Paige Doherty, co-founder and managing partner of Behind Genius Ventures, joins Vlad Cazacu, co-founder and CEO of Flowlie, to discuss her journey from student of the venture ecosystem to the youngest-ever fund GP. In this episode, we unpack Paige's content creation strategy, the early syndication days, and the first LP check.
Paige Doherty, co-founder and managing partner of Behind Genius Ventures, joins Vlad Cazacu, co-founder and CEO of Flowlie, to discuss her journey from student of the venture ecosystem to the youngest-ever fund GP. In this episode, we unpack Paige's content creation strategy, the early syndication days, and the first LP check.
You can find Paige Doherty on X at https://twitter.com/paigefinnn and learn more about Behind Genius Ventures at https://www.behindgeniusventures.com/.
Learn more about Flowlie and how the platform can help you screen deals faster and discover the right connections from your network at https://www.flowlie.com.
Stay up-to-date with all our episodes by checking our website at https://www.thevcarchitects.com, following us on Twitter at https://twitter.com/thevcarchitects, and on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/thevcarchitects.
The VC Architects (Ep. 7) - Paige Doherty (Behind Genius Ventures)
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Paige Doherty: [00:00:00] My name is Paige Finn Doherty. I'm the founding partner of Behind Genius Ventures, an early stage venture firm focused on investing in pre seed and seed stage founders building at the future of work and the future of play.
Vlad Cazacu: Hey everyone, thanks for tuning in and welcome to the VC Architects, the podcast where we share the real stories behind new VC fund managers and the blueprints used to make them successful. My name is Vlad Cazacu, and I'll be your host today as we interview Paige Daugherty.
Vlad Cazacu: She's a guest that for most people probably doesn't need an introduction. An incredible woman who became the youngest fund GP, built a wide audience on Twitter, published a book on venture, and made it to Forbes 30 under 30 as just a few highlights of her amazing journey as an investor. You'll want to tune in for this.
Vlad Cazacu: For more information about starting and growing your venture fund, including show notes, highlight clips, and exclusive scenes, follow us on Twitter and Instagram at TheVCArchitects, as well as on our website at TheVCArchitects.com.
Vlad Cazacu: This episode is brought to you by Flowlie, the number one choice for data screening and network management used by hundreds of investors from 50 plus different countries. Now, [00:01:00] let's dive right in.
Vlad Cazacu: Paige, such a pleasure to have you on this podcast. It's really exciting, probably, to switch seats and be interviewed rather than interviewing others. It's always a pleasure to have another Gen Z VC investor, podcaster, and the Breville coffee enthusiast on the
Paige Doherty: podcast with us today.
Paige Doherty: Thanks so much Vlad. I'm super excited to be sitting on the other side of the table. And I feel like we're gonna have quite a show ahead of us. I have some questions for you, but I'll save them for the end.
Vlad Cazacu: Exciting. I've been following your journey quite from the early syndication days now into fund two of Behind Genius Ventures. And I've always been impressed of your mission to make venture more transparent and accessible industry through both your investing work, but also throguh the content you've created.
Vlad Cazacu: So we're going to start with the hard questions first, which is why is important to have more people around the VC table?
Paige Doherty: So this is a question [00:02:00] I've thought a lot about why it's important to have more people at the VC table. I think I had a misconception when I first heard about venture capital that it was like old dudes in a mahogany library smoking cigars, being like, I'm going to invest in like this friend of mine and then having like massive generational wealth as a result of that.
Paige Doherty: And I think, for me, one thing that's been really important in my conversations with early stage founders and the experiences they've had working with venture capitalists is by bringing a more diverse group of managers to the table, you allow the space for a more diverse group of companies to be created and to create generational wealth.
Paige Doherty: For those founders and the communities that they come from. And I think that this is important regardless of like demographic background, but just like the differences in perspective, [00:03:00] I think lead to a much more interesting early stage investing ecosystem. And we've seen a lot of this through the rise of emerging managers, leading nano funds that are focused in very specific areas.
Paige Doherty: And I'm really excited by it. So, a lot of my... Sharing my journey has come from a place of like, I want to inspire the next generation of emerging managers and investors to really own their perspective and continue down the path of deploying capital in a way that that perspective can be. brought into reality because I think that's like one of the most rewarding aspects of being a venture investor.
Paige Doherty: Seeing those companies go from ideas to, you know, 40 people in an office to, yeah, it's very surreal to see it now. Absolutely.
