A Venture Roast: Making Venture Capital Great Again

Earnest Sweat is an Associate Partner at GreatPoint Ventures who focuses on verticals whose emerging technologies will have the most significant impact on global GDP, specializing in retail, supply chain, real estate, and manufacturing. Prior to joining GPV, Earnest was a founding team member at Prologis Ventures, the venture arm of the world’s largest industrial real estate owner. Earnest is also a founding Board Member of BLCK VC, a community built for and by black investors, and, shortly after college, founded an online marketplace to provide college advisory and professional development services, which was acquired four years later. Earnest is an alum of Columbia University and earned his MBA from Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management.

Alyson DeNardo is a Partner at MaC Venture Capital and M Ventures. In addition, she is the Founder/CEO of Alden - a consulting firm focused on organizational and individual efficiency. Previously, she served as Employee #1 at Atrium, building out internal operations and hiring the first 100 employees within the first year. Prior to Atrium, she served as Justin Kan’s Chief of Staff and Head of Social Media.

Aly's Airtable Template:

https://airtable.com/invite/l?inviteId=invS9GMdHCOhnmHme&inviteToken=7aa5c44b9fa3bc04c2e89a4f519fbc4582b5c021ef45da2e6d7c93db8c487373

Book Recommendation: The Courage to be Disliked

https://www.amazon.com/Courage-Be-Disliked-Phenomenon-Happiness/dp/1501197274

Recorded 6/23/2020

Shawn is a great emerging mind in venture that I am lucky to call a friend. On the podcast he talks about the things trends he and the Floodgate team are excited about, some stories from the industry that are pretty shocking, as well as what we can do to give back and make venture and tech a better place people that are not named Michael (if you don't get it look up the JPM story).

On this episode we cover Farooq's 10 year journey to founding Preface as a POC in Venture as well as the topics of Capability Capital, funding the right people, and ways to make venture a more equitable ecosystem.

Need some suggestions on how you can contribute during this time?

Farooq's Medium Article on actions you can take to increase diversity:

• https://bit.ly/2B5s8hp

How you can be an ally in your day to day lives:

• https://medium.com/@alterrellmfmills/social-change-everyone-has-a-role-to-play-useyourprivilege-unlearnracism-69051138d0de

Where to Donate:

• https://socialjusticeplanner.com/
• https://nymag.com/strategist/article/where-to-donate-for-black-lives-matter.html

Links from Podcast:

Emily Kramer Report

Good Technology Company NYT Article

Britt's Bio:

An investor by background, Britt has worked with companies across asset classes to scale. Before joining Alpha Edison, she was an investor at Bain Capital Credit focusing on middle market and distressed companies. More recently, she led deal processing and management for #Angels, the seed-stage principal investing group founded by early employees of Twitter. With a passion for financial inclusion, she also worked in corporate development at the fintech startup Funding Circle.

Britt is a graduate with honors from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and with concentrations in Finance and Management. While at Penn, she was a Captain of the Women's Volleyball Team. She also holds an MBA from Harvard Business School where she launched the women's entrepreneurship initiative called Series W and cares deeply about diversity across tech.