20VC: Top 3 Considerations When Evaluating Consumer Businesses Today | 700 Meetings, 70 LPs, 2 Years, What It Takes To Raise a First Time Fund| The Power of The Female Network In Action Today with Anu Duggal, Founding Partner @ Female Founders Fund
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
The Twenty Minute VC
4.4 • 637 Ratings
🗓️ 10 December 2018
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Anu Duggal is the Founding Partner @ Female Founders Fund, a leading early-stage fund investing in female-founded technology companies. Within their incredible portfolio is the likes of Zola, Rent The Runway, Maven Clinic, Tala and previous guest, Rockets of Awesome. They also have the most incredible mentor network including the founders of Stitchfix, Care.com, Zola and Tala. Prior to founding Female Founders Fund Anu was CEO @ Doonya, a dance fitness and media company inspired by Bollywood and fun fitness. Before that, Anu was Founder @ Exclusively.In where she headed up New Business Development.
In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How Anu made her way into the world of VC with her founding of Female Founders Fund?
2.) What does Anu mean when she says she likes to focus on "non-obvious opportunities"? What are some clear examples of this? These non-obvious opportunities often appear to have smaller markets, how does Anu think about market size and evolution when investing? Can one blame male VCs for sometimes not identifying with the problem set being solved? What can be done to solve this problem?
3.) What 3 elements do Anu most look for when investing in consumer today? How does Anu respond to the statement that consumer may produce healthy revenue but at the end of the day they will never really produce venture return and be sold for 1.6x EBITDA? How does Anu assess the state of the M&A market today in the world of CPGs?
4.) How was the first fundraising for Female Founders Fund? What did the process look like in terms of amount of meetings, total committed LPs and duration spent raising? What were the common pushbacks from LPs in the fundraise? What did Anu do well that she would do again? How did the raise of the 2nd fund compare to the raise of Fund I?
5.) What does Anu mean when she states, "the power of the female network"? How has Anu seen this work in the real world? How does this allow Anu to see the best deals? How does Anu think about scaling check size and ownership with fund II? How does Anu think about reserve allocation when re-investing?
Items Mentioned In Today’s Show:
Anu’s Fave Book: Educated: The international bestselling memoir
Anu’s Most Recent Investment: Co-Star, Hyper-Personalized, Real Time Horoscopes
As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Anu on Twitter here!
Likewise, you can follow Harry on Instagram here for mojito madness and all things 20VC.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | We are back for another week in the world of the 20 minute BC with me, Harry Stebbings, |
| 0:03.4 | and I would love to welcome you behind the scenes as we come to Christmas to see the festivities |
| 0:07.3 | at the 20 minute VC. You can do that on Instagram at H. Stebbing's 1996 with two Bs. It'd be great |
| 0:13.5 | to see you there. But to the show today, and a guest that I've respected immensely, |
| 0:17.2 | and wanting to have on the show for a very long time now. So with that, I'm thrilled to welcome Anu Dugel, founding partner at Female Founders Fund, a leading early stage fund investing in |
| 0:25.6 | female founded technology companies. Within their incredible portfolio is the likes of Zola, |
| 0:30.2 | rent the runway, Maven Clinic, Tala, and previous guest, Rockets of Awesome. They also have the most |
| 0:35.1 | incredible mentor network, including the founders of Stitchfix, Care.com, Zola and Tala. |
| 0:40.5 | And prior to founding female founders fund, Anu was CEO of Dunya, a dance, fitness and media company inspired by Bollywood and Fun Fitness. |
| 0:47.9 | Before that, Annu was founder at exclusively, where she headed up new business development. |
| 0:52.2 | And I'd also want to say a huge thank you to both Shanlin Mara Zola and Jacob Gibson |
| 0:56.0 | for the fantastic questions suggestions today for Anu. |
| 0:58.8 | I really do so appreciate that and it means a lot to meet. |
| 1:01.7 | But before we dive into the show today, as a VC, making new investments and working with |
| 1:05.8 | founders is your top priority. |
| 1:07.5 | So instead of worrying about scaling your back office, you need a fund administration |
| 1:11.0 | partner. Much like how Carter changed how private companies manage their cap tables and 409A valuations, |
| 1:17.1 | Carter are now doing the same for fund admin. With Carter's new, modern fund admin software and |
| 1:21.8 | services, you get a real-time dashboard of your general ledger, you can securely share info |
| 1:26.1 | with your LPs and issue capital |
| 1:27.8 | calls all from the same platform. You accept securities and request cap table access. So essentially, |
| 1:33.3 | Carter simplifies how startups and investors manage equity, fund admin and valuations, and you must |
... |
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