#54 Venture Capital Investing: How Women-Led Startups Drive Innovation & Returns

AIME Episode 54 Transcript
Meet Sarah Brand with True Wealth Ventures

Sarah Florer (00:30.899)
Today we're delighted to have Dr. Sarah Brand of True Wealth Ventures with us. She's a new friend and has really interesting information and story to share with us about her venture capital funds. Sarah, thank you so much for being with us today.

Sara T Brand (00:45.05)
My pleasure.

Roland Wiederaenders (00:46.892)
Yeah, Sarah, thanks for joining us. And to start out with, could you tell us a little bit about True Wealth Ventures and what that is?

Sara T Brand (00:55.686)
Sure.

So I'm a general partner at True Wealth Ventures along with another woman here, we're all in Austin, Texas, among this group. And we invest, it's a venture capital fund. We invest exclusively in women-led companies whose core value proposition is improving either environmental or human health. We invest at the seed stage, so our check sizes are about a million dollars, up to a million dollars per company for the first round. I can talk more about seed.

stage and all that, but we define women-led as at least one woman is full-time on that founding or C-suite team, so it doesn't have to be all women. It up that most of our companies do have a woman CEO, the vast majority do, and we are considered an impact fund because of the markets in which we invest in human and environmental health.

can talk more about our follow on strategy and all that kind of stuff. We invest across the country. We usually lead the deals, take board seats. That's what we do in the next show.

Sarah Florer (01:59.603)
I'd like to get into all of that more, Sarah. But first, let's talk because we have had the chance to talk before. in a sense, this is a second time we get to talk with you. But really, one thing I think is a really great part of the story of your company or your funds is actually your background and how you got into the finance industry and your STEM background and maybe that of your partner.

Sara T Brand (02:24.826)
Mm-hmm.

Sarah Florer (02:24.881)
So I'd love to hear more about what got you into, I mean, you are Dr. Sarah Brand. And as we know, it takes a lot of work to do a PhD in pretty much every field. So we'd love to hear more about who you are and what led you to being a woman GP focused on women-led businesses and also a second part of it, which is managing a lot of women investors yourselves.

Sara T Brand (02:29.741)
Yeah.

Sara T Brand (02:43.408)
Yeah.

Sara T Brand (02:52.05)
Right, sure. So yeah, it is a pretty unusual background, frankly. And as we'll get into more, it's pretty rare to be a woman in venture capital, know, investing as a GP. It's also unfortunately rare to receive venture capital financing as a woman entrepreneur. But I started here at UT Austin, actually, as a mechanical engineer, and became a little disturbed about how they were teaching design engineers to, you know,

see a problem statement and then select a metal to start machining to solve that problem. And I realized that is really avoiding a lot of the problem space and looking for more efficient ways to solve these, you know.

engineering problems. I realize that's not actually how engineers are, you know, going to go out and solve these problems, but still if that's how they're teaching people there, I thought this is an environmental catastrophe. So I sought out a, for my graduate studies, and I had worked too in the semiconductor industry, Sematech, and I had interned in the summers with Intel, and so I was kind of in the semiconductor industry already, and found this lab at UC Berkeley that was green design and manufacturing. So really, so I went to Berkeley and joined

this lab and it was really looking at how in their very early design stages you could avoid a lot of the environmental and human health impacts when it was much more efficient to change the designs while optimizing for cost and performance as well of course. And so I spent time in again mainly electronics, semiconductors, working in applied material doing this. I sort of went as far up the

value chain as I could, guess, win that green engineering sort of focus and realized then that whether people adopted my tools and analysis had more to do with business decisions than...

Sara T Brand (04:47.558)
than technical ones. So I literally totally shifted gears and went to work at McKinsey & Company in strategic management consulting out in the San Francisco office where the head of the semiconductor practice sat. So I was at least in the same like, you know, space, but doing just straight up strategy work. And then from there went into venture capital out in the Bay area, just really realizing it was, venture capital was a perfect, I thought, industry for me to not lose my technical background, to still meet with

all these entrepreneurs coming up with all these great technical ideas, but then being able to help them with more of that management consulting hat on of all the different business challenges they were facing. So I found out that is what it was and I loved it and really wanted to do it more long-term. coming kind of straight in from management consulting with a PhD in engineering, I wanted to get more operational experience to be a better VC and joined Advanced Micro Devices, AMD.

