My guest today is the epitome of a culture changer, Nathalie Molina Niño. She is an investor, serial tech entrepreneur, founder of Brava Investments, daughter of immigrants, author of the book LeapFrog, and a fierce advocate for building businesses that benefit women - particularly women of color. When we met, she was down to earth, has a ton of moxie, and is so rich with life-changing perspectives, tactics, and as she likes to call them, short cuts! If you are a person who is thinking about how to make your own impact, THIS is the episode you will want to hang on every word and share with your crew. Please enjoy (Transcript below).
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Fast Company: Why is #Finance So White? - written by Nathalie Molina Niño
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Nathalie Molina Niño Interview Transcript:
Allison Hare: 00:05 Hey, I'm Allison Hare and welcome to Little Left of Center, the podcast that interviews culture change or is that are reshaping our world and breaking new ground. My guest today is the epitome of a culture changer. Nathalie Molina Niño, she is an investor, a serial tech entrepreneur, founder of Brava investments, daughter of immigrants, author of the book leapfrog, and a fierce advocate for building businesses that benefit women and particularly women of color. And we met, she was down to Earth, has so much moxie and is so rich with life changing perspectives, tactics, and as she likes to call them shortcuts. So if you're a person who is thinking about how to make your own impact, this is the episode you'll want to hang on every word and share with your crew. Please enjoy. I am so excited. I'm going to hit like fan girl out on you for a second.
Allison Hare: 01:02 But I'm here with, with Nathalie Molina, Niño, am I, am I pronouncing that right better than most. Better than 99% of most my gift. It's mine. One of my gifts is that it's the Jersey thing. Yes, yes, for sure. And so Nathalie is a fact, the founder and CEO of Brava investments. She is a serial entrepreneur and author of leap frog, which is such an amazing book. I'm a fierce advocate of women into theater and arts, like known as the story teller. I mean just the widest myriad a multi-passionate ,I mean you're just, you're just fierce. And this is a little bit of a full circle moment for me because a year ago I had I had an idea and I had an idea for an app. So it was like a crowdsourced app for for women going through up from maternal health.
Allison Hare: 02:03 So women that were interested in fertility or pregnancy or postpartum, and it was a crowd source app where people can review and find reviews on their ob Gyn as it relates to birth and like c-section rates and all of this. So I was speaking to somebody that I think you might know and her name is Jen maser. Yeah. and she, she mentioned you and she mentioned brava investments. And I'm like, what? So Brava investments is this VC or this venture capital firm that invest primarily or invest in women and invest in I'm probably screwing this. I'm just gonna interview myself while you're here. You just relax and make sure I'm not screwing anything up. So Brava investments, invest in companies that benefit women and.
Nathalie MN:: 02:56 Brava actually is no longer I stepped away from brava. I am the founder of Brava and I'm now working on a next iteration of really my journey as a, as an investor based on everything that I've learned.
Allison Hare: 03:10 So this is happening in real time or I haven't done enough research.?
Nathalie MN:: 03:14 No, that's okay. So, so brava, you know, I was the founder and I haven't even launched what the next thing is going to be. I'm planning on launching it before the end of the year. So yeah, I mean it, it's real time and the focus of brava came obviously for me and the thesis, while it will evolve and it'll be bigger and even in my opinion, more amazing. Uthe one kernel that won't change is the thread that continues throughout, which is I invest in companies that can prove to me in some measurable way that they're impacting women at scale. Right? So that we're not just talking about creating one woman billionaire, but we're talking about raising up a billion women.
Allison Hare: 03:50 Yes. So as I was as I was reading your book and realize the kind of impact that the companies that you touch or that you're interested in and that it that you invest in is so wide and varied and you are born of a multicultural la. What is Latinex? What does that mean?
Nathalie MN:: 04:09 I Love that. Latinex it's, it's funny I see it as a group of mostly young people of Latin American descent who are seeing some of the limitations of a language that insists by design, right? Like many romance languages of having the feminine and masculine to everything. And it's a little bit like the one drop rule where it's like you can have a room of 500 women and they're Latinas. But the moment there is one man in that room. Now you have to use the word Latino's because that's the convention in Spanish. Right? And so what's happening with Latin X is a group of people that are saying, we don't like that.
Nathalie MN:: 04:49 We understand that. That's how the language has always been structured. And it's been like that for hundreds of years. We know that language evolves. And so we're going to evolve it in this direction. And from now on, we say the non-gendered Latin x, which means it's not Latina, it's not Latino, it's no gender. I, it was an interesting journey for me to even think about that by the way, because I ended up going through the entire book leapfrog and removing all of the places where we were using Latino as the mixed gendered default. Yeah. And I'm trying to figure it out. And then meanwhile, we're super in the weeds. And then you have people that are not even in the community that are going, what the hell is this x thing? Yes. But primarily, and the point is that that 2% of VC funding goes to females and just a fraction of that go to what females of color?
Allison Hare: 05:37 Women of color. Yeah. 0.2%. And I can't imagine that 98% of that, you know, that 98%.
Nathalie MN:: 05:46 Yeah. That 98.8% of the good ideas, right. Can't, aren't coming from the group that happens to be the most entrepreneurial because it turns out that while in the u s and this is a stat that everybody knows, I think you women are starting more companies than men. And that's been the case for a long time. But the crazy thing is that of those women led startups, eight out of 10 of them are started by a woman of color. So how is it possible that the single most entrepreneurial community in this country is getting 0.2% of the venture capital? It makes no sense.
Allison Hare: 06:17 So what are we getting wrong here? Like are women getting something wrong? Is it systemic? And why you like how, what ignited your fire?
