course, on top of this, we then ask the same questions to founders that we work with. And get to hear and learn from all the work that they're doing.

That's super cool. I just did this exercise with my coach around doing an energy audit. So it's more of an individual version of that, but you write down all of your tasks and then you have 2 axes. And one of them is draining versus energizing. The other is I'm exclusively good at, and the other is other people can do. And then everything that's in the draining and everyone else can do has to be either eliminated, delegated, automated, or hired for, which I think is really interesting framework. But bringing it back to like a gardening metaphor, it sounds like you focus on like what can we fertilize and then what can we prune. And so I'm curious, like on that pruning side and eliminating side, like how do you make those decisions? Because I think like when you get into it as an early entrepreneur or as a fund manager, it's really easy to say yes, super hard to say no.

Like that's definitely a skill that I'm still trying to That is one of the toughest things to do both in venture as well as in gardening. So before I answer your direct question, one of the kind of unintended questions that I think you also asked in this is that sometimes unintended consequences are also a great thing. So if you've gardened for many years, you realize that oftentimes you get volunteer plants that pop up over the garden. And sometimes those turned out to be the best plants in the garden. Those weren't ones that you intended to plant but have worked out really well. Yeah, I think that's a great point. Really well. In fact, my relationship with my co-founder and now business partner is one of those unintended consequences where we had both explored working with a lot of other people and we never intended at the early days to work with each other. But over time, as we've done a lot of investments together and other projects and gotten to know each other better, we've realized that we had such complementary skill sets and we should work together. Whereas some of the other relationships where I think we were more intentional at nurturing Those didn't end up necessarily going in the direction that we wanted them to go to. So I think always leaving the room for spontaneity is great. And I think gardening definitely teaches us that. I would say on the more intentional things, not that if there are great spontaneous— spontaneity events, or that if you have great kind of results from more of the random events that you should never intentionally plan. I think Leaving the room for that is great. But when you are being more intentional about what you're saying yes to versus saying no to, interestingly enough, it's almost that exact same exercise that you described that led my business partner to work with me. So he literally showed me his notebook when we were discussing working together and starting Fund One. He's like, look, conversations with you happen to fall into the category of where it is totally energizing. And it is nothing else like conversations that I have with other people, and therefore something that we should both double down on and have more of these conversations and start exploring together. So on the fertilizing piece, I think we kind of see it as both of a push and pull model. Sometimes we identify strategically opportunities that we should be spending more time on. Other times we have founders that proactively reach out to us, just like plants in the garden sometimes kind of show you evidence where they're screaming for help, right?

Yeah.

So I think there is Both of those pieces. I think on the pruning, that's probably harder because on the fertilizing part, that's still relatively straightforward. But on the pruning part, this is where you're really having to be willing to forfeit a lot. Sometimes you see this gorgeous tomato plant and there's a lot of flowers on a particular vine, but you know that you have to prune it off in order for the long-term success of the entire plant. Those are some of the harder decisions. Even in the world of venture that we have to make. Fortunately, I haven't had to make too many of those decisions, but at least in terms of my own time, I've had to become more conscious about what I say yes to versus no to. So this is probably more personal than you wanted to get into for this particular conversation, but unfortunately, my grandma just recently passed away. I'm so sorry to hear that. Literally in the last A little over a month. And so it has been such a reflective time for me to think through, have I really allocated my time in the ways that I would have wanted to? I had been the primary caretaker for both my grandparents for quite a period of time, and it's always a struggle. How much time with family is right? How much time at work is right? How do you balance between all of these different things. I wish I had the absolute right answer. And I think losing someone so important in your life really puts things into perspective where really at that time you feel like no amount of time with family is ever enough. Yeah. Wow.