out in Sunnyvale, but all their leadership actually sat in Austin. So that's what brought me back to Austin and worked for AMD over 10 years, worked for three of the four CEOs directly, did lots of strategy work, ran several business units. And then later in my time, I became or was asked to lead the executive women's forum or something. I can't remember exactly what was called, but basically the global group for women at the company

And I actually declined it. I was like, no thanks, I don't have time. And they said, you're literally the only woman vice president at the entire 15,000 person company that has any technical or operational background. The other 12 are in GNA functions. I couldn't believe there's only 12. I'm like, well, what? And it was a very technical company. It's like 85 % of the employees were technical. And so that was a huge eye opener for me.

Sarah Florer (06:26.652)
well.

Sarah Florer (06:31.815)
Wow.

Sarah Florer (06:36.453)
Yeah.

Sara T Brand (06:47.374)
not only that that was true, but that I had no idea it was true. And then I realized I am talking about unconscious bias. Like I'm blind to the fact that I was the only woman VP with any technical or operational background. And it was because I was a mechanical engineer that worked in semiconductors, worked in venture, literally realized I'd never met another woman in venture capital in my Bay area days, going to the legal firm sponsored breakfast.

Sarah Florer (06:57.863)
Right.

Sarah Florer (07:15.719)
Mm-hmm.

Sara T Brand (07:17.358)
and whatever, never met one. also my husband started 512 Brewing Company shortly after we moved back to Austin. And that was all bearded men that we employed. We got a woman now. But anyway, I was so used to being the only woman around the table that I just didn't notice. So I started finally doing my homework and saw that when there were more, and this comes back to some early McKinsey stuff,

Sarah Florer (07:29.328)
Yeah.

Sarah Florer (07:39.506)
Yeah.

Sara T Brand (07:47.388)
actually, that show when there are more women in senior leadership positions at companies. And they mainly were looking at corporate, know, Fortune 500 kind of stuff, that they saw significant financial up performance. And knowing I wanted to get back into venture capital, and I had actually earned way more operating experience than I ever intended to, but you know, it was just, it was great experience and I was enjoying it. but anyway, as I started looking, knowing I wanted to get back into venture, started looking at the

Sarah Florer (08:06.511)
Right.

Sara T Brand (08:17.108)
in the venture capital industry and saw that there was even a more extreme lack of women in venture. And then this number of, realized I'd never even met one. And then the percentage of VC dollars going to women led companies at that time was 2%. The estimate of the women CEOs that got venture capital funding was 1 % of companies. And I,

Sarah Florer (08:25.373)
Right.

Sarah Florer (08:37.742)
wow.

Sara T Brand (08:47.188)
Unfortunately, that number hasn't changed actually since then, but we can talk about that. Anyway, I just realized it was the best business opportunity I had ever seen because nobody was investing in these women and they performed much better financially. And when I looked around the country, they are very generously speaking six firms, VC firms that has some kind of gender diversity strategy, being very generous with that, but they were all on the coast. There was nothing in Texas or like the whole.

Sarah Florer (08:49.523)
We'll get to that.

Sara T Brand (09:16.948)
So I realized I have to start my own fund. Not what I intended ever to do, but it was needed.

Sarah Florer (09:17.842)
Right.

Sara T Brand (09:27.438)
hooked up with my business partner, Carrie, who also came from Dream Adventures, which was the most prolific investor in health tech at the time. And she had just raised a $20 million fund. she had developed the first cohort or like it's an Dream Adventures is like an incubator accelerator program. And she developed the first kind of bolt on program for women entrepreneurs.

Sarah Florer (09:36.651)
wow.

Sarah Florer (09:50.237)
Hmm.

Sara T Brand (09:58.394)
Should I keep going?

Roland Wiederaenders (09:59.823)
Yeah, maybe let's just pause. Remember where we're at. Let me see where.

Sara T Brand (10:03.844)
Yeah.

Roland Wiederaenders (10:07.64)
Sarah's right next door. There she is. She came back.

Sarah Florer (10:10.746)
I'm sorry, my computer just cut out. Yeah, it's like my... But anyway, Sarah, don't worry about that. That's totally fixable. Sorry about that. With Carrie? Okay, great.

