Maren Bannon's guest appearances

Maren Bannon

The Full Ratchet (TFR): Venture Capital and Startup Investing Demystified

Piloting your Life

50inTech Podcast

Jane VC

Joanne Wilson

Tim Urban

Erik Torenberg

Scott Kupor

Zach Coelius

Bryce Roberts

Craig Wortmann

Brad Feld

Brian Ascher

Kleiner Perkins

Andrew Parker

Jonathan Hsu

Nicole Quinn

Leo Polovets

OwlTail

 Maren Bannon of January Ventures joins Nick to discuss Breaking the Founder Stereotype, Mastering Conviction Over Zoom, &amp; the Contrast between European and American Entrepreneurs. In this episode, we cover:   Walk us through your background and path to VC   What’s the thesis at  January Ventures?   How are you and your team at January Ventures making tech more of an equal opportunity?   What is your approach to portfolio construction in this fund and how will that evolve in the future?   What's one thing you know now that you wish you knew prior to raising the fund?   You take meetings with founders VERY early — no warm intro, no pitch deck, or no revenue required to pitch to January Ventures. How do you evaluate the potential this early?   How do you filter all of the opportunities -- what is your pre-filter process?   How have you changed your work/process at January post COVID?   What is your experience like moving from SF to Europe and what is your view of the European tech ecosystem?  

Maren Bannon of January Ventures joins Nick to discuss Breaking the Founder Stereotype, Mastering Conviction Over Zoom, &amp; the Contrast between European and American Entrepreneurs. In this episode, we cover: <ul> <li> Walk us through your background and path to VC </li> <li> What’s the thesis at  January Ventures? </li> <li> How are you and your team at January Ventures making tech more of an equal opportunity? </li> <li> What is your approach to portfolio construction in this fund and how will that evolve in the future? </li> <li> What's one thing you know now that you wish you knew prior to raising the fund? </li> <li> You take meetings with founders VERY early — no warm intro, no pitch deck, or no revenue required to pitch to January Ventures. How do you evaluate the potential this early? </li> <li> How do you filter all of the opportunities -- what is your pre-filter process? </li> <li> How have you changed your work/process at January post COVID? </li> <li> What is your experience like moving from SF to Europe and what is your view of the European tech ecosystem? </li> </ul>

268. Breaking the Founder Stereotype, Mastering Conviction Over Zoom, & the Contrast between European and American Entrepreneurs (Maren Bannon)

Hi I’m Maren Bannon, I'm the co-founder of Jane VC. Jane is a new fund to invest in early stage female lead startups in Europe in the U.S. Before moving to Europe and starting Jane, I spent my career as an operator in San Francisco. I worked at large tech companies, startups, and I was also a founder. At university I studied engineering, and over and over again I was surrounded by rooms full of men. I got the idea of starting Jane from my experience as a woman in tech, and recognizing the huge untapped potential of female founders. I want the technology being built to be as diverse as the people on this planet. Today I want to give founders actionable advice on how to cold pitch a VC. 60% of VCs are white men who went to Stanford or Harvard. If you went to one of these schools, chances are you have a warm connection. If you're one of the other 7 billion people in the world you likely don't have this network, but you still may be building something incredible. This is why we started Jane VC: we decided to let anyone cold pitch us because we believe that access to venture capital should depend on what you're building, not who you know, or, where you went to school. I'm personally a huge believer in cold emailing, calling, pitching. I've gotten jobs, made friends, and acclimated to new countries this way. There's something magical about the way a cold intro inserts you into a new network, and broaden the people that you interact with. So today, I'm going to give some actionable advice about how to cold pitch a VC. Tip #1:  tailor the email to the person you're trying to reach. VCs are inundated with emails and impersonal emails are very obvious, so when you're writing to a VC take the time to research that particular investor and explain why you think they would be interested. Have they made investments in adjacent industries? Do they have a past role at a company your competitive sat? Is there something unique about the way they think about the world that you think would resonate? Tip #2: nail you're one liner. This is the old elevator pitch, it's still highly relevant. You need to be able to describe your business in a ten second elevator ride. You should be able to describe who you are, what makes you unique, and what you offer, in one simple sentence. Until you can automatically and succinctly explain the heart of what you do this quickly you'll be wasting your time pitching anyone. (...) Tip #3: list bullet points on your traction. This could be users or revenue numbers, notable customers, advocates, angel investors with relevant industry expertise. A bulleted list makes these bragging points easy to skim and gives VCs a quick overview of who you are and why you matter. Tip #4: make sure to explain why YOU. In this initial pitch you should have a brief description of your founding team. Make this easy to skim, again, highlight which parts of your background make you the ideal people to run this business. Tip #5: include and ask. Be explicit, why are you contacting this VC? Are you trying to raise a seed round? Are you simply looking for advice? Be very clear about what you're asking for. Tip #6: include the right materials. Your letter can be very brief to a VC, but make sure to include more information in case it is something that's interesting to them. This could be a deck or a one pager about your company. You could attach it as a PDF with compressed photos, or a link like Dropbox or Google Drive. Thanks for having me on this episode today, I'm really excited about 50inTech’s mission of reaching gender equality in the tech industry. It's very aligned with what we're doing at Jane.

