Sharing some exciting (& bittersweet) news today:
After an incredible 5 years as a Partner at
@CowboyVC
(following 3 years at
@NorwestVP
), I've decided to take everything I’ve learned and start something new✨
VCs & Founders:
Your friendly reminder that if a round is coming together, I have a list of almost ✨100 female & non-binary operator angel investors✨
&& they're some of the best-credentialed angels out there. Period.💪
⚡️DMs open!⚡️
After ~1 year at Cowboy focused entirely on seed, my frameworks for investing at this stage have changed.
Still (and forever) learning, but sharing my current thoughts on seed investing ✍️
Founders often ask about the value early-stage VCs can add
Reflecting on 4 years in venture, I’ve found it generally falls into the below categories
THREAD👇
Pre-seed is back.
Seeing many more companies raise a $1M - $2M pre-seed followed by a $4M - $5M seed.
More traction is needed to raise an A - and this is finally trickling through the pre-seed / seed world.
At pre-seed, other investors passing isn't signal.
Ambitious ideas have risk and unknowns. It's natural to have many skeptics.
Some of the best investments I've seen had very few term sheets for the pre-seed & seed rounds. Keep going.
After 8 stressful years, your girl is finally a GREEN CARD HOLDER 🇺🇸🥹
This country still represents hope & opportunity to me and so many other immigrant founders, investors, and builders
Excited to continue investing in an American future ❤️
For VCs looking to add diverse investors to their deals, I now have:
✨43 talented female / non-binary angel investors✨
As always... DMs open friends ☺️
Most of my "obvious" investments haven't panned out.
Teams with shiny backgrounds. Competitive round dynamics. Going after an apparent market opportunity.
Alpha comes from the non-obvious tailwind, or a team that look atypical. And from taking risks other VCs aren't willing to.
The past few years I've sat in a number of board rooms and watched some founders thrive and others struggle
Sharing some tips, particularly for first-time founders, on how to best run board meetings
Oh - and it's a THREAD 😉🧵
It’s extremely hard for seed & pre-seed funds to invest in YC companies today
Valuation & dilution expectations just don’t work with a seed fund model
The program can be great for founders but the new YC investment structure precludes funds outside of multi-stage from investing
A friend was told she wasn’t qualified for a job in VC.
👏To👏be👏clear - there are no set qualifications for VC.
Different firms look for different backgrounds & experiences.
What qualities do the best founders have?
At seed, I believe being able to identify outstanding founders is more important than being able to identify outstanding market opportunities.
Sharing 10 things I’ve learned to look for below👇
VCs are well-positioned to add diversity to cap tables.
Recommend. Diverse. Angels.
I have a database of awesome female & non-binary execs who should get access to the best deals🚀
DMs open, VC friends!
At 🤠, we spend a lot of time with our seed companies on their Series A pitches. While most founders have a good sense of what needs to be in it (comp matrix, P&L, etc.) many miss the narrative top Series A firms look for.
Sharing views on a strong Series A pitch below✍️
You’re a founder & your company is exiting
You’re creating life-changing wealth for your investors & that group is diverse, w/ people who will use this wealth to move their communities forward
I want every founder to be able to have this experience
Pretty tired of the, "I care about diversity...but my whole cap table is white dudes" narrative
If you're a founder & don't know any diverse investors or angels feel free to DM me
I can make some intros
Distribution of wealth in silicon valley:
Male founders > become male angel investors > support more male founders 🔁
Let's break the cycle 😎
If you're a female or non-binary angel, hit me up 💪
The Series A $1M ARR is a myth
What investors want is a model that's starting to work - consistent price points, similar ICPs, and a GTM motion that's repeatable
I've had companies well above AND well below the $1M mark raise Series As - chase a strong GTM engine, not a number
Feeling so grateful for the best 30th birthday celebration I could ever ask for 💕✨
Sending love & gratitude to the friends I’ve made through Twitter the past few years - y’all are the best 🤗
Releasing Cowboy's market map of the emerging generative AI infrastructure landscape ✨
Where are the biggest opportunities for startups?
What role will open source play?
1/ Founder > market
Investing at seed often means investing when the market opportunity/size isn’t clear. I believe it’s more important to invest in amazing founders than amazing market opportunities*.
*network effects businesses excluded
Excited to announce our "Angel Investing 101" sessions for the 44 female & non-binary operators in our angel database 🥳
S/o to
@eladgil
&
@gilpenchina
for being our first 😇 experts
If you're a female or non-binary operator interested in angel investing, DMs open!
Can your open source company raise Series A?
We asked 18 of the top open source Series A investors what they want to see in order to lead a $10M - $25M round in today's environment
Here’s what they said 👇
3/ Build for tomorrow
Founders at seed are building for tomorrow's world, not today's. They need foresight grounded in a deep understanding of the tech & market forces driving change.
This is framed very well by
@m2jr
in his piece on "Backcasting".
👼Major "Modern Angels" Announcement👼
We just reached 180 female & non-binary investors🎉
Founders & VCs: this group is phenomenal - GTM execs, seasoned operators, product leaders & more!