I'm so sorry to hear that. My heart goes out to you and thank you for sharing that. I didn't mean for that to come out in such a public avenue, but I really appreciate you sharing that. I made a decision to stay in San Diego when I was starting my career. And I think I chose that for family. I wanted to be close to my family because I had read this incredible article called The Tail End by the blog Wait But Why. And it talked about exactly that, around like the time that you spend with people isn't linear, you can't guarantee it. And it's kind of up to you to decide Am I allocating my time in a way that aligns my values? I think it sounds like we're pretty in alignment there in terms of being values-driven people and being very close to our families. How do you think about that, like, in general over the span of your life? Were there periods where you had, like, different— like, allocated your time differently or might not have been, like, as aware of how you're spending—

Absolutely. Early in my career, in fact, I, I didn't originally intend to share this either, but it kind of came up naturally in the conversation. I feel like this would be the right way to honor her memory. And honestly, so many regrets now. I think we try to do our best to minimize regrets, but sometimes it's impossible to avoid all Earlier in my career, particularly when I worked at Goldman Sachs, as you can imagine, investment banking hours are crazy. My worst week during those days was probably sleeping 3.5 hours over the course of a week. And those were days where I had very limited time home. And that was actually one of the biggest drivers that led me to leave. Partly, I really missed working with early-stage founders. And on the other hand, Family was very important to me and I wanted to make sure to dedicate time to that. But honestly, at that particular point in time in my career, I was afraid to talk about how important family was because it seemed like everyone else who was very driven and ambitious were just talking about how they were really focused on making their careers a huge success. Very driven and ambitious.

Exactly. Yeah.

And I do think that that is starting to change and evolve with more and more people coming out to speak up for the importance of us As individuals having lives, personal well-being, mental health, and all of these other things that come as part of being our full selves, right? Paige, I'm sure you've seen we're both in the Transact Global community for women VCs as well. And there's a huge discussion now about the importance of paid family leave. And not just for women, but also for men. I think those are things that we historically haven't talked about in the workplace, because we kind of shy away from those parts of our lives. So this is the first time where I'm willing to talk about the more personal aspects of our lives too, because who hasn't or who won't ever in their lives deal with the loss of a loved one? Who won't ever have to struggle with illness at the forefront of our lives, right? So I feel like it is only right to talk about these important topics in settings like this so that everyone knows we are all human and we all share common struggles.

I love that. Touching back on something that you said earlier in the conversation, when you said earlier on in your career it was a bit harder for you to be less formal and like expose parts of yourself that were important from like a personal perspective. I've— and also that you didn't have as many role models. I feel like there's been a really great recent trend of people being role models and speaking out about the importance of family and mental health that I'm really excited by. And I want— Having this conversation, I feel like, is contributing like a little small tiny grain of sand to that That big mission, but it's something that I want to be very intentional about because I made— it was just funny because you realize that when you're like a little kid and you're growing up and people tell you things, you absorb them as facts. And as you get older, you're like, oh, they're opinions. And they're kind of those things that people said to you are reflections of how they're feeling, not necessarily like how you relate to them in their lives. I'm curious, like, how long did it take you to make that switch of getting more comfortable? And like, was there a specific moment in time where you were like, all right, I'm over it, this is me, I'm showing up?

You know, I think it was really a process, but I do remember a distinct moment where I was like, wow, this really kind of clicked for me. So I remember reading former President Barack Obama's memoir after he had stepped off from the presidency. And it was really interesting just hearing his own reflections of that particular experience. And there were many times where I felt like in the memoir he was trying to explain where he was coming from and justify some of the things that he did in a way where I felt like, wow, even the President of the United States at times feel like they are not that certain with the way that they had done everything. And even they have moments where they're uncertain about themselves, and that is a normal human condition. And only people who are confident enough with their abilities are able to come forward and actually share those vulnerabilities up front. So I realized that being able to share vulnerabilities wasn't a weakness, but rather was a show of strength.

