Kate Brodock: [00:00:00] There is under 2% of VC funding right now going towards women-led teams.

The ability to assess founders is even more important earlier stage because you have so much less data.

You've got to move from a founder to a CEO by series A. 

Nobody was doing that 10 years ago. No founder was out getting like executive coaching until they were much further along.

Groups go a long way in getting deals done. 

Person next door is doing X, so I have to do X. No, you should sit down you get to make your own investment thesis.

Andrew Kazlow: Welcome to the Diligent Observer, the first podcast exclusively focused on helping angels see what others miss. I'm your host, Andrew, and every week we explore what works, what doesn't, and why through conversations with experienced startup investors and operators.

My guest today is Kate Brodock, who's tackling the massive funding gap for women entrepreneurs as founding [00:01:00] partner of W Fund and CEO of Switch. With over 25 years in banking and commercial real estate finance. Kate, now leads her venture firm targeting what she calls an arbitrage opportunity, which is the fact that less than 2% of VC funding goes to women-led teams.

In today's episode, Kate breaks down her frameworks for overcoming unconscious biases and in diligence. Shares Insights from her Angel Sessions program and explains why finding your personal investment thesis is crucial for new angels looking to get going in this space. I hope you enjoy learning from Kate as much as I did. 

Kate, thanks for being with me this morning.

Kate Brodock: Thanks. I'm excited to be here.  

Andrew Kazlow: Kate, I'd love to start with what are you excited about right now?

Kate Brodock: I think in, if I were to sort of look at the investing space, and with my focus as well, I continue to be really excited about the potential of getting more, essentially new capital into the space [00:02:00] of women, angel investors, underrepresented angel investors, folks who like normally wouldn't have access to this asset class.

I'm really working on getting those people and their checks into the space. We've found that's had, several different huge benefits. Number 1, it gets again, more people have the ability to start growing generational wealth and putting their personal assets to work and that sort of thing.

So, it's literally like fresh capital into the space that's growing. And then additionally, there is a tendency with folks with that profile to really be allocating their money into some new spaces, some emerging spaces, some spaces that may also benefit folks who haven't traditionally been served, etc.

So I just get super excited about the power behind that. 

Um, and then I think kind of on a, [00:03:00] it's funny to answer this question like this, but on maybe a excitement around a somber moment. I think we have a lot of work to do in the next couple of years here in the next four years, just as a country. And while that's a lot, I think it does actually offer like quite a lot of opportunity.

 Because I think there is a lot of market potential that can be really unlocked there, which is kind of cool.

 If you look at the straight numbers right now, so there is under 2% of VC funding right now going towards women-led teams, even less so when you start to break that down by black women, women of color, etc. And if you just look at the math of it, it's not even logical to say that, that is a breakdown of value, potential and success.

And so when you look at that gap, in our view, not [00:04:00] only do we want to, from a mission standpoint, close those gaps, but in closing those gaps, there is so much talent. There is so much opportunity in those founder sets, et cetera, to be investing into, for instance, for us, it's primarily women founders. You also have women founders that are, there are so many data points.

I'll just throw a couple of them at you, but like 3 times better at capital efficiency from an investment standpoint to run their companies. That's huge. Their ROI, especially in certain industries and verticals is like blows, a lot of the other averages out of the water. So you just look at these opportunities when less than 2% of the funding's going there. We should all be going in that direction, right? And so that's, there are so many business cases that you could putting around this investment thesis. And I think one of the biggest ones really is that totally unrealized [00:05:00] opportunity from an ROI and returns perspective on investment dollars that comes from investing in that direction. And we're really strong believers in that.  

Andrew Kazlow: It's fascinating. It seems like you've almost counter positioned to the macro market and that you've identified this reality, that's a small percentage of overall venture dollars going towards women-led ventures. Give me some examples from your portfolio of like how you've seen this start to play out or materialize in the real world?

 Get a little bit more tactical for me, on how this is working itself. Cause you've been in this space, you've been building around this vision for a number of years. And so I'd love to hear just some examples of how you're seeing this play out.

