Transcription
Hi everyone, this is RO Life Master, and I'm excited to have Kate McAndrew, who's the General Partner at Bon, which is a collective of creative technologists advancing the art of building companies in the frontiers of technology and design. That they lead pre-seed rounds, typically investing $500,000 to $1.5 million in pre-product, pre-revenue startups. Kate is also the author of the book, "The Goddess Guide to Branding." Welcome to the show.
Thank you for having me. I'm psyched to be here.
Awesome. So, you know, you had quite a journey before you started your own fund, but how did you get into this crazy world of startups and venture capital?
Well, I've been in venture capital since 2012, so for quite some time. But if you had told me in 2011 that I would end up being a venture capitalist, I would have never believed you. I went to university at McGill University in Montreal and studied art history and cultural studies, which is perhaps the last thing that you would tell anyone to major in if they were going to go into venture capital. But I was just always entrepreneurial. I was always starting businesses, side hustles. And when I got out of university, I started my own consulting business. And then pretty quickly landed in a role in venture capital, helping to start an accelerator program. That was sort of my avenue into my quote-unquote big break. I moved to San Francisco, and a company I had backed at the accelerator was living in this awesome warehouse community in SoMa, full of technologists and totally nuts people, and they let me sleep on their floor for a couple of weeks before I even had a job. And I found my first venture capital, real venture capital role, sort of through them and their network. I was at that fund, which was a brand new startup fund, for seven years before starting Bon, which I'm so proud to be the co-founder of and the GP of now.
Interesting. And, you know, during your school days, were you actively building your own side hustles? Were you selling on a lemonade stand? Is that how you started off?
Well, yes, very close. It wasn't lemonade, they were vegan cupcakes. But in college, I had a vegan baking company. I was not vegan, but it was very hip in the early odds to be vegan. And so I had this kind of punk rock vegan baking company, and I catered all of the dance parties and all the hit parties at school. I delivered to local cafes in the area. But then, interestingly, I had an early blog around vegan baking in like 2005. And that was my first foray into social and brand building, which is what I ended up exploiting to start my first consulting business. Was really teaching execs like what Facebook was, because I was so early to that, because it had just really broached the consumer market, let alone the enterprise market, when I was coming out of college. So the side hustle was the cupcakes, but the real lessons were the online content. And I leveraged that to help kind of get my first real business going, which was in LA, consulting for a bunch of small, medium, and mid-size companies around social media marketing.
Got it. And usually, I find people have different paths to getting into the VC world. But you went from being an operator to VC. How did you make that transition?
Honestly, right time, right place, hustling really hard. I knew nothing about venture capital. And even though I was someone who had always been starting companies and side hustles, I didn't think about myself as a founder. That wasn't even in the lexicon. I was not in Silicon Valley. I grew up in Los Angeles. And when I got my first role, it was actually in the Southeast. So I was living in a small town in the South. I'd moved there to do some volunteer work. And I met this group of guys who would come to the Habitat for Humanity job site where I was volunteering. And they had all been bankers in New York and retired, you know, down to the Carolinas. And they wanted to start an accelerator program. And they kind of got to know me, and they got a sense for maybe I wasn't your average Habitat for Humanity volunteer. And they just kind of gave me this opportunity to help start this accelerator. And for me, I had been thinking, okay, Kate, time to go to business school. Like, you love building things, but I was still in this mindset of, oh, I have to pay this institution money in order to get the knowledge. And they told me, in about an accelerator, they were like, we give founders, we give entrepreneurs money, and then we help teach them how to build their businesses. And it completely erupted my understanding of how capital could flow, knowledge could flow. And I was just like, I don't know what this is, but I want to be a part of it. And so I just jumped in with both feet. And I think it was really right time, right place, prime to start something new. And when I found myself in San Francisco and getting my first real venture job at a real fund, it was like the whole world opened up. And I was just running as hard as I could. And it was such a good feeling. I felt like my skills and my kind of love for meeting people, for complex problems, and really for envisioning businesses and being able to kind of see through strategy into things that don't exist yet, which is something I've always done my whole life, all of a sudden it was like, oh my gosh, that's what this career is. Right? So it was just an incredible moment of acceleration for me. And I truly found my fit here in San Francisco in this community and in this culture of building new things.
