Eli

Today on the pod we're joined by Emily Herrera. She's an investor at Night Ventures, which is an early stage consumer VC fund. We put on our Patagonia vest to get a crash course in the world of VC. Learn how Gen Z is affecting the way people fundraise and get her predictions on the types of startups she thinks will emerge soon. But before we get there, let's discuss what's in our scrolls. Got a jam packed news cycle Trey kicking it over to you what do you got?

Trey

Awesome, so I don't know if you guys have seen that bright green olive oil in the squeezy bottle, Graza.

Clara

Yes.

Eli

I've heard of it. I don't have it.

Clara

I've tried it.

Trey

Right. So they just basically prettified olive oil and made it into a nice squeezable one bottle. But then another brand called Bright Land launched their own pizza oil in a squeezy bottle. And it stoked a lot of debate the founder of Gaza olive oil in the green bottle Andrew Benin publicly denounced Bright Land as a copycat basically saying that they borrowed the squeeze bottle design.

Eli

Listen, listen, oil hasn't caused as much controversy since the Gulf War, you know,

Clara

Wow winding that one up all the way.

Eli

You got everything from a startup world long LinkedIn attacks, long LinkedIn apologies, people on both sides being like this is an issue this is a non-issue. But yeah, I don't think it's a non entity. It's certainly got a lot of press New York Times BBC.

Clara

I know I feel like this is like the the impact of like LinkedIn founder culture in large part but I remember Graza was in the press in January two because they had the apology that went viral. I don't know if you guys saw that one too. But they they basically had a lot of issues with their holiday orders where like people either weren't getting them in time for the holiday or the orders were coming like in some way damaged or like not in gift wrap. So the founder who's now in this controversy like got a lot of like LinkedIn buzz because he did you know a version of the notes app apology but that it felt a little bit less PR heavy and like you're like this is such an authentic and honest response and really like shows how he understands his clients or whatever but I feel like I don't know this guy is just on a tear maybe.

Trey

At what point that was just pouring your olive oil into like a squeezy bottle just like brain empty. What do you doing?

Clara

I know what it was like that can't be like a copyright? You can't trademark that like, ya know, like pizza restaurants put olive oil in like ketchup bottle.

Trey

I think I saw it and like the original Super Mario Brothers movie.

Clara

Original Super Mario Brothers movie famed the squeezy bottle of olive oil.

Trey

Right? It's been it's been around since at least 1993 since like Pizza Hut days of your So the lesson here is? The lesson here is always buy the OG version. Kirkland Signature.

Eli

All right, that's a perfect transition. Clara what's in your scroll?

Clara

All of my scroll, well my scroll today, the day after the first Monday of May? Is all my Gala stuff. I would love to know both of your thoughts both what you loved or what you hated from the red carpet because or the is it a red carpet even?

Trey

I think it was like a red white and blue carpet. I'm not sure what that was about. But.

Clara

I know but there was like a roach that stole the show. There was Pedro Pascal's kneecaps there was like a lot to see a lot to loath. So curious what you loved and loathed from the met this year.

Trey

I was not really into Chloe Fineman and Derek Blasberg who were the two red carpet hosts who are like blatantly intoxicated. And Chloe Fineman got Stella McCartney's name wrong. And Stella McCartney was like, Whoa, who are you basically, it was quite funny. So that was definitely the part that I loved. Loathed? Probably the majority of it, wasn't here for a lot of the black and white land looks like people thought Karl Lagerfeld, the famed designer of Chanel, who was the subject of the Met Gala. Only did sort of monochrome looks and everyone wears like the Camellia flower or something. I mean, I don't think he would be like, offended but the amount of like random celebrities who were like, I met Karl once and he said to me like, he was like to Michael Kors. Like why am I so tan? Let me tell you Karl and I'm like, how does everyone have a random memory of like Karl roasting them and now drudging it out as if it's like this iconic moment that was like a career defining thing for them. Embarrassing. Sad.

Clara

I know it was interesting because I feel like in the lead up to the med gala to there was a lot of conversation about like some of the controversy around Karl Lagerfeld, too. And so it was interesting like the whiplash effect between like all of these like thought pieces from like, Refinery 29 about like, what's problematic about the Met this year? And then it's like, OMG, like someone dresses up as like Karl Lagerfeld cat. Meow. So cute. Like, what is wrong to me about like so much pop culture discourse, when it tries to get like, ethical is that it is like completely toothless. And the second like somebody does something plausibly viral, like whatever the platform is, like completely changes their tune. Personally, my favorite thing to come out of it is the Alexander Skarsgard interview where he eats oysters before going and then talks about how his character on Succession, I'm not going to say it, but just read the piece. I don't even know how to pronounce it cas? cas-cok? cas-cock core?