Vlad Cazacu: I'm curious. Obviously you've started this around 2020 and do you think there was anything in particular that promoted this [00:04:00] quite abundance of emerging fund managers, angel syndicate leads and just overall a larger awareness of the venture ecosystem, a broader audience than before, right?
Vlad Cazacu: Before the white guys, the mahogany table COVID.
Paige Doherty: I remember starting to get, I used to like, keep a list in Apple Notes of Twitter accounts that I would go and check before I was like, enmeshed in Twitter, so this is probably like, 2019, and I remember, like, Mike Dempsey was like, one of the people that I Not even followed. I would just like open a Chrome tab and pull up Twitter and go to his profile is he's a wonderful writing on investing.
Paige Doherty: And I sent him a link of something he was looking for on Twitter. And he's like, Hey, like what's your Twitter handle? I would love to tag you. And then I was like, oh, I should make a Twitter and tell him what my handle is so he can tag me and that was early 2020 and then I started [00:05:00] tweeting about like my journey into venture and then in February, I feel like COVID started to be like a bigger discussion on Twitter as a platform I remember there was like the Andreessen note in the window of like no shaking hands and life was going on around us normally it just was like this incredibly compelling chaos almost on the internet. And then as COVID started to like grow and spread internationally and everyone was at home. There's this really interesting moment where a lot of people were At home with a lot of time in their hands and pretty much unlimited access to the Internet. And I think COVID had a really direct impact on the number of investors who became active in that period.
Paige Doherty: Because everyone was spending an incredible amount of time online. And the second is that there [00:06:00] were certain structural changes that took place in the fund administration stack ecosystem. So, Assure, AngelList, Carta Sidecar. There were these companies had either existed or popped up in the fund administration space that were sharing the logistics of angel investing or leading a syndicate or raising a fund and made it a lot easier to do that.
Paige Doherty: Like if you think back, you know, I talked to fund managers who started funds like 15 years ago and it was the barrier to entry in the activation energy to create a limited partner agreement to have LPs sign subscription docs to like to just like get money in and out of the fund was so much more difficult than it was in 2020 and I do think that COVID impact impacted that as well. As well as the regulatory nature of 506 C funds, which [00:07:00] enabled fund managers to raise in public. So you saw the rise of a lot of fund managers raising in public. I personally chose to pursue 506 B, which means that I can't openly discuss fundraising. But anyways, there's like a whole interesting deep dive in, like, regulatory structure and funds. So 506c became popularized, Manal Hassan wrote a really great article on rolling funds in 506c, and then in tandem with that you had like a booming macro environment where the, you know, the IPO market was wide open, there was a lot of liquidity, there was also like the combination of like a lot of crypto liquidity and a lot of generational wealth being created, and because a lot of that wealth was created from tech itself, a lot of that wealth Spilled over back into tech because people understood how quickly their money could grow in that field.
Paige Doherty: And I think there was that combination of like a really great market, more [00:08:00] access, better structure, easier to start a fund and, a lot of time online and exploring. So I think we saw a real emergence of. A lot of emerging managers during that period of 2020. Those are some, the three of the main things I thought about.
Vlad Cazacu: So it's a fantastic answer and I'm curious. From this macro standpoint, zooming in on Paige, working at WorkOS, deciding to start doing some angel syndicates in a few deals. Maybe you were seeing that larger picture unfolding, or maybe not in the very beginning. What was that genesis of the very first syndicate and getting into venturing the
Paige Doherty: first?
Paige Doherty: Yeah, I mean, it was interesting. I think around the time I was very active in making threads on different part time programs and ventures working as a developer success engineer at an early stage startup. I was really enjoying it and being involved in the early stage ecosystem. I was seeing companies like Webflow and Hopin just like booming through [00:09:00] COVID.
Paige Doherty: So we were responsible for their single sign on. And I kept like seeing these companies grow and. Being like, okay, well, when is it, like, I want, I want to invest in one of those companies one day. And I didn't know when that day would be really, but I kept continuing to learn about venture because I've really been a student of venture for a long time.
Paige Doherty: It's something I'm super passionate about. And I met the first founder that I ended up leading a syndicate in through writing a children's book. So I was writing this children's book, Seed to Harvest, on Venture. I had set up a community text update number where I would share, uh, all the people who donated to the GoFundMe to hire an illustrator.
