Learning to Bet on the Unknown

Pivoting from Consulting to VC

I was just a kid when I first watched a founder stand in front of the Sharks, trying to convince the room that their idea was the future. I watched Mark Cuban lean back in his chair, look that founder dead in the eye, and say, “I am out.”

I didn’t know the first thing about how investing actually worked back then. I don’t even remember what the startup was or how much money they wanted. I just knew Mark Cuban seemed like a cool guy who owned a lot of businesses. But I could sense the distress on the founders’ faces and how much they cared about what was happening. It wasn’t until years later, when I finally understood what was actually at stake, that memory started to make sense.

Fast forward a few years and I started my career as a consultant at Accenture. Helping companies that had been around for a hot minute get even bigger. New markets, better margins. Good work. Real work. But I kept thinking about the founders nobody had heard of yet. The ones still figuring it out, building things that could genuinely change how someone goes about their life. That is where I wanted to be.

So when an opportunity came up at TruWeather Solutions, a startup building custom micro-weather analytics, I took it. Things moved fast because we were building and selling at the same time. Hashing out what to build next while chasing deals while the whole thing was still being figured out. I remember closing a client while the engineers were literally still building out the feature in the next room. Chaotic. But that was exactly it.

And then TruWeather led me to EY, of all places. An offer came in and I went right back to consulting. There, I worked with global financial institutions on capital planning. The kind of place where everything has a process and everyone follows it. But my managers kept pushing me and others on the team past that. They actually wanted us to think. Bring a new angle, try it out, and then they would sit with us and walk through the reasoning. Why something worked, why something else needed more thought. In a firm that size, most people just tell you what to do. These people wanted us to understand it.

EY was good to me honestly. The people, the work, all of it. And then I did what I always said I was going to do. Went back to school to get my MBA. Always had it on the list. And then at a networking event, someone mentioned the BVCC VC fellowship. A formal introduction to the world of venture capital. Structured. And with mentors. That had my name all over it. I applied and got in.

Today I am a Fellow at Laconia, sourcing early stage deals. Demo days, founder conversations, fintech, healthtech, consumer tech. I have worked with founders on their decks, their pitches, getting their asks in front of the right people. It is early and there is still a lot to figure out. But this is exactly the part I always wanted to be in.

I started this blog to put my thinking somewhere. What I am learning, what I am seeing, what I actually think about the deals and founders I come across. If you are trying to break into VC and want a real look at what that journey looks like, stick around. Still figuring it out myself!