Eli

Give us give us a quick TLDR on cas-cock.

Clara

Oh, yes, sorry. I teased and did not get into it, but basically,

Trey

You teased the cas-cock.

Clara

It's basically casual peacocking is his concept for how Matson dresses on Succession like whereas the Roy children are all very like buttoned up like business casual, but you know they can...

Eli

Here's five looks to nail the quiet luxuries brand.

Clara

Exactly it's like here's how you can nail cas-cock at your next board meeting or whatever. But no, so his concept for Matson is that he dresses like in this way that's hyper casual but at the same time like kind of signally. But yeah, I digress. So that was my that was my rose my thorn was all of the cat core.

Eli

Well, yeah, just you mean Jared Leto dressed as a furry.

Clara

Yeah, that kind of gave me the heebie jeebies. And I love cats so that says something you know,

Trey

Doji cat like fully went as like a cat with cat prosthetic face on like her top lip did not move. And then it was done by the makeup artist Pat McGrath but then they started making Cat McGrath jokes and that's when I knew I changed the show.

Clara

I know, my log off starts here today.

Trey

Right? The cleanse starts now.

Clara

Exactly. Well, do you have a Met take?

Eli

No, I actually I wasn't tuning in. I'm gonna be honest with you. Except for what's left onTwitter.

Trey

Why not? You not a Karl fan?

Eli

I saw some funny memes here and there.

Trey

He's great on succession like Karl.

Eli

I just don't know. Not my forte. I'd rather watch the Rangers get eliminated in game seven.

Trey

Did they?

Eli

Yeah.

Trey

Oh, wow. People have so much hope for that.

Eli

Well, anyway, what's in my scroll you ask, total 180.

Clara

Isn't it always?

Eli

I know. I know. But..

Trey

Let's go serious.

Clara

Eli with the most terrifying thing you've ever heard in your life. Take it away.

Eli

Aye, come on. So what will be two weeks ago from now? Good ol Uncle Joe Biden announced his reelection campaign too many surprise and immediately the RNC released a rebuttal ad that was made entirely through generative AI and it was filled with fake disasters both foreign and domestic. So there was a scene of China invading Taiwan there was a scene of US markets in freefall boarded up stores crisis at the border all things you don't even need AI to make but anyway I thought it was interesting because I think 2024, just as 2008 and 2012 are like the social media elections 2024 will be like the AI election and I think it has potential to probably be like way more disruptive and yeah I mean a I thought it was funny kind of? Funny not in like haha but funny is well actually it was kind of funny haha. Yeah AI electable as Clara drops in the chat. But I'm curious if you guys saw saw this ad?

Trey

Oh, yeah. My take is like, is that all you got? Like, this is the worst you can imagine if Biden is elected president. Right well, that's kind of my point. Like kind of got free rein. But another interesting thing is like, there's no rules for AI and like the FTC, which is like The Federal Election Committee there's there's nothing there's no precedent here at all, which is scary. A little bit. I'm also just curious as to like, the types of prompts that they're dropping into these. But yeah. My thing is like you had, you know, the AI world at your disposal, and they probably had, like, prompted, like, Joe sleeping, you know what I mean? It's like, you don't need to imagine these things.

Clara

Yeah, I mean, I don't know, like, for better or worse and not to get like super political about it. But like, I grew up in DC, and like, the anti-abortion trucks and stuff have always had like, these very graphic not real images, like, quote, unquote, depicting abortion, like, I think like the sort of fear mongering tactic that the right often uses to, like, bring attention to like, whatever progressive candidate or cause that they don't like, I feel like and maybe to your point, Trey, it's like, what can they imagine that's worse than what they already do? If that makes sense. I think like, AI has scary potential in terms of like, maybe the believability of somebody, whatever, like a fake video of Joe Biden saying something. But I wonder like, is that convincing any additional people then who believed whatever fate was around in like, 2016? You know, and it's just like, a new way of talking to the same group of people. And I don't know how impactful it is other than the fact that it is, like, terrifying, and maybe I'm wrong, but like,

Eli

I don't know, I think it will be far more impactful than like, say a tweet that is flagged as misinformation. I do think it's way more tangible. It's way more tangibly fake. If that makes sense.

Clara

The AI is more tangible, or what's more tangibly fake?

Eli

The AI is and I think it's way more persuasive than like, I don't know, a tweet or a Facebook post or something.

