Pod Insights Equity Podcast When does a startup know it’s time to spread its wings? About this episode This is our Wednesday show, where we sit down with a guest, talk about their work and dive deep into the rest. Mary Ann and Alex invited Marisa Warren onto the show. You may remember that we discussed her new fund — ALIAVIA Ventures’ first — on the show the other week.
We wanted to talk with her to go over a few key topics that we care a lot about:
The current state of venture investment in women; why the numbers aren’t changing, and what she thinks could make a difference.
When startups should target their second market, and how.
The two themes are not as far apart as they may initially seem. ALIAVIA invests in startups based in the US and Australia that have at least one female founder, and also helps their portfolio companies tackle new markets. It was a really interesting, and fun conversation. Enjoy!
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
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Transcript 0:11 Speaker 00 Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and the nuance behind the headlines. My name is Alex and this is our Wednesday show where we sit down with a guest, think about their work and unpack the rest. But before I introduce our guest for today, I have tagged in my friend Mary Anne to help me out. Mary Anne, how are you?
0:31 Speaker 01 It's going well, Alex. I'm excited to be joining you in this conversation today.
0:35 Speaker 00 Well, that sounded corporate.
0:36 Speaker 01 I know. You know, I don't mean for it to be. I have to just share very quickly. One of my kids listened to our podcast and made fun of me in terms of how I answered when you asked me, "How are you?" So now I have that in my head every time.
0:50 Speaker 00 Well, on that note, my spouse told me last night she'd listened to the show and she hasn't listened to Equity in like, you know, four years because I'm around all the time. She gets plenty of my voice in her life. And I was like, "No way." And she was like trying to come up. She's like, "Yeah, I learned all about the Apple." And I was like, "Yes, nice." That's how I feel about talking to her about her job too. But today, we do have a guest we're very excited about. We have on the show today, Marisa Warren, the co-founder and managing partner at Alia Via Ventures, which is a Cali-based venture capital firm focused on early-stage startups and it invests in both US and Australian-based female founders. Marissa, hey, welcome to the show.
1:26 Speaker 02 Yeah, thank you for having me.
1:27 Speaker 00 Did I get the name right of the firm?
1:29 Speaker 02 You did, spot on.
1:31 Speaker 00 Yes, because people might recall that we talked about her firm on the show a little bit ago and we spent several seconds butchering the heck out of the name. And so instead of that this time, we did ask before we hit record, how to pronounce it. So Marissa, hi, how are you and where in the world are you today?
1:47 Speaker 02 So today I'm dialing in from Laguna Beach, California.
1:51 Speaker 01 Nice.
1:52 Speaker 02 Yes.
1:52 Speaker 00 Yeah, tough life over there in venture capital land. Laguna Beach sounds lovely. It sounds warm.
1:57 Speaker 02 Well, we had to move here, so I'm Australian by background. Well, actually an American Australian and my husband's an English Australian. And when we moved to the US, it had to be near a decent surf beach. So that was his only requirement Laguna Beach had.
2:12 Speaker 00 Yeah, that's lovely. I mean, you got to know what are your must haves versus your nice to haves? And I guess surf is one of them. Actually, my therapist is a big surfer. I didn't even know you could surf on the East Coast, but apparently you can surf more places than I thought.
2:23 Speaker 02 Oh, right. You just need a thicker wet suit than on the East Coast.
2:27 Speaker 00 Yeah, I've surfed twice and both times I ended up with completely translucent frozen feet and I was like, this is not fun. I don't know why people do this. But I bring up the temperature in the water and the surfing because your firm is very interesting to me. And I want to talk a lot about cross border dynamics when it comes to building a company and when to take it kind of outside of your initial starting point. But let's back up and talk about the firm itself. I know you guys recently announced your first fund, but you've been investing and writing an accelerator before. So Marissa, can you just walk us through how Olivia via came to be and where you are today?
