VENTURE CAPITAL/Startups Page - Sarah Chen-Spellings

venture capital
and startups

how TO BUILD INCLUSIVITY IN VENTURE CAPITAL

The recent mishap of Bain Capital’s Crypto Fund and what it reveals beyond the obvious bad timing, is just the tip of the iceberg of what many of us are working hard to address across our organizations. I sat down with my firm, Beyond The Billion’s partner fund, NY-based Palm Drive Capital to discuss what we can do to build inclusivity in venture. Some key excerpts and some additional reflections on this topic.

ceo series: indra nooyi & the power of bringing your full self

“You might be President of PepsiCo. But when you enter this house, you’re the wife, you’re the daughter, you’re the daughter-in-law, you’re the mother. You’re all of that. Nobody else can take that place. So leave that damned crown in the garage. And don’t bring it into the house. You know I’ve never seen that crown.” This snippet may ring familiar to many in the corporate world— it certainly resonated with me as someone raised to assume the role of dutiful daughter, and an Asian woman climbing the ladder myself when I first heard it. Indeed, this was Indra Nooyi’s mother’s response to why at 10pm, Indra with important life-changing news of her career; was first, made to get a carton of milk instead of her husband.

THE COST OF INFLUENCE & BILLION DOLLAR AMBITIONS

FashionValet.com, an online marketplace that once stocked over 400 brands across Southeast Asia, became a major regional player in the fashion industry but, by 2022, she had wound the venture down, shifting her focus to her own in-house modest fashion brands, dUCK and Lilit. The silver lining? By 2022, Yusof had built a network of 14 physical stores across Malaysia and Singapore and sold more than 3 million scarves from just one of her brands. Today, we unpack Vivy’s journey, the cost of building a brand around herself, her regret on not acting on her gut and her BILLION DOLLAR AMBITIONS for her next decade in the modest fashion industry.

ceo series: whitney wolfe-herd & the power of making a radical bet on yourself

Hours after she became the youngest woman ever to take a company public, Whitney Wolfe-Herd blinked back tears. These were not however tears of joy and relief, but frustration at the way her narrative was being told by the media: focused on Wolfe’s alleged harassment and toxic relationships at previous company, Tinder where she was credited as the co-founder and VP of Marketing. To call her career trajectory a “comeback” is an understatement and this is why, Whitney makes first on the list of #BillionDollarMoves we should all be learning from.

scaling a $4.2 billion global business with nicole sahin

While scaling globally seems often to be part of the ‘Billion Dollar Plan’, it is hardly as simple as it is thought to be. Nicole Sahin who founded and scaled G-P, a global PEO leader from an idea to over $4Bn in value chats with me in Davos on her thoughts on the future of work, the challenges of globalization and some of her own hard lessons in scaling.

how female founders and funders are shaking up venture capital

In my article for the World Economic Forum, I share my insights on how the majority of venture capital investment still goes to all-male teams, but how investors are recognizing the opportunity of investing into gender diverse teams. But more importantly, bold systemic change is needed to create an equitable playing field for female founders, and the funds that invest in them.

"i am the most introverted person; i had to actively work on myself to sell the vision"

What does it take to sell and execute on what feels like an impossible vision?

This, is the task of a stem-cell scientist turned founder who is tapping into the multi-billion opportunity to create lab-grown crustacean meat. Under Dr. Sandhya Sriram’s leadership, Shiok Meats today is the world’s first cultivated shellfish meat company, and Southeast Asia’s first cultivated seafood and meat company with investors like Y Combinator to Korean Conglomerate CJ’s Food Arm.

female founders shattering previous grounds with a comeback year: pitchbook-beyond the billion report (2021)

Female founders try to regain their footing amid pandemic recovery: Beyond The Billion (launched as The Billion Dollar Fund for Women), my firm, published a joint report with Pitchbook which showcased how the COVID-19 pandemic had a disproportionate impact on female founders, compared to male founders and the overall US VC market. For the first time in over a decade, early-stage valuations of female founded companies diverged significantly from the industry, with a gap emerging in both 2020 and 2021.

report: our first billion (2021)

Beyond The Billion (launched as The Billion Dollar Fund for Women), my firm, published ‘Our First Billion’ Global Impact Report in late 2021 which provides rich insight into the business of venture capital and what it takes to address the gender venture funding gap once and for all.

This report which I co-authored, published with support from Pacific Western Bank, Bank of America and Motley Fool Ventures found that the consortium deployed over $630 million into almost 800 female-founded companies in under 2 years.

BECOMING THE CEO YOUR COMPANY ACTUALLY NEEDS

We’ve heard a lot about scaling tactics for businesses, but have we paused to think about what it takes to scale ourselves as leaders at the helm? In this episode, Kim Yao, shares with us about how each chapter of her companies demanded different versions of her as a leader, and the future of ‘virtual’ or ‘ghost’ kitchens, i.e. delivery-only restaurants that proliferated during the pandemic and is set to be a $1 trillion industry by 2030.

8 TECH TRENDS FOR INNOVATIVE LEADERS 2022

The pandemic has accelerated the adoption of new technologies – forcing business to rapidly adapt or risk disappearing. Together with 7 other Young Global Leaders, I share how to leverage tech trends to become better leaders in 2022.

is enterprise eating venture capitial?

We travel today to the West Coast of the United States where it’s becoming increasingly clear that Enterprise Tech is dominating venture capital — where every company is becoming a software company. From retailers to established financial institutions and even health providers, the underlying technology has enabled everything from payments to CRM, information management, and so, much more. But how did we arrive at this inflection point and what next?

family office view: the vc strategy

The family office was initially created to look after the wealth of ultra high net worth families. But today, the modern-day family office does far more than that and is in fact, acting a whole lot more like a venture investor. Today we talk to Field Pickering, COO, General Counsel and Head of Venture Investing at Vulpes, a family office built off the wealth of Stephen Diggle, who founded Artradis Fund Management. Artradis was an Asian long volatility biased multi strategy alternative asset manager, and at its helm grew assets under management from US$4 million to US$4.7 billion at its peak in 2008.