Interesting. And how did your experience at Bolt influence your approach to early-stage investing so deeply?
I have so much gratitude for my time there. The number one thing is Bolt always invested first. And I cut my teeth in the pre-seed environment. I cut my teeth in pre-product, pre-revenue investing. And I really do believe that that is a specialty. It's very distinct from later-stage investing where you're assessing P&Ls. At pre-seed, you're really assessing people. And so I really learned how to go through robust diligence with people at the center. So that pre-seed training, I think, has carried through in my career. I learned a lot. The second thing is, Bolt was really interesting because it was focused on hardware and software, and really in deep tech, which is a subculture within broader Silicon Valley. Right? We were in the "software is eating the world" era, not the "hardware is cool" era. And so I really grew up in this culture of like, have conviction and have discipline around your strategy, and be focused on connecting with the people that matter to you and your fund, and don't get distracted by what everybody's saying on the internet or at parties. So kind of really stick to your knitting. And that was a great culture to be raised in because I have learned to really not pay attention to the dominant noise in the market and really to just focus on what's my strategy, how do I execute my strategy well, and really having conviction around what we're doing at Bon.
Interesting. And especially when you're looking at pre-seed investments, you are actually betting on the team. And in fact, in my career, I work with some really young founders. In fact, I was working very closely with the founder of Ou Rooms, who was a Thiel Fellow. I've worked with another founder who was a Forbes 30 Under 30 founder. But I have also worked with older founders. What do you prefer more? Would you like to back the early, very young founders who don't have much experience, or experienced founders who really understand the market really well?
So within our fund, we have three archetypes of founders. The first archetype is that young, hungry founder coming right out of school. The second archetype of founder is the multi-billion dollar exit under their belt, second or third-time CEO. Those two were the first two archetypes. They're also the least common in our portfolio. The most common archetype in our portfolio is really the mid-career professional who has established excellence in their career. They know what good looks like, and they've seen something in their career that they want to change about their industry or about their discipline. And so they have both a unique insight into the opportunity and an incredible facility with technology, with team building, etc., that's going to allow them to build a really, really big business around exploiting the gap that they've witnessed. So we have all three archetypes in our fund, but the third is really the archetype that we work with the most.
And what do you look for in the founder, especially at a pre-seed stage? You don't have, I mean, you can't really analyze P&Ls, you can't really look at their projections in the five to 10 years from now. What are you looking for? Are you looking for the vision, or are you looking for what you're trying to build?
So with pre-diligence, it is very founder-focused. I mean, founder is everything. And the truth is, I think founder is everything at every stage. You just have less data proving how good the founder is when you're really early on. So a big part of what I'm looking for is, do they have the capacity to inspire people around them to go on a completely illogical journey? Right? It is not logical to get an engineer who's making $750,000 or a million dollars at OpenAI to quit their job and come work for this startup where you're going to compensate them with Monopoly money that we call Monopoly money that we call equity. People are going to be taking pay cuts, people are going to be taking risks to work with you for less than they should get paid as a contractor, etc. And so we're really looking for a founder that has both the vision and the charisma to do that in a powerful way. And I think what's interesting is when people think about charisma, they sometimes think about somebody who is a fast talker and they really are, you know, very shiny and they've got that Stanford degree and D D D D D. And that's one version of what that looks like. But it can also look like the really deeply technical, really nerdy, can't make eye contact person. That person can also be a charismatic leader to the types of engineers that they need to hire. So we're looking for that step-function ability to inspire people around a mission. But that can look really different depending on who the person is and what the market they're going into is and who they need to recruit around. Right? So I think that's something we're looking for. And then embedded in that is really this incredibly important axiom around founder-market fit. You can be the best founder in the world, let's say you're the top 1% AI engineer. Well, if you're starting a dog food company, that's not super relevant. Right? So we're looking for why you, why you for this, why you for this, why now? Right? So there's a combination around that. And we have a lot of ways that we try to get to that answer. But it's really about, are you exceptional in some way? Can you inspire people around you? And are you the best person in the world to start this business, or at least let's say the top 10 in the world to start this business?
