Hey friends of Soapbox!

It's September — Welcome to our NINTH edition of Soapbox. 🤯

It’s allegedly Founder Mode Fall…who knows what that will bring for the season. Only time will tell ig 🫡

Here's the rundown on what happened in August: 

We attended Rally in Indianapolis! We caught up with so many friends. We even went to an Indy Fever game to watch Caitlin Clark. We had a guest star appearance from Simone Biles - Maria was shook 😲

Also, Twin Cities Startup Week, Denver startup week, and the M25 Summit are coming up soon!

Here’s what we’re looking forward to in October:

• Fall baking and soup making

• Spooky season 👻

• NYC Edtech Week - let us know if you’re attending!

Soapbox of the Month

On Identity Capital

Written by Maria

Read + Share this Soapbox Moment on Medium

More than ever, young people are asking themselves who am I? You already know what you’ve experienced; start defining it.

For those of you who don’t know, I spent the last year living in Mid-Missouri. It was one of the most confusing and challenging times of my life to date (and trust me, I’ve had quite a few of those). I spent a lot of time alone, working, cooking, and yoga-ing. Despite the mundane, what came out of my year in Missouri was one of the richest opportunities of my life.

The time to truly reflect on who I want to be and the experiences I want to have in the future.

Defining Identity Capital

Earlier this year, I finished the book The Defining Decade by Meg Jay, Ph.D. It felt like, for the first time, I stopped asking myself, “What am I doing in Missouri?” and started framing the experience as a way for me to build something called identity capital. Throughout the book, Dr. Jay asserts that who we are is built over time, piece-by-piece, by the things in our personal and professional lives that we choose to develop. She describes these as “investments that we make in ourselves, the things we do well enough, or long enough, that they become a part of who we are.”

The longer I felt stuck in my current geography, the more it began to shape who I was becoming. What initially seemed ordinary and boring gradually turned into an unexpectedly interesting experience. Living in Missouri became an opportunity for me to invest in myself, engage with a population in the US that I hadn’t interacted with before, gain new perspectives on the investing ecosystem, and apply principles in my job that investors in the Midwest previously overlooked.

I was building identity capital.

Inflection Points

When I began reflecting on building identity capital, it led me to think about the past moments in which that capital was previously built. I distilled both circumstantial and opportunistic moments into what I believe were times of major identity capital building.

I grew up in a small town in the Pacific Northwest. My mom was a stay-at-home mother who worked weekend jobs, and my father was a public school principal. I attended a Title 1 high school where 15.8% of my classmates were homeless, and 8 out of 60 students who were in my graduating class attended a 4-year university.

At 16, I started working two jobs each summer to begin saving for college. This trend continued throughout my college years, where I worked 80–100 hours a week in the summers, juggling an internship and waitressing at two different restaurants. Plain hard work that afforded me the opportunity of education and travel.

In college, I spent two + months studying in Spain, where I worked at a startup where no one spoke English, and many of my coworkers were ex-pats from the former USSR. This environment allowed me to be unabashedly curious while building relationships in a foreign language.

Of course, I’m adding the “year in MO” to my running list. Currently, most of my identity capital moments were derived from the circumstantial. (Ex. born to a working-class family, working because I had no savings, and traveling because I did). These moments are neither net negative nor net positive but moments of inflection in who I am. The next step is creating more of these moments through situations I choose to put myself in with the purpose of building identity capital, no matter how uninteresting they may initially be. (Ex. moving to the Midwest for school)

Piece by Piece

What’s beautiful about identity capital is that it doesn’t always require substantial resources or unique opportunities. It is free to create and can be built through everyday actions — reading books, exploring new places, trying different foods, or engaging in diverse conversations. Personal identity capital is built through your own active development alongside the collective and others’ social capital/relationships, helping you move forward.

A fantastic example of this is founder Andrew Rea’s blog titled How We Got Investor Intros. Throughout the blog, Andrew talks about how he and his co-founder’s ability to get intros was a direct result of 4 to 5 years of putting themselves in a position to build their company (i.e., 4 to 5 YEARS of building the identity capital needed to do so!). Andrew breaks down his and his co-founder’s origins, careers, and network that allowed them to successfully raise. Their identity capital was ultimately “exchanged” for fundraising dollars and a chance to build their company.

It’s this intersection of identity capital and social capital (our own and others) that allows already great people to build something exceptional.

