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Building an Investment Ecosystem: Joy Marcus's Blueprint for Supporting Women Entrepreneurs · The Inspired Stories Podcast

0:04
Welcome to another edition of the Inspired Stories podcast,
0:08
where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from
0:11
their successes and be inspired by how they've overcome
0:14
adversity. My name is Anthony Codaspodi and
0:17
today's guest is Joy Marcus, General partner and Co founder
0:21
at The 98. Founded in 2022, The 98 is an
0:27
early stage venture capital firm committed to investing in women
0:31
LED technology start-ups. Their mission is to turn the
0:35
dial in venture funding since women LED companies currently
0:39
receive only 2% of VC dollars. A Joy is a seasoned venture
0:44
capitalist, board member and lecturer, and entrepreneurship
0:48
at Princeton University. She's Magnum cum laude and Phi
0:51
Beta Kappa graduate of Princeton and earned her law degree from
0:56
New York University. She previously served in
0:59
leadership roles at Conde Nast and Time Warner, bringing years
1:03
of experience in scaling tech enabled businesses.
1:06
Joy has been recognized in the Hollywood Reporters Digital
1:09
Power 50, listed in Forbes 40 / 40, and honored by Cranes as a
1:15
Woman to Watch. She continues to champion female
1:19
innovators through her work at the 98, providing both capital
1:22
and guidance. Now before we get into all that
1:25
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2:04
All right, back to our guest today, Co founder and general
2:07
partner of The 98, Joy Marcus. Thanks for making the time to
2:11
Share your story today. Hi, Anthony.
2:14
Nice to be with you. OK, So I'm checking out your
2:18
LinkedIn profile here, Joy, and you've had a lot of really
2:21
interesting stops along the way. Before we get into talking about
2:26
how the idea for The 98 came about and the work that you're
2:29
doing there, maybe let's talk a little bit about your time at
2:32
MTV and the impact that that's had on you.
2:36
Yeah, it is notable. I mean, I, I definitely have had
2:40
a number of stops along the way at MTV is quite notable to me.
2:46
It was a decisive moment for me, honestly.
2:50
I was given the opportunity while there.
2:52
I entered MTV as a lawyer. I had been trained as a lawyer.
2:56
I worked at a fancy law firm. I did, you know, stayed up all
2:58
night on M&A deals and, you know, did that whole drill in
3:03
like the late 80s. And it was really hard work, but
3:08
I learned a lot. I decided that I really want to
3:12
focus on the media and entertainment industry
3:14
specifically had the opportunity to do so.
3:18
I was recruited first by a very notable entertainment law firm
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and out of there by by MTV to be the first lawyer for the MTV
3:26
channel. So there were no lawyers.
3:27
So MTV was rogue. MTV was just sort of like
3:31
operating, you know? I see on your profile here that
3:36
you joined there in 1993. I mean, MTV had been around
3:40
since what, at least the early to mid 80s?
3:42
And you were the first attorney in all that time.
3:45
Well, that was dedicated to the channel.
3:47
So Viacom has lawyers and MTV Networks, which was like
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Nickelodeon, MTV, blah, blah, blah.
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You know, other, other channels have lawyers.
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But I was the first lawyer. That was like, no, no, no, you
3:58
are only working on MTV and it was about time.
4:02
And one of the first things, yes, I did at the channel was,
4:06
and this is like not a secret, they had no rights to any of the
4:10
music videos they were showing. They were showing them on a
4:12
promotional basis. So two things happened.
4:15
I got there like day one. They handed me a stack of paper
4:18
about a Mile High and was like, there's this guy Jon Stewart.
4:22
We really like him. We saw him at some comedy club
4:26
and we want to do a show. And like, he locked him up for
4:28
Viacom for like the next five years.
4:31
And so I did. I did that.
4:33
I won't talk about how much money was involved in that.
4:36
It wasn't very much. And then the next thing they did
4:39
was like, oh, the Viacom board's really angry with us.
4:43
Like, we're showing all this content and we don't have any
4:47
rights to it. Can you like fix that?
4:50
And I'm like, sure. And I just, and you know, the
4:55
next thing I knew, I was like on the bow, the general counsel of
4:58
Sony, like the my little office at 1515 Broadway screaming my
5:01
head off at him like, no, no, no, we need to do it.
5:04
We need to do it and we need to get rights to the videos.
5:08
You know, we need to be able to show them legally.
5:10
Help, help, help. We won't promote your artists if
5:12
you don't do it. So we we we were standing in a
5:14
good steak because we were very popular.
5:16
And on all seriousness, we were like the main promotional outlet
5:19
for the content. So for, you know, getting people
5:22
to like actually buy at the time, I think it was we were up
5:25
to C DS at that time. So we were important to them,
5:29
they were important to us. Eventually when that happens, I
5:32
find in life, no matter what, usually a deal gets done and the
5:35
better the deal, the worse everybody feels about it when
5:38
you sign it. And then you know, everybody
5:41
kind of operates under it. And we managed to do that and
5:44
kind of on the back of doing that fairly well.
5:48
I was offered a couple of opportunities and I made and
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This is why it was so Seminole getting around to that point.
5:54
We I was offered the opportunity to not be a lawyer anymore.
5:58
And it was kind of a big decision because, you know, I
6:01
had spent a lot of heartache over, you know, law school and
6:07
staying up all night at big law firm.
6:08
What people were great there, but the work was really, you
6:11
know, demanding. And I'm not scared of work, as
6:15
my most people have noted about me, but it was, you know, just
6:18
really, really crazy. And but I had an expertise and I
6:25
was very confident in it. And to make the leap onto the
6:27
business side where it was going to be all learning was a big
6:31
deal. And like other points in my
6:35
career, it was it was Seminole in that I did it, but it also
6:38
set me up for like, I was willing to do it again because
6:41
it worked out pretty well. So like making that leap from
6:45
like this very steady. You're a lawyer.
6:48
You know what your job is. You know how to like, get stuff
6:51
done to, OK, write a business plan for MTV in South Africa.
6:57
What does that look like? What does that mean?
6:59
If you build it, will they come? You know, those kinds of
7:02
questions which I have not yet been asked ever professionally.
7:07
It was, it taught me a great lesson that I could morph.
7:12
I could, I was, you know, I was able to make those kinds of
7:16
transitions. You weren't fixed as the person
7:19
that you once were. You had the ability to grow and
7:22
to adapt and find new skills. To put it in the language I
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teach my students at Princeton, I had a gross mindset.
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I was willing to do something I didn't really know how to do and
7:35
figure it out. And that I think that
7:38
willingness has stood me well throughout the rest of my
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career. And I realized like, OK, you're
7:44
a decent quick study. Maybe not the quickest study out
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of anyone in the world, but you're like a decent quick study
7:51
and you will figure out the next thing.
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And it also taught me that the secret to that is really
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surrounding yourself with the absolute best people possible.
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And I would say I was fortunate at MTV, not so much at people
8:06
reporting to me 'cause I still wasn't, even though I'm like a
8:08
vice president, I had a vice president, you know, there are
8:10
million of them at MTVI was, you know, fairly junior still.
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I, my peer group was so strong and I was able to ask folks in
8:22
my peer group really hard questions and get really, you
8:26
know, smart answers back right away.
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And it was a very supportive environment for that.