Interesting. And what trends in deep tech are you most excited about currently?
Well, we just released a huge deep dive into the intersection of CAD, or computer-aided design, and AI. And I think that that is an incredibly rich area. I mean, we are seeing the transformation of all sectors potentially with AI right now. And computer-aided design, or CAD, is an area that we know really well as a team. So everything from mechanical CAD to ECAD to AEC, which is construction software. Really think about any software that we used to design objects in the real world that is going to get remade in fundamental ways with AI. And so that's an area that we're spending a lot of time. We have very deep networks in that space. And we're thinking a lot about what kind of innovation is going to come out of the incumbents, where can startups play, what are the relationships there? And I can send you this report. It's like hundreds of pages. We did it in community with our collective of experts and includes sort of what some would call the, I forget what they said, the global CAD elite, you know, as well as people just coming out of MIT. Right? So it's a really interesting cross-section of folks, folks and our collective digging in on this. So that's an area we're spending a lot of time and making a lot of investments.
Got it. Interesting. And you made close to around 30 investments, and you made some interesting investments, especially Amber, iBought, Elevated Foods. But how did you get the opportunity to invest into Amber? Maybe you can elaborate more on that.
Yeah, so Amber is a really special one. Amber was founded, or you know, was founded by the former co-CEO of Autodesk. And he also happens to be an LP of ours in the fund. So my partner Axel has known him for a long time, very deep, long-standing relationship. And actually invested in our Fund I and was very intimately aware of how we work and clearly also believed in the investment product that we're quote-unquote selling, which is really about how we can add value to the company-building journey. The art of building is what Bon means. And so we were very lucky to have a shot at being in that round with such a prominent founder. He's put basically nothing about it on the internet. I can say very little other than it's in the AEC space or the construction space. But I think in this business, you know, some people think that venture is finance. It's not. Some people think that it's sales and marketing. It's not. It's really a services industry. And I think the fact that we got the chance to be an early investor and a pre-seed investor in Amber is really about the long-standing relationship that we have and the fact that we built this relationship and continued to hopefully be valuable to this person that he wanted to bring us on to the cap table because he felt like we had a lot more than money to offer. So that one was a really fun tie-in for us.
And Kate, you're leading the rounds for pre-seed companies. But are you also putting reserves for follow-on rounds?
So we exclusively lead pre-seed rounds as our first investment. And we write pretty big checks at pre-seed, right? So we're talking pre-product, pre-revenue companies. And our average check right now is $1.25 million. So we're going pretty hard at the pre-seed. And that's we really want to show, hey, we've got conviction, and we want the founders to have the money that they need to build. We also do reserve capital for follow-on, but we follow on pretty selectively. We're by design not a huge multi-stage fund that's going to be with you through seven rounds or really with you for a few and then abandon you and create a lot of signaling risk for you in the market. We're very clear about the fact that we go all-in at pre-seed and then we follow on selectively at seed, Series A, and beyond.
Got it. And it's said that you need a lot of capital to scale hardware companies. But can you share your experience of working with hardware companies and how can they be really successful?
Absolutely. I mean, I think the most important thing about investing in hardware companies, scaling hardware companies, they're not software companies. And don't disabuse yourself of the idea that they are software companies. You need to have people who understand hardware around the table. And if you do, it's fine. Right? Silicon Valley was built on hardware. It's in the name, silicon. This was not software Valley. There is a lot of knowledge and defensibility and incredible businesses that can be built with hardware. We have domestic battery manufacturing, we have software-enabled PCB manufacturing. Those are two of our most capital-intensive investments. But part of it is, you need to understand, okay, how is this business going to hit inflection points? What is the funding that's going to be required to hit those inflection points? Who are the players that are going to understand that? And you need founders that can look at that too, and can also listen. And so it's really about having the right people around the table who have their eyes open around what the dynamics of those businesses are, when they're going to get into revenue, when they're going to start to ramp, and not having misaligned expectations so that people start to do unnatural things with them. So we think a lot about not only the path to inflection points, but the path to funding to hit those inflection points. And we try to also really work with other investors who have experience in deep tech and in hardware.
