Episode 5 with Paige Finn Doherty (Founding Partner at Behind Genius Ventures)

Hey everybody, it's KP, a creator, community builder, and the program director of On Deck's No-Code Fellowship. And this is Build in Public podcast, where I interview ambitious founders and creators to share their worldviews, best practices, and actionable advice on the topic of building in public. Hello, everybody. Welcome to Build in Public podcast. I'm your host, KP, and welcome to yet another episode with an amazing guest today. I have Paige Dougherty from San Diego joining us. Hey, Paige. Welcome to the show.

Hey, KP. Thanks so much for having me. It's a pleasure to be here.

Paige was remarkable on the Racket that we did recently. For those of you who've listened to our conversation about VC, about using Twitter to not just build a brand, build an audience, but also sort of create a community. And in many ways, Paige, to me, exemplifies the build in public mantra. And so I definitely had to double-click and sort of do a deeper dive into her story and into her worldview and give us an opportunity to learn more about her insights and lessons on the longer podcast. So I brought her back to Building Public. So Paige, I'm gonna kick us off with first asking you sort of what was your intro to the VC world and what made you enter this space?

Um, so I like to joke that I got into venture because managing rappers didn't work out. So when I was in college, I spent a lot of time at concerts. I couldn't afford to go to as many as I wanted to, and so I realized that if I started emailing people's managers and telling them about this music newsletter I was writing, I could go to the show for free and talk to the artists about their creative process and how they had gotten to where they were. Through this, I learned a lot, A, about cold emailing, B, about concert shooting and how difficult it is to shoot in low lighting. But I also really enjoyed my conversations with the artists that I got to talk to. So many of them had taken the conventional career paths that have been recommended to young people. And throw them totally out the window to follow their passions, which was really inspiring to me. And when I got into SDSU's Lavin Entrepreneurship Program, I got to meet a lot of these types of people, but in a different application. So a lot of them were early-stage founders. They were working on something that was super exciting to them and really risking it all. Some people went from like hundreds of like $100K in their bank accounts to like $12. And it was all in the name of working on something they were super passionate about. And I just really loved working with these founders who were like young and early and scrappy and, you know, were just doing what they could to follow their passion. I joined FSU's venture capital team shortly after that. I now get to coach it, which is really fun. It's You know, one of my values is servant leadership and giving back to me is really important along every step of the way. And I learned so much from my venture capital coach. I didn't realize that it was a viable career path for me until he showed me how many, like, of the women that he knew in venture. And I was like, oh, this is cool. Like, I could actually get to talk with early-stage founders and help them with their content and community efforts. And also invest in their businesses and help support them from that perspective. And so that's what really sparked— Go

ahead. So just to follow up on that, so this particular coach you're talking about, this was at SDSU, the university?

Yes, yes.

And it seems to me that was an inflection point in your story.

Yeah, absolutely. I remember being cuddled up over winter break of my junior year, watching all the seasons of Silicon Valley. And for me, Monica was like, she's kind of satirized in the series, but it was incredible to see a young woman doing something that I wanted to do when I thought it was just a bunch of old dudes in a mahogany library picking out companies that they wanted to invest in. I was like, oh cool, I can do this. And then I ended up getting recruited to work at a growth equity fund. Dove really deeply into the nuances of fund administration, which anyone else out there who has started a fund realizes becomes a big part of your job. It's kind of like running a small business. In addition to sourcing, investing in, and supporting founders, as well as managing LP relationships, you're also running a business as well. So I learned a lot about that there.

I love that. I mean, it seems to me that you approached sort of a lot of these inflection points with a sense of curiosity and sort of a little bit of courage to just give it a shot. Right. And so I have to ask, was this something that you've always wanted to do? Like growing up, were you always driven to be an investor one day or, you know, be someone in tech, or has this like taken a turn recently because you couldn't make it, uh, manage rappers' money? So, you know, I think that's what you said at the beginning.

