This interview is one of a series of Women Entrepreneurs sponsored by YPO. You can see an interview of BankMobile (BM Technologies) founder Luvleen Sidhu here.
A friend of mine, Charley Ellis, once told me that venture finance is much more like human resources than people realize. There’s a downside in that: The white men in charge have tended to direct money toward ventures started by the people in their networks. There’s an upside, too: If you can get more women and people of color into venture, the money will likely flow to their networks and according to their sensibilities.
That’s one reason I’ve focused resources for the past few years on women in finance and fintech, and venture investing, in particular. Women like Luvleen Sidhu, Dina Sherif and Melissa Bradley are breaking ground. My latest interview, sponsored by YPO, is with Pia Sawhney, partner and co-founder of Armory Square Ventures, one of the few successful venture firms outside the big hubs. Armory Square invested in ACV Auctions, whose $414 million IPO last spring gave it a $4.9 billion valuation. (Its current market cap is $1.14 billion.)
We talked about what drew Sawhney to finance, Armory Square Venture’s approach to investing, the history of the Upstate NY ecosystem, and the region’s future in the coming (or recently arrived) recession. You can read the Forbes story here.
— Elizabeth
TRANSCRIPT
Elizabeth Macbride
Not sure who is in the audience, but welcome very much to those who are listening in both live and the people who will watch this in the recorded format after we post it to Times of Entrepreneurship. You’ve dropped in on an interview between Elizabeth McBride — that’s me — and Pia Sawhney, who is a partner in Armory Square Ventures, which is a venture capital firm officially headquartered in Syracuse, NY.
Pia Sawhney
That’s right, and we recently opened an office in Skaneateles, NY, which is about 30 minutes from Syracuse.
Elizabeth Macbride
Awesome, and so this is an interview that I’m doing in the process of working on a handful of stories for various outlets that I write for. I have my own platform, which is Times of Entrepreneurship, and the interview will be posted there. I also have a column on Forbes and contribute to various other publications like CNBC, and MIT Tech Review. Basically the work of an independent business journalist is very much kind of always to be working on articles that that go to different places.
So a handful of articles I’m working on right now are about upstate New York, about women in finance and women in the economy. Generally, and then, I’m always interested kind of an up-and-coming companies. I’m going to say a little bit about how Pia and I met and also uhm, want to give a big thank you to our sponsors,
I met Pia probably about a month ago now at an event in upstate New York in Syracuse that was sponsored by Grasshopper Bank and Upstate Capital. I was talking about my book The New Builders, which I wrote with Seth Levine, who’s a venture capitalist in Boulder, Co.
I met Pia at a dinner in Skaneateles, which I learned how to pronounce when I was up there and just was very interested in her story, partly because she comes from a journalism background herself and is now in finance and I always think there’s a bigger relationship between narrative and finance than people realize. So I asked her if she’d be part of a series that I was doing live interviews of women in finance.
The interview series is sponsored by YPO. I want to give a huge thank you and shout out to YPO. You can find the Forbes article that was written based on the previous interview of Luvleen Sidhu, here. Thank you to Grasshopper bank and upstate capital who sponsored the original event that brought us together.
I want to thank all these companies who are sponsoring high quality discussion, writing journalism around economic issues. They are also supporting both our democracy and a healthier economy for everyone.
I’m going to say first that Armory Square Ventures, which is Pia’s venture firm, is one of the very few that I know of that has shepherded a Unicorn through to an IPO. And that company is called ACV Auctions. It’s come out of Buffalo, NY.
And so that’s kind of like the big flash, right? That’s for a journalist, it is very interesting that there’s been this huge success out of upstate New York, but I wanted to first ask Pia little bit about her personal story, cause its always what interests me as a person. So can you tell me Pia first of all kind of your background. Where were you born? Where did you grow up? And then your first career?