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It wasn't particularly like, you know, the channel was doing
8:33
great. We were like, if you had a great
8:35
idea, you could throw it up against the wall and, you know,
8:38
see what's stuck. And, you know, people are very,
8:41
very open minded. So it wasn't like this gross
8:44
kind of competitive environment. It was a very supportive
8:46
environment, honestly. And that's how we got great
8:49
things done. And it was a moment.
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It was a moment. So say more about what that that
8:55
process looks like for you adopting a new skill set.
8:58
I mean, you kind of touched on a little bit like you had a great
9:01
network around you that you could go to and say, hey, I'm
9:04
not experienced in this. Can you help me?
9:05
Like how do I start writing a business plan?
9:08
So me, it's always been about the surrounding myself with
9:11
people. There's a little knowledge you
9:12
need to acquire. So MTV did send me to Columbia.
9:16
So their executive education program, I did kind of finance
9:19
courses and things that, you know about sort of corporate
9:22
America that you don't learn in law school.
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You'll learn quite a bit like a logically does give you a good
9:26
background. So I learned the basics like,
9:29
you know, basic, you know, financial statements, things
9:32
that I needed. You know, I could never write a
9:34
business plan without that, right?
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So I got that basis in education.
9:38
So going back to education is not a terrible idea,
9:41
particularly at a relatively early part of your career.
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So that was good. It was good that I did.
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I also did it when I was very pregnant.
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So that was a challenge. But there's also that there's
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that whole aspect of like baby making throughout all of this.
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But I was very pregnant when I did that.
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So I was really, really busy. I was doing a full time job, I
9:59
was studying at Columbia and I was pregnant with my first
10:03
child. So it's like kind of a moment, a
10:05
trifecta moment for me. So, you know, get some
10:09
education, like acquire some knowledge, I think is like the
10:11
take away from that. And then it's about surrounding
10:14
yourself with the best people and knowing who the best people
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are to ask the right questions of, you know, don't waste your
10:20
time with those who are going to withhold, you know, forget those
10:24
people, forget, literally forget those people.
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Surround yourself with people who are going to be giving and
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generous and want to impart knowledge and want to share and
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want to just build something together.
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And I think we had that going at MTV in a very big way at that
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moment in time in the mid 90s. Again, we were doing well as a
10:45
business. It was easy to be that way.
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As we're recording this in June of 2025, I'm curious, has your
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process for acquiring new skills evolved at all?
10:58
We've got the Internet for many years now.
11:00
Now we've got, you know, the large language models in AI
11:03
where maybe it's easier to sort of acquire some of these skills
11:06
now yourself. Or do you still kind of go to
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the same sort of tried and true, which is who's in my network
11:12
that I can go to and ask for? Honestly, I do both now, but I
11:15
still rely mostly on network. Of course I use AI.
11:19
Of course I, you know, go out to perplexity and ask a question.
11:23
Like, who doesn't do that now? You have to do that now.
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It's just so efficient. But my true source, my source of
11:30
truth, if you will, is always great people.
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And I have really tried to kind of almost curate great people in
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my life throughout my career. I am still at dinner last night
11:43
with one of my close friends from MTVII am still really in
11:47
touch with those people. I am very close friends with the
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person who was my office mate at my first law firm like they
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were. If they're great people, I
11:57
really try to keep them in my life.
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I work very hard at that and and I'm also willing to give, right.
12:05
So if you're willing to give, people be willing to get back to
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you. And that's how you create
12:11
greatness, I think. You know, that's just the magic
12:14
for it, I think. Let's let's spend just a second
12:17
sort of super mini master class here on keeping these wonderful
12:21
people in in your life. What's that process kind of look
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like? It's tiring.
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So it involves, you know, a bunch of wine going out when you
12:32
don't feel like it. Seriously.
12:35
I mean truly like I am like out every night this week.
12:39
I am like old and don't feel like doing that all the time.
12:42
But like it's fabulous people. And I'm going to be traveling
12:46
this summer and I want to see them before, you know, I can't
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see them. And it's not just obviously it's
12:53
not just the professional part of them that I enjoy.
12:56
I don't think there's anyone who I'm purely at this point that's
13:00
lasted as long as that just, you know, hoping to get professional
13:03
feedback from. They're all friends, but it
13:06
doesn't hurt. I was going to say a worse word,
13:09
but I don't know, I'm kidding. As PG, it doesn't hurt that I
13:14
also like them and I like to spend time with them.
13:20
And but like when when you know, it hits the fan and I have a
13:23
real problem. They're, and I definitely had
13:27
those along the way, you know, like tough businesses,
13:30
businesses crumbling, needing to be rebuilt, that kind of thing
13:34
is always, you know, always happens.
13:37
They've been there for me. You know, it's like, OK, what
13:39
would you do if, you know this, what we do, this situation and
13:42
we and I do for them, too. Yeah.
13:45
And it's, it's, it's just the most valuable thing.
13:48
Like to all the young listeners out there, watchers, I don't
13:51
know where this is going to be. You know, do not underestimate
13:57
the value of that. You can't get everything from
14:01
perplexity. You can't get everything from
14:03
your HBS class. Like there are going to be
14:06
people who just have knowledge from experience that is that are
14:12
going to be very valuable to you.
14:14
And other introductions that they can make, which is
14:16
something that perplexity can never do either.
14:19
Absolutely, absolutely. Perplexity will not replace you.
14:22
Yes. Yeah, I, I love that.
14:24
I'm glad we sort of took a little sidebar on that.
14:26
Yeah. Now I'm going to enjoy kind of
14:29
Fast forward because, I mean, there's a lot of interesting
14:32
stops along the way, you know, Barnes and Noble, Time Warner,
14:36
Gotham, Conde Nast, oh boy, BBC. But I, I want to make sure that
14:42
we spend the bulk of our time talking about the 98.
14:45
So tell me how the idea to start this firm first came about.
14:50
Yeah, so Linda and I, so Linda's a big part of this.
14:54
I, I just like Clarizio, my partner at in the 98.
14:58
So Linda and I went to college together.
15:01
She actually brought me some very gravy photographs from a
15:04
dorm room at Princeton to a meeting the other day.
15:07
I was like, Oh my God, my hair. So it's like looked really
15:12
different. So we weren't roommates, but we
15:15
knew each other quite well in college.
15:17
And and I said that only because I have this very close circle of
15:21
roommates. So I have to give a shout out to
15:23
them. They are not.
15:24
That window was something else, and she and I sort of had kept
15:29
in touch along the way and really came together again when
15:32
I was at what was then AOL Time Warner.
15:35
We were actually in the same group, the infamous business
15:38
development group at AOL, which is cutting all those crazy
15:41
deals. We were part of it.
15:42
I had been kind of elevated into the Time Warner corporate area.
15:48
Linda was also elevated running very big division at AOL, but we
15:53
were very much in touch with each other and started like
15:58
having lunch in New York and just talking, talking over like
16:01
the next 10 years remained close.
16:03
And we were both kind of at this stage of our our careers where
16:08
a, we wanted to kind of own our own thing.
16:10
I think both of us felt the need for that, the need for like to
16:14
build something that was uniquely ours.
16:19
We still wanted to make a lot of money.
16:22
Absolutely. And there's an idea.
16:25
It's not, you know, we're not a straight up impact fund.