3:00 Speaker 02 Absolutely. So it was started by myself, my co-founder Kate Vale. So we've both been in tech since 97, if you can believe that. So we've seen a lot of the highs and the lows that's happened in the tech industry. So I worked at SAP, Microsoft and Workday, both across Australia and the US. And my co-founder Kate, she worked, she was actually the first employee and managing director for both Google and Spotify in Australia. In fact, when she started at Google, she would answer the home phone as Google Australia. So definitely. And there took the business from zero to half a billion dollars and through
3:41 Speaker 02 IPO and then the Spotify business to be the number one streaming service in the region. So both of us have that as we classify, you know, that tech operator background, that real hands-on experience. I got to a point within my career, I was living in New York at the time and it was 2014. And I had just, quite frankly, I'd gotten frustrated with the lack of support for females, not only in the corporate tech space, but also in the startup space. So I'm a very action orientated woman, as you'd say, it's one of my slogans is just do it, ripping it off from Nike and launched Elavaco, which is a
4:23 Speaker 02 Pre-accelerator, helping women tech founders get investment ready and funded. And since then, we've had 175 women through the program that raised more than 120 million and had three exits. And I operated that both across the US and Australia.
4:41 Speaker 00 So can we pause there? Did you say pre-accelerator?
4:44 Speaker 02 Pre-accelerator, yes.
4:46 Speaker 00 Yes, I've never heard that phrasing before. It sounds like people at the idea stage who are not yet ready to try to accelerate what they're building, but instead to kind of formulate the idea and to start building?
4:57 Speaker 02 Yeah, it's sort of in between an incubator and an accelerator. But it was very focused on specifically helping these women get investment ready and funded. But we would go through all the key areas of the business, sales, marketing, finances, legal, tech, all of those. But without, so program, so it's a use of pays model versus being a cash for equity exchange.
5:24 Speaker 00 Okay, got it. And the 175 women who went through that, is that still ongoing? Or is that a program you guys have deprecated in favor of the venture fund?
5:32 Speaker 02 Yeah, good question. So we, we're running that, we ran our last program in 2021. But if I take a step back in time, when the pandemic hit, you know, when we remember what it was like, you know, in those sort of initial sort of weeks and months, particularly here in the US, which is, you know, quite a way ahead of Australia. We were on weekly calls with our alumni going, what is happening? We literally had funding that dried up overnight for female founders, both across the US and Australia. So that was really our opportunity at that time. And I, I went to my co-founder then, Kate, and I said, Kate, I've got an idea. I said, I think that we should start a venture fund. I have all of these brilliant businesses that are coming through Elavaco that now
6:16 Speaker 02 can't get funding because quite frankly, people just retreated back to their old behaviors of investing in that's investing in what they know. And typically, most of the capital, around 95% of the capital is, is controlled by men. So they will invest in men. So in, in June of 2020, that's when we came together and said, yep, we're going to do this. We then spent the next six months really getting together our investment thesis, setting up our back office and everything before we then turned the corner in 21 and started fundraising and deploying.
6:47 Speaker 01 I'm curious, how hard was it for you as a firm to raise capital at that time?
6:52 Speaker 02 So there were pros and cons. The pro was it was great. We didn't have to travel anywhere. We could have Zoom after Zoom every day. And in fact, because a number of our investors are actually Australian based, we physically could not get into the country in Australia because Australia's borders were shut until the end of 21.
7:15 Speaker 01 Yeah, that's true.
7:16 Speaker 02 So that was great. That saved us a lot of time and also dollars as well, not having to travel around the place. But on the flip side, you know, Kate and I, whilst we've had really successful tech operator backgrounds, we hadn't had that investment track record. So for us, for the first three months, and you can imagine Zoom after Zoom, we had solid nose. So it was until we reached on a strategy where we pivoted and then very quickly we were able to get to our first close. But initially, it was challenging.
7:49 Speaker 00 So clearly, we're going to ask this question. What was that pivot?
7:52 Speaker 02 Yep. So when you're going through the pitching process for a VC fund, it's show us your track record. And we're like, great, well, this is our corporate track record. No, show us your investment track record. Well, we have, you know, the work that I've done with Alvarco. So clearly I can identify, you know, top founders. You know, this is the pipeline of deals that we want to invest in. And still that wasn't enough. They'd say, come back to us when you have track record. And we're like, that's great. Well, we need cash to get track record. And they're like, come back to us when you've got track record.