Hi I’m Maren Bannon, I'm the co-founder of Jane VC. Jane is a new fund to invest in early stage female lead startups in Europe in the U.S. Before moving to Europe and starting Jane, I spent my career as an operator in San Francisco. I worked at large tech companies, startups, and I was also a founder. At university I studied engineering, and over and over again I was surrounded by rooms full of men. I got the idea of starting Jane from my experience as a woman in tech, and recognizing the huge untapped potential of female founders. I want the technology being built to be as diverse as the people on this planet. Today I want to give founders actionable advice on how to cold pitch a VC. 60% of VCs are white men who went to Stanford or Harvard. If you went to one of these schools, chances are you have a warm connection. If you're one of the other 7 billion people in the world you likely don't have this network, but you still may be building something incredible. This is why we started Jane VC: we decided to let anyone cold pitch us because we believe that access to venture capital should depend on what you're building, not who you know, or, where you went to school. I'm personally a huge believer in cold emailing, calling, pitching. I've gotten jobs, made friends, and acclimated to new countries this way. There's something magical about the way a cold intro inserts you into a new network, and broaden the people that you interact with. So today, I'm going to give some actionable advice about how to cold pitch a VC. Tip #1:  tailor the email to the person you're trying to reach. VCs are inundated with emails and impersonal emails are very obvious, so when you're writing to a VC take the time to research that particular investor and explain why you think they would be interested. Have they made investments in adjacent industries? Do they have a past role at a company your competitive sat? Is there something unique about the way they think about the world that you think would resonate? Tip #2: nail you're one liner. This is the old elevator pitch, it's still highly relevant. You need to be able to describe your business in a ten second elevator ride. You should be able to describe who you are, what makes you unique, and what you offer, in one simple sentence. Until you can automatically and succinctly explain the heart of what you do this quickly you'll be wasting your time pitching anyone. (...) Tip #3: list bullet points on your traction. This could be users or revenue numbers, notable customers, advocates, angel investors with relevant industry expertise. A bulleted list makes these bragging points easy to skim and gives VCs a quick overview of who you are and why you matter. Tip #4: make sure to explain why YOU. In this initial pitch you should have a brief description of your founding team. Make this easy to skim, again, highlight which parts of your background make you the ideal people to run this business. Tip #5: include and ask. Be explicit, why are you contacting this VC? Are you trying to raise a seed round? Are you simply looking for advice? Be very clear about what you're asking for. Tip #6: include the right materials. Your letter can be very brief to a VC, but make sure to include more information in case it is something that's interesting to them. This could be a deck or a one pager about your company. You could attach it as a PDF with compressed photos, or a link like Dropbox or Google Drive. Thanks for having me on this episode today, I'm really excited about 50inTech’s mission of reaching gender equality in the tech industry. It's very aligned with what we're doing at Jane.

Episode#11: "How to cold pitch a VC" - Maren Bannon - Co-founder & Partner at Jane VC

Who is Maren Bannon?   Maren is Co-Founder and Partner at Jane VC, a venture fund to invest in female-led technology startups.  Maren is an entrepreneur at heart who has been building tech businesses for the past 15 years. Previously, she was CEO and Cofounder of LittleLane. Her operating experience also includes leadership roles at health tech startups as well as leading consumer marketing for a $1B product at Genentech. She is the mother to three young daughters and feels energized each day by her vision of creating a different world for them. She has an MBA from Stanford and an Engineering degree from Dartmouth.  Show Highlights   Maren talks about joining forces with one of her fellow Stanford grads, Jennifer Neundorfer, to create a new fund, Jane VC, to not only get more capital into the hands of female founders, but to activate more female investors.  Maren shares the journey from reconnecting with her partner Jenn in January 2018 and leveraging AngelList to quickly create and raise the fund by bringing on supportive people in their network.    Terri asked Maren about Jane VCs plan to get access to deal flow, being open to anyone, and their plan to provide transparency to the VC process to work towards leveling the playing field.   Maren shares their plans for Jane VC in providing transparency, investing in women, and actively looking for investing opportunities outside of the Silicon Valley.   With Jane VC, they are focused on investing in pre-seed and seed stage rounds, but they will also invest in Series A. With Maren based in London, they will have the opportunity to focus on startups not only in the US, but also in Europe including London, Berlin, Paris, and the Nordics.      If Maren could wave a magic wand, she would shift the power dynamic to make it more equitable for women.     Terri’s Key Takeaway  To shift the power dynamic and improve the world, we need to activate more female investors and invest in more female founders.   References in the Podcast   Jane VC: https://www.janevc.com/   Jenn Neundorfer: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jkneundorfer/   Lynn-Ann Gries: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lynn-ann-gries-44440/     Komae:  https://www.mykomae.com/   Women’s Startup Lab: https://womenstartuplab.com/  Joanne Wilson (GothamGal): https://gothamgal.com/   Sallie Krawcheck:  https://www.ellevatenetwork.com/team/sallie-krawcheck   AngelList:  https://angel.co/    Guy Fawkes Day:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_Fawkes_Night  White Fragility:  Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism:  http://www.beacon.org/White-Fragility-P1346.aspx   Becoming by Michelle Obama: https://becomingmichelleobama.com/  Red Table Talk with Jada Pinkett Smitth:  https://www.facebook.com/redtabletalk/videos/343064719835818/  Contact  Maren can be reached by email at hello@janevc.com.    Founders interested in pitching to Jane VC can do so here:  https://www.janevc.com/contact-us   You can follow Terri on Twitter at @terrihansonmead or go to her website at www.terrihansonmead.com or on Medium:  https://medium.com/@terrihansonmead.   Feel free to email Terri at PilotingYourLife@gmail.com.  To continue the conversation, go to Twitter at @PilotingLife and use hashtag #PilotingYourLife. 