Clara

Yeah, I guess my question which is like an open question is like whether it's persuasive to like net new people, you know what I mean? Right? Like, it is persuasive and I agree with you would is like very powerful, but just like, whether or not it swings votes, one way or the other, I think will be interesting. And like, open question. I'm just curious.

Eli

Yeah that's a new type of swing voter. That's interesting now, and now this is some like, Pod Save America, whatever, yada yada snooze.

Trey

We need Marianne Williamson on the AI train. Like, I'd love to see her quotes come to life. She's all over Tik Tok. She's a celeb. Well, for us to find out. But what else is for us to find out is all about the world of VC, Gen Z, etc. So stay tuned for part two of the pod with Emily Herrera. did AI make that transition?

Eli

Em Herrera, welcome to the pod. How are we doing today?

Emily Herrera

I'm good. Thank you for having me. I'm really excited.

Eli

Yeah, same. We're excited for a little VC 101. So, first Q before we dive in, do you have a blue sky account?

Emily Herrera

Oh god, I do, really embarrassing. I do. But I've never used it seriously, Really? I've never used it.

Trey

Wow that's even cooler, you not only got this secret invite, but like you're not even on there.

Emily Herrera

I mean, we can go into what I think about it, but there's not a lot of action, the kind of action I like seeing on there. So I could probably just go to a tech meet up and have the same discourse, you know, and get some free drinks out of that.

Trey

Very true.

Eli

All right well, I'm sure we'll get to that later on. So to take a very far step back. So you're an investor at Night Ventures, which from looking at the website, doing my homework briefly before this, is an early stage consumer VC fund, can you just explain what that is to our audience?

Emily Herrera

Happy to, so I'll breakdown, so first there was the early part. Actually, I'll back up even more VC basically is like having this really big bank account. And you have these like fund managers who go to a bunch of rich people. And usually it's like family offices of people who are just like, really, really rich, or sometimes like random, new rich people that were in tech. And they would raise money from them, and you raise a certain amount, and then you hit that deadline, and you close it. And it's just like a bank account that you basically sit on and VC is a job now formally, because 2% of the amount of money that you raise goes to kind of like the payoff, salaries and operating stuff and marketing and community budget. So that's how VCs kind of have salaries is off of that fund about. So that's a VC fund. And the job of those people is to manage where the money goes. What kind of investments they make, and then who kind of influences their investment strategies. That's what the people do. And then the early stage stuff, as a founder, you can do what's called like a friends and family round, which is like, you literally go to your friends and family and people that you know, literally, and you raise a little bit of cash from them. And that gets you to a point where you can have like a product, but then you go to a bunch of like stuffy VC people, and you're like, this is my idea. Very, like, you know, Zuckerberg vibe with that kind of stuff.

So that's traditionally like very early, early, then you have like a pre seed round, then you have a seed series A series B, blah, blah, blah, down the alphabet, you have growth stuff. So what we do is, we like to think it's stuff that's like, you have an idea, you've probably hired out one person, you maybe have a physical prototype, all the way to, you're making like, you know, $10-20 million dollars a year, and you have a full stack out team. So that's when you say like, early stage, it's still like, you know, 40-50 employees around that or like a, like a later early stage stuff. But it's not people who are making, you know, a bajillion dollars, necessarily. So that's the early stage part. And then the last part is the consumer stuff. And that's nowadays a mix between kind of like, consumer packaged goods, stuff, think like ollie pop, think, the crucibles and Mr.Beast stuff. But then also consumer software. And that could be like Twitter, or Uber, or any of those kinds of like apps on your phone, or websites that you go to frequently, and you put in kind of like a credit card for recurring charge. And that's called like SAS, all that kind of stuff. So it's software that everyday people that know nothing about startups use every single day, and then physical goods.

Trey

So is it fair to say that you are seeing as an early stage VC person. A lot of the ideas that will shape culture, probably in like five or 10 years, even from now, if not sooner?

Emily Herrera

Yeah, I think that's kind of one of the reasons why I like doing it is you're looking at the businesses that are probably hopefully going to change the way that people spend their money. But then also the individual people who will take that money, because it's like very much a privilege, people get to go and get venture capital. And usually, traditionally, small businesses can either take on like a traditional loan, or just have to make the money or fund it in advance. And so when you get VC money, you have the ability to hire really quickly. So it's also certain kinds of distribution of wealth, if you think about it that way, where you're now kind of taking on these, like really big bets, and you have this big budget, and you can hire a bunch of people. So you're basically so it's also the business but it's also betting in the person that in the way that they build a business, that it'll be sustainable. It'll hopefully be not like net bad for society. But also that person now becomes a big manager becomes a CEO with a bunch of money and a bunch of people. So sometimes, if they haven't had that level of management before that job, that can be a little bit scary. But you know, the right person has good vision and likes picking people in a, in a very good way is really exciting to be around. So yeah, so long story short, yeah.