8:25 Speaker 01 So frustrating.
8:26 Speaker 02 Exactly. So one of our advisors had this great piece of advice based on his experience. And he said, do a loan round, close friends, family, select investors. And we did, we did a loan round and it took us just under a month and a half there to raise just under $2 million. So where we went from three months of solid nose to pivoting to this strategy, doing the loan round, and then we had the option for them at first close to roll them into the fund to become fund investors or take their money back. And they ended all converting to fund investors.
9:00 Speaker 00 And when did the firm finish its first close?
9:04 Speaker 02 November of 21.
9:05 Speaker 00 November 21.
9:06 Speaker 02 Yes.
9:06 Speaker 00 And TechCrunch picked this up relatively recently. So I'm curious about the time difference between when the first close came and when you guys were talking about it publicly.
9:16 Speaker 02 Sure. So we had, yeah, November 21 was the first close and then the final close was July of this year.
9:22 Speaker 00 Oh, so you were still fundraising for that entire, I see. Okay.
9:25 Speaker 02 We were fundraising. So it's not an ideal scenario to be fundraising and deploying at the same time because it's just like, you know, there were just two of us, right? You know, running the business, doing the fundraising and deploying. And then as soon as we deploy, well, we have to, we're very hands-on investors. So it's really getting in there and helping our portfolios to be successful because if they're successful, ultimately we're going to be. So it was that real balancing act. I mean, it's, yes, we needed to do it to establish a track record, but it just meant that the fundraising process was longer.
9:58 Speaker 00 Would it have been easier if you had just done a couple of angel deals before you went out to try to raise the venture capital fund? Would that have been enough of a track record or were these LPs looking for something that was more institutional as kind of like a track record?
10:10 Speaker 02 Probably would have been easier, but I think Kate and I don't tend to take the easy path in things. We wanted the big goal.
10:19 Speaker 01 You were ready. Yeah, you were ready to go and I can understand that. And it looks like you invested in some pretty cool startups already, an at-home genetic testing company called Eugene and online training platform called How To. I'm curious as to how, how have you sourced your deals? I know that your criteria is very early stage with at least one female founder building a B2B or B2C tech company. But how did you find these companies?
10:46 Speaker 02 Sure. And just on that investment thesis as well, we're very strict. Yes, there must be at least one female founder. But with a significant equity position and C level role. So for us, we're very mission driven around, we want to see more billion dollar businesses founded and led by women. So that's at the top because we know that when you have diverse leadership teams, they make you more money. So it's just for us, it's a no brainer. So not only is it a good thing for society, but it's also going to deliver better returns for our investors. So that's, you know, at the high level, that's, you know, our investment thesis. And then where we find these deals, so believe it or not, because we do invest across both the US and Australia.
11:29 Speaker 02 So right now it's roughly about a sixty forty split between Australia and the US. But by the time we'll do a few more deals out of this fund, it'll be sixty percent US, forty percent Australia. Believe it or not, when we actually launched Alia Via in Australia, we were the first venture fund in Australia to have a mandate to invest in female founders.
11:53 Speaker 01 Wow.
11:53 Speaker 02 So for us, from a deal flow perspective, we get so much inbound every day, not just from Australia, but from the US. And also because of the work that I did with Elavarko, so there was a lot of deal flow already coming through from that. So we get it from just inbound from our website. And in fact, two of our companies we've funded that came from cold inbounds. So Ethelia and Go Figure. We've also, we get them from fellow investors, so our own investors in the fund, our co-investors, accelerators, incubators, universities, the government. I even had something from Ed Husek, who's a senator and senator equivalent in Australia the other day.
12:37 Speaker 02 So, you know, because of our mandate to invest in female founders, it's just amazing how much inbound deal flow that we get.
12:47 Speaker 00 Okay, so what I want to do is get into the cross border element. If it's going from Australia to the US or the US to Australia, when it's the right time to approach a new national market. But before we can get into that, everybody, a very short break, we are right back.