Got it. Interesting. And the last couple of years have been a little difficult for founders where they had to go for down rounds. What's your biggest advice to founders on how do you minimize dilution and profitability?
The best money that exists is revenue. That's revenue. And I really believe in CEOs getting a nose for revenue. The minute you are profitable, you can relax. You start to be in the position where you can be thinking about fundraising as a mechanism for growth, not for survival. And so I really believe that the era of the upside-down P&L, maybe it's not over, but with AI, it's not over. But I really do believe that many businesses have the ability to get profitable. And if you keep your burn really low, especially if you're pre-product-market fit, keeping your burn low gives you options. Right? And so I really believe in capital-efficient growth. I really believe in profitability, or notional profitability, meaning the ability to get profitable quickly if you want to. And that nose for revenue is something that if you don't develop it, it can be very difficult to develop later. So I'm a big believer in entrepreneurs controlling their own destiny and really seeing capital as a mechanism for growth, not for survival.
And when it comes to founders, what do most founders think they know about fundraising, but they do not?
Oh man, they always think it's about the pitch deck. Yeah, which I think is funny. Like, I just started this TikTok account last year, which has been really fun. I post a lot about venture capital on TikTok. And everybody loves the videos about pitch decks. They want to obsess over this slide and how should it be designed and D D D D. And don't get me wrong, like you need to have a good pitch deck, right? Because you need to be able to clearly communicate what you're working on to your investor. But the strength of the introduction matters about 10x, maybe more, than the strength of the pitch deck. And so people think it's about the documentation. What's really it's about social proof. Because again, what you're trying to do is understand very quickly, is this person trustworthy? Is this person someone that has the ambition to build a billion-dollar business? Is this person unique and exceptional in some way? Those things tend to not be communicated in deck form. Right? The deck is a tool, but the social proof is really the thing that is much more powerful when it comes to fundraising.
Got it. And for founders, if they have VCs on the cap table, what is the best way to put your VCs to work?
A great question. I think a big part of it is really understanding what people are good at, how they like to spend their time, and then using them in those capacities. Right? Then you can ask your VC, hey, how do you love to show up for your companies? What's your favorite part of being on a board? Figure out what they actually like to do. Because when people are doing the things they like to do, you don't have to pull teeth. They get excited about it. It makes them feel powerful. Right? If someone's asking me to do something that I know I know how to do really well, I do it joyfully. Right? If you start asking me to do stuff that I hate doing, I'm like, oh man, that's drudgery. And that emotional experience of what it feels like to work on the company also informs whether or not you want to write a follow-on check. Right? It's true, because we are influenced by our emotional experience of this work. Now, that doesn't mean that there aren't boards where you're just dog working, getting it done, and it doesn't feel good, but dang, the company's great and you want to write the check anyway. It's not like the world is ruled by emotions. But I do think that that's an important thing. So first, listen to how the VCs want to contribute. Second, find ways to pull that out of them. And third, like, let go of the rest. Just find another person that can help you with the thing that you still need. Don't try and get someone to do the thing that's an unnatural act for them because it doesn't feel good.
Got it. And how has your role as a board member for different companies influenced your investment strategy, also the fact that you're working with other board members from different VC firms?
It's so interesting because being a board member for many years now has really influenced how I invest. And I think it's mostly because I now have over a decade of data of how different kinds of teams play out, different kinds of dynamics play out. And so I'm just much more able to guide people based on my experience. And so I think it has helped me be, in some ways, a more cautious investor, but in some ways, a more gutsy investor. Like, I'm just able to really make the call more clearly than I used to be able to. Both helped a lot. The next thing is, when we're doing follow-on funding rounds, I pay a lot of attention to who the specific board member we're recruiting in with that investment is, as opposed to the brand name of the firm. I would much rather have a board member from a non-name firm who has great experience that's relevant to this particular business than a famous investor from a mega fund who isn't going to show up half the time. And happens a lot. And so I feel like I have now sort of a cohort of people that I know are great board members. They work really hard, they do what they say they're going to do, they're honest. And like, those are the people that you want to be in the foxhole with. Right? And so I've learned a lot, both about how to sharpen my own investing, but then also how to help the founders build their boards strategically in a way that's going to serve them in the long term, not just serve sort of the vanity metric of the brand name that did the follow-on.