Clara

I was just curious, like, you mentioned Mr. Beast, but like, what are some of your other clients or people that you work with companies you work with?

Emily Herrera

Yeah, I can go into also in a second, and this will cover the whole like, Night Media and Night Ventures thing of the relationship between that all that stuff, so I'll do that. Trey Did you have a separate question about..

Clara

A crazy thought?

Trey

Oh, yeah, I was gonna say like, I imagine the pressure cooker these people are in to come up with these ideas. You have to have such a kind of confident personality that borderline like ego, maniacal, theranos startup founder personality that like, often ends up in, you know, Kendall Roy succession, like pitch vibes, where you're just like losing your mind. But um, it was not an actual question.

Emily Herrera

No, no, it's totally, it's totally valid. I think that and I'll get into, like, why decided to go more into this job, but you definitely, you know, every VC I think that's the funny thing is like, you could be a partner, you could be an associate, you could be analyst, you could be an operating partner. There's a bunch of different roles at a fund, but everybody is like a VC like once you get the ability to like write a check or help with a check. You're like a VC. And I think each person is so weirdly individualistic that way. And it's because literally, it's about how you mesh with the other person that you're talking to. And like a lot of it people don't want to say it's like very person to person base. So like our last investment, I spent a lot of time with that girl and I just loved her as a person. And because we're a small enough fund that and also just the way that kind of like the guys and I do business is that we like throwing a lot lot of our resources and a lot of our attention towards the guys that we work with. Not every funds is like that. But we're small enough where we get to do that, it becomes even more of person to person connection. So, you know, I'm fortunate enough where I usually like to work with people who are like me, but you know, everybody has a different flavor, I think in this industry. So people like to work with stronger personalities, I like stronger personalities, but I like stronger personally that like, can hang out.

Eli

So yeah, I'm curious to hear more about Night Ventures and Night Media as a whole and kind of your portfolio and what you guys do.

Emily Herrera

Totally, totally. So this is, this is my little shtick. So Night Ventures is out of this company called Night Media, which is a creator management company. And now we call it like a new age talent management company. And basically, Night has really in the past twoish years has turned from being a traditional talent management, to being more of a business management. And I say that because kind of more traditional talent management will get you maybe more PR and get you maybe some more brand deals like we do that stuff. But we also like to explore different avenues that each creative person likes to pursue, whether it be music, or long form, like longer, longer form, like shows and movies. Also, if they want to become a founder of a company, or if they want to become an investor instead of their own VC fund or write sngel check, stuff like that. So that's kind of been the little arc that Nights been going off of. And in doing that arc, around, you know, maybe twoish years ago, there was this whole creator economy boom in the startup industry. And a lot of these founders were like, I don't think we could figure this out without before reaching out to some more creators. So they started sending their cap tables more towards creators, a lot of them were being the bigger creators, which are a lot of the ones that we manage, they're very like, I like to say they're very community based creators, they're not more of like the celebrity names necessarily, but there are people that have very much so big cult followings. So once they started doing that, Reed, who's the CEO basically decided, like, this is an opportunity for us to collaborate with them. And then also for me to maybe hire out a team that could professionally do this for them. So it's not just one off checks, and not really knowing you know, where to put your money, because that's, that kind of adds up, especially for a creator.

So, yeah, so he set out with partner, Ezra, and then found Ben, and they eventually found me. And we became this little collective and I'll also say, so our biggest relationship with our creators is around half of our, we call it LP base. And that just means the people that we get money from, so each fund has a limited number of people that you can get money from. And that's why usually they go to like the richer kinds of people because you want to get like a larger amount for fewer number of people. So what we decided to do is to go to a bunch of creators and say, like, do you have an interest in investing in startups, I can hire out a team, but you just become an LP. And you can kind of get a first row seat into how to start a venture fund and how VC works and angel investments. And you can see the deals that they're seeing, and there'll be people that are maybe more suits. So I'm one of two suits. And that's kind of how it started. So that was around a year and a half ago. And yeah, so now that's the early stage fun. Also, in Night Media, there's the traditional talent management, where you get like a manager and brand deals and all that kind of stuff. It's also what we call an incubator, which is if a creator has an idea, and they want to go serve out think about like Mr. Beast and Feastables, or Beast Burger, any of those kinds of things.