Pia Sawhney
Yeah I’m going to try to be succinct because there’s a lot to say and I really I want to make sure that we have a chance to talk about Armory Square Ventures as well. I’m from an entrepreneurial family, so starting up things essentially something many of us do in my family. My mother, my father, my cousins, uncles, my sister-in-law, nearly everyone here in America and back in India where I immigrated from is a business owner of some kind.
You know my father was a banker. My grandfather was a banker. On my mother side, nearly everyone is in finance or real estate. So for a good part of my career, I have always felt that I have some shoes to fill.
I think over the past two decades you know I migrated to journalism and started in finance. So I was a you know, an analyst at JP Morgan Chase writing commercial mortgage-backed securities, and I was doing well there, you know a great tenure that I had for a couple of years. I was promoted after two years. I just wanted to break away. You know, maybe for all the reasons I mentioned. So that’s what happened.
I became a reporter covering human rights and foreign policy, making films and that was there a better part of a decade. Then when the opportunity arose to start building Armory Square Ventures. It was start up in one sense, and there was also kind of a return to finance tonight in the other sense.
So and those conversations are always happening in our household about business, about small business, about how to build them and you know what are the best techniques and methods and best practices. It’s ongoing and my father currently teaches business and venture capital at Harvard.
Elizabeth Macbride
OK so OK. So let me just ask you then what? So what is your current? So why is it that it’s so important you think in your family to do this work on the economy?
Pia Sawhney
On the economy?
Elizabeth MacBride
I think most people are motivated by wanting to do some good in the world, so the question is what, why has your family and why have you decided that working in finance is your contribution?
Pia Sawhney
Yeah, no, It’s a great question, you know so. Uh, my family migrated, you know, to Delhi after partition they had to rebuild, you know from essentially from scratch and so this was the understanding right like you have to find a way to put up your own shingle and quickly you know and I think that that has really been passed down you know through the generations. So I think you know my father is, he’s really energized by the experiences that he had as a young person growing up, you know, essentially as a refugee, you know in Old Delhi and then kind of, you know joining Citibank, which gave him his big break of his life when he was 19 years old. Back to this broad to Persian Gulf. You know where he worked at the bank, and so I think that spirit of providing for people building, you know, offering recruiting or interviewing people, placing jobs, that’s something that everybody in my family has actively always pursued, and it was very exciting in that respect when I met Somak because he has so much enthusiasm and it’s infectious, you know and that’s of course, why you love venture capital, it has that thrusts, that optimism and always always focused on building and building from scratch right?
If they have ideas, you have to have kind of the stomach for it, but you also have to have kind of the optimism. It drives the whole engine, right? Like people have to feel like getting up every morning is Really, really thrilling and so I think that’s. That’s been a little bit of the secret sauce you know at Armory Square is that we love meeting people who have that energy and I think that’s what is unique in our region is we have the descendants of people who built the great businesses. really remarkable enterprises. And they’re all like, you know, like you know, driving distance, walking distance of one another, they know each other. They have that history. That’s what you saw on your visit to Syracuse.
Elizabeth MacBride
I don’t want to leave the conversation about your journalism career without asking you. So one of your films was very widely recognized, right? And just tell us what that film was and what it was about.
Pia Sawhney
I immigrated to United States in 1993 and you know at the time that I was making this film of 2003 I was a permanent resident in the United States and I witnessed the rollout of a program called Special Registration, in which immigrants of Muslim heritage were being asked to register with immigration authorities.
It was a policy that really caught all of us by surprise. Because it, they didn’t actually notify immigrants who fell under this umbrella.. So it caused a lot of consternation in New York City, where I was living at the time. Uhm and so colleague of mine, you know who’s working at HBO, and I began documenting this, you know, and it became kind of a three-year odyssey. We were following these immigrant families, you know, who are really being torn apart by this new national security program and it you know, I, I think at the time I don’t know if you remember this, but there was a fear that captured the immigrant communities in New York and elsewhere. It was palpable, and you know, my colleague my Co- producer, was on an H1B visa and so we were both, you know, constantly you know, worring, you know having you know sleepless nights because we were documenting all of this that was going on and then at the same time are always a little bit you know, unsure whether we were going to be, you know called up one day. But I think the outcome of that was that you know there was this ground flow uhm, of activism around this and I can say now with some pride that a lot of the activists from that period today are, you know in positions at the ACLU. You know very far along with people, , tenured professors, so that is that part of it.