Kate Brodock: Yeah. So a couple of great ones from our portfolio. One that pops into mind is we have a great company. We have actually, two great companies in agriculture space. One specifically has a data vision, in field data vision technology. Right [00:06:00] now, as you can see, at the administrative level from a government support level, a lot of those resources are looking as if they're going to be retracted from things like employees, et cetera.

Literally, some of these tools that we already have in our portfolio are going to be able to serve that particular industry quite well. In terms of still being able to allow farmers to effectively do their jobs. This particular technology does a lot of crop analysis. So, things like yield, if it's in an apple orchard, for instance. The breakdown of this tree at the state is actually going to be put towards cider.

This is going to be put towards the general like channel marketing into grocery stores, which then determines how much labor you need, like all of this stuff. Those types of technologies are going to be really increasingly needed as these farmers are trying to work through what their employees sets going to be, how much governmental support they're going to [00:07:00] be need, et cetera.

We have another portfolio company that's in the financial, the FinTech space, and again, working with credit unions to be bringing more traditionally underserved users onto the platform, being able to invest from a social standpoint, they actually use a model that's used in several cultures around the world. Around social saving, and really being able to, as a community be supported. It could be a family or a community or a group or what have you, and they have been doing fantastically like in the credit union market and really serving a set of the population that does not normally have access to a lot of even just education around these things.

So that's doing really well. And then maybe the last example is we've got an excellent company that's focused on fertility planning. So, it's essentially like family planning from a women's health perspective. That is going to be a key [00:08:00] solution as we move forward in very uncertain times around

that entire topic. The great thing there is that we have solutions that are already addressing these, and there are many other examples of that out there for people to look at and invest into, and they're going to be ahead of the game. On a lot of these issues that are going to be popping up.

So that's how we're viewing it.  

Andrew Kazlow: Talk me through like tactically what's unique about your diligence process and decision making process as you're evaluating these opportunities, I think, we can assume some of the standard business diligence, make sure that they've got a good team and that they've got a real customer base and they've got a real product, like all of that good stuff, but specifically around this distinctive thesis that you guys have. Walk me through how you evaluate that.

Kate Brodock: There are a couple different ways to answer that. So, like you said, a lot of it is business as usual. And we really do talk a lot about this. [00:09:00] Like, a couple of times people and not just us, but any fund with our focus. We sometimes get bucket of things like an impact fund or something like that.

We really like vehemently press against that because we are actually judging and viewing these opportunities the same way we would as any high growth VC backable solution out there, right? We do not expect a lower return rate. We hold them up against the same business standards. Where we might, for lack of a better word, diverge a little bit.

And this is based on our background. We've been, in this space around supporting in various different ways, women founders for like 20 years. So we kind of know it. But the two areas that pop up to me are number one, just understanding, generally speaking, where oftentimes unconscious biases can come into play in terms of the due diligence [00:10:00] process.

And differences between due diligencing males versus females. And then we also take a look at the founders from a leadership standpoint, because there are sort of like feminine and masculine qualities that can be attached to anybody. I can have masculine qualities, you can have feminine qualities, etc.

We have a bunch of different makeups on that, right? Traditionally speaking, women have been penalized for having some of the more feminine traits in terms of leadership. or If they don't have some of the stronger masculine traits, so we really break it. That is one area that we really do focus on is really understanding, leadership potential, and unique leadership potential, for our women founders.

And we actually continue to work on that with them so that we can also help equip them. Not just in dealing with us. We're one investor, right? So, by the time [00:11:00] they continue on, if we can actually equip them with a higher amount of leadership capabilities, not necessarily a breakdown of map, but just becoming better leaders.

We also know that will help close the gap for things like CEO replacement down the road, for instance. We actually do a lot of work with our portfolio companies around that aspect as well. So, those are probably the two bigger things. And then, I suppose the last thing that pops into my mind is that, because of the lower access to VC capital, you'll often see different types of capital stacks

for women founders, like you'll women and underrepresented founders, you might see more, for instance, like equity crowdfunding. You might see more grants or debt available. There's no equation for it, but you do end up having to sometimes be a little bit more thoughtful or something about that capital stack as well.