13:05 Speaker 01 Another thing that Alex and I are curious about is this notion of the cross-border investing. I know that obviously the US, it makes sense that it would be a target market for you because obviously, English is the main language in both countries, although of course, you have such a charming accent, I think, compared to our American accents. But you know, there's still, Australia's home to some fairly large tech companies, like Atlassian, I believe, but it's not necessarily been a place that's been universally thought of as like a tech hub. So anyway, I'm just curious about your desire or your intent to invest in both markets and why and how that's playing out.
13:43 Speaker 02 There's a few key reasons why Australia, and you said, to your point, yes, there's a few names like Canva, Atlassian, but Wi-Fi, the Hills Hoist, the Hills Hoist, not that that's tech-enabled yet, you know, the old clothesline, the cochlear hearing device, but also like Google Maps as well, was founded in Australia.
14:05 Speaker 01 Oh, I didn't know that.
14:06 Speaker 02 Yeah. There's a funny story. When Kate arrived at the office one day, so this is when she'd actually migrated from the home office to a proper office for Google. She arrives and there are a few guys standing at the door, waiting for her to open. And she said, "Oh, hi, who are you?" And she goes, "Oh, you've just acquired us." And she's like, "Right, okay." Gets inside, calls, you know, Google HQ. And they said, "Oh, yes, yeah, these are the Maps guys, you know, give them a desk." So there is actually a lot of innovation that's coming out of Australia. There is also, we're really keen on helping those Aussie businesses expand, because when they do successfully expand to the US, we see at least a 30 to 40% valuation uplift.
14:50 Speaker 01 Oh, wow.
14:50 Speaker 02 Because the deals are cheaper in Australia. And then when they get the boots on the ground and really successfully launch here, we see that valuation uplift. So particularly in a market like this, where down rounds are common, this is a really compelling investor proposition.
15:05 Speaker 00 Because you're coming in essentially at a lower price point from the Australian market to the US, so there's less valuation pressure on the upside compared to existing US-based startups.
15:15 Speaker 02 Correct, and we're converting them as well into US-based businesses, so then they get QSBS treatment as well.
15:23 Speaker 00 Yeah, so I find the cross-national expansion thing very interesting because I think where you decide to expand to is, you know, says a lot about where your target market is and so forth. The US market though is very competitive. Lots of tech companies are here, lots of money is being spent by startups, by investors. Is it like the best place for Australian startups to kind of go to, or do you recommend a different market first, something, I don't know, New Zealand, just being closer, that may have some similar characteristics that might be slightly less, I don't know, cutthroat, for lack of a better phrase?
15:53 Speaker 02 That is a really great question, and that's what we drill down with founders when we meet them and have that conversation, is the US. Because Australia, I mean, to put in perspective, I think there's what, 28 million from a population perspective. I mean, land size, it's massive, but there's only 28 million. And if you want to build a venture-scale business, you need to expand outside of Australia. And then it's where do you go? Well, where does it make the most amount of sense around the type of product or service that you're selling, your target market, what does that look like, what does that look like in Australia, and which market would best serve? But it's also then the, we've reviewed some of the markets, like India or Singapore or, you know, the UK,
16:34 Speaker 02 but it's where is that market from a education buying cycle perspective as well for that target market? So those are all conversations that we have every day with founders about which market, when is the right time, how to go about it, because it's different for every circumstance as well.
16:55 Speaker 01 I'm curious, sorry, I know you invest in both Australian and American startups, but when you look at companies that are based here in the US, does there have to be a tie to Australia at all, or are you just looking for that one female co-founder and the B2B or B2C?
17:10 Speaker 02 In the US, yeah, there doesn't have to be a tie to Australia.
17:14 Speaker 01 Okay.
17:14 Speaker 02 But it is actually interesting. Where both Kate and I have worked for major tech companies, we saw this at SAP, Microsoft, Workday, Google and Spotify, that they would typically use Australia as a test country prior to rolling out globally because Australia's propensity towards tech adoption, you know, similar, well, sometimes similar language.