Yeah. Um, so I never really knew about the tech world until 3 years ago. I grew up in San Diego. My dad's an engineer, my mom's an artist. I started my career in mechanical engineering. If you're outside of Silicon Valley, I know we've talked about this earlier, it's really hard to understand like what the tech world is and the benefits of being in a place where everyone really gets that if you invest in someone early in their career, you're gonna build a relationship with them that's unlike anything else. And they can one day like make you millions of dollars, which is not as similar in other industries. Right. For mechanical engineering, you can definitely invest in young people's careers, but it's less of an exponential curve. I would say. So when I was 6, I wanted to be a professional shoe tier. That was like definitely my value of servant leadership. And I think I'm not a professional shoe tier today, but I do get to support a lot of early stage founders. So I think I've carried that through. And then I always wanted to be an author as well, which is really cool to see that dream come true with Seed to Harvest. I used to read Nancy Drew books and I'm really not a great illustrator. My stick figures leave much to be desired. So it was really fun to work with my brother on that project, but that has been a lifelong dream of mine.

Now I have a newborn and, you know, and so I've been like sort of reading this to him and it's a simple guide, a simple explanation of venture capital. And so tell us the story about how this book came to life. Like,

When I started the growth equity fund that I was at, so this is a bit back, this is junior year, May. I would come home and tell my parents like everything that I was learning. I was so excited. And I didn't realize for a couple weeks that they didn't understand the context in which I was learning. So it was about— picture someone talking about like plants, for example, and they're going into extreme detail about how Like the tiniest aspect of the plant works. And you're just like, okay, I need like a step back so I can fully understand what you're super excited about. And so I've been thinking about this concept for a while of how do you explain venture to an audience that is excited about it, but needs more of a high-level understanding of what it is, why it's important, and how the venture world operates. And so I've been marinating on this idea for a while, but the real inflection point came last year in July when my friend Nikhil wrote an illustrated book for kids and adults on medical trials. And he took this topic that's really confusing and complex and simplified it into a children's book that was easy to understand. And that's when it clicked for me that that was the correct medium to display this information colorfully, Like with simple words. And I think I'm a very family-first person. I've made a lot of sacrifices to put my family first. And one of my favorite things about Seed to Harvest is really that I've gotten to know a lot of people's families, like you with your newborn and all of the other investors and people that have bought Seed to Harvest have shared their stories of reading it to their kids, many of whom I didn't know had kids before, has been incredible. So I retweeted Nikhil's tweet and I was like, hey, I have a draft of an illustrated book for kids and adults on venture. Who wants to read it? And at the time I probably had a couple thousand followers. I wasn't really expecting anyone to respond that crazy. And I ended up getting 80 emails and I had exactly one page of like diagrams messily jotted out. Kind of looking through the different lenses that venture capitalists look at when they're looking to invest in companies, how like the exit cycle works, how a capital call works. Most people don't understand when you invest in a venture firm, you're not putting up all that money upfront. It gets called via capital calls either quarterly or on an investment basis. And so I had this diagram and I had no idea how I was going to translate it into a children's book. I told everyone that it was on a Monday. I told everyone that I would have a draft ready by Thursday and would send it out. And on Wednesday night, I didn't have anything. And I was laying in bed and I was like, shoot, I can't think of anything. Mulling it over, mulling it over. I finally fell asleep. I woke up at 3 AM. after dreaming of this farmer who went out to, to plant like a seed in a little pot, and then it grew, and then they moved to a greenhouse, and then they moved to a farm. And so I saw like a lot of similarities there, and finally found that like perfect analogy that I was really looking for. And I wrote out like 10 pages after that. So that was late July. August and September, I worked on creating it into a longer draft. So around like 40 pages were strewn across the floor of this apartment, which is basically like half of my apartment minus my bed. And it was, it was rewarding to work on a project that took so much out of me. There were definitely nights where I'd call my friend Marlon, who runs a company called Impulse that coincidentally we're invested in now. And he and his uncle had worked on children's books, and I would just call him, and I'd be like, dude, this is so difficult to work on a project, make incremental changes over a long period of time. I'm really used to building in public. With a book, it's hard because the end product is the end product. Once you release it, you're done. You can like do other editions and things like that, but you're done with the process. Right. And so when you're in the middle of it, it feels like it will never end. So that's kind of how Seed to Harvest came together. I think I finished the final draft of the written part in October.