Paige Doherty: I would share updates of the book. And one of them was the CEO, Kai Han, of a company called, uh, it was called Cardea at the time, but now it's called Pallet, it's a job board infrastructure platform. I spent a lot of time in the [00:10:00] creator economy, uh, as a creator myself, and thinking through, like, different monetization strategies, and there...
Paige Doherty: Just like Kai's insight into what could be like the next LinkedIn, how the next generation gets jobs and how creators can unlock a new monetization strategy through spinning up like essentially recruiting agencies was really interesting. He Reached out to me through the community number and he just sent me a text and he said, Hey, I love your approach to community and content. Are you open for a chat? And I was working remote in Tulum at the time with like the worst wifi in between two hurricanes.
Paige Doherty: I was like really sick too, and I remember just getting on this call and having this like insane sense of conviction where I was just like, I need to be on this cap table for this company. I want to be a part of this journey. But I did not have that [00:11:00] much money in my bank account. I like just started working and I was just out of SDSU.
Paige Doherty: Um, but I asked for, I was like, all right, let me, let me ask for 50 K an allocation just to see if I can get it. Cause they're around, they're like Pre-Seed was quite oversubscribed at that point. And he was like, well, and he came back and he was like, yep. Like I can make space for you. And then I remember I dm Landon at Assure and I was like, Hey, I have allocation this deal. How do I set up an SPV? Cause I had no idea how to do it. And I think that's something that when I was first starting out, I think sometimes. And like, we'll talk about this later in the episode on imposter syndrome. Um, sometimes. It's kind of good to like not know what you're doing and like learn along the way because I, there was so much urgency for me to understand how to do an SPV well at that point in time.
Paige Doherty: So I was, I DMed a bunch of folks that followed me on Twitter and I was like, Hey, I have this amazing investment opportunity. I'm really excited about it. Are you interested? I [00:12:00] ended up raising 60 K in two weeks from 17 investors. Uh, close that SPV with a sure and uh, and then I was, I was like, okay, like I get it now.
Paige Doherty: Like I've like gone through the SPV process. There's a lot of urgency. I had like strong conviction in the deal. It was closing soon and I was really excited about it. And so I feel like one of the biggest things that I learned from leading my first syndicate deal was the importance of conviction and what that truly feels like for me.
Paige Doherty: And the second was the importance of a really great story, being able to communicate the value proposition, the risks that are inherent to investing in a startup and why I was excited about the opportunity. And now it's been cool. We've since doubled down in pallet again, through our first fund and Kai is an investor in my fund too.
Paige Doherty: So that's been a very full circle moment for me. And I'm just [00:13:00] very, very grateful. We've kind of gotten to grow up in tech together, which has been really a cool experience to see him grow as a CEO.
Vlad Cazacu: That's fantastic. And it's very interesting of a little bit of an unusual story of jumping headfirst into fundraising, right? One of the pieces that a lot of people dread asking people for money for a particular opportunity. That was your
Paige Doherty: very first transaction. I think I'd never raised money.
Paige Doherty: Like I had done the GoFundMe, which was pretty cool. I think if you put it in the context too, I think a lot about Like karma. And I had been providing so much value to the ecosystem through the threads that I was writing, through the resource guides that I'd put together. Like there's this massive doc I'd put together called like Tech nvc, the foundation.
Paige Doherty: It was like all of these resources I'd gathered. So I put like hundreds of hours of work into building out resources for the venture community. And so when I think about this kind of like karmic mountain I was building, I feel like the work I'd put in before enabled me to feel more comfortable asking for, or like [00:14:00] raising money, but definitely not something I had done before it was, um, it was pretty crazy.
Paige Doherty: I think it's, yeah, I, I think it was, it's interesting raising for an SPV where you're like pitching an investment opportunity versus raising for the first fund, which was like, who am I like, let's talk about that. But I'm, and, um. Yeah, it was, yeah, it was, there's a lot of like fun challenges and figuring that out too.
Vlad Cazacu: Absolutely. That was actually going to be my next question on the transition from pitching a deal to pitching yourself. How many tries did you had on the syndicate side before deciding to do Behind Genius Ventures?