16:29
We are a more profit endeavour. And I'll explain how that works
16:32
a little bit. But we also saw like a really,
16:35
we saw both an injustice, but also an over basically what we
16:39
thought was an overlooked asset class, which is that women.
16:46
And just to get the statistics, you got to be a little careful
16:49
with the stats. 2% of all venture capital dollars, not 2%
16:53
of deals, all dollars invested goes into female only founded
16:58
companies. There's a higher percentage
17:01
somewhere in the teens or maybe a teeny drop higher based on who
17:06
you're looking at Pitchbrook or you know, the data's not all
17:08
synced that go to teams that are founded both by men and women.
17:13
But I think it's safe to say that 80% of venture capital
17:17
dollars, those two all male teams.
17:21
So that seems crazy. Why?
17:24
Because the industry is about pattern recognition or has been.
17:29
So if you are a 50 year old, I'm sorry, if you're like a 50 year
17:35
old white guy who's been doing this for 20 years and you are
17:39
good at it and you've made a lot of money doing it and you've
17:43
made a lot of money investing in 27 year old white males in
17:49
hoodies, you're just going to do that again, right?
17:54
There's very little incentive for you to break the model.
17:59
And the only incentive will come is if you see success in
18:04
breaking the model. And so that's what we're at.
18:07
You need a different pattern. Yeah, you need to show that a
18:11
different pattern breeds success and if and and there there were
18:16
glimmers. So so we weren't just being
18:18
crazy, right? There were glimmers of hope in
18:21
the model, right. There were some studies that had
18:24
been done about diverse teams and in fact all female teams
18:29
returning capital in a more efficient way to investors.
18:33
IRROY meaning capital returned, you know, sooner at a better
18:37
rate essentially. So first one Capital had done a
18:42
Seminole study on that. It's getting kind of long in the
18:45
tube. That study now was done on the
18:47
late teens. There's some stuff coming out of
18:50
HVS. There was some stuff coming out
18:52
of BCG. There were glimmers of kind of
18:57
oh, around no, no, no, women return really.
19:02
Well, maybe we need to break the pattern, but again, if you're
19:09
sitting in a big fat firm on couple 100 million or maybe a
19:13
couple billion dollars in assets under management and we've been
19:16
investing in men for the last 20 years, it's really it's.
19:20
Hey, it's working for me. Why?
19:21
Why? It's working.
19:23
Why fix it right? It's working for me.
19:25
It's working for my investors. This data is only a couple of
19:29
companies. I don't really trust it.
19:31
I don't really know and I think it really is taking a bunch of
19:37
people who saw the data believe in it, they are mostly women to
19:42
kind of begin to break the mold and that's what we're trying to
19:44
do along the way. Because of this data, we believe
19:51
that our returns will be higher. And I can tell you we're sort of
19:55
little of a midway through investing our capital and hope
20:00
to be, you know going out to raise another, another fund
20:03
sometime soon and. Our companies are doing pretty
20:09
well and you know, so tell us about.
20:12
Them What kinds of companies have you invested in?
20:15
Yeah, without getting, yeah, without.
20:18
They're all private companies and, you know, in sort of
20:21
relatively early stage. So I'll tell you our investment
20:23
thesis and then I'll tell you kind of the kind of companies.
20:26
So our investment thesis is basically keep a woman, put a
20:30
woman in the mix at the top and things go better, better than if
20:35
it's, if not, if not that essentially that this is and
20:40
that there's value for money and that it's just more difficult to
20:44
raise money if you're a woman. That's just true.
20:46
Also, we see it in the numbers, right?
20:48
So undervalued asset class with high return potential.
20:53
Who doesn't love that, right? So that's the core, core, core
20:56
of our thesis. And that is proving out pretty,
21:01
pretty damn well so far. We also, given who we were and
21:06
we both were women, are women who have run fairly
21:11
significantly sized businesses and know how to scale.
21:16
And I had done a lot of zero to 60 too.
21:18
Linda had done more later stage stuff and I had done sort of
21:21
early to mid stage businesses, quite a few of those.
21:25
So we had some complimentary skill sets there.
21:30
You know, our thesis was don't be the first check.
21:34
We're probably not going to be great at the first check because
21:39
it's not. Really, the space that you had
21:40
played in, Well, I mean you did, you did some early stage stuff,
21:44
but not right at the beginning. Exactly.
21:46
I never I before the 98, I had never sat down on a blank screen
21:51
and started writing the plan like completely right.
21:56
I may have done a little bit of that kind of work at MTV, but I
21:58
was working with this gigantic brand and this gigantic company
22:02
behind me, all my other startups and I have run a couple of them
22:05
and I've had some exits. I came in as like a seasoned
22:09
executive to help move the needle, raise capital, you know,
22:13
get the company to exit. So I wasn't ever really the like
22:17
ignite person. So I felt that we would be more
22:22
valuable and I both thought we'd be more valuable at a slightly
22:25
later stage. So we, so where we, we, we
22:29
invest kind of and it's a little cliched, but there's some
22:33
evidence of product market fit and meaning like someone is
22:38
using the thing or buying the thing and it's just starting to
22:43
scale now. It's not completely done.
22:47
There may still be pivots along the way.
22:50
It's not like you know a series BC and onward where we kind of
22:54
know what the business model is and you pretty much have the
22:57
product locked down. It's just there's evidence that
23:00
something is working right and that we're on the right track.
23:04
The business is on the right track.
23:06
Again, there may where we invest, there still may be a
23:09
pivot. There may be changes to the
23:11
product, you know, the market might even morph a little bit.
23:16
We might have to move. You know, there's things will
23:18
happen, but it's not at the like, I'm not really sure what
23:23
the product is. I have a big idea about a need
23:25
in my, you know, which is there's room for that and
23:27
there's room for investors in that, you know, have a talented
23:30
person come to you and say, I think the world needs X.
23:33
Here's my evidence that the world's need needs X.
23:35
Here's what I think I want to build, right.
23:38
Those are first checks. That's not you.
23:41
Right and. I you understood your.
23:42
Lane, you wanted to be just a little bit further along,
23:45
further along. And so as a consequence, you
23:50
know, we're willing to take a slightly higher valuation,
23:53
obviously, and perhaps earn a little bit less than we might if
23:57
we invested earlier. You know, I always say to my
24:00
Princeton students, 100% of 0 is 0.
24:02
Like I'd rather get in on, you know, the famous something
24:06
that's got a little bit. Of traction, yeah.
24:09
Yeah. If not, you know better words of
24:11
Eric Schmidt to Sheryl Sandberg. The rocket ship, right?
24:14
I'd rather get that seat, even if it's like a little one on
24:17
something that's going to clearly take off.
24:21
And again, not so clear, right? We're still taking risks.
24:25
We're investing in a stage where, you know, it may be an
24:28
unproven CEO, an unproven founding team.
24:32
There's something about them, you know, that we've identified,
24:36
that we like and that we feel is uniquely suited to the business
24:40
they're creating, the problem they're solving, you know,
24:43
that's a big part of it. And so is what?
24:44
You're providing just the check or is there operational
24:48
assistance that goes along with this?
24:49
Yeah, yeah. Not.