And you collaborated with your brother, right, for the illustrations?

Yeah. So I was fresh out of college. I didn't have the money to hire a professional illustrator. Ended up raising around $5,000 from a bunch of incredible people via Twitter and my family, and ended up going through different variations of test pages with different people I met through Twitter. And what I realized at the end of that was the answer was under my nose the whole time. My brother Owen is 18. He's graduating from high school in 2 days. Uh, he's gonna go to SDSU just like I did. And he's just such an incredibly talented artist. I don't say this because I'm his sister. I say this with fresh eyes and incredible appreciation for really the investment that he's made in his craftsmanship, whether it's focusing on drawing a single thumb for like days on end, like again and again and again and again. He really takes that same like diligence and appreciation and has applied it to art. So it was incredible to collaborate with him and see like his work grow throughout, you know, initial drawings and sketches to like fully colored in like wonderful pieces of art. So I couldn't be more grateful that I got to work with my brother on this project.

I definitely, when I first saw that, I definitely did not know. I didn't read the fine print about him being your brother. So it seemed like a, you know, professional, just world-class, you know, illustrator. So shout out to your brother. What's his name? Owen?

Owen, yeah. I'll tell him.

Yeah, shout out if you're listening. I love that. This is a genuine compliment from one of the readers. So the book, the launch, I think was incredible. And again, like I said, it made a splash on Twitter and a lot of my friends bought it. That's how I actually found out about it. And that's why I had to go buy it. And it's been like, to your point around simplifying some of these complex topics is really hard. It seems very simple at the end product, but like finding the right analogy, finding the right metaphor. And so it's not as easy as it might seem. But one big focus, going back to the fund, one big focus seems to me about the thesis for the fund that you're running now is underrepresented founders and sort of making space for them or believing, taking bets, taking wild shots on them. I'm curious to hear, like, a big part of your work now involves this. Why? What is the why behind this and what sort of made you make a conscious decision

For me, it's always been about representation. Just like it felt to have my coach say that there was no information on how women dress in venture, I think there's a similar thing for young founders when they don't see anyone that looks like them doing something. They have a harder time imagining themselves in that same position. I will caveat the fact is, We're not an impact fund. We're looking to do well and drive great returns for our investors. And an aspect of that is investing in underrepresented communities because traditionally they've been undervalued by the market. So for us, it's more about intentionally crafting a diverse portfolio because it's good business. We're not an impact fund, but we do focus heavily on that. Building a diverse portfolio. I'd say like the main aspect of our thesis is focusing on product-led growth companies in the future of work and the future of play. So that covers topics from dev tools and API-first products to gaming, media, entertainment, and then also digital health. So that's what we've been focusing on. I'm super excited to support the founders that we made investments in so far and are continuing to do so. Um, and I think that it's one of those double-edged swords that you can talk the talk or walk the walk. And I think a lot of people talk the talk and don't walk the walk. So I would prefer that Josh and I be on the side of less talking about it and more just doing it.

I love that. Um, and just, you know, just doing the right thing, right? So, um, In terms of the thesis of the fund, you've kind of touched on it. Can you elaborate a bit more on what is the thesis of the fund?