Nathalie MN:: 06:30 Uh I love that question because I think that a lot of the things that you see out there tackling this problem come from the frame of how are women broken and how do we fix it? Right? And I think that we need to be turning our eye more towards the system that's excluding them in what is clearly a systemic way. When you think about the numbers 0.2% is ludicrous and there's no explanation for that. Right? and, and you know what, what stirred me was, first of all, there's a lot of us, there's a group at Wharton that developed a study called project sage led by an amazing woman named Suzanne Beagle and project sage came out I believe two, two and a half years ago. So like 2017 and they cataloged all of the funds and all of the investment firms that focused on women. And at the time it was over 50 of us. And then they redid the study a year later and now we're upwards of 80. So there are a lot of people in the space. But when I was just beginning brava and really just beginning to invest full time I was coming out of a period of time where I was really focused on educating women, giving women resources and mentorship and all sorts of tools. Um as a part of the Athena Center, which is a center for leadership studies, it sits inside of the women's college connected to Columbia Barnard. And so I had spent years working on women and training them and providing them tools. And then it became really clear to me after working at that point with thousands of women that we were not the problem. Yeah. And that at the root of almost all of the moments when I saw a woman's growth and a woman's company's growth impaired, it was typically a lack of capital. And so I thought, well, if I'm going to get to the root of this issue, I'm going to have to get my hands dirty in the world of finance. So at the time, this was in 2015 I looked around and I kind of took a Cadillac. This is pre project sage. This is pre Wharton. Cataloging any of this. And I did my own catalog of this space and what I found was things that I couldn't quite get behind. Right. I found a couple of things. I saw that the funds that focused on benefiting women were only investing in women led startups. And while I am, no one can argue a huge supporter of women entrepreneurs, if I'm choosing between a company that is, I don't know, building an app to tell you what color lips to wear a lipstick to wear or you know, founded by a woman or I'm choosing between that and say two dudes that have cured breast cancer. I'm not going to invest in the app telling you what color lipstick to wear when I am sitting on the potential for a cure for breast cancer. And do I wish that that company was founded by a woman? Absolutely. But you can fix that. You can fix an executive team that needs more diversity. You can fix boards that don't have women. Those are fixable problems. Something core, like a business model that is working on lipstick versus working on breast cancer. You can't fix that, right. And so I'm always going to go towards the thing that's going to impact the most women, even if that means investing in male founders and then trying to fix their diversity issues.
Allison Hare: 09:36 Is that unique to you? Because I feel like in your book you mention Arlan Hamilton who she is like a personal hero of mine and he's like, I don't know if you listen to that Start-up podcast series with her, God, she's amazing. You know, like both of you and Kat Cole who is, you know, she's here in Atlanta. So she is not only a global hero but a certainly a local hero as well for what she's doing,ufor women and women in business. So, you know, my question is how, you know, do you look at the world as things that are broken that you can fix? Like what is it? And like how does your brain organize information or you know, is there some part of it that's like, I can make money off of this, you know, like how does your brain organize where to spend and invest your time?
Nathalie MN:: 10:27 I love that because I don't separate them. And here's why. I'll answer your last question first. So I don't think, how do I solve this problem or you know, it's not a choice between how do I solve the problem or how do we, or does this make money? Because I have come to the conclusion, and I came to this conclusion a long time ago, that the way that people certainly in the investment world are super excited about the next new shiny object, whether it be cannabis, whether it be AI, whether it be cryptocurrencies, right? These sexy, novel things that everybody starts pouring money into. The only way that investing in women or in businesses that benefit women is going to become the sexy new shiny object is if we prove to the market that it makes you more money than other categories. Well, that was the other thing that you said that men, people invest in ideas and women, they invest in outcomes and so they have to prove it first. So do you feel like, like how, how do we level the playing field or do you play the game where we've always played this way that you have to work extra hard, you have to prove, you know, and go above and beyond to prove that you can be in the same, you know, on, on the same playing field. How do you break through? I don't, I use this term and I others people have as well, but hustle porn, this idea of like we've gotta be the first one in and the last one out and work as hard and you know, that's a recipe for burnout. And then now amplify that to an entire community and get the word out and tell, you know, entire generations of be that entrepreneurs or just really ambitious career people. That this is how you get ahead and what you get as a whole community of really tired people. Right. And I think that what we also know is that you know what historically the big boy deals happen on the golf course or you know, I mean a lot of things happen in these contexts that aren't actually about working longer and harder than anybody else. It's about being strategic. And so that's really what I focus on. I work on focusing on what are the strategic moves that allow us to shortcut our way to success, not because we're cheating because I think that this is a thing that sometimes happens. Certainly when we tested the term shortcut, which I wanted to be on the cover of the book,usomehow or I would have liked for it to even be the title of the book.
Nathalie MN:: 12:46 What we found is that women associate the word shortcuts with the word cheating. And the reality is, is anybody who has gotten success in any way that you define success have done it because they've taken shortcuts and they have been, you know, obviously there's a range of shortcuts that are kind that are illegal and get you landed in jail in the short time that are just efficient. Like, if you have a contact at somebody in a corporation that can get you your kid, an internship that is going to change the trajectory of their whole career, why wouldn't you do that for your kid? Right? And what we have as a whole segment of the population. And I think women oftentimes fall in that bucket that are not armed with those shortcuts because they're not aware of how they're done. Or they're just not thinking in that way where they can come up with their own shortcuts that no one's ever come up with before. Right. Because there's almost this idea of, I've got to go the long way. To your point, I've gotta be perfect. I've gotta be the first one in the last one out. But that's not how people have been successful in the past. And so we just have to be armed with our own set of shortcuts, which is ultimately why my book is basically 50 of them.
Allison Hare: 13:45 So, and I love a lot of the shortcuts and my favorite one is Getting to NO, and you know, you're a great storyteller. If you wouldn't mind telling me about people asking you about getting to YES or at least naming a speech of yours or naming.