You know that is really gratifying, but all of the work that we did you know it had some impacts and some very, you know, slow like you know, roundabout, circuitous way. So so yeah. Thank you for asking it.
Elizabeth Macbride
Yeah, and the name of the film?
Pia Sawhney
The name of the film is Out of Status.
Elizabeth Macbride
We’re telling a lot of stories, which I love, so tell me the story of how you and Somak as your husband ended up moving from New York City to upstate New York. Because that’s really the story right, of the birth of Armory Square Ventures
Pia Sawhney
Yes, Somak has worked in technology and venture capital in New York since the early 2000s. When he graduated, he became an investment banker, he worked at a tech investment bank in Fort Lee, NJ, which he despised. And subsequently, you know that was kind of when everyone was at that.com fever and everyone was kind of ditching all these banking jobs and and going into these.com startups.
So then he joined this startup, which was an Israeli startup based in Midtown Manhattan and I ran into him. You know he was he had these three, he would walk around with three mobile phones. His title was director of mobile strategy and he was talking, like online shopping at a startup and nobody knew what a mobile phone was, so it was just weird thing we would show up with these like you know they were this big right and and, and he’s like, you know, one day you’re gonna be writing text messages on your phone and he showed us all these prototypes and everyone just thought this is, you know, this is wild, but it turned out. I mean he, he’s always been, you know, a little bit ahead of the curve. I mean at that point it was flip phone. So I think I think it’s always been kind of fascinating to watch that like he, you know, loves testing things out, you know gadgets and all kinds of new input, you know applications and things of that nature. And so he’s he was on that trajectory for a very long time at different start-ups and then at a venture fund and so uh, this position has opened up because of pooling investors decided that you know venture capital was a way to really create jobs in the region, and it must be tried.
So you know there was a couple of years where the Brookings Institution and a number of other groups, local nonprofits had tried to figure out what’s the best way of really cultivating energy and enthusiasm in the region and bringing jobs in a new development and that the culmination of all that research was we need a VC fund. And so Somak was referred out of hundreds of applications for the role because of you know again, some very innovative startup opportunity that he had invested in. And so we came Upstate to Syracuse. We saw, you know, the beautiful lake, that that you witnessed and we thought, wow, you know this is a part of the country that we don’t know a lot about and we love travel and we love seeing you know novel ideas. So it’s it seems like kind of a great fit, a great kind of new phase.
Elizabeth Macbride
Which town do you live in in upstate New York? I’m learning the geography, I’m sort of. I used to be the managing editor of Crain’s New York Business so I feel like I should know more about upstate, but I really don’t. So there’s Syracuse there is Skaneateles, there’s Buffalo, there’s Binghamton, there’s a, there’s a lot of cities there that are actually when you travel up there, you get a sense of how historically important this region was. The manufacturing that was there, the natural resources. I guess it was on the Erie Canal originally, right?
This region has an incredible industrial and business here that are part of the picture that would be great.
Pia Sawhney
You just cut out.
Elizabeth Macbride
Yeah, I know. But yeah, the signal is not ideal, but I was asking you where do you live, and if you could mention some of the families and some of the businesses that have come out of the region and that have supported Armory Square adventures, that would be great.
Pia Sawhney
So we have a group of investors. Most notably you know the Allyn family, which is, uh, it’s essentially , four generations of medical device manufacturers. The family essentially built all the the devices When you go into a hospital room you know all of the beds the tools there, they’re all Welch Allyn devices and that family uhm, really anchored our fund. So we have a, you know, a close group of people that are some affiliated with the Allyn’s were also affiliated with other businesses that they had built on their own that have kind of coalesced around this idea, and so I think Uhm, when you ask what the families I think it’s more, it’s more that they’re you know individuals, but certainly they represent you know, the businesses and things of that nature. But it’s not. It’s not that the businesses themselves are invested in the fund. The Allyn family actually has sold Welch Allyn, they are on longer affiliated, it was acquired by Hill-Rom. For many years Welch-Allyn headquartered in Skaneateles, where we live. It was the focal point for a lot of business in the region and also for a lot of the job and the civic life in Skaneateles.