Yeah, absolutely. So one thing that I learned being at a sales-led growth equity firm, and then also being an operator at a product-led growth company, is that the cost to acquire customers in the past 5 years has gone up 60% via paid media and sales-led organizations. And we see an incredible opportunity to invest in companies across B2B and B2C software that use product-led growth mechanisms because they scale so exponentially. So that's things like community and content, which we see popping up even more every day. I think community is one of the hottest jobs on the market right now. And for Josh and I, that means that we get to focus really heavily on helping founders that have already cracked a bit of this code to continue doubling down on those efforts of building in aspects where they get really great product feedback from their users and also are able to use that deeper relationship that they built to leverage into external champions of their work. So we're really excited by the product-led growth model and continuing to invest in the future of that.

It's actually a great segue to my next question, which is like, I know you've mentioned product-led growth a couple of times. And that being one of the core focuses at your fund, how would you define what a product-led company is? And what are some examples that you can share in that category?

Absolutely. So I would say there's a couple of different distinctions. I would say the main one is that you can sign up for a product, try it out, and pay for it without ever talking to a human. So a couple examples of this from larger companies would be companies like Zapier or Calendly. Those are 2 very large examples of product-led growth companies. Datadog in more of the developer tools space. Also WorkOS, where I previously was. So they're an API-first product focused on helping B2B SaaS companies grow upmarket. So what this means is we create SSO, audit trail, directory sync APIs so that companies that are trying to focus on onboarding their largest enterprise customer don't also have to tack on building out 3 new features that aren't really core to what they're building in that timeframe. Right. And I saw the transition of WorkOS from a sales-led motion to a product-led growth motion and seeing the friction and the difficulty And also the benefit, it was incredible. I used to lead like almost every demo. I would talk to all of these founders, early-stage developers about the friction that they were encountering trying to sell upmarket, which is, it can be pretty intimidating to start selling like those larger contracts. It's also really beneficial because they boost your ARR significantly. Right. And during that transition, there's so many things to think about. So making a transition to sales-led to product-led growth in the early stages means that you have to rethink your onboarding. You have to make it so that someone doesn't have to jump on a 30-minute phone call to answer all of their questions. You have to bake that into the product and make it easy to understand and intuitive. You have to do self-serve billing, which is something that I don't think a lot of people think is super difficult, but it's important to like have good messaging around like pricing integrated with billing, integrated with like simple ways to like ask questions specifically about those. In a product-led growth motion, you're going to get people putting in their credit cards faster, but it also means you have a little bit less visibility into what's going on behind that buying decision. Uh, and then the support aspect of it becomes really, really important because that becomes your main mode of communication rather than onboarding. You're doing most of the support synchronously and, and with, you know, humans. Yeah.

So you were at WorkOS and, and you were an operator. You did, um, I, I gather you were a success slash, um, DevOps or, uh, engineer success, I think, right?

Yeah, so the title that I had there was a developer success engineer. It's kind of a blend between technical sales, technical support, and also community I would say— go ahead.

If I have to ask, what were some lessons you learned from being an operator at WorkOS?

I think one of the most interesting things I learned about is the meta workings of the startup world. For one, I don't think speed is the most important aspect in a startup. It's definitely agility. Speed just means that you can go fast. But agility means that you can go fast and change directions quickly. So this is important when you're responding to shifts in strategy or teams. And it's really important to have that sense of resiliency when things go wrong. And, you know, things are going to go wrong, like customers are going to be upset about something or the other. And it's really important to have that resiliency and aspect of grace and optimism when you're going through tough times at a startup. I gained a lot of empathy for early-stage founders when I was going through that process as an operator. I also learned a lot about the thoughtfulness of onboarding, both from a customer perspective and an internal perspective. I worked a lot on the enablement aspects of developer success engineering. So when I started, it was myself and Taylor. And when I left, we now have 6 people on the team. So tripling the team in quite a small timeframe made us think really intentionally about how are we best enabling folks to learn both asynchronously and synchronously? How can we best provide feedback? I think the hardest thing is getting comfortable enough with the story of a product to be able to, you know, off the top of your head, just roll into it, be super comfortable, know when to push back against questions.

Right.