[00:12:00] Not always, but sometimes.  

Andrew Kazlow: Could you give an example, maybe double clicking one more layer on this leadership coaching, kind of leadership evaluation and how that uniquely applies in women's case. So you talked about these masculine versus feminine qualities what does that mean? How does that work out?

Because as individual angels, we're often evaluating opportunities and we have a limited capacity to run due diligence. And so I think a lot of these unconscious biases certainly influence us without even realizing it. So, help me understand what are some of those feminine masculine traits and, what are the, the natural

values or penalties that are assigned to those so that we can be more thoughtful about it going forward.

Kate Brodock: Especially at the early stage, which is where a lot of angel investors play, right? Pre-seeds, little bit of series A, that's a large portion of your sort of like retail angel investor, right? Across the board, doesn't matter gender, race, anything.

I've had so many conversations with co investors [00:13:00] about this, the ability to assess founders is even more important earlier stage because you have so much less data and it's not perfect. I am constantly talking to my co investor friends on just how to better that process. We all are.

It does not matter who you are assessing. So, at least preface it by saying that. All of this is still a work in progress. And I think it's a newer. It was very traditionally addressed, I think. And so it's this newer bucket, you're seeing a large rise in like founder coaching, et cetera

in the past five years, literally. Nobody was doing that 10 years ago. No founder was out getting like executive coaching until they were much further along. Now it's happening at seed stage, et cetera. So that being said, I'll offer like a very at 2 ends of the spectrum, examples that I think will highlight this a lot.

For example, a masculine [00:14:00] trait that is often seen as high leadership will put it as assertiveness. Because aggressiveness, it's not a negative thing, right? So assertiveness, and that often comes out in things like meetings and interviews when in pitches, et cetera. It can often be perceived and translated as confidence, right?

And so, these things and high levels of knowledge, et cetera. May or may not be actually true, but that is the optics of something like an assertive personality, which is a masculine trait. A feminine trait, that I'll pick is that, is team building, for instance. Women will tend to be on pitches or in meetings, they might use the word "we" often if they have co founders or team members on a pitch, they might be splitting up the answers

and allowing other people's space. As from an [00:15:00] optics perspective, that could be translated into something like, okay, maybe she is relying on those other people or how much of a, like a leader is this woman. So, they can be translated very differently when you're literally in a pitch and assessments position during due diligence.

There's some research, I think it was out of Norway or Sweden a couple of years ago. It was an assessment of two different founders, exact same pitch, and they just changed the gender of the founder, so to speak, and what ends up happening is that, people, men and women, will attribute to the male founder much more forward thinking, aspirational, even in asking questions.

They're aspirational questions. Where do you see this, in 12 months and 5 years? You noted this [00:16:00] market expansion in the future. Let's talk about that a lot more. It was, saying you're here and we're really interested in what you've put together your vision of the future for women in the exact same setting.

The questions were mostly backward looking. How did you get this? Why did you make this decision? How did you get here? And then how are you justifying? what you've put into the pitch for the future. So you can see those are two like very different ways to even get through the due diligence process on the exact same pitch.

With two different founder sets. So it's like very interesting what happens when you have due diligence in front of you. And you've got, various different types of founder profiles in front of you.

Andrew Kazlow: Well, I certainly think that the awareness of these biases is the starting point, right? Because then that allows you to adjust behavior to align with what's hopefully [00:17:00] more effective. It sounds like, you all as part of your process are asking different questions than the average investor and then also walking alongside these entrepreneurs to prepare them to perhaps recalibrate the conversations that they're having, with these other investors who may or may not have such a depth of awareness.

Is that accurate?

Kate Brodock: I would say that's pretty accurate. Again, saying that we aren't even perfect. Like anybody can have these biases, right? Were constantly readdressing our own and all of that stuff. And I think when it comes to leadership, we follow sort of two lines. It's a really strongly developing your own sense of leadership, which I think every founder should do.

Like, in that early stage, we think about, you've got to move from a founder to a CEO by series A and for any founder, that's important. Some founders have a better [00:18:00] experience set behind them. Maybe they went through corporate, they had training available, or they've thought about it a lot, a lot of founders don't.