Absolutely. I remember talking to Harry Stebbings recently about that, and he said that that was his one Regret about 20 VC is he wished that he had been more public about his vulnerabilities. Like his mom has MS, and that's been you know a very big part of his life. And he he just he was like I wish I had told people about it sooner because that was like a big part of my life that I was kind of keeping secret from the world. And I I think like I would love to hear more about how. your first fundraise went for fund 1 of— it was Agile, right? When you raised your first one?

Honestly, we were very lucky in terms of timing. So I had the fortune of doing a dual track during my time at Goldman, where I had the fortune of helping one of our heads rebuild our team around convertible bonds, which was very obscure at the time. But now almost every single startup uses some form of a convertible note to raise their first round of funding. And so what was really cool from back in those days was that I happened to cover a number of clients that had interest in investing here in Silicon Valley. So it was kind of a natural transition. And then for my business partner, he was co-running a tech private equity fund. And of course, he had a number of investors he had already worked with across the years there. So for us, it was a very organic process where we were almost approached by our LPs asking if we would be willing to manage a pool of capital. Honestly, at the time when I was first approached, my immediate response was, no, no, no, I'm an entrepreneur. I can't be an investor. I'm not going to be good at this. Investors are on the other side of the table. That's not what I do. And it took me a while to talk to a lot of mentors and just learn all about this industry and realize that actually investors are really entrepreneurs behind entrepreneurs, right? Oftentimes investors don't necessarily get the credit for what happens, but they get to play a very important part in terms of sharing their experience from the past with entrepreneurs and add value in very unique ways. So eventually kind of got used to the idea of being an investor and started doing a number of personal checks. So my business partner and I had done a ton of personal investments together since 2014, and then ultimately institutionalized Fund 1 in 2016. So honestly, Fund 1, we didn't have to do too much fundraising, which was just lucky timing. You could tell by the year 2016. And then of course, fast forward to Fund 2, we were at the end of 2017 and most of our existing LPs had doubled down and we had some strategic connections that we brought in. So now that we're kind of at the end of Fund 2 and about to kick off Fund 3, we're actually really raising from larger institutional investors for the very first time. So in one sense, we were very lucky in that we didn't have to go through a traditional fundraising process.

In another, we're learning all about fundraising now, now that we're It's like, as you touched on before, it's like the push versus pull. I feel like there are 2 very distinct fundraisers. Like one is a push and one is a pull. Sometimes you get a blend, but I would say landing squarely in one or the other camps always has its benefits and its negatives. So I'm curious, like what has surprised you in your venture journey? Whether it's like financial architecture or building a company and being an entrepreneur in a bit of a different lens. Curious to hear what surprises you've ran into.

I think so many things. Working in venture, our job is to essentially learn every single day and to figure out what the future can and maybe should look like, and really investing capital where essentially, hopefully, that becomes the future, right? So, that's a responsibility that we do take very seriously. And so, I think there's a lot of things that we've always thought about, But now have kind of finally come to see come to fruition. So, for example, being diverse GPs ourselves, we never really openly marketed based off of the fact that we were diverse because we wanted our experiences to speak for itself. But as of last year, I think there's more people that are talking about the importance of representation and just raising awareness in the industry. So I think that's extremely refreshing. I I think that's somewhat surprising because I didn't know when exactly that was ever going to come. So that was really, really great to see, not just supporting diversity in the sense of gender or ethnicity or disability, but really broadly beyond that as well, in terms of age as well. For example, Paige, I'm so impressed by Gen Z. I mean, you know, I've been teaching at Berkeley now for almost 10 years. And I have to say, in this time, I mean, now I get about 60% undergrads and 40% grad students. All my undergrads are born post-2000 now, and they are so incredibly smart. It is crazy.

You go to the grocery store and you look at like the ID thing and you're like, whoa, that is much later than I feel like it should be.