Roland Wiederaenders (10:14.211)
Hmm.

Sara T Brand (10:18.628)
Yeah, no problem. I'll start over with Carrie. Yes. Okay.

So I partnered with Carrie Rupp, my partner here, the other general partner, True Wealth Ventures. I was introduced to her after telling several colleagues in the venture capital ecosystem that I was gonna start my own fund focused on investing in women entrepreneurs. And they said, you need to meet the other woman who recently moved back to Austin. And she had the perfect background coming from Dreamit Ventures. She was the CEO.

Sarah Florer (10:44.106)
The other one.

Sara T Brand (10:54.982)
of that as an accelerator. She had developed the first program specifically for women entrepreneurs, was the most prolific health tech investor at the time in terms of the number of health companies they were investing in, had just raised a $20 million fund herself, which ended up being the size of our first fund. So we were the only two women GPs in the entire state of Texas in venture for years too, after we started this. It's gotten a lot better, but it just

Sarah Florer (11:22.122)
Wow.

Sara T Brand (11:24.852)
just to kind of give a sense of how...

nascent this still was. And when we closed Fund One, $20 million fund in January of 2018, it was literally the largest VC fund ever fundraised with an explicit gender diversity investment strategy. So a great appellate for Texas, but really just indicative of how small the capital is focused on women.

Sarah Florer (11:53.098)
Yeah. Yeah.

Roland Wiederaenders (11:57.135)
Well, you know, sir, I remember from our conversation last time that there are actually studies that show the you said there's a distinction, you know, with women led firms and that there are studies that show statistically that they will just because of that factor, they'll have greater success. And I find it so fascinating. One of the things that we touched on is because of

the different ways that we perceive men and women perceive things that, you know, there'll be things that men maybe will just be blind to, you know, we're talking really broad terms, you know, some men for sure have sensitivities, but that was something that really fascinated me that, you know, this idea that being women led is statistically to your advantage economically.

Sara T Brand (12:53.68)
Mm-hmm.

And I think it's also more so in certain markets maybe because we look at the fact that women make 85 % of all consumer purchase decisions and 80 % of all healthcare decisions and even like adult daughters and daughters-in-law are the largest form of healthcare in the United States for elder care. so like silver tech, that's an area we made our first two investments in that was certainly not like a focus area, but we just saw these markets where the tradition

Sarah Florer (12:59.156)
Hmm.

Sarah Florer (13:14.473)
Wow.

Sara T Brand (13:25.236)
you know, VC didn't inherently see the opportunity. And because early stage investing is more of an art than a science, because there's just not a lot of numbers to go on, one of the ways you're trying to reduce your risk is be familiar with the market, you know? And so if you don't see it as a big market opportunity, that's not something that's gonna be, you know, feel good to invest in when you're trying to reduce your risk. So we see a lot of opportunities like Silver Tech, for instance,

Sarah Florer (13:31.177)
Right.

Sarah Florer (13:49.714)
Right.

Sara T Brand (13:55.156)
or even women's health that have just been overlooked because of who's driving the decisions behind that innovation capital.

Sarah Florer (13:56.073)
Right.

Sarah Florer (14:01.802)
And it's I think so important, Sarah, Roland and were talking about this briefly. My dad has a background in medical research and I always found it striking that some of the women's health issues are under researched compared to the equivalent male research issue, let's say from medical perspective. And I think what you're saying is that, and this is so important too to remember that any tech that comes forward into the market had money behind it. And if you don't get access to that money, it doesn't matter how great your idea is or how...

Sara T Brand (14:19.941)
Okay.

Sarah Florer (14:31.21)
how life-changing it can be for lots of people in the world. I love the term silver tech because it also means that if women are making these decisions and responsible for health care with elderly parents, for example, any tools that they can have to make their lives easier supports their successes in other areas such as running businesses and whatever it is that that person is capable of doing if they're not needing to be the person who takes care of the people who...

Sara T Brand (14:35.388)
Right.

Sarah Florer (14:59.994)
genuinely need care. it seems to me that what you're doing layers into our society in many ways, and it's important to highlight that. And it comes down to where money gets allocated and who's allocating.

Sara T Brand (15:02.424)
huh.

