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In this Fintech Leaders edition, I sit down with the very eloquent Soraya Darabi, Co-Founder & General Partner at TMV, a Venture Capital firm with over $100 million in assets under management that aims to back early-stage founders building businesses beyond the bottom line.
In this episode, we discuss:
Breaking into Tech – How Soraya found herself at the very center of the digital media and startup land almost two decades ago and how it led her down the path of entrepreneurship and investing.
“Just as I was becoming obsessed with Digg and social news, Condé Nast acquired Reddit. So I was lucky enough to write that press release, interview the founders of Reddit, and sent it to the only tech journalist I knew at the time, Michael Arrington, and it became one of the most read stories on TechCrunch that year (2006).”
Purpose-driven investing – TMV’s mission to find extraordinary returns in businesses that deeply care about the triple bottom line and the importance of backing entrepreneurs with diverse lived experiences.
"We very much care about not necessarily investing with a gender lens, but with an openness to diversity at large. And that's diversity of lived experiences…and what's so cool about the first three (and soon fourth) unicorns that we've been either Series A or Series Seed investors in, is that all four of those companies have a female founder."
Fintech startups as a driving force for financial inclusion and some examples of amazing companies building a more inclusive economy.
“When I think about what [Fintech] 2.0 or 3.0 looks like - I think about financial inclusion and I think about diverse founders making it so that you can both invest and learn at the same time.”
Fundraising lessons. Learning to love the process, reflections after raising over $75 million, and how Soraya found herself raising most of TMV’s second fund while pregnant… and a lot more!
“Fundraising took me to Greece, Switzerland, and Mexico, but then it quickly moved to zoom in 2020 and I was pregnant at the time. And as a pro, it was great to be on Zoom and be munching on pineapple in between zooms. But as a con, it's very hard, as a storyteller, to convey the nuances of what makes you special over zoom.”
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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.
Soraya Darabi, Co-Founder/General Partner at TMV – Backing Purpose-Driven Unicorns, Changing the Face of VC, & Why Investors Ignoring Diverse Founders are Missing out on Huge Returns