17:40 Speaker 02 Sometimes I throw out some of those really Aussie slang words and I get sort of funny stares. It's like, what's, what does that mean? But, but yeah, we actually do, you know, we've seen that from the corporate tech side that Australia is a nice test country before expanding globally. But we don't actually have that. That's not a requirement for investing in our US-based businesses.
18:03 Speaker 00 I'm curious though, kind of on that point, do you recommend that a US-based startup does expand to Australia first if they're going to branch out from their home market? Or is that really a case by case thing in which the UK might be a better first go?
18:15 Speaker 02 Yeah, again, it's definitely a case by case. So it's the reverse and we look at it and we say, okay, well, what's your target market in Australia? I mean, how does that look? What are their buying cycles? Where are they in the education curve from a technology adoption perspective as well to see whether it's the right, the right market?
18:33 Speaker 00 Okay. So clearly if you are founded in Australia, as you mentioned, it's a great place to build, but not big enough to scale a full venture backed company. So you're going to have to expand. If you're in the US, however, it is a big enough market, you could, in theory, just stay domestic and not look outside of the borders. But I'm curious, when do you think an American-based startup should begin to think about expanding to other national markets? Because, you know, people often have a London office eventually, maybe a mainland Europe office, et cetera. But one thing that's not been clear to me is, is there like a moment in which you kind of know you've reached the right scale, the right level of resources? Because it can't be cheap. So when does a startup know it's time to kind of spread their wings?
19:13 Speaker 02 It's not, and I, I like using the house analogy. You need to make sure that the foundation is strong first. So if you don't have a solid foundation, even let's focus on from a sales and marketing perspective, that you don't know who you're, you don't have that repeatable sales process, selling to the same type of customer on an ongoing basis. You don't have those good conversion metrics from marketing through to sales. Then trying to take on another market, like it is a significant time and dollar investment to expand into another market. You'd need to get home right first before you build upon that.
19:50 Speaker 00 And so, you know, when I think about startups that have a repeatable sales motion that have shown that they can increase their investment in that and their GTM motion doesn't fall apart. Their unit economics are in place. They have a good enough team. Series B? Sounds like somewhere in that, that range.
20:04 Speaker 02 A series A to B. I mean, typically a series A, you're wanting to, you're wanting to see that they've either planning to expand into another market or have just recently, but they're typically using the funds, but they've got a really good handle. Definitely at series A, you have to understand which markets from here, which markets, but then which products as well. I mean, are you expanding out from, have you just had one product to start? And, you know, that can be software or consumer products, et cetera. Or are you expanding out from that in addition to the geographies?
20:37 Speaker 01 I'm curious about the female-led, I guess, category in general. You know, we've, I've talked to female founders who've told me point blank that they almost felt like they had to have a male co-founder to be taken more seriously by investors. Do you find that that is very often the case? Like how difficult or how common, I'm sorry, is it to see companies that are exclusively female-led as opposed to female and male-led?
21:04 Speaker 02 Yes. So this is a topic that I get a bit fired up about. So.
21:10 Speaker 00 Fire up. Let's do it.
21:11 Speaker 02 Yes. So from our fund perspective, we don't have any biases there. We have invested in solo female founders. In pairs of female founders and also male female founder teams. So all of the different combinations. There are a lot of well-known, the most well-known accelerator, you know, won't accept solo founder applications, you have to have a co-founder. We actually see a lot of solo female founders. In fact, I think we have three in our portfolio. That's great. So they're already excluding a good percentage of top female founders.
21:51 Speaker 02 The second thing that we quite often get to that point is, oh yes, you need a male co-founder and he needs to be the CTO. It's like, aren't women capable of building a successful, profitable tech business without having a man by their side? Like, don't get me wrong, I love men, I'm married to one, you know, we have a man on our team, we have many great male investors, but you don't have to have a male co-founder to be successful. And so that's one of the really frustrating things around the industry is that they put those biases in place right at the founder level.