Sara T Brand (15:13.394)
Yeah, yeah, think, yes, I think there might be even more low hanging fruit in our areas just because they've been, you know, thirsty for some capital and we can just apply some capital and they can do some basic upgrades, you know. Yeah. And also we find there are studies that show women entrepreneurs tend to start businesses that are really solving a personal issue.

Sarah Florer (15:23.78)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I think, know...

Sara T Brand (15:39.302)
that they have or their family or friends have. And so there's an inherent advantage they have on product market fit right out of the gate because they're not just generally doing some financial arbitrage opportunity. They're really solving a big need, especially in the markets that we're investing in, which are improving environmental or human health. So these are very passionate entrepreneurs that have identified a serious issue and are solving that. They're very passionate.

Sarah Florer (15:47.23)
Hmm.

Sarah Florer (15:55.306)
Mm-hmm.

Sarah Florer (16:00.66)
Mm-hmm.

Sara T Brand (16:09.236)
not only is it better product market fit, but they're also very passionate and so they're very perseverant and gritty. And for our fund one, which we started investing in 2016, we closed it in January 2018, but we invested in 12 companies. They've either exited, two have exited and the other 10 are still operating. And that's just, I think it's unprecedented for a seed stage fund to still have a

Sarah Florer (16:22.922)
Hmm.

Sarah Florer (16:30.417)
wow.

Sara T Brand (16:39.156)
zero loss ratio from that timeframe. Yeah, I think it's.

Sarah Florer (16:39.978)
Yeah, that's amazing. And it's also a different model. mean, we could get into talking more about private equity versus venture capital, how venture capital is maybe a subsection of private equity. But I do want to make the observation that private equity, for good reasons, gets some negative press. But there is another way. And part of it is because the model allows for 80 to 90 percent failure of investment.

that are made potentially. you win big on one, then the other nine can fail kind of an idea. But I do think that that's not super sustainable, right? That they're at actually, and this you had talked about, maybe you could speak about it some more, which is if you pick your asset company carefully and then you extend the hand of partnership, you extend the hand of mentoring, you're much broader experience than an entrepreneur would have just generally from your background.

Sara T Brand (17:12.186)
right.

Sarah Florer (17:32.01)
and from not having to deal with all the daily things that a leader in an entrepreneurial situation has to deal with. You can approach everything with why wouldn't you expect 100 % success if you put the right attention to the details from the beginning to the end? Or 90 % or 80 %? Why do we accept 90 % failure as something that's good as long as we're making money? To me, that's kind of a moral question maybe, but for the economy,

Sara T Brand (17:46.618)
Right, right, it's not as much.

Sara T Brand (17:55.889)
Right.

Sarah Florer (17:59.626)
putting aside morality, that seems like it's a good idea to help businesses succeed. Generally speaking.

Sara T Brand (18:05.798)
That's a good point. I agree. Yes. Right. It feels like more of a gamble than...

Sarah Florer (18:14.59)
Yeah.

Sara T Brand (18:14.8)
you'd want it to be as an investor in that fund, right? And we tried to reduce our risk in several ways. One is we don't invest actually unless the science or tech is already proven. And so we can see, yes, this works and it's not just like, we're still researching it and it may not work. that's one of our strategies. We also look at how can this company get acquired versus IPO just because most startup

Sarah Florer (18:17.276)
Right, exactly.

Sarah Florer (18:26.974)
Mm-hmm.

Sarah Florer (18:35.7)
Sure.

Sarah Florer (18:42.121)
Mm-hmm.

Sara T Brand (18:44.734)
that's happened via acquisition versus an IPO, but that's what most venture capital firms are underwriting to. They want the company to IPO. It's not that we don't want the IPO, but it's just that we see if the vast majority of exits actually happen via acquisition after seed or Series A, so pretty early on, and the average valuation is under $100 million. So if that's the most likely successful outcome, we want to make sure when

Sarah Florer (18:47.306)
Mm-hmm.

Sarah Florer (19:10.292)
Mm-hmm.

Sara T Brand (19:14.764)
invest that there's a pathway to that, which means that the company can't rely on having to raise a bunch of rounds and really, really big rounds. And of course that can change as time goes on and the opportunity is more clear. But in case it isn't, which it isn't most of the time that you've got a unicorn IPO on your hands, then we don't over capitalize it and we can be happy in return of

Sarah Florer (19:24.852)
Mm-hmm.

