Platform Shifts, AI, and the Future of Consumer Investing
episode
Venture Unlocked: The playbook for venture capital managers
48 min
2 speakers
4 chapters
transcribed 1 month ago
Transcript
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Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Welcome back to another episode of Venture Unlocked, the podcast that takes you behind the scenes of the business of venture capital. In this episode, I had the pleasure of speaking with Mercedes Bent, who recently launched her own firm called Premise after spending time as an investor at Lightspeed. We covered a lot of ground during our conversation, including how AI is transforming consumer today and in the future, what informed the thesis for Premise, which is the name of her and her partner Vanessa's new firm, and the state of VC today. We hope you enjoy the episode and don't forget to subscribe if you want more Venture Unlocked episodes straight to your inbox.
Sameer Khaji is the CEO and co-founder of Allocate. Allocate and Venture Unlocked are independent of each other. Any statements or references made by Sameer or his guests regarding third-party investments or securities are solely their views and opinions and are not intended as investment advice or an endorsement of such parties or securities by Sameer, his guests, or Allocate. Allocate or its clients may maintain relationships with or investment positions and guests, third parties or securities mentioned in this podcast. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions.
Mercedes, it's great to see you and thanks for being on.
Thank you for having me, Samir. Wonderful to be on.
Yeah, this will be fun. So I usually don't start here, but I think your story is so interesting and all the different things that you've done in your career leading up to, you know, your fund now. Let's go back in history and go through your path of getting into venture.
Okay, so that starts very early. I'm the daughter of entrepreneurial parents. I had probably the luckiest upbringing you could have to have my job today. My dad's an engineer. My mom's an accountant. They started companies when I was younger. My dad started a video streaming company. They worked on our RFID company back in the 90s and 2000s. My parents used to work at Apple. So I kind of just grew up in the Bay Area around tech all the time. And I thought that's what everybody did when they grew up. I thought everyone talked entrepreneurship and ideas at the dinner table. I remember when we were younger, they would say, okay, so what if you had a pet robot and it was talking, what would you price it for?
Who would you sell it to? What would the kids use it for? Where would they buy it? And we would talk all of these ideas. And then two years later, Furby would come out and it was like, oh, that's what we were talking about at the dinner table the last few years. And they were like, Yep. Yeah. And that was just constant. So I had a really lucky upbringing. My dad taught me coding when I was in high school, VBA mostly. And I went to Harvard for undergrad. I started out computer science. And then the great financial crisis was going on while I was there. And I thought that was super fascinating. I ended up working with my Harvard professors at the Fed, both the DC Fed and the Boston Fed in 09 on kind of post-crisis cleanup work.
And then worked at Goldman Sachs for a couple of years, did the asset management thing, got to do a lot of public equities and commodities trading. And then in 2012, I was like, you know what? I want to go back to the startup world and back because of my upbringing. I worked at startups from 2012 to 2019, lots of different roles in consumer frontier tech. I was the founder of my own company, got to see everything from zero to 100 million in revenue. I was leading really large teams, 100 people. and P&Ls of tens of millions. So got great experience. And then I became a VC in 2019. And at that time, I was thinking this is a perfect amalgamation of all my experiences, part finance, part startup. And that was at light speed.
I got my shot from Jeremy Liu, who hired me in 2018. I started in 2019 and just had a phenomenal experience there. tons of investing, but that was really kind of the upbringing that led me here today.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:09–7:04
2
How did Mercedes Bent's upbringing and early career lead her to venture capital?
7:04–25:22
3
How did Mercedes and Vanessa design Premise’s firm values and culture?
25:22–30:46
4
What founder profile does Premise target in consumer technology investing?
30:46–48:07