Footwork’s Secret Sauce | Mike Smith and Nikhil Basu Trivedi
The Peel with Turner Novak
Turner Novak
4.6 • 11 Ratings
🗓️ 26 March 2026
⏱️ 92 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Nikhil Basu Trivedi and Mike Smith are the Co-founders of Footwork where they invest up to $15 million in Seed and Series A rounds. This is the first time they've ever sat down to record a conversation together on video.
We talk about starting the firm in 2020, their secret sauce for working with founders, lessons investing in Canva’s Seed round, scaling Stitch Fix from $0 to $1B revenue in five years with $17m in capital, why AI will enable a new wave of entrepreneurship, and how public company boards are discussing AI today.
Thank you to Tony Staehelin, Andrew Riesen, and Hunter Walk for helping brainstorming topics for the conversation.
Thank you to Flex for supporting this episode.
Sign-up for Flex Elite with code TURNER, get $1,000: https://form.typeform.com/to/Rx9rTjFz
Timestamps:
(0:24) Starting Footwork from a tweet in 2021
(3:11) Difference between startup and public company boards
(4:52) 20-40% of board meetings are now about AI
(7:48) How Footwork’s investing in AI today
(10:37) AI will enable millions of new entrepreneurs
(15:04) 37 questions to ask when starting a VC firm
(17:40) Importance of differences
(23:08) The pace of VC is faster than operating
(26:26) Footwork’s secret sauce (2x board seats, 1-pager)
(31:59) Investors should talk to and help employees
(37:05) Building an equal-carry partnership
(39:33) How Footwork makes decisions
(43:21) Navigating short-termism and politics in VC firms
(51:18) “You’re only as good as your next investment”
(53:30) Characteristics of great founders
(58:13) Canva’s Seed pitch in 2014
(1:02:54) Joining Stitch Fix as 4th employee
(1:06:40) Scaling Stitch Fix $0 to $1B revenue in five years with $17m in capital
(1:16:48) Raising from Bill Gurley after a failed Series A
(1:19:40) Footwork’s office near YC
(1:22:10) Opportunities in consumer health
(1:25:20) Using flash mobs to win deals
(1:26:15) Dad life
Referenced
Footwork: https://www.footwork.vc/
Anything: https://www.anything.com/
Table22: https://www.table22.com/
Canva: https://www.canva.com/
Stitch Fix: https://www.stitchfix.com/
Honeydew: https://www.honeydew.com/
Follow Mike
Twitter: https://x.com/msmith492
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelcsmith1
Follow Nikhil
Twitter: https://x.com/nbt
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nikhilbt
Substack: https://nbt.substack.com/
Follow Turner
Twitter: https://twitter.com/TurnerNovak
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/turnernovak
Subscribe to my newsletter to get every episode + the transcript in your inbox every week: https://www.thespl.it/
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the show. |
| 0:03.5 | Thanks so much, Turner. |
| 0:04.8 | Thanks for having us. |
| 0:05.8 | Yeah. |
| 0:06.8 | This will be really fun. |
| 0:08.0 | We were just talking about how you guys recently started, or actually, actually not that recently, |
| 0:12.9 | started your firm Fo Work. |
| 0:15.1 | It was 2021. |
| 0:17.1 | What was kind of the thinking around starting this thing, coming together, and building a fun together? |
| 0:24.4 | Yeah, today is actually the fifth anniversary of us setting up the management company for Footbook, January 20th of 2021. |
| 0:31.3 | And the story of how we came together is I had been thinking for some time about going off and starting a new firm. |
| 0:39.4 | I'd been at this firm Shast Adventures for eight years. I had a great chapter there, but for a number |
| 0:44.9 | of reasons was thinking about going off and starting a firm. And I had a list of questions that I wanted |
| 0:51.7 | to go through with potential partners, a blueprint for what a new firm could look like, |
| 0:56.0 | and a set of potential partners to go work with, |
| 0:59.3 | all of whom I'd been on boards with before, |
| 1:01.9 | I'd gotten know pretty well over the years. |
| 1:04.1 | And Mike was basically the wild card on that list, |
| 1:06.2 | because he was the only one that wasn't already in venture investing. |
| 1:10.1 | He was at a company, Stitch Fix. |
| 1:12.9 | And I think what we thought was that we were pretty aligned on a number of core values, |
| 1:19.8 | but also very different skill sets. |
... |
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