They've got to jump that gap before series A, and so it's about development of your own leadership style, which anybody should do. And also, like you said, awareness as a woman founder for what you will be up against.

We're great investors for that because we get it, but we are not like, we are one of many investors on the cap table. And so that is, like, to your point, it's awareness of the reality. I actually find that to be very helpful when you are aware of the reality around that. And it's just a matter of how much you want to shift or meld around that.

I have personal philosophies around that, but I think everyone should have their own personal philosophy, and we talk about that.  

Andrew Kazlow: Let's say you and I were sitting down, I'm paying you to consult my venture firm or my personal angel portfolio on how to [00:19:00] evaluate women or underrepresented groups that are leading a business I'm interested in. What's like one or two frameworks or key questions that you would leave me with to ask myself before I

get into the deep dive question that it is top of mind?

Like, how do I introduce a blocking step for me to evaluate? Is this the right question to be asking? 

Kate Brodock: It's a really good question. You actually hit on the number one step, which is an awareness that it happens, and also then a self awareness that you could be doing it, right? Then what comes after that step is, we always recommend doing a little bit of a learning. So going out and learning, what are some of these stats?

Like the study that I just mentioned out of Sweden or Norway, whichever one it is, go read that. There's a lot of information out there about how some of these specifically in the investing VC early space. [00:20:00] And so we always suggest doing some learning and then the best process that you can be doing is that iteration on your own level of self awareness? So then, when you're equipped with understanding how it could or does manifest itself out there. So, using the past example. Okay, I'm aware that, if left to our own devices as humans, I might go into this conversation and start really looking backwards on this founder.

Let me make sure that I spend some time on looking forward as well. So you get to build it in based on how you learn. That is the best medicine for being able to cycle through it and being as thoughtful as you can. It's a never ending process for us. The intent alone will start to close that gap. If you really commit to it.  

Andrew Kazlow: I think for, I mean, speaking from the [00:21:00] majority here and every respect, it can be very stressful sometimes to think about running a diligence process on a minority opportunity. It's just complicated. It's stressful as a white majority, like trying to make good investment decisions, macro, and then specifically to honor these individuals realizing that I have no idea what their life experience has been like.

It's a stress inducing position for a lot of folks, that really aspire to make wise decisions and to allocate capital and to honor the folks around them. But it's not easy to do well. I think your comments, even to the effect of, Hey, we're figuring it out too, is encouraging and helpful.

Kate Brodock: Absolutely. I'll share with you something that one of my co investors, now we have a fund also in addition to angel investing. So, she has the capability to do this a little bit more than your average angel investor, but she mentioned that she always schedules a full 60 minutes for [00:22:00] a first founder interview.

Her intent is to actually spend a little time on the like, how did you get here questions. Cause that can actually, really open up a lot. I have started do that myself

when I can. It's harder to do as an angel investor because we have varying levels of access to the founder. But that learning process, I think, can be telling along a lot of the things that we're talking about here. Anything from just trying to better understand leadership styles or, anything along that, this is the human that we're investing into.

But I also think, to what you just mentioned about the stress levels, I actually think that could go a really long way in that process. So maybe if you're an angel, it's something like if you're traditionally investing through a group, maybe it's as a group, the SPV lead does that 60-minute session and records it and shares it or there are [00:23:00] ways you could build it in. But that I think could be a really, you're personalizing and humanizing somebody, which I think can really bring that stress level down.

The other thing I'd probably say to that is also, yes, this stress level in general around due diligence in a deal, it's always there and understanding that everybody on the other side of the table wants to be talking to you and is interested in having productive and value add investors on their cap table, no matter what, right? Also understanding that they're probably really stressed out about it too can I think also go a long way? Founders go into all of these things. Knowing what's at stake. And frankly, it's a lot more than what we have at stake in the process.

So I think that also, can help a lot too.

Andrew Kazlow: Okay, let's pivot topics just a little bit. I'd love to learn more about [00:24:00] your angel sessions program. So give me the quick story on how this formed, what it is, and then I'd love to ask about some of your lessons learned. I can guess at some of the topics you're teaching in this program, but would love to double click on some of your lessons learned.