Sarah Florer (19:37.865)
Mm-hmm.

Sara T Brand (19:44.725)
invest a great return to our investors with the you know average outcome yeah

Sarah Florer (19:50.546)
Right. No, I think that's great. It's funny because here on Alt Investing Made Easy, we're focused on the private securities market. We've touched on IPOs and what that means generally, how expensive they are, how big you really need to be to make that really viable, even though there are these many IPOs out there and whatnot. In the end, there's such a huge market in the private capital arena.

people don't always realize are still private. so to me, it's very sensible to just have that as a goal, essentially. It's realistic.

Sara T Brand (20:22.385)
Right.

Sara T Brand (20:29.68)
Yes. And also the private markets are just getting bigger and bigger and bigger and people are staying or the companies are staying private for longer. And the average time to an IPO is getting close to 20 years now. So, yeah, I think it, I don't know, 16 or 18 or something like that, but it's, it's just gotten longer and longer. And so, I think relying on an IPO for an exit is not, it is like back to your comment. I think it feels a little bit like a gamble.

Sarah Florer (20:33.15)
Yeah.

Sarah Florer (20:42.09)
wow.

Sarah Florer (20:58.857)
Mmm.

Sara T Brand (20:59.604)
you

Roland Wiederaenders (21:02.105)
Well, Dr. Brand, yeah, I always kind of want to attach to specifics. And so I'd be interested in hearing what some of your success stories have been, the companies that you've invested in that have had successes and maybe ones that are still percolating, but that you're optimistic about. Any concrete examples would be really interesting to me.

Sara T Brand (21:27.506)
All right, I've got.

Two that come to mind. One is the first investment we made that's right here in Austin, Texas. So it's a good example for this group. It's called Unaliware. The CEO, Jean Ann Booth, started this smartwatch for seniors. She came out of retirement. She sold her first company to Texas Instruments, their second to Apple, and was retired. And then her mom, who was a model actually, needed a fall detection

Sarah Florer (21:43.912)
Mmm.

Sara T Brand (21:58.74)
pendant with the button around the neck, was all that was available at the time, the I Fall In and I Can't Get Up button that we've seen the commercials for, and she would not wear it because she's like, no, that's horrendous looking and stigmatizing and no. And so back to my comment of like silver tech is just, mean, there's low hanging fruit where you can take modern technology and apply it to markets that just have been deserted of capital. And so she just,

Sarah Florer (22:04.477)
Mm-hmm.

Sara T Brand (22:28.73)
She has an electrical engineering degree, semiconductor kind of background and made a smartwatch that was all voice activated, prevented, well anyway, does lots of functionality, ties to a call center and has batteries in the watch band that can be clipped out and recharged so you never take the watch off because most falls actually happen overnight or when you're in the shower when you have your pendant charging or off because it's not

waterproof. So anyway, just really thought about the design from the wearer's point of view. anyway, so that has been a real need in the market that I think only, you know, an engineer with her background and again, her mom's need was able to bring to market. And then a more recent example that we invested in is a company called Re-Fibred. I was at the Texas Alternative

Sarah Florer (23:00.404)
That's cool.

Sarah Florer (23:12.104)
Mm-hmm.

Sara T Brand (23:28.5)
investment conference last year. I pitched this company, they had a fun kind of pitch of audience and a judge panel choose the favorite company. The other two were actually like public companies and refibred raised I think was like.

Sarah Florer (23:39.113)
Mm-hmm.

Sara T Brand (23:46.298)
a three and a half million dollar round and it won the audience choice and the judges choice just because it's redefining this, opening up new markets and new revenue streams. It's two CMU women engineers that have figured out how to use hyperspectral camera images on used textiles, used clothing and have trained it with AI to understand what the composition of the textiles are so they can

Sarah Florer (24:08.671)
Mm-hmm.

Sara T Brand (24:16.212)
sorted appropriately for chemical recycling. yes, and that functionality to that level of 1 to 2 % confidence is not available at all. so anyway, it's opening up huge new streams of used textiles that can be recycled. Anyway, lots of stuff. They're even with eBay.