24:50
At all just the checks so our yes so our thesis is you know,
24:54
women undervalued asset class some evidence of product market
24:59
fit some uniqueness of founder and founding team to you know
25:04
solve this problem create this product in a way that maybe no
25:08
one else in the world could or at least as good or better than
25:10
anyone else in the world right. Like those are some of the
25:13
criteria. The next part is, and we
25:17
uniquely provide value and, you know, and when you look at our
25:22
resumes for me, you think content, check digital media.
25:28
Yeah, I morphed from TV to digital, thank goodness, you
25:31
know, pretty early in my career. Stayed current, you know, stayed
25:35
relevant. But you know, that's been my
25:37
lane essentially. What you might not be as obvious
25:41
as I've run large tech teams, I've had large tech teams
25:44
reporting to me. I've had to solve problems for
25:47
big companies using technology of others.
25:50
So I've been a SAS buyer at many points in my career.
25:55
So I know a little bit about what it takes to, for example,
26:00
sell a technology product to a big company.
26:05
So therefore I thought, OK, we can and Linda also, right.
26:09
So we thought we could in theory be excellent SAS investors,
26:15
software as a service investors and that's Elaine we both feel
26:19
very comfortable pursuing. So we have a lot of SAS in our
26:24
portfolio as a result. Is it?
26:27
Is it? Mostly SAS is it?
26:29
Are we talking like all softwares?
26:31
There's some like hardware tech in here.
26:33
There's a teeny. Bit of hardware, we generally
26:35
don't invest in hardware. We have one company that uses a
26:38
sensor. It's it's actually a a, it uses
26:43
a sensor to detect ethylene. I love this company.
26:45
So I have to talk about ethylene emissions from fruit and what's
26:51
the what's the use? Case is it like detect rotting?
26:56
How fast it's right the name how fast it's going to rot when
26:58
retailers and it is without again going too many names too
27:03
much detail. Private company has deals with
27:05
like major, major retailers for, you know, multitudes of money
27:12
and so. What like a ton of value, like a
27:14
like a, a grocery store would put this in place and so it has
27:17
an idea if the fruit that's on display is getting close to
27:21
turning or no no, it it. Actually tells them which fruit
27:25
to put out when. So they're like getting fruit
27:27
from Packers. They know how to sequence their
27:31
fruit. They know if the food's not
27:33
ripening fast enough to turn up the heat, there's a lot of,
27:36
there's probably there's three or four products that the
27:38
company offers to both retailers and Packers.
27:41
So that is at this point the only company that has even any
27:45
bit of hardware. Can we give them a shout out?
27:47
What's the name of the company? The name of the.
27:49
Company is Strella. It's amazing company.
27:51
Strella. So.
27:53
And they have a teeny piece of hardware.
27:55
We have no other hardware in our portfolio right now.
27:57
So we try to stay away from hardware.
27:59
We're really kind of pure, you know, pretty pure sass.
28:05
SASS. Are all of them pretty pure?
28:08
Sass are all the rest of. Them strictly sass everything
28:12
now is sort of layering in AI, but I'm wondering if there
28:14
anything, is there anything in your portfolio that's like
28:17
straight up AI? Yeah.
28:20
I mean, we're a company named Private AI that is, you know,
28:23
really grounded in AI as its key differentiator.
28:28
And again, without talking too specifically, what they do is
28:32
they take lots of unstructured data and make it useful for
28:38
companies with and by eliminating the private, the
28:43
privacy protected element of the data so companies can use it.
28:48
It's like very. I'm intrigued.
28:50
Are you allowed to say more or is this still kind of like under
28:54
wraps? It's I mean.
28:55
They're all out there, you know, working in the world.
28:59
I just, you know, it, don't want to give too, too, too much
29:04
detail on them quite yet because they're all at the stage that
29:08
they're at and evolving, quite frankly.
29:11
And, you know, are going to grow to be something else by the time
29:14
someone listens to this podcast potentially and grow in ways
29:18
that perhaps we're not even foreseeing right now.
29:21
And this podcast will last a long time.
29:25
And that's my only hesitancy, honestly, that this has been
29:27
dated very get dated very quickly.
29:30
Yeah, because they are young companies.
29:32
Yeah. Let's talk more.
29:33
About the the operational support that your portfolio
29:37
companies get when working with you?
29:39
Oh yeah. So we do soup to nuts kind of
29:42
everything for them. We help them certainly in
29:46
fundraising and accessing other VCs, you know, sort of
29:49
syndicating rounds. We do that at scale for sure.
29:55
We are extremely good at corporate introductions for SAS
30:00
companies. So you know, Linda and I between
30:02
the two of us have, you know what we say like 70 years of
30:05
operating experience in like kind of corporate America.
30:08
We just know a lot of people and you know, because we've been
30:13
doing it for a while, the folks we know are pretty senior.
30:16
So we can get them intros at kind of some of the, you know,
30:20
senior levels at, you know, if in the case of Strela, very
30:24
senior levels at some of the major food retailers as an
30:29
example, since we've talked about Strela.
30:32
So that's I think been super helpful.
30:34
Those introductions have been super helpful both on the
30:37
raising money front and also on the, you know, just operational
30:42
deal front. Both Lindo and I have also in
30:45
addition to having run tech teams, have run sales teams.
30:49
So we have companies obviously who are selling and have to
30:55
structure things like commissions and incentive
30:58
programs and all kinds of good stuff for burgeoning sales
31:02
teams. And I think both of us have been
31:04
very helpful to our portfolio companies and trying to, you
31:07
know, helping them figure out how to hire the right sales
31:10
people, how to incent them properly, you know, identify
31:15
perhaps when it's not a good fit.
31:17
Those kind of kind of like nitty gritty kind of operational
31:20
issues. We do get in the leads with our
31:21
companies. So once we invest, we do like
31:25
extremely regular meetings without being pains in the neck,
31:28
extremely regular meetings with the CEOs.
31:31
And frankly, if it's like we've got nothing to offer that day,
31:34
we get off the phone pretty quickly because both of us have
31:36
run businesses and none of us want to waste anybody's time.
31:40
But if there are real, you know, problems to address are frankly
31:42
opportunities to bring to them, you know, we're happy to do
31:47
that. Another like little magic about
31:50
the 98 is that we have a lot of LP's and our LP's are for the
31:53
most part high net worth individuals, all of whom have
31:58
really a lot of great operating experience in a variety of
32:03
sectors. So pretty much any company, even
32:06
when we're at the evaluation stage, we have one or two LP's
32:11
who will bring in to the assessment and say, like, for
32:14
example, if it's healthcare, which, you know, both of us,
32:17
it's not kind of endemic to what we kind of grew up
32:21
professionally doing. But we have some really senior
32:24
healthcare analysts, executives in our LP group.
32:30
We always bring anything we see in healthcare, we bring to them.
32:33
And when I talk to healthcare, I'm talking mostly, you know,
32:36
the tech side of healthcare and not devices.
32:38
So anything that automates some aspect of healthcare that
32:42
doesn't involve kind of a device is kind of a sweet spot of what
32:46
we're looking at. And we always bring in our
32:48
experts always. And then, you know, we bring
32:51
them in again once we invest. And if they have, you know, they
32:55
might have specific expertise, have seen a pattern before we
32:59
hadn't seen in the domain. They might know people, you
33:02
know, we don't know who they can bring to the portfolio.
33:05
I mean, we just had our semi annual LP meeting and I'm still
33:09
dealing with the emails coming through from our LP basing.