It is so true. And in your younger days, you meet people and you assume that they're older than you, right? But now I meet everyone who are, you know, have multiple startups behind them, and I look at their age and they're born in like '05, right? So it's insane, the kind of talent. And that's also what gives me a lot of hope in the world as well. But I think being diverse also oftentimes leads to the fact that we oftentimes are looking at startups and founders that are also more diverse. And so in doing so, I think that does help the industry overall. Other surprising things, I think that was the biggest surprise factor, honestly. Because I didn't think that we would— well, I guess COVID was surprising as well, but the fact that that actually became a positive motivator for positive changes in the industry was a great thing.

Yeah. I don't think I would've been able to build Behind Genius Ventures had we not had remote work or it just— or now there's 506, there's all this creativity and fund structure. And I think it's been really interesting to see the tides shift. I think one of my friends described it as like running the 4-minute mile. Like everyone thinks it's impossible until one person does it. And then you see people do it again and again and again and again. So I'm super excited about that. And like you said, like diversity across age, like not only young people, but also, you know, like people with a lot of experience that are looking to switch careers. After I wrote Seed to Harvest, my dad ended up joining a startup and now he's He's later on has worked like 3 jobs in his whole life, incredibly talented engineer. And I asked him, I was like, so Dad, how's your first month at a startup gone? He goes, I've never learned so much in such a condensed period of my life. I was like, oh yeah, startup years are like dog years in just the condensing of what you're learning because you're having to apply it.

Yeah.

So quickly, I'm curious what frameworks you apply to either how you spend your time or your investing philosophy that you've been applying recently.

Hmm. I wish everything is all a rational framework. I'm an extremely rational person. And so I think for most of my career, particularly early on, I had very rational structures. In fact, at one point in time, I even had a very specific time tracker that was automated to see in 5-minute increments where I was spending my time. And then evaluating whether or not that was the most efficient use of my time. So you can tell I was on the way extreme end of one. I have to say, COVID really re-put things into perspective where I am able to get more work done because we're just more productive and doing meetings and everything else that we need to do. But that I've also really started to value family time in very different ways, especially in light of what's happened in the last couple months. So I would say I have less of a rational framework now. If my heart feels right about spending time with family, that most likely means that that is the right time to spend with family. And I try my best to not leave any room for potential regret. I don't want to have ever missed out on an important family gathering. I think had you talked to me 10 years earlier, I would have told you, what do you mean? Like between work and family, of course you have to finish your work first.

Mm-hmm.

So I think it's definitely re-put things into perspectives there when it comes to just pure It's more and more clear than ever before that future of work is looking very different, where all of us are evolving, where we have a portfolio career, right? It's not like before where everyone only does one thing and that is forever all that they do for the rest of their lives. So I think it's very clear for us that the fund is obviously our core and what everyone else and everything else that we do contributes towards, but that we're able to engage in these other roles that add value to the fund. value and make us better investors. So of course, being on the faculty at Berkeley teaches me to become a better investor, and in doing so, I get to learn from my students. And of course, we get to really work with these early entrepreneurs years before they're actually entrepreneurs. And Paige, I'd shared this story in New York before, but one of the most heartwarming stories was that one of my former students had then years later become an LP in our fund. And I haven't really told that story often before until that time that happened to come up. And it's just one of those moments where, you know, things really tied together. I had been doing a lot of work with students outside of the classroom as well, and I've been sitting on the board of a nonprofit called Decode, which has since become the largest tech and innovation community that we co-host with Berkeley and Stanford. In fact, their first in-person event post the pandemic is going to be this weekend. So I'm excited to finally see people in person again. But in that role, I've had the honor of serving on the board with folks like the CTO of Microsoft US, Chief Privacy Officer at Google, and a ton of startup executives that have brought their companies public. And it's a very humbling experience just to learn from not just folks who are extremely experienced in the industry, but also folks who are extremely young and very accomplished, just like you yourself. So it's really cool to see kind of how in retrospect all the dots connect. And you had briefly brought up mental health and the importance of that earlier. I'd always been volunteering for mental health in my spare time, but I had never talked about it before. So actually, as far back as elementary school, I used to go into my neighborhood and knock on every single door to canvass, literally door to door, and just ask for like $5 donations towards mental health organizations. And I had never talked about that piece because I think more or less on Wall Street, there was this sense that if you talked about mental health, you were weak. I still remember some of the prevailing Wall Street conversations Why would you ever get sick? How could I find you to be reliable if you're getting sick all the time and you're not able to deal with all this stress and lack of sleep? But I think over time we've really developed a much healthier narrative around the whole human experience of physical well-being, mental well-being, and whole well-being being a very important part of long-term success in a profession.