What happens when you're in a developer success position is that oftentimes people ask you things about tangential products, which you might not know anything about, and you have to say, this is out of my forte. I'm not sure about this. I'll go back and ask our team and the folks that we work with. I think it's really hard when, at least when I was coming into that position, I've seen this with other developer success engineers, is that You have a harder time pushing back when you're earlier on because you're like, oh shoot, like, did I not like study this enough? Am I like supposed to be saying this? So I think those are some of the biggest lessons. Also learned about a lot about just like creative problem solving and really getting to the core of what was making a developer make the buying decision that they were making and One of the hardest things with software is so many of these concepts and problems that software companies solve are abstract. And so you have to be really good at communicating what the specific problem that you're solving is, and then asking again and again and again and again that developer, like, is this what you want? There was definitely a couple of calls where I would just straight up tell them, you know, this, this isn't the product for you. Like, you need a different— you need like our competitor's product because we're just not going to suit you. And I'm not going to sit here and like lie to you and tell you that our product is like the perfect fit for everyone because it's not. And, you know, if it was, we'd have a much bigger problem because we'd be building for everyone. And I think that that honesty about whether or not a solution is going to work for someone is one of the rarest qualities of a salesperson because it's often reprimanded. And I think that staying really true to that helps build trust with developers about, okay, this person's going to tell me the truth regardless of if it's beneficial to them and their company. And that actually creates more evangelists than it would had this one person started using your product and then didn't like it, didn't fit their solution, and they probably wouldn't have had the best solution with— or like time with it anyways. And so you can create a lot of evangelists by the way that you say no.

Right. It also speaks to the long-term mindset too, is this, you know, not just looking to close the sale, but genuinely caring about this customer enough that you will tell them that this is not meant for you, or this probably is not a good fit for you, and will win you Long-term trust. So now bringing this, bringing these lessons into your sort of new role where you interact with hundreds of founders on a daily basis, what do you think are some patterns and common mistakes that you see first-time founders make?

Yeah, absolutely. So I would say this isn't necessarily a mistake, but a shift that's really important to make. I was speaking on this AWS panel, And one of the other panelists was talking about this, which I hadn't considered before this. The most important delineation that you can make is whether or not you're fundraising. You should never be like always fundraising. You should always be, hey, I'm heads down building, would love if you could introduce us to X, Y, and Z investor to like get their perspective on the space. And I would say that is like a much lighter lift than like, hey, we're fundraising, but you might not have your materials ready and things like that. So it's really important. to be prepared going into a fundraise, because once you pull that lever, it's— there's like not really going back. And fundraising is definitely a full-time job. You're not going to be able to run the business like as you 100% want to, because it is a full-time job. I think some other common mistakes— every investor is very individual in the way that they make decisions and invest. I think A lot of people send out kind of point-blank pitches that don't really take into consideration what the investor likes to invest in. We've gotten some interesting ones about like solar panels and like different things, like B2C products, and for Josh and I, that's just like not what we invest in. And we definitely want to be like respectful and say like, hey, this isn't a fit for us. So I would say keeping in mind that venture investors are not bound to, but make decisions based on the framework defined in their investment thesis and portfolio construction, both of which are pretty important. And I would say maybe there's like 10% of the time that people go outside of their thesis if they find like a really, really compelling opportunity. So I think building a spreadsheet of an investor, someone that could introduce you. I'd say a lot of people are like open to cold intros, but I think— or cold emails. I've done a lot of cold emailing myself, but I think making those warm intro connections, making that effort to find someone that can connect you goes a lot farther in the long run. While it may be seen as like exclusive to some people, it's really important because then You're like, oh, this person introduced me, like, I need to get back to them so I can, like, close the loop on the person that I already know. Whereas if someone cold emails you and, you know, something, you know, they just, like, cold email you once. Like, the growth equity firm that I worked at, the range was, like, you email someone 7 times, and if they don't reply in, like, 7 times, then you're like, okay, they haven't answered me. Like, being persistent and following up with updates around, like, your progress on the round and different investors you've added, Different traction that you've seen in the business is a really important aspect of fundraising. Very similar to enterprise sales.