33:14
I have someone I can introduce to so and so I have someone I
33:16
can introduce to so and so. So we really activate our LP
33:20
base. The idea really is, I mean our,
33:24
our first thought around this was not just to VC but an
33:27
ecosystem. And I think what we've created
33:31
with our LP base is like de facto an ecosystem that we bring
33:36
to bear for the benefit of our portfolio companies.
33:39
Can we increase on that ecosystem by, you know, adding
33:43
other things of boot camp, you know, training programs, you
33:47
know, we do do breakfast where we bring in experts to talk
33:50
about how to hire a sales chain, you know, how to handle X
33:54
problem. You know, we have like specific
33:56
kinds of events around that for the portfolio, but perhaps
34:00
something more formal in the future that really helps the
34:04
portfolio companies in a way even beyond what I've just
34:07
described as kind of what we're thinking about right now.
34:10
Like a strong ecosystem is really what we're aiming to
34:15
create and the 98 First Fund is kind of like the beginning of
34:20
that, that sounds. Super valuable.
34:23
Let's back up a bit. Joy to kind of when you're in
34:26
the stages of considering a company to invest in thinking
34:30
beyond kind of the typical metrics, what sort of signals
34:34
are you looking for? Maybe things that reveal a
34:37
founder's capacity to pivot or to, you know, persist through
34:41
challenging times. Yeah, Yeah.
34:43
So. We're looking, we're looking a
34:45
lot, we're looking a lot at the founder.
34:48
I mean, because we invest post product, we are also looking at
34:53
how are people using the product?
34:54
Are they paying for it? I mean, we have those data
34:57
points, but those you know, everyone has those data points.
35:00
Everyone's looking at that. Everyone has like this magic
35:02
number of $1,000,000 in ARR. We don't stick to that by the
35:06
way. We just we want to see evidence
35:09
of fit defined in each industry maybe a little bit differently
35:13
and evidence of growth and retention basically.
35:17
So those are like data points kind of everyone looks at.
35:21
I think most people look at what we look at and founders as well.
35:25
We're looking for a lot of grit, right?
35:28
We're looking for someone who may have stumbled before and got
35:32
back up. We are looking deeply at how
35:36
they think, not so much what they've produced, but how
35:39
they've gone about producing it. So people always ask like even
35:43
at the stage where we invest, when you look at a five year
35:45
model, it's like that's crazy. Like anything could happen.
35:48
That's why I'm loath to like talk about these companies with
35:52
more specificity because so much can happen in the next six
35:56
months to any of these companies.
35:57
You know, hopefully most mostly positive, right?
36:01
So we know that, but we still ask for it and you know, it's
36:08
deregard the stage we go in, which is kind of late seed early
36:11
to have that anyway. But mostly what we're looking
36:14
for is how do they think, what are what are their like
36:20
analytical abilities, touch points, depth of thinking?
36:26
What's their intellectual integrity around putting
36:31
something like a business model together?
36:35
Is there something in the model that shows that they haven't
36:38
thought it through? For example, they've just missed
36:42
like a synapse, you know, like some connection that should have
36:45
been made was not like those to me are always very telling.
36:49
Are they like absolutely. I won't invest.
36:51
They miss something in the model for sure.
36:53
Not for sure. Like that's it's just like a
36:55
data point. It's like they're being
36:58
intellectually lazy. Maybe there's a little bit of
37:03
lack of integrity. That's a huge red flag.
37:05
And then forget it, forget it. But maybe just like maybe a
37:10
little intellectual laziness. Can we overcome that?
37:13
I don't know. So that's what we're looking
37:16
for, looking for their like thought processes.
37:19
How do they think as individuals?
37:20
How do they think through problems and get through
37:23
problems? Is there?
37:25
One or two maybe specific questions that you really like
37:29
to ask that kind of get to the heart of what you're looking
37:32
for. I cause what you're describing
37:35
sounds more like a process like on like you're going through the
37:38
entire business model and you're sort of OK, did they miss this?
37:41
Did they? But are there sort of like
37:43
questions where like the answers like particularly revealing to
37:46
you? I always like them to know a
37:52
heck of a lot more about their market than I do.
37:55
So and I get, and this is not, you know, rocket science.
37:59
I think almost every investor thinks this like if they don't
38:04
have a very strong step sense of the competitive environment and
38:08
the market dynamics and the market size and then really
38:11
thought all of that through. Again, that to me is like
38:16
intellectual laziness that it's just like they're not going to
38:19
win. They've they've got to have,
38:21
they've got to know more. They've got to know something.
38:24
I don't know just from Googling, you know, around before the
38:27
call, you know, they have to have some kind of insight that
38:33
would not have been obvious to me.
38:37
And that comes through, that always comes through in a first
38:40
15 minute call. Like what is your insight?
38:44
Because they've already been operating in the market.
38:48
What is the insight you're taking away from the market?
38:51
And that's me super telling. It's like it's all condensed in
38:55
that answer because it's like it's their intellectual
38:59
wherewithal, their willingness to like push themselves to think
39:04
things through. All of that comes in that
39:07
answer, I think. So if it were one thing I'd
39:10
always inquire about, you know, kind of the overall where you
39:16
fit in the market, how you know how how the external factors
39:23
would be affecting this product or about to dividends marketer
39:25
who had put into market. I'm kind of.
39:28
Curious to hear, you know, from your experience as a lecturer at
39:31
Princeton, what do you think are the recurring challenges or
39:36
misconceptions that you see among either young entrepreneurs
39:40
or aspiring entrepreneurs that you can kind of help steer them
39:44
and in a different direction, kind of put them back on track?
39:48
You mean about venture capital or like overall let's.
39:52
Stick specifically to venture capital, OK?
39:57
Look, I I don't think when I talk to my Princeton students,
40:00
they have no idea what venture capital is, OK?
40:03
I mean, they're 18 years old, some of them.
40:06
So I don't have that many freshmen of my guys.
40:08
OK, so then let's. Let's twist the question and
40:10
have it be more about business in general then, yeah?
40:13
I mean, I think there is the biggest challenge is opening
40:19
their aperture for my students, certainly.
40:22
So their world, think about it, they've had, you know, high
40:26
school, right? Some of them, you know, I've
40:29
taught kids out of COVID, you know, who did high school during
40:33
COVID. So their worlds were super
40:35
small. And and yet, you know, they're a
40:38
place like Princeton. They've obviously achieved
40:41
something great. Like, you know, they are me, my
40:43
students. I have to say that like every
40:45
single one of them is, you know, done something like unbelievably
40:52
world class by the time they get there.
40:54
And that's just the truth of kind of what it takes now, Not
40:57
when I was there, but it's what it takes now.
41:00
So they're kind of superhumans already a little bit, but they
41:05
are, their worlds are very small, you know, and one of my
41:09
challenges as a professor, I think is to open their aperture
41:16
a little bit. So I'll tell you about the
41:18
evolution of my class because I think it really shows shows
41:22
this. So initially I taught a class
41:27
and I gave that about starting anything, starting an
41:31
enterprise, right? And I was like, come up with a
41:35
great idea. We're going to get you through
41:36
it over the course of the semester.
41:38
There's a lot of reading, a lot of Harvard Business School cases
41:40
I throw out there, whatever. And I got things like, you know,
41:45
literally, you know, like toilet seats that automatically go
41:50
down, you know, at a frat house, you know, alcoholic chewing gum.
