IAM437- Founder and CEO Enables Institutional Investment in Startups

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Intro 0:02

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

Gresham Harkless 0:29

Hello, this is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast and I have a very special guest on the show today, I've Bethany Quinn of Street Investors Exchange. Bethany, it's awesome to have you on the show.

Bethany Quinn 0:38

Thanks so much for having me, Gresh.

Gresham Harkless 0:39

No problem. Super excited to have you on. And what I wanted to do was just read a little bit more about Bethany so people can hear all the awesome things that you're doing. Bethany is the founder and CEO of Street Investors Exchange, which aims to move the needle on diversity in early-stage investment by enabling institutional investment in startups.

She also runs SIEX (SIGH-ex) Paths, where she helps clients achieve wild success in the gig economy. Before that, she worked at the Service Employees International Union on their private equity campaign and as a legislative assistant and did a fellowship at SoGal ventures. She has a BA from the University of Miami and an MBA from Johns Hopkins University. Bethany, are you registered to the I AM CEO community?

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Bethany Quinn 1:16

I am all set.

Gresham Harkless 1:18

Awesome. Let's do it. So to kick everything off, I wanted to ask you a little bit more about what I call your CEO story. And what led you to get started with the business?

Bethany Quinn 1:24

Sure. So, as you mentioned, I used to work for SEIU on their private equity campaign, which is, you know, ironic that I'm now working in venture capital. But I think part of the reason that the union had decided that this was a good sector to focus on is that they basically looked at, you know, when you do organizing, you try to figure out who has the power to make a difference.

The union had basically looked at the whole economy and decided that private equity made the most difference out of any other type of sector. And so working on that campaign, I did a lot of corporate research on a lot of different types of portfolio companies, a lot of different industries, which was really fun. And there was also a pretty significant pension engagement component.

So the union members are members of pensions, and so the union would lean on the pension to lean on their, the funds that they were investing in to do good things for companies, for workers, whatever. So fast forward, I worked in their legislation department for a bit and got kind of burnt out. So I decided to go back to school to get my MBA, and I had a little bit of experience working in the startup world and really liked that.

So I decided, well maybe, I'll try this venture capital thing, you know, I really enjoyed working on the private equity campaign. And, they sometimes make some money in that sector. And I would be okay with that. So, I did that. Then I was working at SoGal Ventures, which is a female millennial-led venture capital firm when I needed to hit the fan. And I was, I thought to myself, number one, wow, there's a lot of discrimination in this industry.

But number two, they are leaving so much money on the table, that I was doing some with their deal flow. And, you know, just reviewing all of these companies that were run by these phenomenal female founders, founders of color, and they were solving just bigger problems, problems in our society that I knew, based on the legislative work I had done were just huge markets and huge missed opportunities.

And so I was kind of like, okay, so how do we really move the needle on this investment. How do we really move the needle on diversity and investment and make sure that the venture capital world looks like the rest of the world. In part, because almost 2%, of the people who get funded by venture capital look like the decision-makers. So I talked to some of my folks from the union, SEIU actually has a great diversity and investment initiative led by Rene Manley, who's on our advisory board.

And I learned that ironically, part of the reason it's so difficult for diverse managers to get funded isn't because there's not enough money in the economy, but there's actually too much money in parts of the economy. So for instance, the California Public Employees Retirement System (CALPERS), has about 365 billion in assets under management, but they only have about $500 million.

So they only have so much bandwidth to do to distribute that and to invest in it. So the smallest fund that they can back is like a $500 million fund. But they also need people who have experience managing that level of assets and sadly, most of us don't have 500 million kicking around the office. And so they need people who have that experience and it's really difficult for people to raise that level of assets from their communities, particularly in venture capital.

So what our company is hoping to do is to build technology that would allow us but we're hoping to build a venture fund incubator where we could do that sort of investment had a scale that institutional investors back.

Gresham Harkless 4:50

Nice I definitely appreciate that. And, as you said, there's opportunity sounds like on both sides, where the venture capitalists miss out on a huge opportunity, but also the opportunities for at least founders to be able to get that capital and have that opportunity to kind of give them that gas for lack of a better term so that they can continue to have like strong and thriving businesses.

Bethany Quinn 5:08

Exactly. Yeah, yeah.

Gresham Harkless 5:10

Yeah. And I know you've touched on it a little bit, could you drill a little bit deeper, into exactly what you're doing with Street Investors Exchange and how exactly SIEX works?