Kate Brodock: So, this happened a little bit organically. We've had this community of women in startup tech since 2006. It's gone through many iterations just with the changing of everything. It's traditionally had a majority focus on the founder side. So we've had all the loads of programs heavily focused on the founders and on the investor side, it would always display as some networking.

But primarily as like a knowledge set and a connection point. What we realize several years ago is we actually had a lot of women in our community who were like in this, in the middle and they're [00:25:00] interested in the startups. They're interested in the founders. They're not founders.

Many of them might be in places like Google and they're in the tech space. They're not going to start a VC fund. They're definitely accredited. And they're all sort of super interested in what's happening. And it was like the perfect storm of hold on. These could be angel investors. Like people were like, what's this angel investing thing?

And like The questions were popping up. And so we said to ourselves, let's pop up a course It's probably about four or five years ago now and the course is a deep dive. It's all virtual, it's a deep dive into several different sort of key topics around investing. Each of the presenters of the course are like our partner level VCs, investors, et cetera.

Once we also then ran that, we said, this is the great making for an angel investing group. And we started to do, some group [00:26:00] deals. So we're sort of a hybrid educational, and then angel group structure. And it's been awesome. And it's about eight sessions each.

Andrew Kazlow: It's fascinating to hear the journey from community to education to now forming a formal group. I think the inverse tends to be the standard case where there's some group that says, oh, we should start investing. And then they start doing stuff. And then afterwards, the education is a second thought.

They're like, Oh yeah, we should be helping our members and potential members get smarter on all this stuff. So I love that you guys progress the other direction. I'd love to hear, what are some of the things or lessons that have shaped you over the last few years as this course has matured and as you guys have formed this community specifically for angels around it.

What are the nuggets, what are the lessons learned that you share as the season 

continues?

Kate Brodock: Yeah So one of the biggest reasons it came to be that way is that mission that I mentioned in the [00:27:00] beginning, which was specifically, we actually had a lot of literal capital in front of us, potential capital in these people that were technically accredited angel investors, but they either were only curious or didn't even realize they could do it.

And so we focused right on that layer, which was new angel investors. So we actually said to ourselves, we need to educate them. So most of the people going through our cohort, some of them have never done a deal, but they've been curious for a while, or they might have done one or two deals or something.

And that's the perfect layer for us, because that is a excellent funnel to just get more women into the space. If we had done it in the reverse. I actually don't think it would have been as successful for fulfilling that meant that mission. So with that set specifically, some of the things we have learned exactly that education can make a huge difference, [00:28:00] even if it's just like a confidence level or working through your 1st deal with people beside you or feeling equipped with the information to do a due diligence process, that goes that is a humongous. It makes it go from here to here in terms of participation in the asset class. And that's what we want. So that education layer is actually super important. A couple of the other things that we talk a lot about, because we're again, I'm working with mostly newer investors. We really talk about the fact that I even joke in our class on this, but you're going to hear me say, you do you a lot and angel investing journey is it's so easy to get the person next door is doing X, so I have to do X. No, you should sit down and you get to make your own investment thesis and then let that [00:29:00] drive where you go for deal flow, for if you want to participate in a group like anything, and you get to refine that.

It's okay if you have 3 things you want to focus on and next year you're refining it and it's 8. But all it's an ongoing learning process is like, the biggest thing. Learning and refinement process is the biggest thing I say and then I think that also relates to some of the topics. There are things in investing that are, what I would say they're the meteor topics, things like valuation, right? And venture math, like these things that if you don't come from that particular space, can be potential hurdles for you and so just being able to dip your toes in and then realizing that you will continue to learn about those as you go along.

And as you continue to make your deals is, I think, really important. So, we talk about people coming in a lot, if this particular [00:30:00] session feels, obviously, we try to make it not feel like a lot, but it might. If it feels like a lot, this is the goal of your session, which is to get a foundational knowledge

of what you're dealing with, and you get to actually apply that moving forward and continue to learn. And then I would say the last sort of thing that we've learned or seen is that, groups really do not and it doesn't have to be a formal angel group. It could be a group of friends.

