diversity in vc
LA Venture: Serial Entrepreneur Jessica Jackley on Pursuing a Goal: 'Just Take More Steps Anyway'
On this episode of the LA Venture podcast, Untapped Capital, Alltruits and Kiva founder Jessica Jackley talks about her experience supporting entrepreneurs across the world, and offers advice to founders on what to do when encountering doubt -- from themselves or others.
"The pursuit of an opportunity, a vision, like an imaginary world that you want to make real. You're running after this thing, you're pursuing it without regard to what you have in front of you," she said. "So there's always going to be something wrong."
Jackley's journey as an entrepreneur started when she founded Kiva, a nonprofit that lends money to low-income entrepreneurs. She started the company and moved to East Africa where she heard stories of people starting businesses with just $100.
"I wasn't asked to swoop in and help or save. I was asked strategic questions about where they could access loan capital, where they could access business training," said Jackley. She added that the individuals she met through the service didn't want handouts.
Kiva offered $200, $300 loans at no interest. That model helped build successful small businesses. Every year, they saw a raise on how many loans they could offer. The company has so far facilitated $1.5 billion in loans since the business started in 2005.
More recently, Jackley founded Untapped Capital and Alltruits. Untapped gave her opportunities to invest in unexpected companies and watch them rise, much like Kiva. Alltruits was born out of the pandemic.
"I really wanted to figure out a way, especially as we were on lockdown, like how do we not just have our lives be waiting for the doorbell to ring and another package is dropped off and we just consume it, right? What, what would it look like to reach back out into the world in a way that is helpful," said Jackley.
She created a box subscription service that provides kids with activities that can benefit them and the world. The company's last box focused on making a pollinator hotel for bees.
From her ventures, Jackley recognized when pursuing your dreams, something will always go wrong.
"There's going to be days when you are told, or you're telling yourself, 'well, I'm not old enough', 'I'm too old'. 'I don't have enough experience'. 'I have the wrong experience', whatever," said Jackley. "Just take more steps anyway towards that thing. Cause that's what great entrepreneurs do."
Hear more of the episode, in which Jackley talks about her goal to disrupt the volunteer economy and more.
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On this episode of the LA Venture podcast, media tech expert Shane Kelly comes on to talk about the business of financing feature films and tech startups.
Kelly has financed over 20 feature films and invested in over 20 tech startups, many of them at the center of the tech and entertainment industries. Over the course of his career, Kelly has focused on investing in the future of the media industry with his primary investment fund MCT.
"MCT was formed, to not only be able to invest capital into the new pipelines for content that have emerged with streaming as well as traditional [viewing] -- but also now with the disruption that's happened from COVID," he said.
Kelly said he's seen media innovation evolve from smaller ventures and introduce different ways of thinking across the entertainment sphere. One of Kelly's investments is a pair of headphones that can detect brain signals to determine how focused the user is on a particular song. Kelly said the device can also allow users to skip songs or call someone with their mind.
Kelly also talked about his commitment to bringing more Black and Latinx people into the industry through his work with Pharrell Williams' Black Ambition Prize, which awards anywhere from $100,000 to $1 million to fund ideas and companies.
"Black Ambition Prize started out kind of as a competition, right? To bring together Black and Latinx founders and provide them support and provide awards for the folks that win." Now, he said, it handed out awards to 10 winners in 2021.
Kelly served as a lead mentor of the organization's mentorship program .
He said the work helped him see beyond his own biases and encouraged him to partner with local groups including the Annenberg Foundation and HBCU.vc to create more inclusive environments for young entrepreneurs of color.
"I went down this path, really trying to understand how the world works and how oppressive systems... impact people of different groups, people of different locations," said Kelly.
Listen to the full interview by clicking the playhead above and hear Kelly's thoughts on film, tech and the state of capitalism today.
dot.LA Audience Engagement Intern Joshua Letona contributed to this post.
LA Venture: As Competition Tightens, Threshold Ventures’ Chirag Chotalia Focuses on What Matters
On this episode of LA Venture, Chirag Chotalia talks about his journey from Pritzker Group to DFJ to Threshold Ventures.
Chotalia made a name for himself in L.A.'s tech community while working at Pritzker, where he led investments and worked with a number of successful startups, including Dollar Shave Club and The Honest Company. He joined enterprise and consumer-focused venture firm DFJ in 2018 and is now a partner at Threshold Ventures, which evolved out of DFJ.
The transition gives him and his colleagues a chance to reimagine a venture firm, with the benefit of a 30-year history of hindsight.
"Think of it as sort of a rebrand and refresh of the core of DFJ," he said.
Chotalia and his partners at Threshold feel that funds need to focus in order to stand out in today's venture world.
"In a highly competitive market where there's a bunch of new entrants, there's a need to define yourself and a need to stick to your knitting. Focus is greater today than it ever has been in venture," said Chotalia.
For his part, Chotalia is focused on the intersection of consumer and healthcare. His experience at three high-profile VC funds, he said, have honed his ability to assess which investments are worthwhile.
"The role of a board member [is] going to board meetings and really listening and figuring out what are the two or three things that are the most important — and focusing all of your discussion and commentary on those two or three," said Chotalia.
Click the playhead above to hear the full episode, in which Chotalia talks about the maturity of the venture industry and Threshold's team-oriented approach to investing.
dot.LA Audience Engagement Intern Joshua Letona contributed to this post.
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