41:59
I mean, I got crazy like and, and, and by the way, it was
42:04
Princeton. So the the toilet seat guy came
42:06
in with a prototype. So the class he had built the
42:09
thing, he was an engineer and it was like amazing.
42:14
But I didn't think the world needed that.
42:17
What wasn't? Really a problem worth solving,
42:19
right? And I.
42:20
Exactly. And I didn't think and they they
42:22
just weren't opening up their aperture.
42:23
So I changed the class about five years ago.
42:28
I've been teaching for about 7 years.
42:29
I've changed the class about five years ago for them to
42:32
address the UN Sustainable Development Goals, which are
42:35
like 2, ridiculously big, like poverty, hunger, you know,
42:41
gender inequality, climate change, you know, they're just
42:45
like ginormous big ass problems. And now and the same, it's kind
42:51
of the same class, but they have to come up with solution to
42:56
those. Wow, that's asking a lot.
43:01
But I, but I don't ask them to like solve the whole thing.
43:04
Their goal is to solve like 1 little aspect like how do I get
43:10
like simple solutions? I had someone come up and not
43:14
necessarily technical, like a student who was like, you know,
43:18
the valedictorian of her high school class in a rural town in
43:21
the state of Washington. My student, it's like not a, a
43:24
typical profile about one of my students.
43:28
And she was like, my high school had no resources.
43:32
I was very lucky. And my parents cared a lot.
43:35
You know, we were buying books on Amazon.
43:37
They were able to purchase those, you know, but like, we
43:40
had no resources. She came up and one of the
43:43
things was like equality in education.
43:45
And she like devised this whole system for like learning vans to
43:51
go around to these rural schools.
43:54
And she's like building it now and it's so damn simple, but
44:00
it's so genius, right? It's like exactly what the
44:04
students need. They need someone to show up and
44:07
like for free, give them some more motivation to learn.
44:12
So it's stuff like that that like really jazzes me.
44:15
But it also opened their a picture like they're still like
44:19
her drawing from personal experiences, but they're taking
44:23
their personal experiences and kind of broadening them into
44:26
solving bigger problems like equality and education and, you
44:30
know, access to there's others that have done like access to
44:33
food and things like that. Do you like?
44:35
Where the class sits now, or are you already envisioning sort of
44:38
the next evolution of it? You know, it's funny you ask,
44:42
because I am going to working out a little bit this summer.
44:44
I may change some things, but this thing, this thing where
44:46
they try to solve a really big problem, I'm not changing.
44:49
I'm going to write a book about it.
44:52
It's amazing. I love it.
44:53
I get like, you know, really, really smart 18 to 22 year olds
44:59
thinking about the world's biggest problems.
45:01
It's fantastic. Like how long it might be like
45:04
the great perspective. Exactly.
45:06
And like some of them may build it, you know, like, who knows?
45:08
Some of them may build 1. So, you know, it's still early.
45:12
It's like I'm only five years into teaching.
45:14
So you know, 10 years out maybe one of these ideas will get
45:18
built and change things. What is it that you think then,
45:21
that founders get wrong or misunderstand about venture
45:25
capital? I do think that a lot of
45:28
founders view Venture as a check and that's it.
45:31
And they kind of, you know, prefer you to go away.
45:34
None of none of the ones we have because we kind of get for that
45:37
like that's not our model, but you know, and they're they're
45:43
they're look, they're different motivations.
45:46
Let's just call it, right? Like VCs are motivated to, you
45:52
know, have an exit. Relatively, you know the best
45:56
exit possible, but in a relatively, you know, reasonable
46:00
time frame, you have to get your.
46:02
Investors, their return, that's that's sort of how the whole
46:05
model is built. Yeah, absolutely.
46:08
So founders may have a longer time frame and that's actually
46:14
something we vet for. How are they thinking even
46:17
initially, before we write the first check, how are they
46:19
thinking about exiting? Is this going to become a
46:21
lifestyle business for this person once it gets profitable?
46:24
Like, how are they thinking about it?
46:26
Do they really want, you know, a big exit?
46:28
When I hear a founder talking about, you know, I think this
46:32
can be an X whatever size company and it's that's a big
46:37
number. I'm pretty happy about that.
46:39
At least they're aspiring to that reality may change things.
46:43
The world may change things. Oops, I did lose one of my
46:46
things. Excuse me for a second.
46:47
I'm going to go get it at the start of.
46:50
The interview Joy expressed concern that that might happen,
46:53
but we asked that she used the headphones because the audio
46:56
works out better. So I, I, we.
46:58
Roll with it. It's.
46:59
All right, I have. Them on the smallest thing, I
47:01
have really little ears so they always fall out and then playing
47:06
with them the whole time. But you do hear me well.
47:09
So, so there's like a tension, you know, between founders and
47:13
venture capitalists. And I think that's Sophie in
47:22
some ways because there's always this like trade off between, you
47:26
know, profitability and growth and, you know, all this kinds of
47:29
all those kinds of trade-offs you're making kind of at every
47:32
stage when you're dealing with young companies, as we are.
47:36
And we like to get beyond that tension if we can.
47:42
And, you know, we're not like your best friend.
47:45
We're here to offer critique, guidance, sage advice, hopefully
47:51
and capital, right. But I think some founders just
47:58
view it as like, I don't trust these people.
48:01
They're just money, you know, and we don't invest in those
48:04
people. I would say all of our founders
48:06
are not that all of our founders welcome our feedback, welcome
48:11
our introductions. They love our cash, of course,
48:14
but like it's well beyond that. And I would say that there's,
48:18
there's a human element to it too.
48:20
I mean, I, I say this to my class and I say it to the
48:22
founders I talked to. It's a marriage.
48:25
You're once you're on a cap table, it's like really hard to
48:29
get a divorce, right? And so you're there and, you
48:37
know, there's, I know there's a secondary market and we want to
48:39
talk, you know, details about the industry.
48:41
There is a secondary market and stuff.
48:43
But like, you know, you don't really want to go there.
48:46
You want an exit out of, you know, your investment.
48:49
And so it's it's truly a marriage.
48:53
So we're cautious and I hope the founders are cautious about us.
48:57
They should diligence us like crazy.
48:59
We do them and we expect that they do the same about us.
49:04
And then once you're kind of in the marriage, then you kind of
49:06
know what you've got. Joy.
49:08
What's the best decision that you've made for your business so
49:10
far? Linda as my partner for sure.
49:15
That's like the number one best decision.
49:18
Say more about. Linda and how this partnership
49:20
works so well. We're really different.
49:23
I mean, when you look at us, we're both, we're both like
49:26
scholarship kids at Princeton, like we're very similar back
49:28
immigrant parents, scholarship kids at Princeton, like very
49:31
similar, like you would like, you know, looking at us, both
49:35
lawyers like looking at us. You'd be like, oh, you know, but
49:37
we're quite, really quite different.
49:40
And I think we really complement each other.
49:43
You know, Linda's like super brilliant.
49:47
That's good. That's always good.
49:50
But I, I think the biggest, the biggest thing is mutual respect
49:56
for each other's capacities and intellectual capabilities, but
50:01
also like judgement, which is a really big deal.
50:06
And we know we're, you know, 1 might be weaker on some aspects
50:09
of judgement, 1 might be stronger on some aspects of
50:11
judgement. And we really complement each
50:13
other. And, you know, like we fight
50:15
about that all the time. And it's like kind of great.