Nathalie MN:: 14:00 Yeah, yeah. I mean that, it's funny, that hack came because of a very specific experience. I was somehow muscled by one of my best friends into doing a talk at this amazing conference called Animus in Puerto Rico, but I had never heard of it before my ignorance. I just had not known what it was about. And so a friend of mine kind of muscled me in and she said, they're getting a two for one deal. I get to speak if you also speak and I already committed you. It's like, great, but I get a weekend in Puerto Rico out of it. So I went,uI didn't think too much of it. They gave me the title of the talk and the title of the talk was the same title as the classic negotiation book getting to Yes. And so I was supposed to come up with some inspirational talk about getting to yes. I honestly didn't put a lot of thought or energy into it. I showed up, I decided the night before to go check out, you know, the space, and I walk into a room with over a thousand chairs. Beautifully organized. Clearly this conference is not a little podunk, you know? No, no one's ever heard of it kind of conference. Yeah, and I think, holy crap. Okay, this is bigger than I imagined. And then I go look at the lineup and I find out that one of my idols, Sonia Sotomayer so it's in my yard, Justice Sonia Sotomayor is speaking before me. Oh my goodness. And I nearly peed my pants and I thought, great, I have this totally mediocre. Talk about a talk topic that I didn't even choose. You didn't even feel like it was yours. You didn't feel like it was resonant with you? Not at all. It was kind of like I was really phoning it in is what I was planning on doing and I thought, this is ridiculous. A, I never phone anything in B. This is just me being tired. This happened by the way, I think a month, maybe even just a couple of weeks before I launched brava. Right. And Brava was fortunate enough to have a launch that was somewhat propelled and helped by the Obama administration. I used to advise the council on women and girls and they allowed me to launch my company with the United State of women at the White House in October before the administration had concluded. And so here I am just a couple of weeks before that preparation for the launch of my new company and I'm in Puerto Rico, kind of phoning it in. If you can imagine when I looked at the size of the venue and then I saw who was speaking before me, I thought, okay, this is, this cannot stand around [inaudible] excuse me. You are being called honey. I know. Excuse me. So I throw my speech away. Obviously I start over from scratch and I realize in that moment that we have been told by the folks who have been functioning in the old school sort of rules that getting to yes is the, is the, is the goal right? The, the default, which is what I think getting to yes means is that the default is no and you have to get people to convert from that no to the yes. And that's how you win. And I'm thinking that's not really the paradigm that women work in. First of all, what do I ha, you know, glass half empty perspective on the world that everything is a no until you convert it to a yes. So I object to that view of the world to begin with. And second, when I think about the talent and the super power that women have, it is not a challenge to get to yes. Women as individuals who have been saying yes to things like getting paid 70 cents or in the case of Latinas, you know, 55 cents on the dollar. We've been saying no to the injustices that we're subjected to every day. And it's actually something that we're really good at both in getting to yes within our families, both in being accommodating like yes is the rule by which we live and how we survive and how we've survived in this society as it is. And if anything, what we need to do is figure out how to say no. And so I ended up writing a speech overnight about essentially how we have to exercise that muscle of saying no. And if there is anything that compliments our super power for making lemonade out of the lemons that sometimes we get, it's actually this compliment of being just as good at saying no to the injustices, no 55 cents on the dollar, no to doing most of the hard, hard work. Um,even in the home, right? No to all of the things that don't make sense and using that muscle because I don't think we use it enough. All of us, myself included.
Allison Hare: 18:14 But I think, I think that touches on something cause I feel like it's such a profound concept that, you know, like somebody like me who is scheduled from the moment I wake up until the moment I go to bed and a lot of it is I have the ability to say no, I just don't want to miss anything. Right. And I W I want to be there. I want to be the reliable one. Yep. And that really resonated for me. And I even think about it as dating, you know, like I met my husband when I was 34 and I had, you know, my first kid at 38, my second and 40, you know and I remember I, there was like a stretch of five years where I was single, you know, and I was like the quintessential single girl and I would go on dates because I should, you know, like even though I wasn't that interested and the moment it was, it was very clear for me was like, the discernment of this is not going to add to my life. I don't feel like it, you know, or this guy, I'm just, it's, you have, it's like almost like an internal trust of what is going to be nourishing. Yeah. And what is not going to be nourishing. So that's kind of how I put yes. But that's kind of how I process that.
Nathalie MN:: 19:23 Um that concept of getting to know and it really does feel good in the, one thing that I will say that even though this is, this sounds like the sort of thing that only an investor would need to do in becoming an investor, one of the things that I had to do is I had to come up with my thesis, which industries am I going to invest in? What stage of companies am I going to invest in? And I had to make that decision based on where my superpowers are. Right? And so for example, even though I have worked with a lot of early stage women owned businesses, if you look at my career in tech for 15 years, most of my time was spent working with big companies like Microsoft, big companies like Starbucks, like Disney, like Mattel, MTV, the BBC, and making them bigger or taking a product that was just being launched and taking over the world with that kind of thing. So my background is probably better suited for that later stage company. That is where I have the most experience. And so one by one I went through and I decided this is my thesis. I do later stage investing. I focused on healthcare. It previously was education and consumer. Now I'm doing healthcare, consumer and infrastructure with a climate lens because I'm a former environmental engineer that never worked in her field. And so basically I figured out what are the things where I'm strongest and where my interests are also strongest. And let me figure out that this is my thesis. This is my lane. Right? And what happened is that now based on that, when an entrepreneur comes to me in their seed stage, when an entrepreneur comes to me and they're in the entertainment industry, these are not my industries. It might be an amazing startup that absolutely deserves to be invested in, but not by me because my thesis is clear. Yes. And what's interesting to me is I think whether you are an investor or not, that exercise is a really powerful exercise. And deciding where are my superpowers, where is my time best spent? And what happens is once you have really clearly articulated that saying no becomes so much easier.