22:27 Speaker 00 So I think all of us agree that you don't have to be a man to write code. In fact, if you look historically at early programmers, they weren't men. But the way that I've interpreted Mary Anne's question oftentimes is, hey, the market is sexist, so perhaps you want to set up your company in such a way so that way that doesn't trip you up. I don't like that that's the case. And if there were more investors like yourself, Marissa, I don't think that advice would have to stick. But do you tell, do you have any specific advice for solo or just all female founding teams on how to navigate a sexist environment without bringing on men for, for just optics, essentially?
23:04 Speaker 02 Sure. So there's two things. There's the advice for the, the female founders and then there's also the advice for the funds out there as well. So the first piece around female founders, it's just, there is so much capital out there that is willing to back on female founders. I know the stats are poor, but we just, there's our fund, there's plenty of other funds in the US as well. And now we see a lot more family offices as well. You just have to pound the pavement a bit harder and longer and it's get there. And it, and it's funny, people qualify out very quickly, any investors that have some red flags around type of those questions and get the investors on board. That believe in your mission and don't see gender as an issue.
23:48 Speaker 02 The second point around how we can start changing this, as I mentioned as well, you know, ninety five percent of the capital is controlled by men. So people tend to invest in what they know. So we really need to have more women at the GP and managing partner level with the power to make the investment decisions into female founded businesses. I've seen a lot of promotions, particularly in Australia, where women are promoted to partner, but they don't have, you know, they might have a seat at the table, but they don't have the power. So they need to have a GP and managing partner level. Secondly, for firms, even if they don't have that investment mandate to invest in female founders, there is no reason why they can't establish like a diversity fund, but also
24:30 Speaker 02 making a meaningful size, not, you know, like a ten million dollar diversity fund, like hundreds of millions of dollars, like make it meaningful. And the third and final point would be quotas and KPIs drive behaviours. So if the firms at the VC level, if they're not making the change, then our LPs need to start holding the GPs accountable to minimum quotas for investing in female founded businesses, or they pull their capital.
25:00 Speaker 00 So you mentioned earlier that more family offices are active in investing in female founders. Family offices also are LPs in some venture capital funds. So is that a change in the wind when it comes to what you're saying about LPs demanding or at least supporting a different investment style when it comes to gender?
25:19 Speaker 02 Yes, absolutely. We're seeing a lot more family offices and particularly in the last couple of years, establish like a gender lens investment strategy. So we have a number of those. For example, Carol Schwartz, she's on the Board of Reserve Bank of Australia. She's one of our investors. Same with Robin Denham, who is the Chair of Tesla. In fact, our fund was the first investment under their family office. Tatarang, which is the family office for Nicola and Andrew Forrest, that's actually the largest family office in Australia. So all of these have got their newly formed gender lens investing strategies.
25:54 Speaker 01 Well, the only other question I have is there's also been this sort of, I guess, stereotype that female led companies often fall into the consumer category.
26:04 Speaker 01 What do you think of that? And where do you see female leaders showing strengths? And what other industries or spaces besides consumer?
26:13 Speaker 02 Yes, absolutely. That's a great question. So we have two companies in the HR tech space. So you mentioned how to online training and also GoFigure, which is an internal mobility solution. We have another company in the health tech space. So Eugene really focused it genetic testing, at home genetic tests combined with genetic counselors. We're wanting to make a fintech investment under this fund as well as we go into the next one. So we are seeing a lot of deal flow coming through that doesn't fall into that stereotypical sort of women's business or CPG. It's fantastic. So.
26:57 Speaker 01 It's awesome.
26:58 Speaker 00 Well, also, you know, there's back to the men investing in men because it's what they know. I mean, I think one nice thing is that women have built companies that don't fit into the other venture norms. But it's also nice to see women building everywhere in startup land. So I think it's kind of good both ways. The question that I had though is just about about capital, Marissa, because you guys have put together your first fund. You've done your close on that. So looking at fund two, I know it's a little early, but we have you here today. How much higher is your fundraising target going to be for the firm?
27:27 Speaker 02 So we absolutely are doing a multi-fund, multi-generational firm. So that's the strategy here. I want it to live way beyond sort of Kate and I as well. We want this to have a lasting impact. We will be coming out with fund two next year, which will be significantly higher than fund one. Fund one was just under nine million. So it's, there are times where we go, yeah, that was good. And then there are times where we go, no, that wasn't good enough. But, you know, given that we're first time fund managers, I think we'll, we'll take that.