Got it. Interesting. And Kate, I was fortunate enough to work for a female founder. She was a Forbes 30 Under 30 founder, and her name is Hana. And I was part of the student accommodation marketplace. A really great operator. But when I was working with her, I realized that only 2% of the money gets into female founders. So what's so unique about the female founder ecosystem in venture capital, and what can be done to increase the investment getting to female founders?
The number one thing we can do to increase investment in female founders is to increase investment in female VCs. Yeah, period. Full stop. End of story. We know this empirically. We know this empirically. And I have always worked at funds where we invest in all genders. I've never worked at a fund that was specific to female founders. But again and again, I have invested in phenomenal companies that have female founders. And I think that's because I'm exploiting an underinvested asset. Right? Which is female founders are overlooked. And I think a big part of that is, again, many pre-seed decisions and seed-stage decisions are made based on social proof. Well, guess what? If you are a middle-aged man, your network tends to be other middle-aged men. Right? So you're going to have less social proof for those rising female founders. Secondly, people like to invest in problem sets and industries that they understand. Now, female founders are starting cybersecurity companies. It's not like women are just starting companies for women's issues. Right? That's not the case. But many women are starting companies for the giant gaps in both consumer and enterprise opportunities that dominantly affect women more than men. And men often intuitively do not understand it, or they haven't seen it before. They haven't seen an exit in a look for. And so it just takes them more work to quote-unquote get it. And lots of investors, and I understand it, we're moving fast, you're getting hundreds of emails a day. And so you're naturally going to gravitate to the opportunities that you intuitively understand, either from your own experience or from your own track record. And so if you have not historically had companies founded by women and funded by women, and all of a sudden you just don't have the pattern matching around it. And so I think that there is incredible alpha in investing in female VCs who don't pattern match to that history. Right? There's an opportunity to find new corners of the market, new ways of approaching problems, that I think is super interesting. I'm continuously, some of my top-performing investments have been in female founders. So I think it's really not an issue of, oh, I don't like women, or oh, I'm a patriarchal person. It's not that. It's just, I get it, it's not how the game is played, it doesn't match your pattern matching, so you move on.
Interesting. And has DPI died in 2024, especially when it comes to SaaS companies? Do you think the salvation for VC exits is through PE and to get more liquidity?
So I think that, you know, all markets have cycles. We have up cycles, we have down cycles. And you hope to buy in the down and sell in the high. Right? So we are clearly in, it's like, seriously the most one-on-one thing, and yet often times people forget it. And a lot of people, LPs, especially VCs too, are struggling from lack of liquidity. Right? And so many people are like, oh God, we got to get liquidity, we got to get liquidity. The LPs need it, and the VCs need it because the LPs don't have it. Right? And so it creates a lot of pressure. But the issue is, you don't want to go selling things in a down market. You're going to get terrible multiples, you're not going to make a lot of money. And so ultimately, you're going to depress the value of the portfolio. So I'm a big believer in holding out until the next upcycle when hopefully you can harvest things in better conditions. So I think many people are seeking liquidity right now. They're looking for secondary opportunities, they're just trying to get their money out. But my belief is that it's not the right time. And that we need to wait and hold. And if you have a portfolio that has underlying high-quality companies in it who have revenue ramp and you have good ownership, you should not try and liquidate now.
And do you think the IPO markets will open up in 2025, and would the M&A markets also open up, since you'll have Trump coming in next year?
Oh God, I don't know. I don't know. I can't predict it, to be honest. I mean, will '25 be better than '24? I hope so. One of the largest exits in '24 was actually in a company that my partner led the seed round in, Recorded Future. It was a $2.76 billion acquisition announced by MasterCard. But that was an anomaly. Right? And I think that I think that '25 will improve. I'm hoping that '26 will be a much bigger improvement. But I'm like, the last person you want to ask about public market predictions. Again, in terms of sticking to my knitting and my conviction, the beautiful thing about pre-seed is that down markets are a great time to be investing in pre-seed. Right? So my discipline right now, since we're so early in the fund cycle, we're only two years in, like, I'm lucky that I'm not trying to harvest right now. Right now, I'm planting seeds. And dang, it is good soil out there. So I'm very lucky to just be in the moment in time in my fund cycle where I get to focus on the discipline of making good new investments. Now, certainly, the seed, Series A market has been very unpredictable. And so we're going to see a higher drop-off rate between pre-seed and seed, and between seed and Series A. And we're already seeing it. I think CA just released their 2024 data, if I'm not mistaken, on the drop-off rate, and it's gone up significantly. So I think that's probably going to be more impactful to my business and more impactful to certainly the current early-stage founders that are out there in the market right now.