Basically, they come with this idea, and there's a full staff team within Night that will hear it out, kind of flush out this idea with them no judgement at all. And then once they get it to something that maybe could be a little bit more scalable, they'll help them usually raise money, the way that any other founder would raise money, but then also staff them up with people who have very formal experience on what they want to be doing. So think about people who have either done the equivalent on more startup side. So if a founder says like I want someone who's created CPG products for like Pepsi or like a really big company. Our job is also kind of to act as the most recruiters and to go and scope out those people the same way that a lot of VCs do for their portfolio founders and kind of like schmooze and see if we can kind of sell them on working with these creators. So talent management incubator early stage fund, has a bunch of stuff media buyout fund with the turning group. This is like to buy out CPG brands but creators on them, media stuff, almost like a record label, and it's actually called a record label and a production studio. So a whole bunch of stuff. And the idea, like I said before, is to really build these creators and see what their interests are, and make sure that we have the avenues that they can pursue them professionally.

Trey

One thing that we've been talking about a lot here at our agency, having worked with a lot of creators, mostly on like partnering with brands side of things, I know there was a sort of a boom in the creator economy, especially when the pandemic hit. And that seemed to be like, possibly the only option for a lot of young people. Now, and this is not true of all people. Some are like completely growing and growing. But some, you know, are either plateauing or their engagement numbers are not as high anymore. And there's a lot of discussion about like, where do we go from here? If I'm a creator, and my content is like, not doing not hitting those same numbers, or my fans have, like, fatigued, you know, about the content I'm posting, like, what can I do? And I think that starting a business or putting your name on something, whether it's like a consumer packaged, good, or whatever, seems to be the case. I'm wondering if, like the creators you work with, are actively thinking about that from the beginning. And like how that process works? Like, a lot of people have ideas, a lot of them are probably not great. So how do you kind of take a kernel of an idea with them and grow it into something that can be a business that would be successful?

Emily Herrera

Yeah, I mean, it's a great question. And my partner, Ben kind of works more on the incubator, and I mostly just help with the investment side, but I can give you a little bit of an insight on the signing process. And on also kind of like that interest going into the incubator. Because not everybody has to incubate something, we have plenty of talent that kind of has their own business on the side, or maybe doesn't have a separate business and just wants to partner with a talent management like Night, because we do work with a lot of larger brands, and all that kind of stuff. But mostly, I think, Night Media likes to work with people who are open to it. So people that are kind of homegrown within their niche and have a really strong, very passionate relationship with their fanbase. And will not budge. So typically, a creator is decently stubborn. And we think that's like kind of a good thing. But it's also open to really picking the right idea. So on the incubation side, it's a couple of people that work on that side. And I think it's half kind of like, it can feel almost like therapy, a lot of people have a lot of ideas, like you said, but it really is just like brainstorming on almost like whiteboard kind of vibe, and you're writing out all these different ideas that you've had. And then this is kind of the fun part where Ben and he was at a big fund before working at Night. So he's kind of had a lot of exposure to startups in general. He'll be like, Ah, okay, like, that sounds like this company. And then the creator will be like, oh, what does that do? Like, this is the end product what I want but like it, maybe it's a business model that's different. Maybe there's a lot of tech involved. And can you explain it to me in like, very much so layman's terms. And that's a lot of what the incubator team does is they'll go around and find some, like really good markets that maybe haven't been tackled very well, and either can present those to a creator. That makes sense.

So an example is that we did, Ben and I mapped really hard, like the women's health space. And we had a creator who was really interested in making more content about women's health and something that she hadn't explored really in her content before, but she really cared about because she was going through personal issues about it. And I had also just so happened to hear that conversation, and I had a lot of women's health issues. So basically said to her, like, let me go and figure out what are the companies that have raised money before? And what did they look like? What do they do right, and what did they do wrong? And then I basically presented to her and say, like, you know, this is just all the information that's out on the market right now. You know, what do you think in terms of more of like, the consumer interest. And I think that's kind of part of the reason why I wanted to work with creators is because when you do that breakdown for them, they do a really good job of being like, you know, maybe the business model made sense, but maybe this is what was off about the business. And because I know my audience better usually they they kind of know the consumer insight a little bit better than maybe a technical or product person like a traditional startups and so. So it's a lot of market mapping. It's a lot of patience, it's a lot of kind of no bad ideas mentality. And it's also a lot of testing. Not every single product makes it to the end line. And I think that Nick does a really good job of being like, you know what, we tried it but we're basically you know, it's a big catch up period to becoming a creator that's just making content, you know, maybe in your parents bedroom, and then all of a sudden running kind of like a couple million dollar company in like a year. That's like a lot of pressure. So we know that takes a lot of trying and stuff but but yeah, so that's a very long winded way of saying a lot of patience and a lot of trying.