It could be anything. Groups go a long way in getting deals done in this space, whether it's sharing of due diligence. A lot of angels are doing this on the side. And so if left to their own solo devices, they might be able to process a deal a quarter depending also on how much time they want to spend on new diligence.

But if you can actually close that gap, because you're working with other people, you actually get more deals done. And then also from just a basic, especially for new angels, like a basic socialization [00:31:00] aspect, right? If you're socializing deals and you're hearing other people's viewpoints, you're going to feel much more informed going into the deal and therefore much more likely to

write a check or make the decision either way on a deal when it's done in a group. We always encourage people like find a group of some sort to go out and invest with

Andrew Kazlow: Kate, I'm curious, in this process if you've found things that have surprised you that like they were so meaningful or impactful as you've built out this educational program. I assume there's 20% of Pareto principle, 20% of the content ends up delivering like 80% of the value.

What are some of the things that have surprised you in the process of building and running this educational suite? And then what would you point to as yeah, this is that 20% that seems to really get things to click for our students 

Kate Brodock: I will say it's not necessarily surprising, but it's one of the most rewarding is we definitely have so many people that graduate [00:32:00] from the course that are like, I now feel like fully confident to be doing like deals this year. They're like, let's go, when they get out of the course.

That isn't like necessarily a surprising thing, but it validates, I think what we're doing. I have loved people as we go through the course. Getting a little geeky in the areas where they didn't think they were going to get geeky. So as for example, I just mentioned, valuation and venture math. I've actually had some people completely outside of that space have never looked at it at all.

And they just go on, deep dives on this stuff. The surprising part is that they weren't expecting to do that. It's not necessarily that we weren't it's that they weren't. A really positive proof point of the excitement around this process of investing into startups.

Is that of people think they're going to like it or they hear about it and then they really do [00:33:00] get into it. It's exciting because you have these solutions in front of you. Doesn't even matter if you're investing or not, but there's so many solutions to get excited about.

And so that gets translated into the process for a lot of the people who go through our course, and that's very cool. The alternative would be that you're drudging through this investing process to get to the end game, which is to make an investment. I actually have not seen one case of that.

It's like an all in and that's very cool. Those are two that pop into my head.

Andrew Kazlow: Let's say you leave everything you're doing right now. You join the board at another angel group who has no educational program in place. They outsource everything. They point their members to online free resources. Based on everything you've learned, like what's your starting point?

How do you get a new community going with some kind of educational content around welcoming new members and educating existing members?

Kate Brodock: I will say that it's nice if you [00:34:00] can get some operations funded so I would probably start there. 

Andrew Kazlow: How would you do that? Because every angel group is, that I've talked to, struggles with funding, getting dollars for the organization. It's a non profit, most of value should be flowed through to the entrepreneurs. Maybe quick tips on how to get funding for an angel group.

Kate Brodock: One is obviously the membership model. I think we have benefited because we are expansive and leaning on that educational part in terms of we also manage founders, so we can actually put programs in place that also serve founders. It could be anything from a demo day to an accelerator program to just a matching of investors, something like that.

We have an extended and expanded community to be able to layer on. Essentially, what end up being sort of sponsorship dollars on that and then around the educational piece, there are organizations that will [00:35:00] fund that some of them corporate for our case, they're very interested, specifically because it is, generally they're accredited investors, and it's women for us.

That's our group. That is a little bit more attractive and we actually have a full curriculum. So, I think that's 1 other opportunity. I sometimes do think about things like consolidation. Sometimes, there are a lot of angel groups. And, I love to be collaborative.

I try to be collaborative whenever, but we all understand what it means to have an angel who can invest in a deal in your group. It's hard to share those, and trying to figure out good ways where at least you can collaborate with other angel groups. I think at least decreases the operational load on both groups.

For instance, if we know we will do, co investing, co leading of deals with other groups as opposed to splitting it up. We're splitting the fees. We're getting a larger deal and a larger stake in it [00:36:00] because we have 2 different angel groups on that fund. We're splitting carry, but that's okay because it all working out.  