Allison Hare: 21:17 And the way I process that is, is to stand in your power. And when I was listening to your book, because I don't have any attention span to actually turn pages and read, but I can listen and process information. But as I was listening to it, you had objection after objection after objection that was knocked down and actually not even just knocked down, but just empowered. You know, like I don't have money, I don't have time. I don't know technology, I don't know, you know, like you called it the valley of death. And that's what happened to my idea. You know. So I started that and I'm, I'm grateful to be in this place where I have such a passion for culture to changers, which is how you're just sitting in front of me today. In my, in my husband's weird office. But but I think that standing in your power and not making excuses, but like owning what you're powerful at is probably the greatest gift you can give women. And one of the things I thought about is there are probably in this, this you can probably relate to, you're very multi-passionate you're very multifaceted. So I imagine that the people listening here in many cases are entrepreneurs. They are people who are interested in making a contribution. That's not just, I need to make a lot of money, but like I need to make an impact. Right? So how do you coach women that are either, so multi-passionate to either pick a lane or people who feel like they have gifts and talents but don't know where to start?
Nathalie MN:: 22:55 They don't have the idea, right? Like how do you coach women to kind of cultivate their own power? I mean the two things that, cause I feel like those are two problems, right? There's the pick the thing I'm going to focus on, right? I tend to shy away from using the term pick a lane, even though it's one of those terms that comes to my mind all the time as well. Only because I find that oftentimes when people tell me pick a lane, it's really just a way of having me be limited in what I'm doing. Yeah. Right. And so I, yeah, I'd never want to limit these creative spirits. Right. And then there's the, the question of like, well, I don't have an idea. You know, how do I come up with an idea? But I feel like I want to do something entrepreneurial for those people. What I often remind them is that no company is ever taken up and, and you know, created and built and grown with one person. And people forget that entrepreneurs come in many shapes and sizes and introverts and extroverts in every possible, you know, quality and all. A lot of the Times people forget that that number two partner, that co-founder, that third employee, fourth employee, these are essential to making any entrepreneur successful. They are essential to any startup. And I think that if you have that entrepreneurial drive, but you don't have the idea, be someone's number two, find yourself a co founder, hitch your wagon on an idea that you absolutely love that maybe wasn't yours. You're still an entrepreneur and you're still exercising that entrepreneurial muscle. And so that's, that's that one. And then for the person who is deciding sort of where do I focus because I do have, you know, 10,000 interests. What I often remind people is that it's not that you have to choose one, it's that you just have to decide what order you're going to do them in. People make the mistake of looking at Martha Stewart and her empire, right? And think two decades to build that empire. People forget that she built it one component at a time and they look now at the TV show on the magazine and the merchandising products and right. All of these things happened incrementally. So nobody's asking you multifaceted, amazing creative person to pick one. All that the world needs is for you to decide which one you're going to do first. And I'm wondering when you consider investing or do you invest in an idea and a founder, you know what's important to you when you consider, you know, what's going to make the most sense? Cause there are a shit ton of ideas out there.
Allison Hare: 25:22 And you're probably a hit from every angle. Like how do you, is it intuition? Is it gut? You know, how do you operate?
Nathalie MN:: 25:31 You know, I think you try to process it. You try to create a process that takes some of the subjective out. You definitely try to do that because we all have biases. We all do. There is an amazing Broadway show called Avenue Q. Um, and there's a song that I always, that always comes to mind when I think about this, about everyone's a little bit racist. And the truth is we all are, you cannot live in a society where the bad guys are always black. Oh, we organized information. No, that you just stereotype to move on. We're just flooded. Well, you're also fed the stereotypes when the right, you know, the bad guys always black and the cleaning ladies always Latina.
Nathalie MN:: 26:06 I mean, whether you want to believe the stereotypes and you know, these racist tropes or not, they're fed to you every day. Right? And so I think that there is an element of creating a process by which certain elements of selection are blind by which there's more of a democratization to access to information. But to your point about getting the same ideas multiple times, I have gotten the same tampon delivery service pitch to me at least 20 times. Right? It's not to say that it's not a good idea, but what ends up separating the one example of the same business for example that someone like me might choose is ultimately the formula of a great idea combined with a founder or a set of founders who you trust to be able to be uniquely poised to deliver and execute on this idea better than anyone else.
Allison Hare: 27:01 How do you know when to take a gamble you mean or not always? All of those, that same time, you know, like how do you know?
Nathalie MN:: 27:09 Well, here's the thing. I think sometimes you can't know and so it's time I have taken months.
Allison Hare: 27:15 Do you feel it in your gut? Like some type of formula?
Nathalie MN:: 27:18 I mean sometimes the, the, the gut to continue a conversation is ultimately the thing, right? But the gut has to be combined with data and sometimes that data is time. I have taken eight months to get to know founders. I have a set of founders who I love and they just happen to be in the middle of an unfortunate piece of litigation at the moment. But it's been a really interesting exercise for me to take the last year, year and a half to get to know them as human beings, to connect them to press when they needed a press, to connect them to other people who might be helpful to them. And so to, in the process of kind of coexisting with them, take in the data of how they react to certain situations and how they respond and you know, how were they in a pinch? Seeing them sort of live in an action. It gives me this sort of data that maybe validates an initial gut feeling because you're right, at first it was a gut feeling that these founders had potential. And then what happens over the course of many months in my case is getting to know them as human beings in his founders and seeing if my gut was right. That is so cool. I'm,
Allison Hare: 28:17 And I'm wondering what is when do you get really lit up? Like tell me about the last time that you just were bursting at the seams. So whether it was an idea, like what about what you do? Cause you, you have something very unique that you carry a voice for a lot of people that may not know they have a voice. You have a very heavy responsibility where you are going against not only, you know the VC money and then minorities on top of that. Like you're constantly going against the grain. So what does success look like to you?
