Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and Bloomberg
Speaker 1: Quick Takes Tim Stinovic on Bloomberg Radio. Earlier this month,
Speaker 1: Bloomberg was at with a story about the bulk of
Speaker 1: US venture investors and how they want to back minority
Speaker 1: run firms and similarly invest in businesses founded by women women.
Speaker 1: The data is coming from the private equity firm Color Capital,
Speaker 1: and our next guest definitely has some thoughts on this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: really eager to chat with Catherine Finny. She's founder and
Speaker 1: a CEO at Genius Guild. Genius Guild is a VC
Speaker 1: cap VC fund, also a studio. Catherine joins us to
Speaker 1: be assumed from Chicago. She's also the author of the
Speaker 1: great book Build the Damn Thing, How to start a
Speaker 1: successful business if you're not a rich white guy. Catherine,
Speaker 1: good to have you with us. It's great to be
Speaker 1: with you all. We love the title. Well, can you
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about the title and and and
Speaker 1: and coming up with with something like that because it
Speaker 1: certainly catches people. Yeah, you know, the title is what
Speaker 1: I say often when I meet with entrepreneurs, so kind
Speaker 1: of being out in you know, the talking conference circuit,
Speaker 1: I would often get entrepreneurs coming to me pitching UM
Speaker 1: and they would give these great ideas and you know,
Speaker 1: really well thought out ideas, and I would ask, okay,
Speaker 1: well let me see a demo. Do you have something
Speaker 1: on your phone I could see and they would say, oh, well,
Speaker 1: I haven't quite built it yet, and they would go
Speaker 1: into all these reasons why I did, and I would say, well,
Speaker 1: just build a damn thing, like what are you waiting for?
Speaker 1: But that's but that's that's like what venture capitalists or
Speaker 1: that's what I should say. Founders always say needs to happen, right,
Speaker 1: you need to have this minimal viable product in order
Speaker 1: to build on it and iterate right, yes, you have
Speaker 1: to start off with something um in order to get
Speaker 1: feedback and actually in building your minimal viable product, which
Speaker 1: is really the simplest version of your product that you
Speaker 1: can build to be able to put out into market
Speaker 1: or to show the people to get feedback, it allows
Speaker 1: you to get information, get thoughts, get feedback before spending
Speaker 1: too much money in building your product. And that's very
Speaker 1: very important. Oftentimes founders, particularly founders who come from communities
Speaker 1: that are outside of you know, traditional communities in the
Speaker 1: startups will spend tons and tons of money tap into
Speaker 1: their four one k um to build these world bust
Speaker 1: prototypes without knowing whether or not there's a market for it.
Speaker 1: And it really goes back to this concept of product
Speaker 1: market fit. Does your product have a market? Does your
Speaker 1: product have people who want to pay for it? And
Speaker 1: so your goal with your minimal viable product is to
Speaker 1: find out this product market fit without spending a ton
Speaker 1: of money. You know, It's interesting what I love also
Speaker 1: about this book and I feel like this mirror some
Speaker 1: of the conversations. Tim and I were just back from Dallas,
Speaker 1: Texas UM at the Inside conference talking with financial professionals,
Speaker 1: but diversity inclusion came up big time, and one of
Speaker 1: our chats specifically was about how you have to have
Speaker 1: diverse investment advisors to reach out to the diverse investor
Speaker 1: spent public that is out there who are increasingly being
Speaker 1: left behind. UM. Talk to us about that when you know,
Speaker 1: in terms of businesses that are being left behind and
Speaker 1: markets that are being left behind because we're not tapping
Speaker 1: into a more diverse consumer marketplace and not supporting diverse
Speaker 1: entrepreneurs who see the need for that. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: you're leaving money on the table, right, UM one, and
Speaker 1: for new entrepreneurs or Latino UM, black women are one
Speaker 1: of the fastest growing groups of entrepreneurs. UH, you are
Speaker 1: leaving money on the table when you're not reaching out
Speaker 1: to these markets. This is the new future, and so
Speaker 1: it's really important to be able to understand how to
Speaker 1: reach these markets and then in the world of startups,
Speaker 1: how to work with these startups coming from these markets,
Speaker 1: mostly because these startups are tapping into new areas and
Speaker 1: new opportunities for growth that you may not be able
Speaker 1: to access or even understand if you're not part of
Speaker 1: those communities. So by investing in them and by getting
Speaker 1: to know these amazing founders, you're actually giving yourself more
Speaker 1: diversification within your own portfolio. All Right. I want to
Speaker 1: be provocative because I love that you lay it out
Speaker 1: there and thanks to kind of sharing some materials with us. UM.