50:19
I think it's super, super healthy.
50:22
And so I think that by far like, and that can be broadened out as
50:28
a learning moment. I think for the audience, which
50:31
is your team is like your most important asset.
50:35
It goes back to my networking thing with friends and
50:39
colleagues that become your greatest source of inspiration
50:43
and of knowledge, certainly those you work with together as
50:47
a team. And this is like, you know, it's
50:48
just we have analysts at from Columbia Business School work
50:52
with us. But like, it's mostly her and I
50:54
running this fund right now and it's, you know, every day.
50:58
And if we didn't have that kind of mutual respect, I think it
51:01
would be pretty tough. So I think that was like, by far
51:05
the best decision. I think we took money from
51:11
really great people and we pursued them dog doggedly.
51:18
Is that a word? I didn't, I never said that
51:19
word. I'd only read that word.
51:21
So we, we, we pursued them pretty carefully.
51:27
Like we wanted to have like look, it was no picnic
51:32
fundraising, but in the end we did have some choice and we
51:38
wanted to have people who you knew could add a lot of value in
51:41
addition to writing a check. And for the most part, that is
51:45
the case of all of our LP's. And there is not a single LP
51:51
pretty much in our in our entire sort of ecosystem that I
51:55
wouldn't that I would hesitate to call and you know, ask a
52:00
question, ask a favor, ask for an introduction, sort of like
52:06
diversifying and being really careful about who's in that mix.
52:10
I think was also like to the extent it was a decision, which
52:13
it was to a certain extent was also really good.
52:17
And there are other like sort of nitty gritty wittles, good and
52:22
bad decisions you know we made along the way, but for the most
52:25
part good. For the most part, good so.
52:28
Obviously you value your partnership a great deal.
52:31
It's a big part of the reason why you think you're having the
52:33
success that you're having as you're looking to invest in
52:37
different opportunities. Does it matter to you if it's a
52:41
solo founder versus you know Co founders does that?
52:44
Yeah, that's an interesting. Question.
52:46
Yeah. So I think being a solo founder
52:50
is really tough. And I mean, frankly this is when
52:57
I really can't talk about. We're about to make an
52:58
investment in a solo founder and it's one of our key and and we
53:03
got through it, but it's one of our key kind of risk factors in
53:08
the deal. Frankly, I think everyone in
53:11
business needs really a true thought partner.
53:14
I, I can't imagine running a business without a true thought
53:18
partner. And whether that's a Co founder
53:21
or #2 or #3 or #4 whatever it is, team is really, I mean it
53:27
just comes back to the same line.
53:28
Team. No one can do this alone.
53:31
Team is super important. So if it is a solo founder who
53:35
can attract the right team, we're super comfortable.
53:41
And if there's evidence of that, we're fine.
53:44
You know, not everyone has, you know, gets lucky to find, you
53:48
know, finding a great Co founder is a, is a, is lightning in a
53:50
bottle. It's like such a lucky thing to
53:53
have happen. But a really good founder can
53:57
always, you know, in our views, always find the right team
54:00
around them. So they built a solid team and
54:02
just some fraction with that team that sort of alleviates
54:07
some of that. But my view is no one can do
54:09
this alone. I, I teach that in my class too.
54:11
I'm like, you know, the the difference between like an
54:15
inventor and an innovator is team.
54:20
Like you can invent in your basement something, but to like
54:23
get it out in the world and have other people use it and iterate
54:27
it so that the market likes it. Like you just need a team.
54:30
You need other people. Yeah, you.
54:33
Can pick each other up when you know when 1's up, the other one
54:36
is. It's all right to be down 'cause
54:38
you, you're sort of on that teeter totter ride with each
54:40
other. And, and, and that kind of leads
54:42
into my next question. You know, you, you hit these
54:45
bumps in the road, you know, whether in personal life or in
54:48
business. I I'd be curious to hear about a
54:51
serious challenge, joy that you have overcome, how you got
54:56
through it, and what you've learned through the process.
55:00
So the I, we, we talked about this a little bit before.
55:03
So what I will reveal about the truly serious challenges I've
55:07
had have had to do with kind of being the only woman in the room
55:12
and and that has been very serious at times.
55:16
I would say I am, I mean, I guess the podcast, but if you
55:19
can see me, I'm blonde. I'm also short.
55:22
I'm a little person and there are assumptions about me when I
55:27
walk into them. And I know that I've had my that
55:29
my whole career. I'm well aware of it.
55:33
Some, you know, groups are accept that more easily and I'm
55:40
able to get beyond that more easily than others.
55:42
I have found every time how I've fought against that is over
55:47
prepared. You know, the typical things you
55:49
do, you're like crazily more prepared than anybody else in
55:54
the room. Like that's like you have to be
55:56
that. Like that just goes without
55:58
saying. But sometimes you just can't
56:00
fight it, and I think you have to realize when that's the case
56:05
and get out because some people really are just not going to
56:09
give you a chance and they're not going to change.
56:11
And I think that's OK. Have you seen the?
56:15
Landscape shifting at all? Or do you feel like this is
56:18
still the case for you sometimes?
56:20
For me, not anymore because I'm so damn old and experienced at
56:25
this point. You know, when I was certainly
56:26
when I was younger, I was much, much more of a challenge at this
56:30
point. Certainly, you know, with
56:32
investors for the fun. The fact that we were two women
56:35
for sure, you know, get people pause for sure, for sure.
56:38
I mean, it made fundraising. We knew it though.
56:40
We knew going into this why we were raising the fund.
56:42
We were we're out there to do something easy.
56:44
We're doubt to do something very, very, very hard.
56:48
And we knew it and that was OK. And that's why rejection was
56:51
like almost like we would laugh. Well, that went terribly on to
56:55
the next call. You know, it was like like that
56:58
was really bad. Can you believe they said that?
57:01
You know, like, and we would just go on to the next call and
57:05
that's having a great partner. You know, we could just like
57:07
literally laugh it off 'cause we expect your.
57:09
Your humor becomes your armor. That's great and just.
57:12
Like we were senior enough and seasoned enough and frankly
57:17
financially secure enough to be like, OK, they just said that,
57:23
move on, you know, like, whatever.
57:27
So I'm not finding it as much other than when it's just like,
57:31
laughably obvious and I walk out, you know, like, whatever.
57:35
I don't really know the answer. You know, I am in tune with my
57:39
students, with my daughter. I get the sense that things are
57:45
a bit better. You know, obviously we've had
57:50
sort of macro movements that have affected it.
57:53
And there's like waves of things going back and forth around
57:57
that, right. We had me too now sort of a
57:59
backlash against me too. And, you know, no, no comment on
58:03
that politically at all. Just to say that that's the
58:05
macro. And so, you know, maybe people
58:12
who were, you know, reacting to me too are reacting differently
58:17
now. I don't know.
58:19
I mean, I really don't know. I am hoping that this becomes
58:26
less of an issue, but I to say that it has not affected my
58:29
career would be crazy. It absolutely has.
58:34
I talk to my husband about it all the time 'cause, you know,
58:38
he's part of like the old boy thing.
58:42
I mean, we, I've been married for 32 years, totally happy.
58:45
Everything's great. That's truly, truly.