So yeah. So when you look at a new pitch or a new idea, what makes you go, whoa, this is awesome? What are some factors or characteristics of, to you, an investable idea or a great idea that stand out?

Yeah, one thing that I think is unique to Josh and I is we don't usually look at pitch decks on a call. We definitely like to speak face-to-face with the founder about their story, and I think what's been most exciting to us in that aspect is hearing founders' super compelling stories about why they started a product and why they saw a need for it in the market. Getting conviction on the fact that what they're working on right now is something that they want to be working on for the next 10 years is a really important part of our decision because it takes a long time to get a startup from seed to harvest, right? It's like 7 to 10 years oftentimes, and that's a significant amount of your life that you're devoting to it. And so I think that conviction in the idea and their vision for the future Similar to like what I saw with artists, is probably the most important part of our decision. And then goes into other things around like communication. Like the communication of your vision is really important because if you can't communicate it well, you're gonna have to do it to not only investors and fundraising, but also to hire people. You're gonna have to— Yeah. Be so intentional about that communication when you're trying to hire like 200 people in a year or something like that. You're gonna have to like sell every single one of those people on why they should choose your company Over a totally proven company that's paying a ton of total compensation. You have to compete on that story and that vision. So that's something that we think a lot about.

So as a young VC, what are some things that you wish you knew 3 years ago, 5 years ago? that today, you know, it's part of your job, it's part of being who you are now, but you really wish that you had known these lessons sooner?

I think I'm going to have a really good answer for that in like 5 years. I think right now I feel super lucky to be able to learn from some of the incredible firms and GPs that are backing us. One in particular that I've been learning a lot from is Mark Mullen at Bonfire Ventures. He's had an incredible investing career has been doing it for the past 20 years, is incredibly well-versed in term sheets. He's made a ton of like angel investments and firm investments. He's just like been around enough to see incredible change in the venture ecosystem. And learning from him about like the different negotiation levers on a term sheet, like the investment process is just that. It's a process. It's constantly shifting depending on market conditions. different events that are happening from a macroeconomic perspective. And so I think that I learned the things that I was supposed to learn at the time when I was supposed to learn them. I would say I'm very much an applied thinker and I really need to apply the things that I'm learning to have them stick. And so I've learned a lot building this firm that I didn't even know last month. And thinking through positioning and messaging of an early-stage venture firm. And then even all the way down to, how do I pay myself logistically from the First Republic Bank account? Because as a founder of a firm, you don't put yourself on payroll. You're doing guaranteed payments and working with our accountants on that. Just a lot of things that come up. that pop up. And after I know them, I'm like, oh, okay, cool. This is like how I do like that specific aspect. So hey, I'm an infinitely curious person. I always want to know the why of what I'm doing. And so I've learned a lot over the past 6 months.

Um, it feels— it's, um, definitely feels resonant, you know. It resonates with me deeply too, is being curious enough to Ask why and just sort of learn on the fly, you know, and not assume anything. So, um, I want to touch on, um, the, the new trend of, um, angel syndicates, solo GPs, and established venture firms. As a— from a founder's perspective, um, what is the right way to look at now seems like a lot of options, right? Like, how should a founder decide which is the right fit for me or the right path for my company?