Paige Doherty: I did four syndicates total between November and January, and then I met my business partner for FundOne, Josh Schlisselman, actually when I was doing my first syndicate for Pallet, so he had led a syndicate before, and he gave me some [00:15:00] learnings from how he had done his, and we started talking about what it would look like to raise a fund together in December, and then I would say we formalized things in Like January or February and then we did a first close in april. So we closed like 1. 6 million April 2021. And so it was quite a quick timeline, I would say. Like looking back on it, the full fund ended up being 5. It took probably 10 months to fully close it.
Paige Doherty: One of the biggest transitions was, I think sometimes it can be challenging to talk about, like, to talk about the things that make you special. And I think that there's an element of investing that's really interesting where there's one element that it's like, here is the substance of your thought process and your due diligence and like, the real quantitative or qualitative like depth [00:16:00] to it. And then there's an element of who you are as a person in the ecosystem and your network and community. And I think reputation really matters in venture. Like founder trust is one of the things I think about the most deeply. And I think it can be, it was an interesting journey, like learning how to communicate that to LPs.
Paige Doherty: And I think folks who had followed me, like, maybe a third of our LPs came from my Twitter following. It was really helpful to have shared my journey and people to have understood, like, where I came from, like, not knowing how to lead an SPV, to raising 60K in two weeks, to sharing what it was like to go on that journey. It was challenging. I don't know necessarily if it was like imposter syndrome because you hear enough no's in fundraising where you're like, yeah, uh, this is humbling for sure. Um, like there's, there's not a, sometimes I feel like with imposter [00:17:00] syndrome, there's like. Is there going to be critical feedback at some point in the system and in fundraising, like you're hearing enough no's where you're like, Oh yeah, like this is a, this is an uphill battle. It was like 1700 calls to raise 5 million from 120 investors.
Vlad Cazacu: So question on this because I think this is important. A lot of people may not really be prepared either as founders or emerging managers of the amount of no and rejection that is happening during the fundraising process.
Paige Doherty: Your process around dealing with it. I would say like one, it can be like, really lonely if you're a solo founder. Two, it's incredibly emotional, because even if someone says that it's not personal, it feels personal, because this is your baby and this is what you're working on and it's really important to you. I think, uh, some of the things that were...
Paige Doherty: Really helpful were one was like spending time with the founders that we backed. I think to me that's that's always been like I I have a picture on my wall and it's a it's a picture from [00:18:00] like my first annual summit With me and like nine of our portfolio founders and I like read a little note It's like remember who you do this for like whenever fundraising was challenging.
Paige Doherty: I would go back to The incredible entrepreneurs that we got to back and spend time with them and like brainstorm and be there for them in their like challenging periods. And that I think like having that perspective of like, I'm fundraising for a reason. And that reason is to back the most incredible founders that I can find.
Paige Doherty: And I've had to work so hard to raise this money that I know what my bar is for investing it in someone else, you know, like I've had to go through like the nose and the rejection and the crying in the bathroom. And like, is this ever going to get to the, to our target or whatever? Um, it like really teaches you strong conviction with the founders that you [00:19:00] back and a lot of empathy for them as they go through their fundraising processes.
Paige Doherty: In terms of like tactical how to deal with that, I would say like having a really great support system is really important people who you can share both the really happy. Aspects of like closing the biggest check that you've ever closed, and also the really challenging Nose or frustrating periods where you feel like you're like not hitting momentum.
Paige Doherty: The second would be like exercising in some part of your day. It's really nice to just Exhaust your body physically in whatever way brings you joy because I think Fundraising is such an in your head activity that sometimes you can just spend all day up here and it's nice to like get your energy moving throughout your body. Meditation was also really helpful for me is just like quieting my mind.
Paige Doherty: So I think a lot of fundraising is like how you show up on the call, how you interact with a prospective LP. You can feel if someone's in like an [00:20:00] optimistic or negative headspace. Those are some of the things that I think about, but it's hard. Just like knowing that it's hard and it's hard for everyone and like, if it's not hard, they're worried about it being hard in the future.
Vlad Cazacu: And I'm curious, how was that experience going with another GP, right? There were two co founders of Behind Genius Ventures for fund 1. How was that experience like?
Paige Doherty: I think two, like the... Raising the first fund was so special to me because, Josh and I were both raising a fund for the first time and just, like, all of the things that we didn't know or ran into, uh, I remember I was, like, reading through our texts recently and it was like, this person's in for 25k and then he'd be like, this person's in for 25k and then we'd text back and forth all the updates, um, and, like, how we were trying to just like impress urgency on like timelines or things like that.
