Tanya Dua’s Post

🚨 A scientist-turned-investor, Roseanne Wincek has backed companies like Glossier, Inc. and MasterClass, and founded her own startup. She joins us for VC Wednesdays. 🚨 ✒️ What were the biggest lessons you learned from being an entrepreneur? Understanding platform risk and how to own your destiny, especially when it comes to distribution. How do you own and operate your channels so that you're not dependent on anybody else? I had a music tech startup that built apps on the early Facebook platform. It grew really fast and crashed as fast. History doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes. Even for enterprise, the way to think about it is around basic unit economics. How are you selling your product? ✒️ You’ve invested in both consumer and enterprise startups. How would you describe your thesis? I am sector-agnostic, because I like to make bets on where the world is going. I invested in Glossier and MasterClass at a time when building direct-to-consumer companies was doable, as it was a perfect storm of changing consumer interests and new ways to reach them. Today, the focus is on enterprise, as the market for software continues to get bigger. There are also some fundamental changes around how companies are willing to buy from startups, how dependent we all are on data and how fast the underlying infrastructure and the delivery of software is moving. For the stage, our sweet spot is when a company is at an inflection point — and has about 10 to 100 employees, and early revenue of $1 million a month. ✒️ What’s the No.1 thing you look for before making an investment? It comes down to the founder — we're not just betting on people who are great at what they're doing right now, but who will be able to grow and change. The best founders are those who aren't afraid to blow things up in order to reach the next level. An early indicator of that is when founders are willing to fire people who aren't working out, and do it quickly. You’re building a team for different stages of your company, so people come and go — and that's fine. ✒️ What emerging technology area are you most excited about? AI is exciting, but we’re asking ourselves how is it actually creating end-customer value? The cost of compute is going to come down, which is an amazing opportunity for startups. But we’re picking our shots around where startups actually have competitive advantages. One area is how do you get different types of real world data into machine learning formats. We’re also looking at end-user applications where AI is deeply embedded in the product — because AI is going to be like SaaS, where it's in everything. An area we’re cautious about is consumer AI, because OpenAI has been sneaky and set pricing — telling consumers that this costs $20 a month. That means it's going to be tough for a lot of consumer AI companies to be able to operate at or around that price point in a unit economics profitable way. #VCWednesdays #vc #venturecapital #startups #TechonLinkedIn