Trey

Yeah, it's interesting how creators are kind of like building that audience first, where that was probably something that was so foreign before when you know, in startup culture. Now you like, have a direct line to your consumer and know exactly what they want before you can build out the product or the company that fulfills that need, which is just, I guess I haven't really considered that. But I'm having that thought now. And it's very mind blowing.

Emily Herrera

I mean, there's also this kind of thing. Now, I think it's really funny because I wasn't a crater II kind of person before this job. So it was like the biggest tailwind like I came into basically, talent management, everybody's like, I know, this person or this person, this is what we do this where we hang out and blah, blah. And I'm from New York. And I was like, oh, like, I don't really have an audience. I've never tried to be a creator, really, I have like a Twitter following. But it's not really like my thing. And it was a really different kind of like culture shift. But there's one thing that I've noticed, it's not like a trend in the startup space. And it's called, like, pre founder programs. So it's exactly what it sounds like, it's right before someone starts their idea. So they'll try to scout out like, you know, if we were to go and try to incubate around someone, like, would this person be a good profile for us to build out this company with them. And I think it's really going to lead a lot of like Silicon Valley people all the way down probably to creators, because there are a lot of people who are creators, but also part time, so maybe they have a different job, but we call it an operating job or like a creation job. And, and I think just like the hardest thing for early stage companies is distribution from like what you're saying. So that's an interesting trend that I'm seeing amongst startups, it's like they're like, Let's do pre funded programs, let's scout out people who maybe have really good distribution, but they're not putting two and two together, of being like, you know, who has pretty good distribution as an individual person that isn't thinking about a company yet, creators.

Clara

I'm also curious, just because like you were saying, off pod that you like in college and stuff, we're educating people on VC's and like, helping them sort of like start to get into it. Like, we talk a lot here about how Gen Z is like super entrepreneurial and interested in kind of like striking out on their own. So I'm curious from your perspective, like both what drew you to it, but then also just like, in working with other people, like at Night Ventures, but then also just generally like, what do you think the draw is for like, especially Gen Z towards like venture capital?

Emily Herrera

Definitely. It's great question. It's probably one of my favorite questions to think about. Literally, it's because it's getting more and more common. I went back to my old college the other day, and I got, like, swarmed a lot of questions about VC. And back when I was in school, no one had any idea what that was. And it's such a weirdly, like, complicated, it's like complicated for no reason. It's just like very gate kept. So now that I'm hearing a lot of people have interested in I get really excited about like who the hell i like telling everybody like? Why did I hear about this earlier? But I'll first start with like a very shortened version of how I tangibly got into it, blah, blah, blah, I used to work for a bunch of women's tech things back in like 2015 to 2018 worked at companies like Girls Who Code there was a platform called built by girls that was at AOL. And it was around a lot of really interesting girls, but also a lot of really interesting different education models, and fairly community based learning, which I went to like a normal high school and stuff very, like normal public school. So that was something that was very different for me. So I really learned to love that kind of learning. So did that for a bit, went to college was a computer science journalism major at Northeastern. I really enjoyed like storytelling and finding stuff out. I always ask way too many questions that my dad always tells me that so I was like, I'll just go into journalism. So I started doing both things at the same time. ended up doing like a bunch of at Northeastern, they have Co-op programs and work study periods, basically. And then I would do a bad thing where I do work study period, and then I would just extend the period into my next semester. So it's be like, Why would I go back and I could just keep working. I really liked the job that I had and then I just kept doing that. At some point, I had heard from one of my friends at Northeastern and she said that there was a student facing fund that was looking for like scouts. So scouting is like a whole other thing. But basically, those are people who are given the ability to bring a deal to have fund, and potentially get some kind of financial kickback for doing that. So like literally little scouts that go around looking for companies, and this fund was only looking for students. So I ended up getting that position. And I really focused on one kind of regionally Boston because I was there and then two also media because they were really looking for a media person. So I did those two things. But when I got there, I really realized that the women that were in this program, there was like a few of them didn't really know each other. And it just felt very classic like OG women and techie problems, where they're very, like heads down. They're not really like socializing or engaging in community stuff, because they really want to hit metrics and kind of prove that validation, it's a whole thing.