Speaker 1: You talk about army readers with responses to investors who
Speaker 1: have told her quote, great pitch, but I just don't
Speaker 1: do black women. I mean, that happens. That's a reality, right,
Speaker 1: it happened to me. We'll tell us, all right, so
Speaker 1: tell us about that. Well, I think you know and
Speaker 1: It's been well documented inventure capital about the pattern matching
Speaker 1: right of this idea of because every successful founder I've
Speaker 1: invested in was, you know, a twenty five year old
Speaker 1: white guy from Stanford, that means that every successful founder
Speaker 1: is going to be a twenty five year old white
Speaker 1: guy from Stanford UM. What is interesting about that is
Speaker 1: the inherent fallacy, which is it also means that all
Speaker 1: your failed investments also came from twenty five year o
Speaker 1: white guys from Stanford UM. And so what happens is
Speaker 1: when someone like myself, for woman, or a diverse sounds
Speaker 1: nor shows up, it's kind of like, you know, this anomaly, like,
Speaker 1: oh my gosh, you're here. And so we often find,
Speaker 1: you know, in the our meeting we get with a
Speaker 1: potential investor that forty five minutes of that is just
Speaker 1: explaining how we got into the door. They're so fascinated
Speaker 1: by us in our history that we only get about
Speaker 1: fifteen minutes to actually talk about our business, which is
Speaker 1: what we're there to talk about. And so it becomes
Speaker 1: really hard to be able to pitch when people don't
Speaker 1: see you as a business or they completely don't understand
Speaker 1: the business opportunity, and no matter what you say, no
Speaker 1: matter what type of data you have, your metrics, the
Speaker 1: total addressable market, you know, all those great things that
Speaker 1: you know investors say they love to hear um. They
Speaker 1: don't hear it because they're so sort of distraught, distracted
Speaker 1: by you and your presence and so, and that definitely happens.
Speaker 1: I think as a diverse entrepreneur, though, the goal is
Speaker 1: always to redirect. Right, Hey, hang on for a second.
Speaker 1: We gotta a little bit of news. But we're gonna
Speaker 1: come back and continue with Katherine Finney. She's founder in
Speaker 1: chief executive officer of Genus Guild. We're talking about her
Speaker 1: book love the title Build the Damn Thing, How to
Speaker 1: Start a successful business if You're not a rich white guy.
Speaker 1: I want to get right back to our guest, Catherine Finny.
Speaker 1: She's founder and CEO of Genius Guild as a venture
Speaker 1: capital firm. Uh, and she joins us once again via
Speaker 1: zoom from Chicago. Catherine, I want to get to Chicago
Speaker 1: here and talk a little bit about venture capital in Chicago,
Speaker 1: because when we think about VC, it's so often in
Speaker 1: the context of California. And you mentioned that, you know,
Speaker 1: twenty five year old white guy Stanford Grad as being
Speaker 1: sort of the archetypal tech founder. Um or we talked
Speaker 1: about in the context of New York, what are would
Speaker 1: you say that venture capitalists who are isolated to those
Speaker 1: areas of the country miss out by not being in Chicago,
Speaker 1: You missed out a new opportunities in new markets, right, um.
Speaker 1: And there's a lot of VC firms now they're starting
Speaker 1: to pay attention, not just Genius Guild and what we're
Speaker 1: doing here, but also you know, Steve Kase and Revolution
Speaker 1: and Rise of the Rest has been for several years
Speaker 1: going around sort of Middle America outside of the cos
Speaker 1: um and and investing heavily in amazing startups in these
Speaker 1: sort of places. And so there's a lot of opportunities. Um.
Speaker 1: A lot of great companies are coming out, companies are
Speaker 1: really solving some interesting challenges. There's a lot of cybertech
Speaker 1: companies here who are particularly in Chicago, who are solving cybersolution.
Speaker 1: There's a number of companies around food in the future
Speaker 1: of food that are also in sort of the Midwest region,
Speaker 1: which is also very interesting. It kind of makes sense
Speaker 1: because we're the bread basket of America. But so there's
Speaker 1: a lot of emerging opportunities here that I think people
Speaker 1: tend to overlook because again we're in the middle of
Speaker 1: America and and sort of people are not coming here
Speaker 1: to see. But I welcome everyone that comes to Chicago
Speaker 1: and see what we have here. Where the founders that
Speaker 1: that you invested, or at least that are pitching to you,
Speaker 1: because you're not, of course investing in every founder that's
Speaker 1: pitching to you. What are their backgrounds typically and are
Speaker 1: they coming out of school university, are they coming from
Speaker 1: established firms? What what's a typical uh startup founder who's
Speaker 1: looking for funding from you? Yeah, and so our founders
Speaker 1: have really strong domain knowledge and experience and what they're building.
Speaker 1: Um So, one of our companies, Health in her Hugh
Speaker 1: it's kind of WebMD for black women and experienced enormous
Speaker 1: growth over the past couple of years. Was founded by
Speaker 1: a black woman with a public health degree who also
Speaker 1: happens to be UM what I have too, which is
Speaker 1: a public health degree as an epidemiologist. UM. We have
Speaker 1: founders who have working in the creator economy, who also
Speaker 1: were creators themselves or worked in the agency side, so
Speaker 1: they have experience working with creators and understanding the opportunities there.
