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Episode Description

Ann Miura-Ko, Founding Partner at Floodgate joins the show to talk about

  • Founding a Venture Capital firm in the midst of a financial crisis.
  • How founders should be thinking about their business and communicating to VCs at the pre-seed, seed, and Series A stages of company building.
  • Why VCs say no and why Floodgate said no to Disco.
  • What VCs actually mean when they say they're "investing in the founder, not the idea".
  • The company that Ann wishes someone would start.

Episode Transcript

Ann Miura-Ko

Co founding Partner at Floodgate

Ann Miura-Ko is a co-founding Partner at Floodgate. A repeat member of the Forbes Midas List and the New York Times Top 20 Venture Capitalists Worldwide, Ann was also named the “Most Powerful Woman in Startups” by Forbes.

Ann is well-known in Silicon Valley as a pioneer investor in highly technical companies because of her background as a PhD in math modeling of infosec at Stanford.  Her deep interest in technology began as a child – her father was a NASA rocket scientist – and her expertise developed as an undergraduate at Yale, where she participated in the Robocup Competition in Paris, France. Ann has also made significant investments in consumer (commerce, curation), marketplaces, and software for SMBs and solopreneurs. Some of Ann’s investments include Lyft (where she is still a board member), Xamarin, Monthly, Popshop, Emotive, and Refinery29.

Ann is also a lecturer in entrepreneurship at Stanford, a co-director of the Mayfield Fellows Program at Stanford, a member of the Board of Trustees for Yale University and a co-founding member of All Raise, a nonprofit committed to improving diversity in funders and founders. Prior to Floodgate, Ann worked at Charles River Ventures and McKinsey and Company. She lives in the Bay Area with her husband and three energetic kids.