And I think that's a really important point.

So earlier this year, I had the fortune of being appointed to California's Mental Health Commission, the first and currently only Asian American commissioner. There's still a lot of stigma in Asian American communities around mental health-related topics. And mental health can hit you at some of the most unexpected ways. Losing a loved one is certainly a moment of difficulty in life. And all of these things are things that I used to not think about so much at the forefront of My life. But I think not just being a former entrepreneur, but being able to understand these issues more really helps me better support our entrepreneurs as well, because everyone will go through these experiences and it's about having the right people to talk to, to support you and the right tools and resources at the right time.

Absolutely. I think having a good support system is so undervalued and something I feel super grateful for. I think that relationships are in a constant state of decay. And so it's really important to like continue to invest in those relationships that you think are special in your life, especially family. But outside of that, I'm, I'm curious, like, who are some of the mentors that you have learned a lot from over the past 10 years?

So many. I, I'm learning every single day, including from my students. I would say some of the most influential Number one person that I've learned a lot from is definitely my business partner. So even though he is younger than me, I think having worked together across the years, we not only have complementary skill sets, but we have continued to develop and grow over the years in different directions. And so I've learned a lot more about re-putting things into perspective when we've worked together over the years. He's probably going to be shocked that I even mentioned him in a question like this, He's like, I didn't even think you thought highly of me. So I think I would definitely cite him as kind of number one person I've learned a lot from. Other mentors include folks who are more experienced in the industry than I am, whether it is folks who have started their own funds or LPs who have actually run their family offices and overseen investments from across the years. In fact, one particular mentor I'm about to see I think next Monday again. He used to work at Stanford Endowment Fund and had run investments on their behalf for a long time. I think he was the first person who convinced me what it meant to be an investor in the first place. I just always thought of investors as on the other side of the table, but he really helped me reframe things about how things are actually very collaborative and the world is really small. Everyone knows each other and we'll work together in different capacities over time. And then I think last person that I can't not mention is definitely my grandmother, who has just always taught me to be kind. She's a doctor by training, and she actually ran the ER when she was working full-time. And I think she just taught me such important characteristics that make you not just a decent, but a wonderful human being. So those are probably some of my biggest mentors.

Aw, I love that. And I'm so happy at like what a diverse group of mentors you mentioned. It's so fun that they're like spread across age and experience and your relationships to them. I feel like that definitely goes back to what you said about being more comfortable, like combining your personal and your professional life. 'Cause at the end of the day, like they're still your life. Like they're still very much the, you know, in the same pie. Do you have any favorite books that you'd like to recommend?

So many.

Okay.

So probably the one that I consistently go back to is The Originals by Adam Grant. The reason why I really like the book is that not only is he really great at storytelling, he is also very practical. I like the fact that at the end of the book, he literally has an appendix of here are all the practical things that you can go away and do. These are the things that you do with your kids. These are the things that you do with These are the things that you can do by yourself. And I think it just— I like the, let's start with the very great stories to reel people in. Let's talk about the practical facts, science-based research of what needs to be done. And then let's end with these practical things that you can then go away and do. So I really, really like that particular approach. Of course, there's plenty of other styles of books. books that I've appreciated more over the years, but that's probably one of the top ones that I consistently go back to and I'll refresh on every once in a while.