Elizabeth Macbride
Yeah, and some of the other companies so historically like Smith Corona was headquartered in Syracuse. I know, I don’t know if there are a couple of other, I know that the salt industry, so this is something I learned in Syracuse, right? The salt industry was kind of born like I guess in the 1700s in the region there must be salt flats I think underneath some of the ground, so there’s just really a long. I think a big gun manufacturers up there too right? Maybe Remington. So, so there’s all this industrial history.
Pia Sawhney
Yes, so in Syracuse there’s a good deal of history with wth small businesses In Rochester, there’s Kodak Uh, and you know, along with Kodak, until some Bausch & Lomb, Rochester New York has been really, really important traditionally in this region and you know Kodak of course didn’t survive at the onset of new cameras, but it was again a very, very serious employer, you know they had thousands and thousands of employees at one time in Rochester,and around Rochester. Bausch & Lomb also has a presence, There’s also an optics community in Rochester that has grown up around Bausch & Lomb so we actually have a company an ophthalmology company that we’ve invested in in Rochester because, you know, it’s nationally recognized for optics. And then Buffalo has a host of other industries, but one of them was, you know is the auto industry traditionally, so there’s a luxury car industry in the 30s and 40s. For many, many years kind of one of the most historic manufacturers of luxury cars in whole world and so you can go to museums in Buffalo where you have all of these cars restored and you can visit the site and people in the region or are very passionate about cars in general because it was always that it always had that auto sector that culture of buying cars but also repairing vintage cars.
Elizabeth Macbride
Yeah, that’s really fascinating actually, and it feels like a good segue. The company that, IPO during the pandemic which is called ACV Auctions. So can if you can tell us a little bit about what the company does and then I think there were three when I was reading the background that you sent me. There were three gentlemen right Joe, Dan and George who were critical to the development of the company. So maybe if you can just tell me briefly what their respective roles are in the company?
Pia Sawhney
Joe and Dan are the CO founders of ACV Auctions. Joe is still with the company and Uhm, George Chamoun is the CEO and so, George actually joined ACV when it had fewer than 10 employees and he ran a public company previously called Synacor. So he literally broke from what he was doing and decided to join this startup, which is which does not happen very often so it’s very it’s fair to say that, like Joe and Dan were very charismatic cofounders and they I think you know, if you had the chance to meet them, they have they exude, you know passion for Buffalo as does George. When they created the idea for ACV auctions, it came from their experience living in Buffalo. Joe was an auto dealer and he recognized that that the market on the sale of used cars between dealers was woefully out of date and antiquated. You know, 10 years behind of where it ought to be and when he met Dan who was the CTO and asked him to come on board and Dan was working at an incubator in Buffalo and he really sold him on this idea, and so they kind of came together and built this application and they sold about 1000 cars when they met Somak.
Somak, of course, like I mentioned earlier, you know he can kind of. He gets a sense of things and he kind of you know, he can tinker around a bit with what someone is doing and then it gets really excited and this is one of those moments where he sort of thought. This is really wild that this hasn’t been created so far because the app that they made allows you the auction cars in 20 minutes. So what it does is it takes a lot of friction out of the process of selling cars, removing them from a lot, it’s essentially what happens in physical auction dealer goes to a lot, he drops off the cars and then he waits around for three or four days for them to be sold from other Dealer and that’s how used cars are traditionally sold and you know, Joe and Dan essentially said, well, come on, I mean, you know you get some more bids, thousands of bids, you know if you create this app and sell them in this, you know constrained period of time and so that has been wildly successful. They’ve innovated around the app and they have all kinds of ways now transferring title between cars you know through new technology and also inspecting the undercarriage of the car so there’s they’re constantly building as well as transporting the cars, so couple years into it after we made that first investment in was 2015. We also helped them recruit the COO of the company, who came essentially from Silicon Valley. He had lived, abroad in Berlin and in Milan. Uh, you know another. An eBay which is a marketplace business and so he saw the potential of sort of this auction marketplace and he brought you know, all of his experiences, network, you know, skills to ACV auctions.
