Who am I and how I got here
Hi 👋🏽 -
My name’s Reena and I’m excited to share that three months ago I joined Laconia as an Associate on the investment team.
My journey in VC started 5 years ago when I applied to Laconia’s internship as a senior at NYU. After my year-long internship, I joined one of Laconia’s portfolio companies, PromoteIQ. In fact, it was the first company I had done due diligence on while at Laconia. The passion and steadfastness of the co-founders, Alex Sherman & Peter Schwartz, got me fascinated with solving problems in an industry being disrupted.
Why I’m excited about VC – An industry disrupted
Over the course of four years, I managed PromoteIQ's largest customers in both the US and Europe, building their retail media program from the ground up to hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue. It was there I realized I thrive in the chaos of a market transforming. There’s something fascinating that happens when you’re building in an industry disrupted – you often hear others speculate from the outside, but when you’re in the trenches, you have real-time data points on what is happening on the frontlines. It’s in this chaos that you can question the assumptions the industry was predicated on and define a new path on how the industry will move forward.
At PromoteIQ, I got to play a part in defining where the Retail Media industry was going next. What’s most exciting to me about making my way back to Laconia this past October is that the venture ecosystem I experienced 5 years ago is not the same one I’m seeing now – it resembles an industry being disrupted.
What’s changed
The venture landscape has changed quite a bit compared to when I interned at Laconia 5 years ago. Here are some of my observations re-entering this space:
New Market Entrants: There are more options on where founders can get funded – whether that is from established VC firms, crossover funds, rollover funds, Micro-VCs, or crowdfunding platforms like Republic.com.
In 2021, venture investment reached $621B, a 775% increase compared to 5 years ago. There was more competition for certain deals, ballooning in round-sizing, and variance in key metrics needed to raise the next round.
With more competition, VCs face increasing pressure to provide founders with what they need most - time and money. In an environment where everything moves faster, not wasting a founder’s time is more critical than ever.
Diversity in VC: When I walk into many of these pitch and tech events, I see more people that look like me than before. That’s exciting to see because the hope is that having more diverse investors means more diverse founders and ideas are getting funded.
Despite the superficial improvements, a deeper dive below the surface reveals that venture capital’s challenges are far from solved. There’s still a lack of diversity of those who get funding, which means many founders with the highest upside potential remain underfunded.
More capital =/= more deals funded: Despite there being more money in the ecosystem, the number of deals funded hasn’t gone up, which suggests that a large part of the market remains underserved. (Geri’s article here on the “Two Worlds of Venture” sheds more light on the increasing bifurcation in funding outcomes).
More diverse VCs =/= more capital to diverse founders: While academic projections suggest that diversity at the investor level will lead to more diversity in funding outcomes, the data shows that this isn’t necessarily the case. For example, despite the meaningful increase in women in VC over the past few years, the amount of venture capital dollars invested in women founders remains at a mere 2% (see here).
In addition to the unprecedented increases in capital allocated to venture, regulatory changes and technology have enabled the rise of new funding sources such as crowdfunding platforms, “solo capitalists”, and micro-VCs, calling into question the established ways of who can raise a fund and how capital is allocated. The VC industry is being disrupted and thrown into chaos, but as the dust settles, I’m excited about being a part of how that dust settles.
Why Laconia
Laconia has created an environment and firm that is well positioned to navigate this “industry disrupted”:
Prioritizing accessibility beyond our existing networks: in an industry where trust is so important, many firms rely on their existing networks. However, in order to fund diverse ideas and therefore achieve outsized returns, it is imperative to reach beyond existing networks.
Investors: We have an open application internship program (it’s how I was introduced to the Laconia team) and venture fellowship apps.
Founders: We host open mentor meetings and review all inbound through our pitch submission form, with no warm intro needed.
Systematically incorporating diverse perspectives in our decision-making process:
Laconia’s culture encourages disagreement, debate, and autonomy, even for more junior team members.
We involve interns, venture fellows, and LPs throughout the due diligence process to continue to challenge any of our own assumptions and biases.
Outcomes over promises:
At Laconia we have made accessibility and diversity central in the way we operate rather than a separate initiative. Despite the fact that we have no explicit diversity mandate, our approach is resulting in tangible improvements to our diversity metrics. For example, the first three investments out of our third fund all have diverse founding teams (you can find more stats on our website’s FAQ page).
I could not be more excited and honored to be joining the Laconia team and to be able to re-define what venture should look like. If you’ve made it this far and you’re a pre-seed/seed founder or investor in the B2B software space, I’d love to meet you. Feel free to schedule time and say hi! You can also find me on Twitter or email me at reena [at] laconiacapitalgroup [dot] com.