Sarah Florer (24:18.847)
wow.

Sarah Florer (24:27.859)
Yeah.

Sarah Florer (24:37.342)
That's really cool.

Sara T Brand (24:39.568)
you know, is this a fake or not? So there's all kinds of interesting things they can do with with tariffs now, like, is this actually 100 % polyester or not, because it's tariffed differently. So anyway, very interesting applications, but.

Sarah Florer (24:50.058)
And that's so interesting. Well, and also I think just broadly, contamination once you recycle something, the wrong products mixed with the wrong products, is a huge reason why lot of recycling doesn't succeed in the end, right? So that's amazing.

Sara T Brand (25:03.782)
Yeah, exactly. Like it either reduces their yield a lot or it like blows up. I mean, literally there's some things that you can't have it. Yeah, it's important.

Sarah Florer (25:08.531)
Mm.

Yeah, exactly. Like it's very dangerous.

Roland Wiederaenders (25:15.991)
Gosh, it seems like that technology might have other applications too, if it's that robust. That sounds really promising.

Sara T Brand (25:26.682)
Right. Yes. We're trying to get them to focus right now, of course, as any young startup should, but there's lots of potential. Yes.

Sarah Florer (25:32.17)
Yeah, no, you just, well, that's the strategy in you, right? The strategist, right? The management strategist. Well, you know, it's so great to hear these examples, but one thing I do want to make sure we circle around back to is, you you talked about raising money, you raised your first $20 million fund, then you had a second one, which I think closed in 2023, which was a $35 million fund. So you basically got $55 million in these two funds. And I remember you mentioned to me that, you know,

As with any fund, you're raising money from investors. That's the whole point. So could you talk to us a little bit about who those investors are or if unofficially you have sort of targeted investors?

Sara T Brand (26:11.078)
Yeah.

Yes, our investor base is very unusual. It's 80 % women, which when we closed Fund One and saw, oh wow, it's 80 % women, the Wall Street Journal at that point said that they thought that was unprecedented, which a lot of funds don't share who their investor base is, but it probably was at the time.

Sarah Florer (26:17.801)
Hmm.

Sarah Florer (26:27.997)
cool.

Sarah Florer (26:33.342)
Yeah.

Sara T Brand (26:36.146)
When we started raising our first fund, we did not think about whether to target or ask or invite women versus men to invest. We were just finding people we thought would resonate with the investment thesis. It ended up that when we had our first close and went back to look at the mix, was 50 % women, 50 % men. But then those women started in hosting us at their country club or their home and inviting their colleagues and their friends who they thought would resonate and have the capacity to invest to hear what

Sarah Florer (27:00.372)
Mm-hmm.

Sara T Brand (27:06.1)
what we were doing. And so they were helping us fundraise. And we realized they were also very passionate about what we were doing, realizing they thought it would be a good return. But they also thought if we don't invest, who is going to and who's going to change this dynamic? And so we're, you know, equally passionate about it. And then when we closed the fund, we saw, oh my gosh, it's 80 % women did a poll just to understand the dynamics more, found that the vast majority had never invested in a VC fund previously. The vast majority had never been

Sarah Florer (27:20.262)
Right.

Sarah Florer (27:34.478)
wow.

Sara T Brand (27:36.03)
invited to invest in a VC fund previously. And then Carrie and I realized, wait, we've never been asked to invest in a venture capital fund and we're from the industry. And then also we didn't ask our friends and colleagues and my, know, Carrie went to Harvard Business School and every guy that started a venture capital fund from Harvard Business School invited their colleagues or their, you know, classmates first. And it wasn't natural as women to do that.

Sarah Florer (27:52.712)
Mm-hmm.

Sara T Brand (28:05.94)
and it almost felt like culturally inappropriate. And so we realized there's something here that women aren't being invited to invest in VC. And then we, as professionals, didn't invite our colleagues and friends to invest. And so we started digging into that and realized that women in the United States are estimated to control almost 40 % of US investors.

Sarah Florer (28:06.003)
Right.

Right.

Sarah Florer (28:21.672)
Mm-hmm.

