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In this Fintech Leaders edition, I sit down with the wonderful Alexa von Tobel, Co-Founder and Managing Partner at Inspired Capital, an early-stage VC based in New York City, with over $500M in Assets Under Management.
The firm was founded by Alexa and Penny Pritzker, former U.S. Secretary of Commerce, and has backed some outstanding fintech companies, including Finix, Rho, Habi, Orum, Public, and Kamino.
In this episode, we discuss:
Alexa’s background & entrepreneurial adventures and why she dropped out of Harvard Business School to build LearnVest, which she then sold for $375 million.
“I started a company on the side called Learnvest, built out of my own desire to build something and I went back to HBS in the fall of 2008, and Lehman Brothers went under and the business plan that I'd been building for Learnvest, which was to help empower America's wallet… seemed like the exact right time to go do it... So I dropped out of HBS, December 2008.”
Lessons learned in the last three years since launching Inspired and their process to look for and find exceptional founders with relentless determination.
“We've learned so much. I mean, if you think about the last three years, this has been one of the wildest environments, you can start anything in, right?... As it pertains to how we think about businesses, not much has changed, is the truth. There's nuances here and there, but we look for exceptional founders, and the word exceptional is literally exceptional. And so that bar is very, very high.”
The reasons why Alexa is excited about the impact of fintech internationally, especially in places like Latin America.
“We've seen a lot in FinTech and we have a really good sense of what works and what works well at scale. And so as a result, there's certain businesses that we really like, and that we're excited for in other regions, where that human behavior change doesn't have to happen, right? It's the same possibility in terms of customer support, customer experience, but just in a market where it doesn't exist yet.”
And why she loves hosting her own podcast, Inc. Founders Project, where she’s interviewed 150+ incredible founders and what she’s learned from them… and a lot more!
“I've interviewed almost 150 founders, most running massive billion dollar businesses… And what I love about it is really getting to see that there's this shared psychology around willing things to happen, believing that the world deserves better, and then knowing there's a better way... And then often they bring just epic amounts of positivity to what they want to do. And that's what makes them magnetic.”
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Miguel Armaza is Co-Founder & Managing General Partner of Gilgamesh Ventures, a seed-stage investment fund focused on fintech in the Americas. He also hosts and writes the Fintech Leaders podcast and newsletter.
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