Bethany Quinn 5:19

Sure. I mean really, what we're trying to do is to create a new path into venture capital. Currently, to get into venture capital, you already kind of have to be rich, either you're going the angel investor route, which means that you have to be an accredited investor. Currently, the definition of that is that as an individual, you have to have over 200,000 in income annually, as a household you would have, or as a household, you have over 300,000 in income annually, or you have to have over a million in net worth.

Particularly when you start looking at the racial wealth gap, this is a huge problem for aspiring fund managers of color, because they have. So for white households, one in seven white households has over a million in net worth, but only one in 50 black households does. So it's really difficult.

You know, there's this idea of the family and friends round that founders are supposed to go and ask their family and friends, and It's not feasible for people of color. I mean, it's just that much harder. And so you're missing out like that many more brilliant founders are missing out. And our economy is missing out.

Gresham Harkless 6:26

Yeah, exactly, I was just gonna say, cuz a lot of times, like going back to, you know, a lot of times when people are creating organizations or they're creating products or services, a lot of it has to fill, in basically solve a solution or create a solution for a problem. And not only does it not allow them to get the funding, but it also doesn't allow a lot of these great ideas to come to market, because they don't have the opportunity to get the funding to have those successful businesses.

Bethany Quinn 6:52

Exactly. I mean, part of the problem with the way that our economy is currently structured is that, you know, currently, it's almost exclusively white men who are deciding which problems in our economy, we solve scalable and sustainably. And it has been for most of history. So, I think a lot of other people have some really great ideas that are right for investment.

Gresham Harkless 7:13

Yeah, absolutely. And, I definitely appreciate you doing your part, because I think there's not that awareness of this, for one and two, even when people are aware of it, they're not actually doing something about it. So I appreciate you having the ability and expertise, of course, to do that. But also, making your part in your path to not only create something but also to execute it and bring it to the awareness of so many people.

Bethany Quinn 7:38

Yeah, thanks. Yeah, no, and I mean, I have a really phenomenal team. And we're, we're planning to pull this off.

Gresham Harkless 7:43

Nice. So I wanted you, and you might have already touched on this, but I want to ask you for what I call your secret sauce, it could be for you or your organization, but what do you feel kind of sets you apart and makes you unique?

Bethany Quinn 7:54

Um, I think we have a pretty strong vision, that sort of the way that we're planning to do this is going to be the fact that we're starting with a technology and that we're creating kind of this new path, you know, we're really trying to change the fact that you have to be rich to get into venture capital.

And, by doing so, we could really open the door to a lot of folks, not only demographically, but also in terms of industry expertise, I think one of the limitations that VCs face, for instance, when I was working in legislation at SEIU, I often would review their software vendors or who are hoping that the union would buy their products. And there was a product that we reviewed, that was very, very well backed, and it was essentially claiming that it could, it was, the next generation of lobbying basically.

And what it ended up doing was basically trying to analyze Bill tax, to figure out who you should be targeting in the legislative process, which is not sort of well, but according to the software, the Speaker of the House was one of the least influential members of Congress, which I mean, it was John Boehner at the time, so say what you will but no, sorry, Washington a joke.

Gresham Harkless 9:10

I'm local, I get it.

Bethany Quinn 5:19

But, I think there are a lot of people who have this deep and industry expertise who because there is such a, because you already have to be rich to get into venture capital are not able to get in the field. And I think VCs missed out on that. So our our hope is that by creating this new path, we would be able to have deeper industry expertise than than other folks.

Gresham Harkless 9:35

Yeah. I definitely love that. And I appreciate that. Again, just going back on what we kind of talked about before because, you know, not being aware of the kind of like the disadvantages, sometimes you might have and again, you're creating the opportunity for people to have that different path, so that they can potentially be able to have the same success that a lot of times, the more affluent people have, just because just being, kind of in that circle or being born in that circle a lot of times, so I think sometimes that's not always aware, but I, again, appreciate you for bringing it to that.

And I wanted to switch gears a little bit, and I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an apple book or a habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

Bethany Quinn 10:22

So I think for me, really, I talked about my company starting when I realized that I had depression. And so getting on the right medication for me was huge. And, I had a lot of really great ideas, and I just never quite had the impetus to execute them.

And so realizing that, I was really unhappy, and I was just not getting out of bed often enough, was super helpful, and then now I have the energy to finish what I'm able to do what I want to do and to, to really get out there and actually execute on the ideas that I have. And it's been, it's been really fantastic.

Gresham Harkless 11:01

Nice. So now I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO nugget. And this is a word of wisdom or piece of advice. Or if you can happen to a time machine, what do you tell your younger business self?