It's a super interesting story framework around great stories, facts, and then practical applications. I feel like a lot of books or authors will focus on one or the other, but without great stories plus facts, there's not a ton of substance or like application. And then if you have like great stories and practical things, you're kind of missing like the factual baseline. And then if you just have facts and practical things, it's pretty dry to read. I'm curious, like, how do you think as— so I think I mentioned this to you when I was in New York, but I'm also teaching a class at SDSU on venture, and it's been so fun. I co-coach it with a serial entrepreneur who has over his lifetime probably either like raised/deployed over half a billion dollars. And I'm just like super enthusiastic and just getting started. And he's kind of like this battle-hardened entrepreneur who has a ton of experience and has seen a lot of change. And I think we bounce off each other really well in terms of I'm like this new fresh voice and he has like a lot of experience to back it up. I'm curious like how you think about your class as an educator or kind of like your portfolio of classes if you teach multiple ones.

Yeah. By the way, I am so impressed by everything you've managed to accomplish by 23. That is so amazing. I think when I was 23, I probably didn't even know what venture was.

So this is impressive. Thank you.

Yeah.

One of our portfolio founders, when I was talking to him, Andy from Avron, I remember talking to him and he goes, when I was 22, I was like playing League of Legends in my like Parents' basement. So that's up to you. So thank you. We're getting there. We're getting there.

It's amazing. So definitely very inspiring. So you're totally one of the people that inspires me too. And to answer your question on being an educator, I really like the combination of story, fact, takeaways. So I try to embed that into all of the classes and I want to be as hands-on and practical as possible. So especially when you teach entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship is not really one of the things that you can just teach. It has to be experiential. You have to learn from making mistakes and then you become better over time and all of that. So I try my best to make it as practical as possible by making it real-time and relevant to the industry. So I think there's plenty of people who, in a traditional academic world, you talk about research and there are professors who have taught for literally decades of their career. They know what works and what gets them the best course evaluations over time. But I think those are the good professors. The best professors are ones who try really hard over that course to continually adapt new content and new things and new case studies, bring in new guest lectures and all of that. So that's certainly a lot of the things that I try to do for my class. So some of the folks that I've brought into class so far this semester, the theme— so I teach entrepreneurship, the theme kind of evolves from semester to semester. This semester, we're actually the very first class covering edtech and future of education blurring into future of work. In the past, it used to be that future of education and future of work were 2 very distinct ideas, but that's no longer the case because now education is all about how do you think about a job of the future, and then future of work is how do you continue to learn in your job as you evolve. And so We've brought in some really fascinating folks, including Elon Musk's co-founder for his school. In fact, that session was so interesting because he brought a ton of students from his school that are like age 8 or 12, and they all came in and sat in on class. And then we broke them into breakout rooms. There's like one of them for each of my class discussions. And at the end, when I was debriefing with all of our undergrad and grad students, they were like, yeah, the smartest people in our group chat discussions were all like the 8-year-olds.

Oh, the 8-year-olds.

They were so smart.

That's so funny. I remember watching, they did like a really great video on Twitter when they announced, someone announced their investment in them, and it was all these like incredibly smart kids like playing an online game and collaborating together. And just like the, like, I love seeing that spark. And then I also loved what you said about being like blending education and the future of work. I view my role as like mainly as an educator. I try and like take what I'm learning and then educate other people on how it works, whether that's the nuances of a term sheet or whether that's what it looks like to build a fund and bootstrap it as a 23-year-old. And yeah, it's just been like such an interesting journey to see that. I think a lot of the most successful creators have like an education background because they're like, What do you want to learn? I will help teach you through these different experiences. So I'm curious if there's any folks that you've worked with that are earlier in their venture journey and kind of like the advice that you might have for them or founders as well.