Yeah, that's, that's a really awesome question. I think it's one that a lot of founders are asking right now is like there's more capital in the market coming from different areas, specifically the ones that you touch on, angel investors, syndicates, solo GPs, and then traditional venture. I would suggest, I think traditional venture firms can be a really, really beneficial aspect of the fundraise in terms of they carry the brunt of a lot of platform support. When you work with solo GPs or angels, a lot of them will work really hard to get into the deal and will continue to work hard for you in their area of specialization, But they might not have like the broad experience that a traditional venture firm has. And so I often recommend that folks try and get like a couple, maybe like 3 or 4 really strategic angels on board. Folks that have deep expertise in their industry and can be kind of like a founder confidant, the person that they call and ask about something before they bring it to like their board or their investor, their larger investors. And then really taking the time to narrow down, okay, let's like look at the institutional venture world at the pre-seed and seed level. There's a bunch of great firms that we work with. A few that come to mind, like Precursor and A4 are really heavily, and Hustle Fund are really focused on the pre-seed specifically. Like, look at their investment thesis, look at their current investments, see if they're a good fit for you, and then try and find a warm intro somewhere in your network. And go through and talk to different institutional investors. You should have a valuation cap in mind. I think that's one thing that folks trip up on a bit is like, oh, you can decide the valuation cap for me. And it's like, no, no, no, no, you as the founder, like, tell me what you want. And then I will say, yes, that works for me, or no, it doesn't. But it's really important that you make that decision. And so I think, like, making those strategic angel connections, having a couple of folks on board, and then exploring your institutional options through warm intros or cold emails, if you want to send, like, thoughtful cold emails. I always think it's, like, helpful to have a couple other people, like, ping investors about what you're working on. And try and find the best, like, institutional capital fit for you. They'll often provide a lot of feedback in terms of, like, why they didn't pick you. If you ask. If you want to know, that's like a different question for you to answer. I think like the most— one of the topics that I talked about in my book is that timing can be an incredibly important aspect.

Right.

So where that venture firm is in their decision process, where they're at with other investments, whether they're currently raising a fund, because the fundraising process can be really time-consuming. Like, they're going through it just as you as a founder go through it. So I think that can be like an important aspect where, you know, they might be a great company and in the fit for your thesis, but they're just like not gonna make that investment right now.

What are some trends or micro trends, you know, if not broadly, That you're excited about in the B2C space?

I think one of the most interesting ones is seeing the flow of like game development techniques flowing from kind of like gaming in the East to gaming in the West to consumer products. So like, I can't talk publicly about like the name of this company, but it's in— they draw on a lot of game development techniques to build for creators. And I think that what you see with game developers a lot of the time is they're super incentivized to create like the best monetization strategies for like large online games, which translate really well into B2C consumer, B2C products, because there's not like a ton of opportunity for you to get an individual to pay like an exorbitant amount a month unless you're providing an incredible amount of value. And so there's really interesting methods of like tipping, subscriptions, incorporating NFTs and ownership. I think that we're seeing a really exciting resurgence of art. And I don't say digital art because art is art no matter what medium that it's in. Right. My mom's an artist and she's an incredible painter. And I think it's been really interesting to see people my age getting excited about art. and owning NFTs. And for the people that don't get it, it's kind of similar to like the people that didn't get like why someone would buy a piece of physical art.

Right.

It's not just about looking at it every day. It's also about crafting. Like when you decorate your home, you're kind of like saying like, hey, this is who I am. Like, I'm excited about art. I'm like a patron of the arts. And so I think that's an incredible incredibly exciting trend is that more people are getting excited about ownership in art. And then I think the resurgence in an interest in holistic health. So whether that's like mental health, physical health, I think the pandemic showed us that, like, going to the gym isn't realistic all the time, especially if you're like in, you know, traveling a lot for work. it's really important to like have an outlet for, for just like being active, being healthy, like getting your mind active. That's not dependent on like one location. So we've been focusing pretty heavily on like the digital health space, which I think is a really interesting place to be exploring now.