And okay, what I've seen in the last 10 years is you've got crowdfunding, syndicate models, revenue-based financing. There's been a growth of multi-stage funds also. So what do you think is the future of venture capital? Do you see a lot of seed funding also play along with multi-stage funds, and who's going to win or lose there?
So, you know, I think what's interesting is a huge part of what people talk about as venture capital today is not really what venture capital ever was or was supposed to be. You're really calling maybe like new types of banks, even venture capital. And it's not like venture capital was invented really in the '90s. And it was always about finding a great team with a great technology product that had a new insight to a market and giving them the opportunity to go for it and grow with them. And I believe that the fundamentals of venture capital are today, should be, hopefully will be that. Right? Now, I think that today, actually, the heart of venture capital is really pre-Series A, because that's what the asset class was designed for. It's one of the reasons that I love it. And I think a lot of what's happening at the big multi-stage firms is really a distraction, in my personal opinion. And I think it's honestly like a difficult way to make money on returns. Like, I'm carry-focused. I'm very aligned with the founders on having carry-focused funds. And I think when you get into these big multi-billion dollar vehicles, it's really difficult to return 3x on a $3 billion fund. It's really hard. Right? And so if you want VC to be about high risk, high return, I really think the early stage is where it's at. And I think that's really the heart and soul of VC, and I think it always has been.
Got it. And what advice would you give to aspiring entrepreneurs in the deep tech space?
Team, team, team, team, team. I think honestly, the difference in my career of what I've seen between the companies that take off, that IPO for a billion dollars, that are still building multi-hundred million dollar businesses that have real enterprise value, it's the difference is people who were able to attract the talent that they thought was ungettable. Right? Versus people who went after the people that were just okay, or were pretty good, or they can get the job done. Right? And so I honestly believe that you're only as good as the team that you're playing on. And forcing yourself to seek the ungettable talent is the number one thing that you must do.
And are there any trends in AI and deep tech that you think are not being served, and listeners who are listening to this podcast should look at?
Well, I think we're starting to see the application layer in AI develop around consumer experiences because of the infrastructure layer that's gotten laid in the last few years. The extraordinary adoption rate of ChatGPT is just beyond. And I am so excited for the businesses that have gotten started in the last 18 months and that are going to get started in the next couple of years that are really going to hopefully revolutionize how your everyday consumer interacts with technology in their everyday life. And I'm hoping that in that, we can unlock some experiences that are ultimately more human. That would be my hopeful interpretation. Less of the doom scroll and more of getting the thing done, or getting the thing done better. We're starting to see those companies get funded by funds like ours, but also funds like Forerunner, funds like Maven Ventures. Like these are funds that are looking at consumer AI. And I think that there's a lot that's going to happen in that application layer now that the infrastructure has been maturing.
Interesting. And as I mentioned earlier, you've also written a book called "The Goddess Guide to Branding." So what made you write the book and any insights on that?
So I wrote the book with my sister, which was an incredibly fun project. So I've obviously been in VC for a long time. She's a career brand strategist. And we read the work of a young Jungian analyst named Jean Shinoda Bolen, who wrote a book in the '80s called "Goddesses in Every Woman." And it's an interpretation of Carl Jung and his sort of archetypal system. Now, if you've ever walked into a branding studio today or done branding for your company, it's highly likely that the agency that you worked with worked with archetypes. And most of those agencies are using Carl Jung's archetypes. And those archetypes are very masculine. You have the Explorer and the Innovator. And it's not that Explorers and Innovators can't be women, but they really or can't be feminine, but they don't lend themselves to the feminine interpretations. And so my sister and I read the work of this analyst and we came up with a branding system based around eight goddesses based on her work. And so instead of the Explorer, we have Diana, the Free. And you have Athena, the Wise. And so we go through this goddess system and we introduce you to the CEOs and CMOs of very successful companies today that are leveraging these archetypes. And kind of show how they're at work in successful brands. And then we walk founders through the process of finding an archetype for their brand. So the book covers examples as far-reaching as hot sauce and fintech. Right? Anything that you make needs a brand, including yourself. And so this book is really about a new system that can allow founders, marketers, branding people to start with the core feminine archetypes and hopefully build something really authentic and magnetic for their customers.