 That's awesome. If we could see, a little bit more of that, or things like that, I think that would also help with some of those operational expenses for us. We actually shop out just our curriculum. We've done this with a couple of other angel groups, and we create the business relationship.

And we all know where our boundaries are so that we all feel good about the contact sharing and that sort of thing. We'll just take our, and there's a revenue share and everything. We'll take our actual course, just the curriculum and use it with some other angel groups as well. Things like that are at least where we've found it, but it's still, hard. Everybody's in it for the carry  

Just enough to float the ship and the payouts down the road.

That's the name of the game.

Andrew Kazlow: Okay. So back to the, where would you start kind of education, ground zero, right? New angel group, let's say [00:37:00] 30 to 50 members, asking for some educational resources. How do you start? 

Kate Brodock: So part of it is figuring out the life cycle of an angel or a potential angel. So, we target often potential angels. And figuring out potential angels need to, number one, realize they're angels. They need to understand the opportunity. They need to understand what they're getting into.

We know the breakdown. This is that 15% of your assets that you have that we should all be considering Monopoly money anyways, right? So you gotta, you have to get people down. Like, that's a lot, though. It's money, right? This is people's money, which is one of the top most important things for people.

You have to get them down that life cycle of, from non awareness of the opportunity or their own status to the space of I want to make a deal. We have one of the more [00:38:00] robust sets of education around there. So we actually only a little bit address, the section before we have some, we'll do panel discussions and that sort of thing.

But closing those whole gaps, like you have to decide where you want to be on that whole trajectory, and then taking a look at your network is super important. You're going to have to then go out sell the program. At the end of the day, you're really talking about a marketing sales. What we've tried to do is just productize it as much as possible and we are out there selling, and marketing a packaged up product that people tap into. It's got manual features, but that's it. That's like what we did.

Andrew Kazlow: You would start with, okay, how can we build a productized educational resource to then offer to our ecosystem more for the purpose of processing or helping move angels along the journey from awareness to being activated.

Kate Brodock: Yeah, and I would say [00:39:00] like our next step is to get this asynchronous so that people can really tap into. There are some huge benefits of having it live. But there are additional huge benefits of having this all packaged up almost as like a, just like an online course and an opportunity for, then you get to build on the deal flow and all that stuff.

But if you get them in that, that becomes your funnel to actually build out an angel investing group that's comfortable and equipped to start investing.  

Andrew Kazlow: Kate, final thoughts for our audience things we haven't covered.  

Kate Brodock: There are more people out there who are so well equipped to be angel investors than they know. And so I, if anyone's even have the inkling of thinking about it, go learn about it more. Talk to people who have done it. And there are easy ways to get into it. Also equity crowdfunding. There are a lot of angel groups out there that [00:40:00] do minimums.

Like we do a $5,000 minimum. Anybody can get into our deals by the way. You don't have to be part of the group, but like we have $5,000 minimums. Go out and find some places where you can just test. I think that's just an excellent way to do it. Find folks who've done it before. One of the biggest things is deal flow.

Start to tap into the community around you. Demo days, mentoring opportunities, angel groups or founder groups, or there's so many places you can tap into based on what, where you want to get started. And then one big thing I always tell people is really start to think about that investment thesis.

I think that's a good thing to think about. What are the stages? Like, you know, your basics. What are the stages you want to invest into? What's your budget for the year? And how many deals you want to do? What do I care about or what problems do I want to see solved?

Or what is my founder profile look. If you start to get going of finding deals. [00:41:00] assessing deals and getting to that final check is really trying to understand what it you want to invest into.

Andrew Kazlow: Well, Kate, we will wrap there. Thank you so much for joining me today and I very much look forward to our next conversation.

Kate Brodock: Fantastic. And thank you so much for having me. 

Andrew Kazlow: Thanks for listening to this episode of The Diligent Observer. I'm your host, Andrew, and if you're an angel investor looking for essential angel intel in five minutes every week, I think you'd enjoy my newsletter. I send my best stuff, interesting deals, and more straight to your inbox so you never miss a thing.

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