Nathalie MN:: 28:58 Wow, that's a heavy question. You know, success looks to me, in a way. I think it's ups, it's, it's rendering a lot of what I'm doing obsolete, right? Success looks to me like people realizing that investing in companies that benefit women and especially investing in women isn't charity. It's just smart business. Right. so and, and to me the data has already been proving that out for a long time. And the fact that research after research proves this out hasn't changed the behavior of the investment community. And so it's clearly what's left is culture change, right? Because the data proves it out. If the investors made their decisions based on data, we would be swimming in women entrepreneurs getting VC money in all sorts of other money loans, you know, all sorts of other institutional capital. But what has to be happening now is more the culture shifting. And that's why interviews like this are important to me. Right. The other thing that, to me success looks like is that more investors look like you and me, that we have more women writing the checks, that we have more people of color being responsible for who gets the money and who doesn't. Because I think that once that happens, then we're not asking for anything. Right. I'm a big believer in not even having the conversation about whether we have a seat at the table. I love entrepreneurship because it is not about asking for a seat at the table. It's about creating your own new table. Yeah. Right. And that's why getting the investor community to look like you and I is probably the most telling for me. Sign of success. Where have you seen the culture shift in the, in the, not just you elevating entrepreneurs but in people saying yes and money flowing to these new companies.
Allison Hare: 30:50 What is that needle moving look like for you? I will tell you. And how does that manifest itself?
Nathalie MN:: 30:55 I have, I have to anonymize the names because these are startups that people know and their rounds that are highly publicized. But there was a relatively visible round of financing that happened and closed earlier this year. And it was a woman led startup and she was in a place where she had gotten enough traction with her business and enough attention publicly that her deal became a sexy deal that a lot of investors wanted a part of. Right? Not every founder is in that position. So she was in that fortunate position because of a number of factors where she became one of those prize deals. Right. And we, she was in a situation where an investor who approached her, who happened to be somebody that I knew came to me and said, you know, we tried to get a piece of this deal and we were told that the deal was closed, that she had already closed the round. And I said, well, that must be true. And of course, the very experienced investor looked at me and raised his eyebrow and said, Nathalie, you and I both know that if you want somebody in and around, you will make room. So I said, you know what, let me see what I can do. And so I happen to know the founder, she happens to trust me and have we happened to have a relationship. And I said, Hey, I'm calling you because so-and-so investor was really interested in year-round. Is it really closed? And she comes and she tells me, listen, I could make room for an investor if I wanted to, but have you looked at their website and their website is all white men. It was the usual thing that we see a lot of the times in the space now, which you didn't know is that this firm understand that that's a problem, are bringing on new partners and we're in the process of really re-imagining themselves from the ground up with equity in mind. But that is in a work in progress. So you weren't seeing it on the website and part of the work that they're doing was something that I was in dialogue with them about. So I'm basically mentioned to the founder. I said, this is happening. You should know they're actually a really interesting group to work with. You might want to reconsider. And then she made room for them. I love and they ultimately invested in her company. But what I think is interesting about that is look at how the power has shifted. You have a woman founder with a coveted business saying no to a group of all white male investors simply because it's not aligned with her values. And that means I like the voice. This is like this. Imagine the signals, it's sending the market, right? You all white male vcs have a competitive disadvantage because of the lack of diversity in your ranks and you would have been out of this incredibly interesting deal.
Allison Hare: 33:30 But you're finding that, but you're finding that the diversity is important. So that is like the needle moving, right? That having a cultural diversity.
Nathalie MN:: 33:39 That's an example sample of the culture shift. Now I want to see 50 of those any given quarter. I want to see that sort of dynamic continuing to happen. That is one example. Unfortunately probably in a sea of examples that are the reverse. But when I see an example like that play out, it shows me that we really are starting to see the culture shifting a little by little.
Allison Hare: 34:00 That's amazing. That's kind of feel what success looks like. You know, the culture shifting or saying we need, we need more diversity. And you know, like I always say a lot that what you see becomes normal and a lot of that comes from art, right? So, you know, if, if you only see white people around you, you know, and the only black people you see are what you see on the news. You know, like it's, it's very easy to start believing that one is good or one is bad. But when, when art and when culture and what you see is around you.
Nathalie MN:: 34:34 Totally. And when it was reality, which is why I often don't use the word diversity because we live in a country where, you know, 17% of the community here are Latin x, but that's not reflected in the media. It's certainly not reflected in who gets invested in. It's not reflected in so many ways. And so when people come to me and say, I want to create diversity, it's like, well, actually what you want to create is reality. You want your workplace, you want your bank, you want your VC, you want your board to reflect reality at the moment it doesn't. Right.
Allison Hare: 35:05 That's amazing that you continue pushing that. And one of the things I thought was amazing about you or your differentiator is storytelling and your background in theater and arts. And I think you had shared a story about going to a story telling workshop and some things stuck out at you that having a ritual, a sacred ritual of writing set you apart from everybody else. So I want to hear more about sacred rituals and I like how you, how you position routines versus rituals, right? And what that looks like for you.
Nathalie MN:: 35:40 Yeah. there is a an amazing choreographer who of course right now is escaping me, but she wrote a book called the creative habit. Her name is toilet Twyla Tharp. Yes. and I take a lot of my thinking from her and from that book, she's also a Barnard alum. She's amazing. Because I am one of those people who has, by virtue of having been an entrepreneur my whole life, never had routine. And if you had asked me maybe before I came across Twyla's work, what do you think about routine? I would have immediately vomited a little bit in my mouth because the idea of routine has simply never felt right to me. It felt, it felt not thoughtful. It felt mindless. And it felt arbitrary. And then I read this book from Twyla Tharp that says creativity is entirely about something that might appear like routine, but that she instead frames as ritual. And what I love about it, because I am such a brass tacks, like how do we get things done kind of person. Is it the way she communicated it is do you think that I show up every morning at eight o'clock into a room with 50 professional ballet dancers and simply say that today, I don't feel creative rehearsal is canceled. She's like, right, that's not how creativity works. Creativity is a muscle and you need a ritual to basically get you in the right head space to be able to deliver on something like creativity.