You know, I'm personally super super fascinated by the rise of digital everything categories combined with, I'd say like the creator economy, because I think until COVID, digital was always like the orphaned child in the categories and IRL trumped everything, right? Yeah. If you saw like meetup.com, If you saw anything, like anything was like, oh, real events or real art or real everything. And suddenly now it feels the opposite in a way that people are much more embrace, much more open and embracing like digital fitness instructors, right? You don't have to physically see them, be in the same room with them, but like the Future Fits of the world that are being a big phenomenon now. Yeah. So I'm personally, I think there's so much to be done in my view, Because bringing the creator economy into the digital space opens all borders, right? The TAM is like super big, super large, because really, as long as there's the internet connection in a particular country, you can reach that audience. And now like there's so many things that we do in real life, like IRL, that I think can sort of have a digital version of them happening. And Maven is an example. Of course, On Deck is an example, right, where all of this stuff used to be IRL, right? Like, you know, instructors used to be in classes and courses, and, and now we're like, you know, all, uh, on the internet. So, um, well, my last question to you is like, what do you, um, hope to sort of create an impact about? Like, what, what, what, what are some things that excite you that you're currently working on? And at the end, my second question, part 2 of this is sort of, what are some companies that you're personally excited about? Either what you invested in or just, you know, just companies that are rising and you're excited about them.

Sure. So the first part, my 10-year goal is going back to the representation is really important. I want to help 1,000 people make their first angel investments. 500 people lead their first syndicates, and seed 100 emerging managers. So that's my 10-year goal. Over the next 10 years, being tracking that quantitatively, I've definitely made some strides on that already, having seen like, I think, 7 people lead their first syndicates, and I think over 20 folks have made their first angel investments. And it's been really cool to see that reaction, especially for people that are underrepresented, whether that's women, people of color, LGBTQ+, folks that live outside of coastal cities, continuing to embrace the identity of an investor, even if you haven't written a check yet, saying like, hey, I'm an early-stage investor and I'm like actively looking for an investment, can be a really powerful statement in a world where young people might not see people that look like them in this world.

Yeah.

So I would say that's like my 10-year goal and just continuing that, that is a big background for why I produce the content that I do, like the Essential Guide to Syndicates. I'm putting out one on angel investing pretty soon. As for companies that I'm excited about, I think I have 2 from our current portfolio that I'm super, super excited about. So One is Pallet. Pallet was actually my first syndicate investment. They basically allow community leaders to create job boards for their communities. And I think it's an incredible capture of value for these community leaders that previously had to pay like $300 a month to host a job board, which is just not aligning incentives because it's a crazy startup fee for a lot of people that are doing this for free and aren't having money in the door like that. I think Lenny has made over like $100,000, which is super, super cool. And I am just so proud of the team, having seen them go from like a Figma mockup to helping creators monetize their audiences over the past 7 months. And then other one is Archetype. So Justin de Guzman, the founder of Archetype, is incredible. He is super community-oriented, so he has a Discord group with the developers that use his collaborative SQL client, and he activates them pretty often to do product feedback, and they evangelize it to their friends. He did a really interesting deep dive onto using Archetype to analyze the characteristics of public product-led growth companies and started to understand how they were like more capital efficient Super interesting, qualitative deep dive into that. So that was Josh's first angel investment. And then we're super excited to be investing in Archetype out of the fund as well.

Excellent. Awesome. Thanks for sharing your thoughts and sharing your insights. Where can people find you on the internet and where can people find out more about the fund?

Yeah, absolutely. So I've been full-time on the fund for 4 days. So our website currently says coming soon. It's coming soon, but behindgeniusventures.com. And then my Twitter is @PaigeFinnn. You can find a lot of information on my Beacons page, which we're a tiny investor in. That's a really interesting company as well. Andreessen just led their seed, but that has a bunch of links to different resources if you're a founder or looking at getting into investing. And yeah, and then Seed Harvest is available on Amazon.

I love that. And I'll make sure that I'll include all of these links in the show notes. But thank you so much, Paige. This was fun. I feel like, you know, I've learned something new, so much about your story and, you know, your desire to impact, you know, not just a lot of, you know, people coming into VC, but like underrepresented founders resonates deeply with me. Yeah. So thank you for being here. And, uh, I look forward to seeing you again.

Absolutely. Likewise. Thanks so much for having me on, KP.

Awesome. Thank you.