Paige Doherty: It was a really fun process to go through together and [00:21:00] I think one of the one of the things that Yeah, so I'll just say like I, I wouldn't have traded that experience for anything. Um, it was so like it was just like such a crazy roller coaster of emotions, I think, in terms of, um, how that changes.
Paige Doherty: I think there's also an element of the novelty of fundraising where after you've done like A thousand calls. It's not that you've seen everything, but you've definitely seen a lot. And so you're like, Oh, like, this is kind of like how the cadence of this conversation is progressing.
Paige Doherty: And so I think like you get more comfortable with the process. And so some of the things that you might have, like, remarked upon earlier don't get, uh, don't get shared as much or it's just like, it becomes part of your everyday life versus something [00:22:00] that's new and fresh and crazy emotional rollercoaster.
Vlad Cazacu: And I'm curious, was there any point where you said, yeah, I don't dunno if this river is flowing. I dunno if we're moving forward. I dunno if this is happening.
Paige Doherty: Never ran out of leads. It's like one of the most important things I'll say it's like anyone listening, who's fundraising don't run out of leads. Um, cause if you do, then you'll reach like 70%. You'll have, you'll be like building these relationships up from scratch, which like takes a while.
Paige Doherty: Like the average time to close back then was probably like between a month to two months. I think like in today's macro environment, that's changed. Um, but yeah, we were. There was, there were certain dark days, I will say. We were just like, are we ever gonna close the rest of it? And then I think, like, what happened on the first fund is, there were, like, timelines.
Paige Doherty: Like, we were... We had gotten named as the cover of the Forbes under 30 venture [00:23:00] capital section in 2021, the article was coming out in December of 2021. And I remember Alex Conrad texting me like, can I say five? Can I say five? Can I say five? And we were waiting on like a couple people to sign. And so there was like so much urgency to close before December 1st.
Paige Doherty: And we finally got everyone in and I was like. Okay, cool, we can put it in the put it in print. I think like at the end there's some random point of urgency that things all come together.
Vlad Cazacu: And I think a lot of people may not realize, but, you know, the 5 million endpoints started with a very single 10k check from the very first LP. So I'm curious if we can spend a little bit of time to tell us that story of the very first LP check.
Paige Doherty: He was one of the other investors in one of the syndicate deals I had led, and I believe I spoke to him for one of our reference calls, and I remember we were having a catch up call, and I was telling him about the fun.
Paige Doherty: The deck was a mess. We were [00:24:00] working on a memo. Like, just, it was messy. It was not, like, put together. And I remember explaining this and just being, like, so raw. Emotionally, like, hadn't slept that much. And he was like, You know what? Like, Paige, I really want to put 10 K in, I want to be your first investor.
Paige Doherty: Let's go through the process together. I'm really excited about what you're building. I think you're on to something really special and I want to be on this journey with you. And I remember I started crying and I, and it was just like, even thinking back to that moment now, it's so emotional because, um, one of the questions that you prepared was like, when did you know that you had a fund?
Paige Doherty: And I knew we had a fund at the first yes, and I think it was like, not the dollar amount that mattered. It was just like someone had the belief in us to put their money where their mouth was [00:25:00] and be like, I believe in you. Go do this. Go raise the other like 4. 9999 million. It was just like, so surreal.
Paige Doherty: I remember getting off the phone and, at that point in time, like that was still large for the size of commitments I was raising for the syndicate. And I think that has been really interesting as the average LP commitment size rose. When I started raising, I was like raising out of the corner of my bedroom in Pacific beach, where I was living with like all my girlfriends from college and it just feels so surreal looking back. I don't know. I feel really lucky to get to live my dream that I had when I was 19. And I see this now with founders that I back where there's just this undeniable, like, This future vision that I have will come into fruition and it's just this like optimistic [00:26:00] Force of nature, energy, like it will happen. It is written, it will happen. And I think that was an element of it. I think from an investing perspective, I think I'm still one of the youngest fund managers in the world now and I definitely was when we started when I was 22. I'm almost 25 now. I think an aspect of it was like that relentless drive to really bring it into fruition and the 2nd was, I think we had a very unique perspective on the companies that we wanted to invest in, like, looking at the demographic trends across like products like growth and the future of work in play.
Paige Doherty: And like, we were. Consumers that were in these like massive demming. And it wasn't like we were going and asking like our kids or our nieces and nephews, like we were living those demographic shifts. And so the diligence that we went through on, you know, trends like the consumerization of enterprise or sustainability or creator tools, like we were living all of those [00:27:00] realities and it wasn't like a second degree understanding.