28:00 Speaker 00 No, I certainly do not mean to deprecate or to mock the first fund. I'm just, I'm curious, are you going to add a zero? Or is it going to be more like a double it than double it again for fund three?
28:12 Speaker 02 Somewhere in between.
28:14 Speaker 00 So that, uh, hold on, let me do some math. So roughly five X then I think is, is what is that? So we're looking for a roughly $45 million fund too. Because I mean, frankly, you know, given that you do have the family offices involved, given that you've managed to have capital come from both it seems US and Australian sources. And given that women founded companies tend to do better, it sounds like you have probably a pretty good mix of progress to show on the portfolio side. And you already have some people who have capital to invest. So I would expect the fund two would be hopefully quicker to close and also quite a bit larger to kind of prove the case. And can I ask a favor?
28:49 Speaker 02 Sure.
28:50 Speaker 00 Which is, can you eventually not do what every other venture capital fund does? Which is hide their results as if they got out, they would cause a mass pandemic. Like, talk about how it goes. I feel like some data out there about how investing in female founders is doing would be super helpful at the fund and firm level versus just aggregated metrics that people can dismiss.
29:13 Speaker 02 That's really interesting that you say that. So, I mean, we have this philosophy with our LPs that we're very transparent. So we share with him in our quarterly updates, which apparently is against the norm in the industry, which just blows me away.
29:29 Speaker 01 Yeah, it's mind boggling, right?
29:30 Speaker 02 But yeah, we are very transparent around what are the good things happening with our portfolio companies, but what are the challenges that they're having, you know, on each quarter? And our investors get to meet with our founders as well, which again is, is not all that normal in the industry. So I'm very much for the transparency, both internally and externally.
29:54 Speaker 00 Well, I'm glad to hear that because if you do decide to share more than information with, say, the media, I know some folks who would love to dig into it. And also, we'd love to have you back on when it's time to talk through it. So you can kind of break it down from a venture perspective, because I can talk about DPI and IRR, but I don't think anyone really cares what I think about it. I think it'd be better from the venture capitalist's mouth to amend a cliche there. But Marissa, thank you so much for coming on. We are very excited to see what comes next for the firm and the fund. And also, I hope that any company that does expand to Australia gives you a call, because I think it's really cool to see more cross-national startups. But Marissa, we cannot let you go without giving you a chance to plug all your things. It is the thing we give guests in return for their time. So where can people find you on the internet?
30:35 Speaker 02 Absolutely. Well, in the spirit of transparency, I'm happy to give out my email. So that's Marissa, M A R I S A. So there's only one S, at Aliavia, A L I A V I A dot V C.
30:49 Speaker 00 All right. Is there a Twitter account that people should follow or anything like that?
30:52 Speaker 02 LinkedIn.
30:53 Speaker 00 LinkedIn. Oh, I see. Oh, you're a serious person.
30:56 Speaker 02 Well, I came from corporate, you know.
30:59 Speaker 00 Yeah, that's, if you work for Workday and Microsoft, you're probably more of a LinkedIn person. Yeah, fair enough. If you want my email, continuing the era of transparency here, it's [email protected] . Send me whatever you want. Sign me up for any newsletter. Shoot me over notes. Tell me how great writers like Alex Wilhelm are, and I will of course let you know what I think about that. Mary Ann, we have to go sadly, but if people want more equity, what are our Twitter and Threads handles? EquityPod. Precisely. All one word, no underscores. You can't miss us. And we are back on Friday with our news roundup. In the meantime, everybody, you are lovely. Thank you for your time. We'll talk to you soon. Bye. Bye.
31:38 Speaker 00 Equity is hosted by myself, editor in chief of TechCrunch Plus, Alex Wilhelm, and TechCrunch senior reporter, Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Teresa Locan Solo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our illustrator. And a big thank you to the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch Audio Products. Thank you so much for listening, and we'll talk to you next time.
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