Bethany Quinn 11:11

So this is actually part of why I was excited about getting on your show. My company is now a means to raise the funds, we need to build the software and bring on key staff, we are doing what we're calling an activation boot camp. You know, we're, the idea is that starting a company is kind of like getting tossed in the deep end of a pool with a bunch of weights tied to you. You know, at the end of the day, what's gonna matter is your ability to develop a great product or service for your company or for your customers, to find the right customers, etc.

But in the meantime, you also have to deal with your legal registration and your CRM and your accounting and all of the other things. So our thinking is, okay, we're going to take a month, we're going to do sort of a create a checklist, and we're going to help aspiring and new entrepreneurs sort of take them through these all of these steps that they're going to need. And it's going to culminate with a two-day boot camp in November.

So November 9, and 10. We're going to do this two-day in-person hands-on boot camp, where we'll help people get up their CRM, their accounting system, and their social media website, and then figure out the next steps so that by the end of the weekend, they can focus on what actually matters, which is solving that problem for their customers.

I think decision fatigue is I mean, behavioral economists are just kind of realizing what a problem this is, but particularly for entrepreneurs, trying to figure out all of the different things at once can be incredibly overwhelming. So we're hoping to make that a little bit easier by sort of creating a concise time-bound time for people to an opportunity for new entrepreneurs to figure this out.

Gresham Harkless 12:52

Yeah, absolutely. I always say that you never can guarantee success. But if you can, do as much as possible to try to hedge your bets towards that. It's always something great to do, which is why I love, what you guys have created. And what you were saying kind of reminds me of Elon Musk has quote. And I think he said that. I think he said, like, it's creating a startup, it's kind of like chewing on glass and staring into the abyss.

And that's just because there are so many things like you kind of touched on that you have to like to worry about you have to do that you do get that kind of decision fatigue, where, you just get there are just so many decisions, you have to make that a lot of times you want to be able to lean on the expertise of people like yourself. So creating that bootcamp sounds like it's something that's really awesome.

Bethany Quinn 13:29

That's the hope. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's interesting, too, because it's I think entrepreneurs face sort of a double layer of decision fatigue, not only in terms of making decisions for their businesses but usually when you're trying to get your company up and running, you're also trying to be operating on a pretty strict budget. And maybe your resources are dwindling. And so we're hoping to alleviate that and sort of truncate the runway for folks.

Gresham Harkless 13:51

Absolutely. Yeah, that makes perfect sense. So, now, I wanted to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. And we're hoping to have different quote unquote, CEOs on this show. So Bethany, what does being a CEO mean to you?

Bethany Quinn 14:04

I mean, for me the first thing that comes to mind is autonomy. I really like being in charge, but I also like, being able to collaborate with other brilliant people, men sort of execute on, ideas without sort of bulky organizational infrastructure holding you back. I also, recently, realized that being a CEO is blinking and realizing that it's been three months.

There's that but overall, I mean, it's, it's a really good opportunity to sort of a path of self-discovery, figuring out what you're really good at figuring out what you're really not good at. And hopefully, you know, you're able to recruit the folks who can recruit a great team who can support you in accomplishing what you want to

Gresham Harkless 14:52

Yeah, that makes perfect sense in that area. Definitely can say that. Yeah, I feel like somebody at least a couple of years of my life just because Everybody's going back and like, wait a minute, where did that time go. But it seems like that and you're doing so many things juggling so much. And time never stops.

So we can echo that comment as well. Well, Bethany, thank you so much for your time. I appreciate all the awesome things you're doing. I wanted to do was pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional, you can let our readers and listeners know. And then of course, how best people can find out about you, the boot camp, and all the awesome things you guys are working on.

Bethany Quinn 15:26

Yeah, so our, as I said, our boot camp is called activation boot camp, get your company up and running. You can learn more about it. It's on Eventbrite, or the information will be on our website and that's www.siex.vc. And I think that's what I got. Keep on I don't know, reach for your dreams. I would say again, try to figure out what wild success looks like to you. It's a lot easier to get there once you're clear on what that is.

Gresham Harkless 16:01

Yeah, absolutely. It's always hard to try to hit a target if you don't know what that target is. So creating that target and then working backward is definitely the case. I appreciate you for doing that. And we will have those links and that information in the show notes as well so that everybody can follow up with you. But again, appreciate you for fighting the good fight, so to speak, and all the awesome things you're working on. And I hope you have a great rest of the day.

Bethany Quinn 16:21

Thanks, you too.

Outro 16:22

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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