👋 I’m a founder, operator, and early stage investor. My mission is to build enduring businesses. My love of business started young - talking about our family business at the dinner table - and I’ve been a founder or helped founders for most of my career. Today, I’m a Venture Parter at Breakwater Ventures and Lead Special Projects as an Advisor at PayPal Crypto. I’m building in AI, and you can follow along.
I co-founded Jinjur, a social investment platform, out of Stanford Business School. We had thirty members and an 5K+ online community. Prior, I led strategy at Sila, where I doubled pipeline with our fintech partner marketplace and managed a successful seed and Series A raise. I led a seed-stage venture fund for five years, investing across consumer, fintech, and software, including one IPO.
My superpowers include communication, collaboration, community-building, and critical thinking. My core values are learning, freedom, kindness, joy, and team. I write about AI and entrepreneurship on Substack. You can find me trail running, skiing, surfing, or practicing yoga any day of the week. My family and I live in Woodside, CA.
👩💻Founder: My co-founder and I launched Jinjur (a social investment platform, developed at d.school and Startup Garage at Stanford Business School) in 2022. We focused on closing the investing confidence gap for millennial women through social collaboration. The product enabled women to form investment clubs with friends and invest together in different asset classes. We purpose-built content and community to increase investing confidence. We bootstrapped the company to 30 customers, and we built an active community of over 1,000 members engaging on investment ideas. Much of it worked. 30 customers. A roughly 30% increase in investing confidence, and a 75 NPS. Using early AI tools to streamline content creation and product iteration. A lot didn't. Growth marketing was expensive and unit economics weren’t viable. We made the tough decision to shut down Jinjur in 2023. Needless to say, I leaned a lot. Building community, user research, designing beautiful products, and growth marketing. I learned how to lead and manage. And I learned (some of) the hard thing about hard things.
💳 Fintech Operator: I led strategy at Sila Money, where I learned partnerships and product from some of the best people in fintech. I sourced, developed, and managed business critical product relationships with Evolve Bank, Stripe, Plaid, Visa, Alloy, and others. I developed our Fintech Partner Marketplace and Startup Package, which doubled the company pipeline and saw a 50% close rate on inbound referrals. I helped build the finnovation (now TWIF) community of nearly 10,000 folks in fintech. I managed our $15M Series A fundraise and Board of Directors meetings and metrics (including implementing OKRs). I learned how to spot market opportunities. I learned the “”ABC’s” of selling. Mainly, I learned how to keep up at a fast-growing startup.
🏧 Early Stage Investor: I led a seed-stage VC fund with $100M in AUM, three funds in top decile performance, and one IPO. We developed a unique model of entrepreneurs investing in entrepreneurs. Our individual LPs were former founders, and we leveraged their expertise for the benefit of our founders. For five years, I was involved in all aspects of investing and fund management, including due diligence, board management, financial modeling, and fund operations. I also built our community, including organizing The Funded (90 NPS from founders and 110% retention rate) and our Annual Compensation Survey (over 3,000 downloads). I learned what can help make founders and startups successful. I learned board management, negotiation, and fundraising. I learned how to curate an ecosystem. And, I learned how much I love building enduring businesses.
🆕 Current: Right now, I’m writing, investing, and building. I lead special projects at PayPal Crypto, where I helped launch PYUSD ($1B+ market cap payment stablecoin) and worked on passing the GENUIS Act. I’m a Venture Partner at Breakwater Ventures, focused on investing in and incubating ideas in AI & fintech. I write about AI and entrepreneurship on Substack. I’m building an AI Chief of Staff to double my output. I’m an angel investor in This Week in FinTech Angels and the 2023 GSB Fund. My personal investment portfolio include Fireproof Storage, Kinly, Sila, CFX Labs, and others. I love building community, helping founders, and working with customers to solve hard problems.
🎢 Other: If you’ve read this far (first, thank you!), here are some other work experiences that have shaped how I think about building enduring businesses: Investment Banking, Capitol Hill Intern (and Tour Guide iykyk), Yoga Teacher, Barista, Track Coach, Receptionist, and Customer Service Agent.
✏️ Substack