So whether it's venture fund managers or founders that are in their early days, I would say My top advice is always maximize for learning and growth, because we really just kind of naturally grow over time. While it would be amazing that you start out as the perfect founder or the perfect investor, the chances of that is relatively low, right? All of us have areas to grow and improve in. So, I feel like the most impressive people that I've met over time are where, let's say, we had a conversation a few months ago, and then, like, fast forward a few months later when we catch up again, I'm like, wow, this person has matured and grown. And just has become, has evolved so much in that little time period. So I do think maximizing for growth is so important. And exactly like you said, as a founder, whether you're the founder of a startup or founder of a fund, it almost feels like you're operating on a different timescale of things because a year in startup time is like 10x maybe the time and amount of stuff that you do in alternative professions. And I think maximizing for that is so important. But when I say maximizing for that, it doesn't mean like, now burn yourself out. It's more like every single day, try something slightly new and try something slightly different and then continue to iterate. I think the power of iterating over time is valuable when you have all that stacked up. Not to be like in one day you do everything and then burn yourself out and you're like, I never want to do this again.

No, it's like the iteration and you fertilize prune and you're like conscious of the choices that you're making in that iteration process. I feel like that's like definitely been key in my journey as well. I love that.

Absolutely.

This podcast is called Seed to Harvest and we've spent like the whole hour talking about gardening metaphors. So I, I guess like as we wrap up here, I think that I'm curious to hear what you're excited for in The next year and then the next 10 years, what you're looking forward to?

So first of all, thank you for geeking out with me over the last hour on everything gardening related.

Of course.

It's been very exciting. What I'm most excited about in the next year, I am really excited to see a lot of positive development in the next year in terms of more allocators than ever before. Recognizing the importance of investing and working with emerging managers from very diverse backgrounds across all of these different metrics of diversity. And I say this because this is a really new trend, right? It really hasn't been the case in the past where there's nearly as much conversation about diversity as there is now. So I'm really excited to see this conversation continue to evolve and grow as more and more people are aware and are actively supporting all these DEI initiatives, not limited to venture capital or entrepreneurship, but overall in all these different industries. And over the next 10 years, I'm still really excited about future of work. I'm obviously super biased because our startup used to do this. And then obviously the fund focuses on investing on this. But I look at some of the data where, for example, Dell's latest published research says 85% of the jobs that will exist in 2030 didn't even— wasn't even created just 5 years ago, right? You just think about the pace at which these new careers are evolving. And then you also look at the fact that most C-suite now are in jobs that didn't even exist when they started their careers. So, I'd recently hosted a conversation with the VP of Data at Coinbase, and he was previously head of data science for LinkedIn. And he was like, yeah, when in undergrad, like, data science wasn't a major back then. You would study mathematics or statistics. And that was the case when I was in school too. Where it would be kind of different that you would be studying math and stats, and it wasn't one of the majors that got you like a great job into a great company. So I'm really excited to see things continue to evolve over time. And call me optimistic, but I, I, I'm a very optimistic person by nature, cautiously optimistic. I do think it's important that now we do the right things so that we're set up for success in the long run. But I am excited to see all the new things that will emerge as we show up in the workplace and no longer have to deal with really bad software experiences like I had to experience back in the day. I'm excited to go to work and see a really diverse workforce. I'm really excited to see very flexible workplace arrangements. I'm excited to just have an awesome experience at work that is integrated with our overall well-being. So I think those While not all of those are related to our investment thesis, I think those would all be such amazing things to have in the near future.

I love that. I think we share a decided optimism for the future of both tech and the world. So I love that we were able to dig into it in this hour and go over different stories, facts, and practical applications. With that, thank you so much for coming on. It was an honor to have you and to get to know you better since I met you in New York. Yeah, thank you so much.

Thank you so much, Paige.

Thanks so much for tuning in today to Seed to Harvest. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe wherever your favorite podcast listening platform is. I'll be releasing new episodes weekly, and if you have any questions or comments, feel free to let me know on Twitter. That's Paige Finn, Paige and then Finn with 3 N's. Thanks, and see you again next week.