Who is Maren Bannon?   Maren is Co-Founder and Partner at Jane VC, a venture fund to invest in female-led technology startups.  Maren is an entrepreneur at heart who has been building tech businesses for the past 15 years. Previously, she was CEO and Cofounder of LittleLane. Her operating experience also includes leadership roles at health tech startups as well as leading consumer marketing for a $1B product at Genentech. She is the mother to three young daughters and feels energized each day by her vision of creating a different world for them. She has an MBA from Stanford and an Engineering degree from Dartmouth.  Show Highlights  <ul> <li>Maren talks about joining forces with one of her fellow Stanford grads, Jennifer Neundorfer, to create a new fund, Jane VC, to not only get more capital into the hands of female founders, but to activate more female investors. </li> <li>Maren shares the journey from reconnecting with her partner Jenn in January 2018 and leveraging AngelList to quickly create and raise the fund by bringing on supportive people in their network.   </li> <li>Terri asked Maren about Jane VCs plan to get access to deal flow, being open to anyone, and their plan to provide transparency to the VC process to work towards leveling the playing field.  </li> <li>Maren shares their plans for Jane VC in providing transparency, investing in women, and actively looking for investing opportunities outside of the Silicon Valley.  </li> <li>With Jane VC, they are focused on investing in pre-seed and seed stage rounds, but they will also invest in Series A. With Maren based in London, they will have the opportunity to focus on startups not only in the US, but also in Europe including London, Berlin, Paris, and the Nordics.   </li> </ul> <ul> <li>If Maren could wave a magic wand, she would shift the power dynamic to make it more equitable for women.   </li> </ul> Terri’s Key Takeaway  To shift the power dynamic and improve the world, we need to activate more female investors and invest in more female founders.   References in the Podcast  <ul> <li>Jane VC: <a href="https://www.janevc.com/" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.janevc.com/</a> </li> <li> Jenn Neundorfer: <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/jkneundorfer/" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.linkedin.com/in/jkneundorfer/</a> </li> <li> Lynn-Ann Gries: <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/lynn-ann-gries-44440/" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.linkedin.com/in/lynn-ann-gries-44440/</a> </li> </ul> <ul> <li> Komae:  <a href="https://www.mykomae.com/" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.mykomae.com/</a> </li> <li> Women’s Startup Lab: <a href="https://womenstartuplab.com/" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">https://womenstartuplab.com/</a> </li> <li>Joanne Wilson (GothamGal): <a href="https://gothamgal.com/" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">https://gothamgal.com/</a> </li> <li> Sallie Krawcheck:  <a href="https://www.ellevatenetwork.com/team/sallie-krawcheck" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.ellevatenetwork.com/team/sallie-krawcheck</a> </li> <li> AngelList:  <a href="https://angel.co/" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">https://angel.co/</a> </li> </ul> <ul> <li>Guy Fawkes Day:  <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_Fawkes_Night" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_Fawkes_Night</a> </li> <li>White Fragility:  Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism:  <a href="http://www.beacon.org/White-Fragility-P1346.aspx" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">http://www.beacon.org/White-Fragility-P1346.aspx</a> </li> <li> Becoming by Michelle Obama: <a href="https://becomingmichelleobama.com/" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">https://becomingmichelleobama.com/</a> </li> <li>Red Table Talk with Jada Pinkett Smitth:  <a href="https://www.facebook.com/redtabletalk/videos/343064719835818/" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.facebook.com/redtabletalk/videos/343064719835818/</a></li> </ul> Contact  Maren can be reached by email at <a href="mailto:hello@janevc.com" rel="noopener">hello@janevc.com</a>.    Founders interested in pitching to Jane VC can do so here:  <a href="https://www.janevc.com/contact-us" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.janevc.com/contact-us</a> You can follow Terri on Twitter at @terrihansonmead or go to her website at <a href="http://www.terrihansonmead.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">www.terrihansonmead.com</a> or on Medium:  <a href="https://medium.com/@terrihansonmead" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://medium.com/@terrihansonmead</a>.   Feel free to email Terri at PilotingYourLife@gmail.com.  To continue the conversation, go to Twitter at @PilotingLife and use hashtag #PilotingYourLife.

Transparency in the venture funding process with Jane VC founder Maren Bannon