Final Thoughts

As a young person, it’s easy to feel like you’re floating in the abyss, unsure of which direction will lead you where you want to go. I’ve found that by reframing everyday situations as opportunities to build identity capital, you can start to design a life that is interesting. My year in Missouri provided a chance for deep reflection and helped me start crafting my life around what I found was most important to me (family, friends, global citizenship, etc.)

After leaving Missouri in late May, I spent 10 weeks backpacking and working in Europe and have now settled into a new apartment in Chicago. None of these opportunities would have been remotely possible without my prioritization of building identity capital through my past, current, and future circumstances. I am beaming with pride that I formed these experiences, and I sincerely believe that other young people can as well.

You know more than anyone what your life has been like. Think about it. Spend time reflecting on what your inflection points are and what you’re doing now to build the experiences you want to have in the future.

CAREER 🧑‍💻

Last month, we talked about the famous “2-year itch,” and how we’ve seen a trend of junior VCs start looking for new jobs. 🔍

A few days later, we read Going VC’s “Six Top Reasons Why Junior VCs Quit Their Job.” In summary, the article outlines the six reasons as follows:

1. A plateau of career growth and skill development 📉

2. A desire for more hands-on experience 👐

3. Lonely work environment with changing priorities, and high risk for failure 😱

4. Lack of clear objectives for success and long feedback loops ❓

5. Burnout from constant networking, attending events, and staying “in-the-know” 🥴

6. Lack of diversity and inclusion 🧍‍♂️

They’re all great points. We’d also add “dealing with VC/tech egos all day” and “trying to keep up with AI” to the list of reasons 😉

We really love the “Key Reflection” questions listed at the end of the article. If you’re an aspiring VC or considering your long term career path, you should definitely ask yourself these questions.

We’ve already talked about some of the common paths after working in VC for a few years, but next month, we’ll talk about alternative paths you can take. VC gives you an incredibly unique skill set that is transferrable in many ways! Stay tuned.

CULTURE 🌈

Last month, we attended Rally in Indianapolis! Our favorite session at the conference featured a panel with Allison Barber, President & COO of the Indiana Fever. The session titled, “Business is Booming! Investing in the Clarkonomics Era,” we got an inside look at The Fever’s plan for strategic growth in this new era of women’s sports. 🏀

Clarkonomics defines this new era of excitement, viewership, and growth in women’s sports over the last two years. During the panel, Barber spoke about their strategic plans to build the Fever brand and prepare for their 2024 first pick lottery and getting a player like Caitlin.

Barber mentioned that her team put in an order for over 10,000 jerseys before the WNBA draft pick, in preparation for a spike in sales after the draft. Their bet paid off. Caitlin Clark was the best selling athlete ever on Fanatics during WNBA draft night. Fans bought more of her Indiana Fever jerseys that night than the Dallas Cowboys sold for all of their players combined for the entire 2023 season.*

Here are some other Clarkonomics fun facts 🔥

• Caitlin led Iowa to a victory over LSU in the Elite Eight game on April 1 which was the most watched women’s college basketball game ever. More than 12 million people watched that game compared to the 9 million viewers of last year’s World Series.*

• The Indiana Fever had one televised game last season. This year, 36 of 40 games will be televised across seven networks.*

*Data sourced from Sagamore Institute.

CAPITAL 💸

It’s pay-to-play time! Seems fun, right? Well, not for founders or early funders ☹️ 

Venture capitalists are increasingly inserting "pay to play" provisions into term sheets, according to the law firm Cooley. Pay to play is a provision added to term sheets by VCs that are designed to benefit new investors at the expense of existing shareholders who don’t contribute additional capital in the round. i.e. If you want to play (be in the round), you have to pay (deploy capital).

According to Cooley, 8.7% of all deals in Q2 included "pay to play" provisions, the highest rate since the firm began tracking in 2014. This marks the first time the percentage has exceeded 8% since Q1 2017. Historically, "pay to play" has been more common in later-stage deals, often exceeding double-digit percentages, but in Q2 2024, the largest percentage occurred in Series A rounds at 13.7%. It’s a sign that VCs are under some “performance pressure,” and startups are struggling to secure the necessary funding.

Some argue that pay-to-play is unfair to early investors or employees who invested capital at high risk, and others argue that “pay-to-play” helps companies actually survive as new investors with more capital are able to deploy if needed. Regardless of whether you're for or against seeing pay-to-play provisions in earlier rounds, the trend is on the rise.

From Our Feed to Yours

Tweets, Memes, and other things from our feed that gave us a laugh.

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