Paige Doherty: Um, so I think we had a unique perspective. And then the third was, I'd say, um, I just, we just had invested a lot of time and resources in, into the ecosystem itself and had helped like other emerging managers raise, had helped other startups raise, like had written all these resource guides, like it was clear that there was like a longterm view to help educate the next generation of investors, which is like a very significant undertaking, especially if you're like, Raising a fund or like leading a fund and so I think those are like three of the key things, but I don't know.
Vlad Cazacu: You'll never truly know what went on in people's mind. But people said yes, which is the great result of that happening. But I'm curious on, on that second piece, right? Because it makes a lot of sense, right? If you're [00:28:00] looking to deploy capital into a thesis that's predicated on a younger consumer base, finding a younger investor to guide you through that journey makes total sense, right?
Vlad Cazacu: Like, why would you deploy an average GP age of 60 when they're trying to invest in products for the Gen Z market? But there's still that perception of They don't have those decades of experience. So I'm curious, how did you navigate that concern?
Paige Doherty: I got a good piece of advice when we were raising our first fund. I think we had come out. Guns blazing, we're like, we're 22 and 24 and we're raising a fine, and I, the, one of the best piece of advice that I got was just like, okay, don't focus so much on your age, like, you have a unique perspective, like, dig into actually what that is and where the substance lies versus Just like your demographic information, what you put on, like, a survey that you were filling out. And I think that having done some very deep [00:29:00] introspection onto what those defining characteristics of the perspective of being 22 and investing was really important work that I needed to go through to build like a timeless investing framework that was sustainable far beyond like Gen Z being In the zeitgeist because we're not always gonna be that like one day. We too will be older and So I think that was like some really interesting feedback.
Paige Doherty: In terms of the age thing, I grew up and I was always like hanging out with my parents friends and I always had my nose in a book. So I didn't think about it as much like being the youngest person in a room. I always really loved like learning and hearing people's wisdom going through their different like life paths and stories.
Paige Doherty: And so that felt pretty natural to me. After I had that conversation with that investor, I kind of like shied away from identifying so much with like my age and being [00:30:00] young. As an investor you are more than welcome to say that, like, this will be a unique entrance into the Gen Z market, and yes, that's what my community is, and yes, I have access to, like, all of these incredible, like, Fund managers and founders that are in that demographic, but it's not like the like I want to be more nuanced than that in my investment approach and not as tied to a specific demographic.
Vlad Cazacu: And there's a proven track record more and more. And I think one thing that you touched upon is that narrative that you're creating out of just the age, right? Not putting yourself at just one label in one bucket, but rather craft a unique story.
Vlad Cazacu: I may be switching gears completely into this spin, but I want to make sure that we touch upon this because I think it's fascinating and rather unique to you and a few other creators in the space as well, which is the whole idea of building an audience. And it takes time, it takes a lot of effort to put a lot [00:31:00] of resources and engage. And sometime, Similar to Venture, quite frankly, the result and the feedback will be significantly longer than how long it takes to be on every day on Twitter and post and interact. So how did you make the decision of how much time is worth spent investing?
Paige Doherty: I grew my Twitter from zero to now it's like 32, 000 Twitter followers in a matter of like probably two years. And I think that part of why I wanted to share my journey, like I've been sharing my life online since 2013. I would make these like annual summer videos of like what my family was doing during the summer.
Paige Doherty: And, um, such a big part of that was so That I could go back and watch them with my family, with my loved ones, and be like, Wow, we've come the delta gets Bigger every year and I've always thought writing is the medium I'm most comfortable expressing myself in [00:32:00] I always thought about how writing could scale my time and impact and so as a medium like I was very comfortable with it and so Twitter suited me very well for that very Um, and as I began to share things, it was really cool.
Paige Doherty: Now, to see the impact of folks have been inspired to raise their own funds, start companies, get jobs in VC, uh, the cold outreach guide specifically that I made has been really cool to see the impact that that's had in people switching careers or getting a new job, or reaching out to people they really admire and I think for me, so much of that impact you won't see immediately. And so for me like why I choose to put myself out there online is like there's this wonderful tweet Um about like a tuning fork resonating. It's like you just want to find Resonance and I think as a creator it can be challenging to look at like the clicks and views and [00:33:00] impressions but having a metric of What is the impact of this content not only today, but in the next five years?