But I have some really good advice from my friends, especially my guy friends there. And they said, Em, like this is an unpaid thing. So you're not actually getting paid to do this, there are plenty of funds that have scouting programs. So the best thing you can do right now is really engaged in the community and make friends and learn what people want to do. Because when you guys grow up, you could potentially become something that's really interesting. So did that. Blah, blah, blah, COVID came, basically, I just decided, I'm like, you know what, we're all locked down. Let me try to get all these girls on the phone. There was like maybe four or five different funds that were focusing on students. And I started this little community. And then we really started crowdsourcing and see like, what was helpful to them as younger people that were still in college, what do they need, that really came down to paid coffee chats, merch, and then also like some study materials, if they wanted to get certified, or maybe they, you know, maybe needed some help with their, like summer internship finding and stuff like that. So bunch of different stuff going on there. And then after that, basically, I started getting some requests from older people at funds, who were interested in learning, like a Gen Z perspective. And that was something that was totally unplanned, because at that point, my community wasn't very formalized at all. But they were asking for very specific questions. So I was like, okay, either I could keep running these coffee chats with my own internship money, or I could just have these people basically pay for it. So I started doing that, started running a bunch of basically surveys and selling them as insights to GPS. And that's really what got a lot of the attention of these older people on me. And then I started like placing girls into jobs and stuff. And they were all really my friends.

So it was a really good opportunity to do that I learned a bunch and started this thing called syndicate. The whole thing, basically, super easy. So as a person who runs a syndicate, I open a bank account, whenever I see a cool company, I go find rich people, they put money into this, and then I close it, and I send it over. But it's like little tiny flips, or then having like a big fund. I didn't really make any money off of it at all. But it was really good experience and started doing that. Blah, blah, blah. One of my old bosses at Built By Girls out of AOL had a fund, I hit her up, I said, Hey, I think I want to do this thing. Can you talk to me and she said, you know, they could do give you a job. So so we're going there are two different fund called Harlem Capital focused on kind of like diverse founders, but BBG ventures, which is the first one was really about diverse consumers. And then eventually, yeah, the creator thing. And that kind of leads me to the last party question, I'm sorry, this is so long. But the last thing mostly was that I wanted to figure out how to invest in shit that people actually cared about. And I realized that a lot of investing in consumer stuff right now is like, very random. Like, this is no shade to anybody, but I've never bought Allbirds in my entire life. I don't know if I ever will. So I was like, You know what I want to do? Probably not that kind of investment. My dad loves them, but I don't love them.

Eli

It sounds like a PSA.

Emily Herrera

Oh, yeah, please don't like cancel me like the Allbirds people. Send my dad some shoes, please. Um, but yeah. So I realized that I was like, let me try to figure out what younger women like because it's just a narrative that I gotten validated over and over again, that a lot of VP that these consumer funds didn't know. By selling insights by placing these girls into roles by doing syndicates off of them. It's realized it was like something that I had an edge over just at that moment. So did that that and blah blah blah moved to Miami to LA. Ben reached out through DM because he was like, Hey, we're a bunch of dudes. And we're doing a bunch of dude things. We work with Mr. Beast, a lot of gaming and stuff. So we need someone that knows girl stuff. And then yeah, and then they found me.

Trey

I want to ask your predictions and feel free to divulge proprietary info, if you like, but what kinds of startups do you think we will be seeing? Even in the next like two to three years that you think maybe are in those spaces you were speaking about earlier? Or just solve problems that we are currently experiencing? Maybe I know, like AI is on everyone's minds. What can we expect?

Emily Herrera

Yeah, let's see. So I can say maybe like six months out, and then I'll kind of like you know, Hail Mary it down and see if I'm right. I think because there's the cool stuff of like, consumer. And then there's also like the super boring stuff and I might offend some of my friends, but we know that's boring of like enterprise stuff. And enterprise software is like, the stuff that companies buy. And it's like not really useful for individual people. Traditionally, in the past maybe 10-15 years, there was a lot of money made to like enterprise, SAS, and enterprise software, like will always make a lot of money, it's a very confusing thing to do. And I don't do stuff like that. But I think a lot of the future of AI will be in enterprise looking stuff. So like AI and medicine, or AI and construction, like things that are facing more towards traditional businesses that have to be disrupted. I think in terms of consumer facing stuff that's really hard to predict. But I don't like AI specifically is like a tool. You know, it's like no one really owns it, I guess maybe like two guys right now, technically, on a lot of it, but like, it's not really. It's been around for a hot minute. Like we've had Siri on our phones for a long time.

Eli

I was just gonna say even even that about like ownership. I feel like that's a debate that's starting to happen with like Reddit saying that open AI needs to pay, to like use their subreddit, etc. But yes, to your point I, you're right.For the most part, those two or three?