Sara T Brand (28:35.86)
assets by the end of this decade for a number of reasons. There are high earning women are increasing to X the rate of men. Then there's also the baby booners who are transferring wealth. There's widows are the average widow age is I don't know, it's like 55 or something in this country. Women lived longer than men. So there's a bunch of dynamics where women are controlling more of the U.S. investable assets. And so we realize they're not investing in venture.

Sarah Florer (28:37.438)
Mm-hmm.

Sarah Florer (28:52.17)
wow.

Sara T Brand (29:05.78)
or in this innovation ecosystem. And if we don't get women investing in this ecosystem, it's going to be an actual issue for our innovation economy. So now we've put a primer together to talk about why is the venture capital industry not gender diverse? And why is that an issue and a huge opportunity? And then how does investing in venture capital work? What is the two and 20? What's the capital call? What questions do you need to ask? How are you going to make money?

Sarah Florer (29:13.959)
Right,

Sarah Florer (29:26.378)
Mm-hmm.

Sarah Florer (29:32.778)
Mm-hmm.

Sara T Brand (29:35.7)
this kind of stuff just to educate more women about it. takes a little less than an hour. It is not rocket science. It's just been this kind of cloaked secret group. And so we're really trying to make it more accessible. And then we, so for our second fund, we also were able to invite a lot more women more consciously and also got 80 % of our LPs to be women again.

Sarah Florer (29:38.226)
Mm-hmm.

Sarah Florer (29:48.394)
That's amazing.

Sarah Florer (29:56.033)
cool.

That's amazing. And I can see how that would be appealing because quietly, you know, there's a lot of women who I think support everything that you're doing, some more quietly, others more loudly. You everybody has their own way of going about those things and managing their lives. But in the end, you speak with your money a lot of times, how you use it. So, well, listen, if there's any way we can be of support in that regard, I really love that because

here on this webcast, we're really about education for everybody. And everybody's included in that. And it's really important for education purposes to talk about these differences and acknowledge them and promote people who are doing something to bring everything into balance, essentially, is what you're talking about. Roland, anything to add?

Sara T Brand (30:43.698)
Thank

Yeah.

Roland Wiederaenders (30:48.474)
Yeah, no, I just, you know, it's interesting that it's such a underserved market and, there are so many opportunities and it's great having this dialogue here and just I would echo, know, like what you're saying, Sarah, is that we have created this podcast to try to serve as an educational platform for investors and telling them about opportunities to invest in private securities. And you look at so many of our episodes, they've all been with.

with men, we've had a couple women guests, but this is, meaningful because, know, the, it's not just a, you know, a equity thing, like we want to, but it's really the opportunity. And I think that that's the thing that people should understand that there are real objective reasons why a women led venture firm like this and women led

businesses and women-led investors can see things differently than men. I'm really always trying to be as cognitive as possible about all the biases that I carry. We all carry biases, but that's part of wise investing is being able to step back and think, well, what am I not thinking about here? What's the unknown unknown? And for me, know, that

Sarah Florer (32:00.424)
Mm-hmm.

Sarah Florer (32:09.054)
Hmm.

Roland Wiederaenders (32:14.736)
What you said about the caregiver thing, know, that statistically such a huge, overwhelming majority will be, you know, the elderly parents daughter, you know, more so than the son. So right there, you know, that, and Silver Tech, like what you're saying. So I'm really inspired and I'm really glad that, you know, you're here in Austin and we had a chance to make your acquaintance and had a chance to have this conversation for sure.

Sara T Brand (32:46.086)
Thank you.

Sarah Florer (32:46.089)
Sarah, if you have anybody that you know who might be interested to come continue the message here, just let us know. I don't know. We try and find a way to connect it to alternative investing no matter what it is, even if it's like an operational company. And I do think to speak to what Roland said, we are in the center of Texas. Texas has a dynamic that people recognize, but it doesn't mean that there isn't a lot of

opportunity and people from all kinds of backgrounds doing a lot of interesting things and to have the chance to highlight any of that, to just get it out there into the internet or the universe or however you think of those things and social media, you know, would be really an opportunity for us to kind of continue with our principles, which is that here when it comes to wealth building and making money, everybody has a seat at the table.

Sara T Brand (33:40.57)
Mm-hmm. You're here.

Roland Wiederaenders (33:41.968)
That's a great message, sir.