Paige Doherty: And then also it's so cool to have it out there so you can go back and you know It's really special to me to have like writing from how did I feel raising my first syndicate? Like, I think that's so special because it's now like the, the assets I have under management are like, like orders of magnitude larger than that.
Paige Doherty: And I think that the feelings are very universal. And so that's been really special to have that in public and have people get to know me in that way. I think the podcast that I've been running now, it's been like 72 episodes has been a nice way to share, like, my investing practice and how the firm has been growing in conversation with other investors and founders, with more nuance. I don't know. I go back and [00:34:00] forth on it. I do miss writing but I think it was a lot easier when investing wasn't my full time job. So it's a, it's interesting, like, double edged sword getting to live the dream, and that means that I'm spending a little less time doing what got me in that position. The answer is community and content. like very tactical and oriented towards like what problems founders are encountering. Or FAQs from our investors like making resources that can really scale my time and then like introducing the community to each other. Like I love Our founders, like a bunch of them are like now friends and they hang out, which is so heartwarming.
Paige Doherty: And then additionally, like one of the things I think about a lot is like introducing our founders to additional capital, like either in the current rounds or follow on rounds. And I think I've made introductions like upwards of 4 million in the past year, at least that I've [00:35:00] tracked which has been really exciting to get to contribute in that way. I feel like I'm always paranoid about how I could be contributing more to the community that I have the distinct honor of getting to build and holding that in balance with, like, the type of life that I want to live and the time that I want to invest in myself and my family and my friends.
Paige Doherty: I feel good. This has been like a very calming period of life, the last eight months. The business is no longer a newborn. It's kind of like in toddler stage. So I'm not in like survival mode all the time. If I had to like use a metaphor, so it's been fun, like looking more towards the future.
Vlad Cazacu: It's a great time to record the episode and do a recap of your work so far.
Paige Doherty: Okay, so I'm like an avid poker player. I love playing poker and I think a lot about like the analogies of poker in investing in life, whatever. And one of the biggest learnings that I've had is when I felt conflicted [00:36:00] about a decision, it's like triple the stakes in your head.
Paige Doherty: So it's like if you're making a bet in poker and you're kind of like on the fence about it, like it's like, okay, what if you tripled your bet and had like You know, three X the stakes, or you go all in, like, would you, what decision would you make then? And I think like, that's really interesting to think about in the context of the fund, it's like, okay, well, I I'd make this decision if I was writing 150 K check, but would I make it if I was writing a 500 K check?
Paige Doherty: And so I think like playing with the stakes of a decision can really bring out. your true conviction or like that sense of intuition. So that's been one of my biggest learnings is to, if you don't, if you don't have clarity, triple the stakes. I think that's served me well.
Vlad Cazacu: Really quick on the rapid fire questions, because I want to be respectful of your time as well. A longstanding transition [00:37:00] with our firm and a lot of our communities we've been part of ending every conversation with a point of gratitude. Looking back at this reflection over, BGV fund one, upcoming fund two, et cetera, what are you most grateful to? But you'll only have to pick one person, unfortunately.
Paige Doherty: I honestly, like out of all the people that I could pick that I've worked with, um, Be like a tough tie between Josh and Kai. Josh, like, raising the first fund together was like an experience that I'll never get to live again.
Paige Doherty: Um, and for Kai, like, I'm so grateful that he let me on his cap table in that, like, earliest round. It has continued to be such a big part of my journey and to get to touch base with him when I'm In New York and hear about how he's growing as a CEO and share about how I'm growing as an investor, um, and that, like, relationship grows [00:38:00] over time with, like, all of the different things that we're doing.
Paige Doherty: And I think it's like that, you know, as I talked about, like, publishing my life online, like, the delta gets bigger between, like, where you started. And so I'm just really grateful for the people that have really been there since the beginning.
Vlad Cazacu: Fantastic. We'll let the double answer pass for this time because it was such a great conversation. Paige, my gratitude to you for joining us on this one hour call to share more about your journey and hopefully inspire a lot of other people to join their career in venture and start a fund.
Vlad Cazacu: What a great conversation. If you enjoyed it, make sure to like and subscribe to our podcast and be on the lookout for a new episode in two weeks featuring another amazing fund manager and their story.
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Vlad Cazacu: That's it for today's episode. See you next time.