58:47
I don't just say that lightly. I'm very, very, very when you
58:49
kind. Of run into this now joy, you
58:52
can kind of. Laugh it off.
58:54
But in the early years when you were less experienced and OK,
58:58
I'm going to say how, how do you get this cried in the.
59:00
Bathroom cried in the bathroom. Like, cried.
59:04
Yeah, like, if you want to talk, like vulnerable, literally tears
59:08
in the bathroom, composing myself, splashing water on my
59:12
face, like, I cannot believe that just happened and it did.
59:16
And how am I going to go back out there into that meeting
59:19
again? But I think I was sort of like,
59:23
it felt really unfair and like I was mad about it.
59:32
I think they would tear the frustration, but also a little
59:35
bit sad. Like, you know, there had been a
59:42
lot of movement in the right direction, but yet it but yet it
59:45
persists, right? And I think that was a lot of
59:48
like when Linda and I got to talking about this fund and
59:51
starting this fund, it was the yet it persists thing that we
59:56
saw in the data. And that for sure we had both
1:00:00
experienced throughout our careers that we were like, we
1:00:04
were just mad about it too. You know, we were just like,
1:00:07
really like, we're just going to prove this wrong.
1:00:11
We're going to do everything we can to prove this wrong.
1:00:14
And the only way to do that is to be really successful.
1:00:19
And that's what we're trying to be.
1:00:21
And that's like, that's like being the most prepared, being,
1:00:24
you know, working harder, staying up the extra hour,
1:00:27
waking up the extra hour early. There's the whole other life
1:00:30
strategy. I have get up early.
1:00:33
Everybody out there, get up early, get up early.
1:00:35
Why is that? Look, I mean, everyone has a
1:00:39
different bio rhythm. I'm super clear in the morning
1:00:41
in a way that I am definitely not later in the day.
1:00:44
And so, you know, for me, moving my alarm from 7:00 to 6:00 about
1:00:50
15 or so years ago was like life changing.
1:00:54
And I'm trying to do, I know when as Paltrow talks about this
1:00:58
too, I think she's a 530 person. But I, I, I don't, fives are not
1:01:01
good for me, but maybe, maybe I'll get there.
1:01:04
But like 6 is fine and six became really fine.
1:01:08
So, and I just like, you know, when my kids were home, that was
1:01:16
a time when the house was quiet too, which is always helpful
1:01:21
before, like the craziness of like get them up, get them out.
1:01:26
Which by the way, I, I know I mentioned my husband before,
1:01:31
could not have done without him, was absolutely a partner in all
1:01:34
of that, which is my other advice.
1:01:37
If you want to do the family thing and the career thing, no
1:01:41
matter what gender you are, figure out to do it with the
1:01:44
right person, whoever that person may be.
1:01:47
Because really it's really hard without it.
1:01:53
Really, I mean, for me, it would have been really hard without
1:01:57
it, let's put it that way. I think for most people, really
1:01:59
hard without it. So life hack, get up early.
1:02:03
But the, the the sort of channelling the frustration and
1:02:08
almost like sort of disappointment in that, you
1:02:14
know, things haven't really changed that much into something
1:02:19
productive. Like the 98 is sort of a like
1:02:23
like a big challenge of my life right now and like a really fun
1:02:28
one. And I feel super lucky to be
1:02:31
doing that. It is.
1:02:32
Interesting. You know, as you talk about sort
1:02:34
of the macro environment kind of shifting back and forth and it's
1:02:39
a little bit harder to maybe put a finger on and measure how does
1:02:43
that macro shift, you know, affect things at the micro
1:02:47
level, You know, and, and you're a little bit of insight into
1:02:51
that and it doesn't affect you as much now you've got more
1:02:54
experience. And so that kind of comes with
1:02:56
an, I don't know, an extra set of resilience or, or you become
1:03:01
a little bit more impervious to, to some of those exterior
1:03:05
criticisms. But it hasn't gone away because,
1:03:08
you know, we look at the the numbers in terms of, you know,
1:03:11
how much venture capital gets invested in firms that, you
1:03:15
know, have women at the top. And it's there's certainly a
1:03:18
disparity there. So there's a lot, a lot of work
1:03:22
left for you to do, right? And and.
1:03:24
Again, I think the only the only way to do this is to win is to
1:03:31
be good at it and to prove the opportunity for success in
1:03:36
investing in one. That's the only thing we can do.
1:03:40
So, Joe I. Just got truly, Yeah, sorry.
1:03:43
Go ahead, finish that thought. No, no, I mean.
1:03:46
Truly, like the only, I mean, the world is run by guys
1:03:51
punching numbers right now, right?
1:03:53
I mean, that's kind of the truth.
1:03:55
And So what we need to do is show them the numbers and say
1:04:00
you're a fool not to invest in a woman.
1:04:03
You're just a fool. And we're going to prove that.
1:04:06
And that's what we're. You know that.
1:04:07
Data that you talked about early on, you know that that shows
1:04:11
that when you've got women at the top of a company, they're
1:04:15
doing a better job returning investment to their investors
1:04:19
more quickly and, you know, at higher valuations.
1:04:22
I think that's pretty compelling data.
1:04:25
And so the more use cases, the more case studies that you can
1:04:29
get to sort of continue to compound that data, I think is
1:04:32
it's going to go a long way to to helping the cause.
1:04:34
Yeah, yeah. But what one last question for
1:04:37
you before I ask it, Joy. I want to let people know the
1:04:40
best way to get in touch with you or follow your story.
1:04:43
What would that be? Well, the 98 is on LinkedIn is a
1:04:49
good way we post, sort of. We're not great at it.
1:04:55
Honestly, we're so heads down focused on investing in the
1:04:57
business right now. We've been like not so great at
1:05:00
communication, something we need to work on.
1:05:03
So they, but they can just e-mail me Joy at the 98 super
1:05:07
simple joy@the98.com. We'll include a.
1:05:10
Link to the LinkedIn profile and Joy's e-mail in the show notes.
1:05:16
But last question for you, Joy. We've had a great conversation
1:05:18
here today. I hope you and I stay in touch.
1:05:20
And a year from now, we sit down and you're celebrating something
1:05:23
you're super excited about. What's that one thing?
1:05:30
Business thing, right? So it's a lot of things to
1:05:34
celebrate in life, but yeah, no. So from a business perspective,
1:05:38
certainly closing a second fund would be like something to truly
1:05:42
celebrate. We just want to or more capital
1:05:46
into these opportunities. So hopefully that will happen.
1:05:52
That's our goal. I put myself out there saying
1:05:55
that we'll see if we can do it. Hopefully we can.
1:05:59
Absolutely. Would love to see maybe one of
1:06:02
the companies in an exit might be too early a year from now.
1:06:05
They're, you know, still pretty young companies, but like an
1:06:09
appropriate exit at the appropriate time would be great.
1:06:13
You know terrific lots of other things in life, but for sure
1:06:17
those two things would be amazing.
1:06:20
Well, joy I. Want to be the first one to
1:06:21
thank you for sharing both your time and your story with us
1:06:24
today. I really appreciate it.
1:06:26
Oh, it's been. Lovely talking to you.
1:06:27
Thank you so much for the opportunity.
1:06:29
Really, folks, that's a. Wrap on another episode of the
1:06:32
Inspired Stories podcast. Thanks for learning with us
1:06:35
today.