Speaker 1: We have companies that are working in supplier diversity chains
Speaker 1: and the supply chain and diversifying that who have tons
Speaker 1: of experience working in the supply chain. And we also
Speaker 1: have invested in a couple of other funds as well.
Speaker 1: There also are led by general partners who have experienced
Speaker 1: either in the sectors that they're investing in and or
Speaker 1: coming from really top nodge to venture funds. You know,
Speaker 1: I have to first ask you what is it about
Speaker 1: Voldemort today? Because Tim O'Brien of our team, our opinion team,
Speaker 1: has quoted tweeted out a picture of him in connection
Speaker 1: with pardoning. And then I love in your book, Uh
Speaker 1: that says you've gone from standing up to the Voldemort's
Speaker 1: venture capital to leading around multimillion dollar fund. Um, I
Speaker 1: just love it. I mean, was it it was that bad?
Speaker 1: I mean that's very hard. Watched Harry Potter and been
Speaker 1: terrified by the evil villain of Voldemort, Like that's terrible.
Speaker 1: It was that bad. And I talked about in the book, Um,
Speaker 1: you know what it was like in the early two
Speaker 1: thousand's and I think some of us kind of forget
Speaker 1: because it's so long ago, but they're really was not
Speaker 1: very many women and definitely not very many women of color,
Speaker 1: And so it was this atmosphere where people didn't have
Speaker 1: just low expectations, they had no expectations of me. And
Speaker 1: being a lifelong OVERACHIEVERMER, that was incredibly difficult for me
Speaker 1: to be in a situation where people didn't think I
Speaker 1: just couldn't do it. And so I had to develop tools, um,
Speaker 1: and they had to develop ways in want you to
Speaker 1: get around that, and a lot of those ways I
Speaker 1: share in the book I love It You do. It's
Speaker 1: really great how to and really working people, walking people
Speaker 1: through all of the processes to our procedures to build
Speaker 1: their own successful business. It's interesting to you know, in
Speaker 1: venture capital and you know, like you said, it's this
Speaker 1: isn't a new story. We've written about it a lot
Speaker 1: of Bloomberg, but even like women venture capitalists not investing
Speaker 1: in women led companies. And I find it funny because
Speaker 1: we just talked with Tory Birch Embrace Ambition. She had
Speaker 1: a big summit this week, but she also has been
Speaker 1: about specifically, you know, providing money for female entrepreneurs and um,
Speaker 1: what is it about though that women in Silicon Valley
Speaker 1: weren't backing other women. Was it just the pressure of
Speaker 1: the firm. Well, there's almost a tax that you pay.
Speaker 1: So if you're a woman investor and you invest in women, um,
Speaker 1: there's almost like a tax that you pay that perhaps
Speaker 1: you're not able to spot great investments, right, but the
Speaker 1: understanding thing that women are not great investments, right, And
Speaker 1: so it's almost a tax that is for any uh
Speaker 1: VC who falls outside of the norm that if you
Speaker 1: tend to over index your investments in whatever group that
Speaker 1: you identify with, that somehow you're creating favoritisms, somehow you're
Speaker 1: not investing in them because you see opportunities um, that
Speaker 1: you're somehow not as greative an investor. And that's actually documented.
Speaker 1: There's been research has come out there's a penalty, um,
Speaker 1: not only for the VC, but there's also a penalty
Speaker 1: that's paid for female founders who raise for a significant
Speaker 1: amount of their rounds from female investors. And so that
Speaker 1: penalty is true, um, and that causes marginalized investors so
Speaker 1: sometimes not invest as much as they would and the
Speaker 1: ups that they understand in the markets that they understand.
Speaker 1: All right, great book, as we said, great titles, So
Speaker 1: all right, we just have a few seconds left here.
Speaker 1: If you had one piece of advice for someone who
Speaker 1: wants to start a successful business, how should they what's
Speaker 1: the first thing that they've got to do. Build it
Speaker 1: and get it out there, test it, take the feedback
Speaker 1: and build it again. All right, Well, listen, this has
Speaker 1: been so much fun. Stay in touch. Love to hear
Speaker 1: more too, about your VC investing going forward. Always UM
Speaker 1: to to hear about kind of where you're going. Catherine Finney,
Speaker 1: founder and chief executive Officer of Gina's Guild. She is
Speaker 1: a VC investor, She's built her own business and now
Speaker 1: she's sharing what she's learned with others. It's all in
Speaker 1: her book, Build the damn Thing, How to Start a
Speaker 1: Successful Business if you are not a rich white guy.
Speaker 1: Great title, yeah, great title, but in great very you know,
Speaker 1: advice laying it out for you know, other people who
Speaker 1: are looking to start their business, women, people of color, minorities. UM,
Speaker 1: just trying to figure it out.