Sarah Florer (33:42.986)
So, well, let's not take more of your time, Sarah, just to quickly say, I went to a Texas Women on Wall Street event yesterday with the girls at Ann Richards School. It was so fun. I don't know if you've ever been to that luncheon where you sit around with like some junior high school, junior girls, or like 16, I guess, and talk about what you do. And they're like, what do you mean? How do you, what, so many of them, they're doing engineering stuff, but they don't know about the money side. And so I was like, well.

Sara T Brand (34:09.296)
Right.

Sarah Florer (34:11.218)
it's all about the money in the end, you should pursue that. Because in the end, is what, if you want to do cool research or cool engineering solution development, all of those things, somebody's paying for it. All right, well, I know. Well, no, it was interesting. You'd be happy to hear that like...

Sara T Brand (34:14.862)
That's right.

Sara T Brand (34:28.87)
great. Although we need women to stay in engineering too.

Sarah Florer (34:36.54)
of the eight girls or the five girls at my table, four of them were like full on to biotech, two other mechanical engineering focus. And then one girl was like, I'm going to be a social media star. And the funny thing is I was like, she might end up the most successful because she had this really bright personality. But anyway, it was funny.

Sara T Brand (34:47.377)
Of course.

Sarah Florer (34:57.066)
It was good for them to even be thinking about it. And I think that the schools for girls are focused on making sure young ladies become aware of the opportunities that are there for them. All right. So, Roland, you want to?

Sara T Brand (35:08.186)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Roland Wiederaenders (35:13.328)
Yeah, what do you think? mean, we're coming up on 35 minutes. We haven't really asked the, know, what drives you personally question. I mean, do we want to get into that? Do we have time?

Sarah Florer (35:16.682)
Okay.

Sarah Florer (35:24.618)
You want to, you know, we do like to see, do you have like a personal motto or a good example is one person we interviewed, he was like, my wife and I in our business seek work life harmony instead of balance because it doesn't balance always, but it's harmonious. So do you have anything like that you'd like to share or if you don't want to, it's okay too.

Sara T Brand (35:37.01)
Mmm.

Sara T Brand (35:41.712)
Mm-hmm.

Sara T Brand (35:46.002)
If I had a work motto, it's probably to really focus on the things that matter most and not, you know, take your day up by the things that...

matter least or just really be clear on what you're prioritizing because if I just do everything that comes into my email inbox, you know, there's no way I'm going to be able to have the time to move the big boulders. So I ended up having to say no a lot and that was really painful for me at first and then I read a bunch of, you know, strategy and how do you say no? How do you get comfortable saying no? And the way I am comfortable saying no is I'm saying yes to

my priority. You know, are my priorities. And so that's helped me a lot, which I think is needed more and more in this crazy world. We're just a lot thrown at us. so knowing how to sing is important.

Sarah Florer (36:29.15)
Yeah, that's really great.

Roland Wiederaenders (36:30.68)
Yeah, that's really good. Putting it in positive terms.

Sarah Florer (36:41.576)
Yeah, I totally agree. No, but thank you for couching it that way because you also don't want to think negatively, right? But it's so hard to sometimes just put the boundary about this is really what I can do. You know, the pressure on being a super person or a superwoman, you know, and of course we do, people do it to, you know, it's internal, it's not an external thing only. So.

Sara T Brand (37:00.722)
Right.

Sara T Brand (37:08.216)
Yes, I'd say I'm a type A personality as well. so making sure I'm being appropriate for my role, especially on the boards of not going in and trying to get in other people's business, but wait until they actually are seeking advice and seeking help. So, yes.

Sarah Florer (37:19.74)
Yeah.

Sarah Florer (37:24.382)
Yeah.

Sarah Florer (37:28.18)
That's a lifelong journey learning how to do that. But thank you so much for spending time in your busy day with us and genuinely I look forward to getting to know you hopefully through Texas Wall Street Women or in any other way. we'll follow up soon. Let me go ahead. I forgot I hadn't closed it out. So thanks everyone for joining us today on Alt Investing Made Easy. If you like this episode, please like and subscribe to our channel.

Sara T Brand (37:47.111)
Wonderful.

Roland Wiederaenders (37:56.805)
And remember everyone, take aim with your alternative investing strategies.

Sarah Florer (38:01.546)
See you next time.