Nathalie MN:: 37:09 And so what she talks about is how important it is that she wakes up every morning and she makes her a cup of coffee a certain way and she goes to a very specific corner in Manhattan to hail a cab. Like she has her morning sort of opening ritual so that every day when she walks into that studio at eight o'clock in the morning, there is no, I wasn't feeling it today. The creative, you know, Muse didn't show up. No. She shows up every morning like a muscle and delivers on being the most prolific choreographer alive in the world today. And she does it on demand every day as expected. And she delivers every time as the muscle. Yeah, because it's a muscle. And so when she framed it that way, I thought, well, being an entrepreneur is all about creativity and the nervousness of am I going to be able to do this again? Right. Am I going to be able to develop a new product? Am I going to be able to, after I exit this company, start a new one? Or was that last time just to fluke? All of the things that are ultimately imposter syndrome, but fundamentally I think that the thing that we humans and I do think it's male, female, everybody are most afraid of, is the idea that we're not going to be able to be creative again or ever if you don't think of yourself as creative.
Allison Hare: 38:21 Do you feel that way as your in between with your next venture?
Nathalie MN:: 38:25 Oh yeah. You do? Oh yeah. Wow. The thing I am known most for is starting things and ironically the thing that most scares me is starting things and I don't think that it's a coincidence., I mean it really does. It's when I noticed, I don't, I don't want to believe it's true, but when the voice, the ugly negative voices of Imposter Syndrome are the loudest is in these moments of transition when I'm in between, when I'm launching the new thing, when the little voice in your head has the success of the last thing was a fluke, or maybe if the last thing wasn't successful, well then that failure is going to follow you into the next thing. Those voices get really, really loud in these times. And that's why I don't think that, you know, maybe it's possible. My mentor says it's possible, but I don't think you ever grow out of imposter syndrome. If you're a thoughtful, you know, moderately humble person, those voices will always be there. I think what I have tried to do is to drown those voices out with the other side of the coin, right? With the voice that says in the case of my mentor, these words that have kind of become my mantra, which is you are the source of your own supply. You know, whatever you did before you can do it again. And the well from which you draw is you right. So you are the source of your own supply. And that's kind of become a mantra for me. And so when I hear those voices, all I can do is join them out with these others and it's become almost muscle now so that it's, as soon as those negative voices pop up, these words surface and I hear them really loud and clear and it kind of helps me realize that, oh, this is where I am.
Allison Hare: 40:00 And I wonder if the question I asked before about finding your own voice or finding how you can impact, cause I'm a huge fan of Seth Godin and Seth Godin talks about writing every day and as he's published his blog daily, even on Saturday, Sunday, like clockwork for over a decade. And he said, there is no such thing as writer's block because your brain doesn't stop thinking. You just get paralyzed with is it going to be good or not? But it doesn't really matter if you just write what you're thinking. So I saw something recently from Marie Forleo. You can tell him like I'm kind of a student of everything. And Marie Forleo puts put something where every day she will follow her breath for 10 breaths before, you know, when she wakes up and she'll move, she'll do some kind of movement for a few minutes and she'll write. So write for a sentence or two or five minutes before she looks at any screen. And so I've been doing that. And so I thought if I take the Seth Godin thing of just having kind of the creative faucet of just me just forcing myself to just write or reflect whatever it is, it doesn't matter if it's good or bad, but by nature it's going to be real and it's going to get better. And if it is just kind of tapping into your creativity, it's your ritual that seems like that Rachel for you,
Nathalie MN:: 41:22 Both of them are tapping into where I think they're coming from is there's a book called the artist's way. And in the artist's way, there's something called the daily pages. And the artist's way is one of these books that if you're not an artist and you aren't in the creative field, you might never have heard of it. But if you are, it's like a cult favorite. I mean it is a classic that people swear by and one of the exercises that she does is she says, wake up every morning and just write. Even if you are so uninspired that you write the same word again and again, it doesn't matter. Just wake up and do your daily pages. And it sounds like both of them are inspired by that. And it's the reason that when I looked for an agent for my book, I found the agency that represented the woman who wrote the artist's way because I was not interested in Leapfrog being something that surfaced like many books do for a few months and then sort of went away and disappeared. I wanted it to be this sort of quiet favorite of people who really connect with it and decide, okay, this is a paradigm shift for me and I need my friend who was starting a company to look at this. I need my niece who is thinking that she might be an entrepreneur to read this. I need to have basically a new set of rules. And I want it to have longevity the way that the artist way has had longevity because I do think it's a, it's a shift and if it influences the way that the artist way has influenced Seth Godin or Marie Forleo, that's it. That's winning.
Allison Hare: 42:48 Right. Do you feel like the book changed you?
Nathalie MN:: 42:51 Yeah. Oh, absolutely. I tell, I haven't told you writing the book, writing the book, not somebody else's book. Your book. No. Yeah, no. Writing the book. Absolutely. Did I, I talk about how, you know, the book is split into four sections. A ready, set, go fund grow and ready is not a chapter or section that I wanted to include it in the book. And the reason is because the rest, the other four sections are really brass tacks, tactical. Like these are very specific hacks that you can use to get ahead. The first section was really about getting yourself ready. Right? It was the inside game of getting my mindset ready. Thinking about imposter syndrome, thinking about all of the things that we need in order to have our head really on straight to be best positioned for success as we defined success. Like this idea of no instead of yes. I didn't want to write that section even though it was very present in my mind. And.