You would be lucky to have them on your cap table 💪
It’s awesome to see how many funds care about hiring women now (h/t
@AllRaise
) but so few are in leadership roles (GP / MGP / MD)
Waiting for the day senior men in VC will be willing to give up meaningful carry to give women major roles in their funds
2/ Partner w/ "Learning Animals"
I picked this one up from the queen of coining new terms
@aileenlee
. Founders with a growth mindset can adapt to changing market dynamics & develop into successful leaders at different stages of growth.
This is for the Female & Non-Binary Operators who have always wanted to invest, but didn’t have the access
👑Our community is for you👑
Spotlighting some of our incredible angel investors👇
Recently, I've met with multiple solo founders who have been advised to find a co-founder before raising capital
I've seen more challenges from co-founder break-ups that were forced, than from founders going at it alone
Don't force it!
Celebrating 3 yrs at
@CowboyVC
🎉
Thankful to the BEST team - here’s to many more years with you as my cow-lleagues 🤠
Cc
@aileenlee
@Jillwillnyc
@allegra_v2
@twang
(+ our amazing EA Mae who’s not on TW 👑)
&& our incredible founders & community 🥰
4/ Diligence should not convince you to make an investment
Using diligence to move from "no" to "yes" is dangerous. It can result in projecting a vision on founders that isn't theirs.
S/o to
@twang
for keeping me honest on this point.
Would love to see more female founders in infra software💪
Happy to spend time iterating on ideas with technical women considering becoming founders👩💻
DMs open ladies!
5/ Why (this founder) now?
I used to obsess over “why now” but have edited that to “why this founder now”. At Cowboy, we look for 'earned insights' that demonstrate a founder's unique understanding of their space in addition to the tech/market trends supporting "why now".
When multi-billion dollar funds do $100K checks into seed rounds, it just adds signaling risk.
If they want to lead your A, they can show value without being an investor.
For International Women’s Day, I wanted to give a shout-out to the ✨130+ female operator angels✨ who have joined our amazing community!
Female operators should get access to the same high-quality deal flow as male operators. Full stop.
DMs open if you want to join us 😇
6/ Find talent magnets
This extends to advisers, early engineers, other investors, and any other high-quality ppl the founders have convinced to spend their precious time helping them. This can be a huge point of leverage early-on.
I started a new written series: Making Money from Open Source💸
The first post digs into one of the biggest challenges early-stage open source founders face - going from project-market fit to product-market fit👇
1/ Depth of understanding of the problem space isn't clear
Why are you the best founders to build in this space? What's your unique insight? Why are you willing to spend the next 5-10 years focused on this problem?
Taking a moment to celebrate the growth in Modern Angels 😇
200 female & non-binary angels investing in the best venture opportunities 💪
VCs 👉 this group is for you to tap into!
The original 🤠
@aileenlee
is one of Forbes most powerful women!
On top of being a world-class investor, she has made our industry a more inclusive place helping countless women & underrepresented minorities find their voice 💪
Noticing a lot more OOO from the VC industry this summer. Highly advise founders to hold off initiating their fundraise processes until after Burning Man (early Sep), if possible.
Sadly, I’m totally serious.
12/ trusted ally
Finally, being an early-stage founder can be a hard and lonely job; having someone you trust to bounce ideas off of and RIFF with can be super productive (& help keep you sane 🙏)
Amanda Robson, partner at VC fund
@CowboyVC
. “Venture capital has historically been an individual sport where investors only focus on their own investments,” she says. “I want to help build a firm that is truly collaborative at its core.”
One of the biggest challenges open source founders face is determining the right business model💰
We dig into the history of open source business models (starting w/
@RedHat
), Open Core and Cloud Hosting models, and managing community expectations here👇
For female & non-binary angels: there are opportunities to deploy smaller checks (i.e. $5K) as more founders are prioritizing diverse cap tables
👉amanda
@cowboy
.vc w/ LI, check size, industry pref, investments (if any) & value-add to get looped in
Deals in the works already😎
Software infra has been hit hard in 2022 - the avg public co is down (40%)🤯
However, downturns are a great time to build & we at
@CowboyVC
are excited to find the bold founders taking this time to identify new opportunities💪
Some ideas from us here👇
8/ Back companies that can get to Series A
Our companies usually raise multiple rounds & need to hit milestones to raise more $.
At Cowboy, we consider this in diligence & do an all-hands session post-investment to fine-tune milestones & have a path to get there (hiring, etc.)
It's been heartbreaking to read about what went down at Launch House. I'm so sorry to all of the women who had to experience awful things there. I see you ♥️
Founders: we heard you 😇
My amazing 🤠 intern
@mathurahravi
created a process where founders can submit pitches to the female angel group to check out. No warm intro required!
Link here 👉
The venture industry hasn't always been accepting or kind to women.
When I started in venture 5 years ago, organizations like
@AllRaise
didn't exist. The women I knew in the industry often felt excluded and were frequently the only woman in meetings and board rooms.