Got it. Interesting. And Kate, you've been successful in launching Bon, which is $100 million. Any advice for emerging managers who are looking to raise funding for their fund?
Oh my gosh, my advice is always team. I mean, I love my co-founders. I truly love my co-founders. And there's no way that I could have done this without them, nor would I want to. You know, I remember one of my LPs kind of asking me, well, how did you pick your co-founder? And I was like, if you're picking in an abstract way, they're not really a co-founder. There's no one else in the world I could imagine going on this journey with. So the biggest thing that I would say is build a great team. Don't go it alone. I think that this job is hard and it's long. Our fund life is 10 years. That's just for the first fund, which you're really signing up to spend a decade plus with these people. And at least for me, I'm someone who loves to collaborate. I love intellectual exchange. I would have never wanted to do it alone. But it became very common for emerging managers to do these solo funds. And the truth is, I just don't recommend it. I think it's more fun, more interesting, more expansive when you have a team that challenges you, that forces you to grow, and that also allows you to lean into your strengths instead of making you also handle your weaknesses. No one wants me approving wires. Like, I'm not the dot-the-eye, cross-the-tee gal. But man, I don't think my partner Matt has ever missed the dot on an eye or the cross on a tee. And so we make great partners. Right? So I really do believe in building a team. And I'm so grateful that we did.
Yeah, I mean, this is something I should have asked earlier, but how did you come up with the name Bon?
Oh, it was such an interesting soul-searching process, especially because I love branding. And picking a name that no one can pronounce, let me tell you, it was a bold choice. So Bon means the art of building. And Bon means building in German. And then Co means sort of art or craft. And we really felt like Bon was this encapsulation of really our belief around the art of building startups, the art of building teams, the art of building products. And especially at pre-seed, it really is more about the art than the science. And I think for us, we have a real love for the craft in venture capital and the craft of the early stage. And when we found this word, and one of our partners happens to be German, so we felt like we could use it. We were just like, oh man, like this is us. And it's weird, and no one's going to get it. That's ours. And so we just decided to kind of go all in and do the weird thing and pick the unpronounceable name. And we've really come to love it.
Got it. Awesome. And I quickly wanted to do the top three. What's your favorite business book?
Honestly, it's "Zero to One." Such a classic.
Absolutely. We'll put that on the show notes. And you know, if you could go back in time when you started your career in the VC world and you started Bon, what is the one thing you would have focused on or done differently?
I would have been more focused on my self-care early on. I really worked. I mean, I worked really hard, that's how I got here. But I feel like there were some years where I just wasn't taking care of myself. It took a long time for me to really understand how to take care of myself and have a high work output. And that's the only way you make it for the long run.
Yeah, no, absolutely. And do you have your favorite online tool? For example, Gmail, Slack, Zoom?
Oh, well, I'm obsessed with our CRM, which is Streak. And people say that no one loves our CRM. I love our CRM. It's all plugged into Gmail, and so everything's integrated. And it's my favorite tool that we use.
Got it. Put that in the show notes. And Kate, what's the best way people can reach out to you and know more about Bon?
So I am most active on TikTok, Kate McAndrew on TikTok. And then I'm also on LinkedIn, Kate McAndrew. So follow me there. I post a ton of videos about startups, VC, raising money. And I'm also, it's me in the comments. There's like no intern there, you know, Harding stuff. It's literally me. So it's a great way to interact with me, and I really love it there.
Got it. Put that down in the show notes. Okay, thank you so much for taking for speaking with us. And thank you for your time. It was awesome.
Thanks for having me.