Allison Hare: 43:49 Are you afraid of vulnerability do you think? Or just being public with it?
Nathalie MN:: 43:52 I was afraid that it would be considered a self help book. Hmm. And I wouldn't be taken seriously and it would be put into, you know, in terms of the category of business books into that sort of ghetto of we don't take this so seriously because it's sounds and reads and feels more like a self help book. And so in my interest, totally I think misconstrued interest of being, you know, taken seriously among the boys who, right. You know, business books. There was this, I think, feminine, not excluded for women only because men and women benefit from this really holistic of what it means to be an entrepreneur that I wanted to leave out. And it was my co-writer, Sarah, who really insisted that these are the building blocks upon which everything else thrives. Right. And so it changed me because it ultimately reminded me that I can't show up without that piece. Right. That the two really complement each other that you can't talk about success in this brass tacks kind of way without making sure that there's a really solid foundation that is emotional, that is, you know, psychological.
Allison Hare: 45:04 Cool. That is a whole person though. Like I wonder, did you feel like, you know, you growing up cause you, you left school did start your company at 19 years old. Did you feel like that armor was imperative? You know, back then, did you feel like it.
Nathalie MN:: 45:17 Being in tech for 15 years? Yes, absolutely. Yes. I learned how to play the game their way and even to up the ante. So if men who succeed in tech are perceived as cut throat, if men who succeed in tech are perceived as being, you know, having sharp elbows, in order for me to thrive in that context, I felt like I needed to even be more of that more cutthroat, sharper elbows take no prisoners.
Allison Hare: 45:47 Right. Like that there is probably a rush in there too for you. You know, like it was probably very thrilling. You get validated, you get plenty of positive reinforcement that that's the right thing to do.
Nathalie MN:: 45:58 Absolutely. Until, and I do tell the story in the book until there was a moment where I put ultimately the life of a human beings second after the success of a company and somebody whose life was actually put in danger. And ultimately I was the one responsible. Right. And it was at that moment that it hit me where I had sort of arrived and it hit me that that's not the person my parents raised, right? That I had somehow got caught up in it and lost complete sight of at the core who I was raised to be, who I really am. Who I wanted to be. And so what's funny is people are like, oh, she had this Aha moment and then she's just been, you know, the amazing founder, manager, investor that everyone wants to be ever since, because she had this epiphany. It wasn't that way. The reality is, is when you see that you're capable of something like that, all it does is expose the sort of shadow side and all you can do from there onward is work on sort of climbing your way out. Right? Yeah. But you always know that that shadow side is possible. You always know that in your worst moments you could revert to that. And the work constantly is about making sure that you don't.
Allison Hare: 47:14 Right. Do you feel like the way world has evolved over the past 20 years where it's much more acceptable to be more vulnerable and more of a fully whole self?
Nathalie MN:: 47:27 I don't think so.
Allison Hare: 47:28 You don't!
Nathalie MN:: 47:29 But I think that what excites me about how we can get there is seeing the level of entrepreneurship that seems to be rising among women. Right? Because I think that that helps male founders. It helps female founders when we have a different group of people calling the shots, defining the culture of a company. Right. With all due respect to people like Sheryl Sandberg because somebody has to do the work of taking a Google or a Facebook or a Proctor and gamble or these huge monolithic companies and shifting their culture and for people like sit, you know Sheryl Sandberg who are doing that work, God bless. Right. But I really would rather focus my energy on building the new Procter and gamble or the next Google and building it right from scratch. Where the culture shift that you are talking about gets built into the DNA of a company.
Allison Hare: 48:21 And I'm wondering what your thoughts are on which is kind of dovetailing off of that is you know, companies like, or people, I should say, like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk are banding together to help solve health care and there are 145 CEOs of companies that have petitioned to lobby for gun control. You know, do you feel like the power is more in the hands of a corporation to change? What typically has been, what government is supposed to govern or fix. And do you feel personally responsible to maybe push that forward of, you know, changing healthcare or gun control or border control or things that are that are important and we just seem to be at a stalemate from a government perspective?
Nathalie MN:: 49:09 I do think that we have to take a stand as business leaders. I actually had an interesting situation where there was last month a full page ad in the New York Times with a hundred, 280 CEOs who signed a letter talking about how the anti abortion legislation that is popping up in many states around the country is bad for business. And I was on the list of CEOs, I think probably one of the only ones who spoke Spanish. And so I did the Spanish media circuit, right? And I did a piece with CNN Espanol and I got pretty strong heat from Latin x population who are watching a leader in the business world go on national television and talk about how the human rights of our employees is paramount. And any laws and any state that looks to threaten the human rights of our employees is really threatening the health of our businesses because the health of our employees is directly tied to the health of our businesses. And so what I found is that I got a lot of heat for that. But you know what? At the end of the day, it's both who I am. It's what I stand for and every company that I invest in is going to have to reflect those values.
Allison Hare: 50:23 And that's part of how we do culture shift. If the leaders of these large corporations aren't standing up for what they believe in and for what's right for their workers in their population or their consumers, then I think that people will start to vote with their wallet. And you see that all the time. If I go to a store and I'm choosing between a north face jacket and a Patagonia jacket, I don't know what north face stands for. I don't have any particular objections against the company. But what I do know is that Yvon Chouinard and Let My People Surf and all of the things that Patagonia stand for and 1% for the earth, these are all things that are embedded into the brand of Patagonia. And so all things being equal, I choose the product made by the person whose value aligns, whose values align with mine. And I'm not the only consumer who who buys that way.