Emily Herrera

Yeah, I mean, like those contracts, specifically, it's from a business owner to a business owner, right. Like, that's really where like, a lot of cash will be made, a lot of big bites will be made in that stuff. I think the concern a lot more towards like users is a lot of privacy stuff and a lot of that kinda stuff. But I still see like consumer facing AI stuff is like a tool. Like it's not really like a set business yet. Or, or we have yet to see one yet. However, I did use face app the other day, which is the tool that the Kardashians use to edit their photos, and it's like God's tier, like, I look like, I look at Kardashian, like, and it's all AI, like, I just pressed the button, and it's like, oh, I want to look like this. And it changed my entire appearance, I basically deleted face tune off of my phone. And I'll never redownload it, never redownload it. And basically it's like $7 and it will change my entire appearance completely. So, maybe that's one example. But other than that, I haven't really seen something that's stuck that long. I would say healthcare, anything that is like such an office answer. But going off of like trust and institutions and stuff. If it's historically been like very institutionalized, it's gonna get disrupted on the consumer side. Because no one wants to work with them. Like people are saying, Why would I go into like a big hospital if I don't have an emergency? Let me just walk into like one medical and like, get it figured out there. You know. So healthcare, education. I think those are the two that really will get like reset completely, just get ripped apart. Climate stuff is very tricky.

Again, I think it'd be more limited to like enterprise stuff, a lot of money will be made on the enterprise side, I think it's hard for individual people to necessarily like really tackle that problem. Yeah, I'd say so consumer, cyber, underserved consumer, consumer also can include small businesses. So think like small business owners of even like trucking companies or farming companies. Everything, it's not Silicon Valley and faces a consumer, I think will become popular, mostly because a lot of those people are either retired kind of bored, hired a bunch of younger people that look like me, and are like, I don't know, tell me what's cool. And a lot of that stuff is it a come from the conversations that you guys have every day. Because a lot of this consumer conversation like I don't really know that much I know about consumer racy stuff, but you guys spend more time with actual consumers than VCs do. So I would say whatever you guys say, because that's the funnel. I'm not even kidding. That's the flip of funnel.

But I think younger VC people acknowledged a lot of the time that they're like, What are we now we just talked to a bunch of suits all day, why don't we go out in the crowd to figure out what's more interesting, But I think there is like a lot of crossover. Well not maybe not oddly enough in the work that we do, which is kind of what I was trying to try to get at. It's like I feel like once you have a consumer unlock of those insights, like you can use that as runway towards capital. But that said, I know our cybersecurity our head of cybersecurity Dennis Huck will be very pleased that your answer because he's always pushing an agenda. And Hey, I'm aligned with it. But before we close out, want to know where our audience can find you. Not in the doxing sense and like You know, online sense. I'm happy to dox myself. Please, if get referred for my building I'll get $1,000. So become my neighbor.

Eli

That's that's an idea.

Emily Herrera

That's another thing is like rental and like homeownership we didn't talk about that.

Eli

Isn't that Adam Newman whole thing?

Emily Herrera

Yeah, that's like co-living and stuff. I've seen a lot of companies that are doing like kickback for referrals. Or if I don't join, like a co-op building that they'll give me discounts for things that are locals who Around me there are a couple of those companies that around there it kind of like there's also like, the co-living stuff where it's like I pay a set amount every month, and I have the option to live in like eight different places. Basically, it's kind of complicated.

Eli

We'll stay close on it.

Emily Herrera

But it exists. So yeah, a lot of co-living and stuff like that. That's a whole thing. But I think that that's more niche to like cities, I think it's a difficult thing in like things that are not just cities. So I don't like to bring that up all the time. But it is something it's really exciting. Okay, you can find me on Twitter. My handle is @emilyhxrrera very embarrassing.

Eli

Not at all.

Emily Herrera

I used to be a fan fictiony kind of person, I had a fan account. So that's where I come from. So you can find me there. You can also find me EmilyHerrera.com. And then you can also email me em@night.co. If you want to talk to any of my partners or myself, there's also a cold inbound for him to pitch us on the Night website. Which isn't at night. ventures.com. And yeah, mostly find me on Twitter. You can also find me on Instagram. This is Emily Herrera. So do that too.

Eli

I wish we I wish we had time to dive into the the fan account stuff but next time, next time. Great. Well, thanks for coming on pod.

Emily Herrera

Thank you for having me.

Eli

No doubt. Thanks for listening in. Be sure to check out more on d1a.com\perspectives. And sign up for our bi weekly newsletter to get the latest trends and insights directly to your mailbox.