VENTURE CAPITAL IN EMERGING MARKETS: SPACS, SUPERAPP WARS & MORE

In today’s Billion Dollar Moves Breakdown, we bust some myths on the emerging markets and venture capital with THE emerging markets analyst, Mikal Khoso, VC at Wavemaker Partners, a cross border venture capital firm dual headquartered in Los Angeles and Singapore and has raised over $580M across multiple funds.

never too late to startup: building insurtech

We love rooting for the underdog- but what does it really take to rise despite the odds, as THE underdog? Rosaline Koo founded CXA Group from her living room in 2013 after a storied career with multinationals, with ambitions to transform health benefits for employees. Tune in to her story from risking all her family savings to build her startup; to scaling to over a million users and raising over $50M from the likes of Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin’s B Capital Group, EDBI, Openspace Ventures and more.

executing on your purpose & making eggs without chickens

From the rise of Impossible Foods to McDonalds announcing their McPlant menu, plant-based food has undeniably taken the market by storm. Beyond the mainstreaming of veganism, fast-forward to 2021, a global crisis and global lockdowns drove consumers to reassess what they eat and their impact on the planet. Riding this wave is Clara Foods, a Silicon Valley venture-backed company making animal protein without the animals. Led by Arturo Elizondo, Clara Foods is disrupting food technology, developing performance protein products and making the world’s first animal free egg white protein. Using advanced fermentation to brew protein that is cleaner, greener and kinder to our environment today, this week, we take a personal deep dive with the man behind the vision of eggs without chickens.

building indonesian unicorns

Indonesia’s startups have been making headlines in the last few years, including most recently the news that online mall Bukalapak is set to raise $1.5 billion in the country’s largest-ever initial public offering – setting the stage for a wave of tech listings, with fellow unicorns GoTo and Traveloka to follow suit. Home to the region’s largest population, it is no surprise, Indonesia is in it’s primetime for entrepreneurs. This week, we begin to scratch the surface of the Indonesian startup storyline with veteran digital entrepreneur and evangelist Shinta Dhanuwardoyo.

asian startups on overdrive - real fundamentals or are we drinking our own kool-aid?

From sky high valuations to the sell-offs of SPACs, This week, we dive deep with Rajive Keshup in Singapore, Investment Director at Cathay Innovation, an early and growth stage venture capital firm with $1.5B AUM across San Francisco, Paris, Shanghai and Singapore, and closely affiliated with Cathay Capital Private Equity, a global private equity firm with $3B in AUM. From the lens of a management consultant turned operator turned funder, Rajive talks about what it takes to be an entrepreneur’s first phone call in great and not-so-great times, and the real landscape of growth stage companies in SEA.

BIG TECH & THE GLOBAL ENTREPRENEURIAL REVOLUTION WITH RENOWNED INVESTOR, CHRISTOPHER SCHROEDER

This week, we went deep on the Global Entrepreneurial Revolution shaping our future with renowned American investor & entrepreneur, Christopher Schroeder. From the dominance of big tech, to the digital divide to startups rising in the Middle East – we cover it all. […]

VENTURE CAPITALIST VIEW: STARTUPS WINNING IN SOUTHEAST ASIA WITH MICHAEL LINTS

Southeast Asia’s ride hailing giant, Grab is set to go public through the world’s largest SPAC merger, valuing the company at close to $40Bn. Fresh off the announcement, in this episode, we talk about the rise of startups in Southeast Asia, with over 650 million internet users, more than America and Europe combined. Southeast Asia is arguably the most exciting region in the world right now to create disruptive tech companies with more dry powder, higher valuations, the rise of unicorns and imminent exits fueled further by large corporates. […]

SOLD MY STARTUP FOR $780M: THE GOOD, BAD, UGLY

“Never do business with your friends” “Never hire from Craigslist” From breaking all these rules and more, this week we went deep on the growing pains of a startup, from PR nightmares to co-founder breakups, the challenge of shifting from a scarcity to growth mindset, and so much more with Jack Smith, serial entrepreneur & investor who sold his startup, Vungle to Blackstone for $780M.[…]

A TIME OF RACIAL RECKONING: CAN VENTURE CAPITAL HEAL ITSELF?

By: Sarah Chen Are we just reading off talking points to pacify the marketplace, placing a bandaid over a deep wound that has been inflicted again and again over the last 400 years; or are we committed to working on real, systemic, institutionalized change? What does this mean for the world of venture which has […]

CORPORATE VENTURE CAPITAL: REAL DEAL OR LIP SERVICE?

Originally posted on LinkedIn October, 2017 Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures hasn’t been shy with his comment that “corporate money is dumb money”. With minimal success stories told in the corporate venture capital (“CVC”) model; this critique has sparked conversations among the business community, and made its ways to the shores of Asia at the recent PE-VC […]

Why more than ever, we need to fuel innovation by women: female- founded/led companies building the post-COVID-19 world

Originally posted on BTB’s Medium as part of our #FemaleFunderFridays series By: Sarah Chen The sentiment on the ground is increasingly grim to say the least, with further extensions of stay-at-home orders across the globe, even amidst protests by locals. COVID-19 has reshaped our view of normalcy and in many ways impacted the way we think about […]

Strategies for navigating COVID-19, Curated by the Lean In Team

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the resources I can make available to others through the work I’m involved in – especially in this time of COVID-19. Please find below, a curated list by Lean In, a group I’m grateful to be part of, empowering women around the world working through this difficult time. […]