Allison Hare: 51:09 I think that is a culture shift to that we want to contribute with our dollars. People are buying TOMS shoes and there's so many more you know, socially conscious companies that are trying to figure out how do I give back? Yup. And it's such a beautiful, brilliant business decision, I think as a company, but it forces CEOs and companies to really consider their political, whether it is political leanings or not, or what their views and beliefs are of, do they put themselves on the line and is it worth it? You know? And I think it's become more normalized now and more socially acceptable where I don't know that that was the case 10 years ago.
Nathalie MN:: 51:49 And part of it is because so much of just how we do business has become, or maybe it's become clear to us that the way that businesses are managing their operations actually have a direct impact, not just on our, you know, government, but also just on our day to day life on their ability to pollute the rivers that we're enjoying on their ability to use water when we have a scarcity of it on there, you know, influence, potentially undue influence, influence on the political process. I mean, all of these things start to impact our daily lives. And I think that we start to expect that from the companies that we support. Right?
Allison Hare: 52:27 Yeah. So what do you, what do you know you've got a lot on your plate, right? You have a lot of responsibility. What do you know that you wish people could know?
Nathalie MN:: 52:40 I am I'm about to publish an article in fast company, maybe by the time this podcast.
Allison Hare: 52:45 Breaking News, right on little left of center
Nathalie MN:: 52:49 Um that talks about this very thing that I wish more people knew about. And that is that when people watch for example, Shark Tank or the Prophet, we have kind of mythologized the role of the investor, right? The investor seems to be this godlike figure that stands behind a desk and watches people pitch and decides who gets the money and who doesn't get the money. And that so much tied to also self-worth, right? If I get rejected from an investor is my company, no good? Am no good, right? So much, right? We give so much power to these investors and what we forget or what we maybe don't know, and I wish everyone knew, is that investors have investors. And what I've done in this fast company article, as I've kind of broken down how the sausage gets made, because I think a lot of people don't realize how investment funds come together. And the fact that the investor who you meet is just the manager of a fund that was assembled using a lot of other people's money. And those other peoples, those other people are called Lps, limited partners, right? And those lps are the ones that decide who gets to have $100 million fund and who doesn't. And so what I talk about in the article is here's how the sausage gets made. And ps, those Lps, there are people, you know, because a lot of the times there's lps are the endowment at the college that you went to, or the LP is the pension fund. If you're a police officer or a teacher, right? Or maybe it's a vanguard or fidelity where your 401k is being managed. All of these places are places where we have influence. And so for example, if I'm a Latin X police officer in Los Angeles, 60% of the police force in Los Angeles or people of Color, are you picking up the phone and calling the pension that manages your retirement and asking them how many of the fund managers that you're investing in that are essentially managing my retirement look like me and have last names like mine, right? There are so much power in the individual, whether it's calling your alma mater to find out how they're managing their endowment or the nonprofit that you volunteer at, or you know, the 401k manager that is managing your retirement. All of these places are places where you have power. And if people rise up and start to ask questions about, if women represent 51% of the population, why is my retirement half of it not being managed by women investors? Right? I think that if more people understood how that sausage gets made, we would have very different companies being invested in and very different priorities around where money goes.
Allison Hare: 55:33 Nathalie, that's so good. So what do you do for fun? Like what recharges and refuels you?
Nathalie MN:: 55:41 Uh you know, my, my friends are my family. Even just here, I'm in Atlanta. I could've just flown in and parachuted right out, you know, one day, two days to do a speech. But I'm here for a week because one of my best friends just had a baby four weeks old. I can't think of anything that recharges your batteries more than a newborn. And just the, the sound and the smells and all of the excitement around a newborn. So my friends spending quality time with my friends you know, I try to make sure that my theater roots don't go away. Um so I'm helping with a Broadway show. For example, about Jeannette Rankin, who was the first woman to ever join Congress and be elected to Congress and.
Allison Hare: 56:26 You're a playwright is your specialty. Do you act at all?
Nathalie MN:: 56:29 No, no, no. In fact, I tried to bribe someone at Columbia University to help basically waive the requirement of making me take an acting class. It was torture. It was obviously like the sausage making. I love the sausage maker. Yeah. Yeah. I want to be the one that helps define how the story gets told.
Allison Hare: 56:45 Oh, that's awesome. So how can people contribute to your mission?
Nathalie MN:: 56:50 Uh follow me, I am always working on, you know, the last week for example, has been Bahama humanitarian efforts. I obviously get very involved with politics and supports certain candidates. There are all sorts of projects, creative projects like this Broadway show that I'm hoping to shepherd that are always keeping me up and keeping me excited about life. And if people want to get involved in any of these things and especially with the launch of my new company, which will happen within the next few months the best way to know is just to follow me.
Allison Hare: 57:22 Oh, that's awesome. And I, and how can people find you?
Nathalie MN:: 57:26 Best way to find me is Nathalie molina.com and it's Nathalie with an h and the h is there entirely just to confuse you,
Allison Hare: 57:34 I have a cousin named Nathalie with h with the age. Amazing. She's french. She's french.
Nathalie MN:: 57:39 My mother would say that exactly. She thinks we call her, she goes, it's a French name. The proper spelling is with an h.
Allison Hare: 57:46 Okay. Well thank you so much for being here, Nathalie. This was great. I can't wait to see what you do next and you are a culture changer. Thank you for having me. Thank you. Thank you, Nathalie, for sitting down to talk to me and sharing your ideas of how to move a community and elevate women of all colors. Please pick up Nathalie Malina Niño's book leapfrog, or download it on audible, and I'll link her info in the show notes. As for little left of center. In addition to streaming on your favorite podcast app, these episodes are also now broadcasting on Decatur FM and salesforce radio. I truly hope you'll not only subscribe, but leave a review and continue sharing these episodes. I'm also looking for sponsors for future episodes, so please feel free to follow me on the socials and hit me up. Thank you so much for listening and I will see you next week.