Elizabeth Macbride
Yeah, I think this is it’s such an interesting story ’cause it really it highlights so many truths about about venture capital in the investment business, right? Which is that successful venture capitalists are do a ton of human resources. They’re basically like money combined with human resources. It’s what they are and you’re kind of highlighting that. I think that a lot of wannabe entrepreneurs don’t recognize that it takes so many people to build in a successful company, right and often there are the leaders of the company in the early days of the most successful companies. Often those leaders have to gracefully give away some of their power to build a successful company, and so what you’re talking about is, like all of those things in sort of a nutshell and also it highlights the amount of time. People don’t realize that it sounds like this was about like a 10-year process or a little under 10 which is very fast actually, but people don’t tend to recognize that really.
It can often take 10,15, even 20 years, to take a company all the way. A really successful company to IPO and so I love that story for all of those reasons. OK, so I did want to ask you about the size of the fund. So how big is Armory Square ventures? and are you on your first second third fund, now or where are you in the firms journey?
Pia Sawhney
Yeah, so uh, you know the success of ACV IPO has really put us on the map in many ways. It went public last March in the in the in the midst of the pandemic and you know, we have essentially you know? One of the sort of most unique track records in the Industry, let’s just say because we were the earliest investor and we subsequently invested in almost every round of the company. Uh, so in a small portfolio of 8 companies in fund one and fund one was 16.4 million.
We had one company that went public another company that exited and both of them return the fund. So ACV auctions return the funds several times over, and so you know at this point. You know we the the second fund is is, you know, somewhere in the middle, like about 32 million but but we’ve already soft circled, the third fund at this point. And also. we’re not marketing as it were because it’s part of it, you know, is the story part of it is the fact that you know people didn’t think it was possible. I mean I have to tell you Elizabeth like I can’t tell you how many, you know how this universe works ? How many people told us and continue to to say because you know they don’t know the intricacies and all that, but how many people continue to say that this isn’t actually possible? What you’re what you’re projecting because it’s not, it doesn’t happen in the VC business, you know? So so currently the 2014 fund is one of the top funds in its vintage, and so when you benchmark all the key metrics including cash on cash turns we return a greater multiple in capital than nearly any other form in the industry, and that for every dollar we invest, we saw 20X multiplier.
So in addition to the fact that we have ACV Auctions, all of our other startups have raised follow on financing and that aspect is consistent. If you look at a lot of funds right because they’re riding the bull market and they saw that growth and now we don’t know. You know where it’s going to go from here? We’re very proud of the work that that our whole community has done but yeah, like you say, it’s a human resources problem as much as it’s a finance problem and we’ve cultivated a lot of great relationships in New York City and Silicon Valley and that’s really brought us, you know further and further along so we are, you know, going to start another fund, but I think at this point work comfortable with what we’ve learned through this process of how to recruit talent to underventured regions. And so in that sphere, we think that we’re unique. We think that we understand under ventured regions a little better and then probably, you know, most people using firms.
Elizabeth Macbride
Yeah no, that makes a lot of sense. So what’s the typical size investment you’re making now into companies and you are you actively investing that second fund?
Pia Sawhney
Yes, we are investing a second fund. Our first are typically our first check is $750,000 and with reserves up to $2,000,000. That has also been part of our thesis, We take a vested interest in in each company. We were like we’re almost like an extension of the startup usually we come in we give guidance, we mentor, we provide introductions and we help the companies grow and now that we have you know, some data we know that this method works. It takes a little longer, you know then then then maybe a typical fund where you send in a smaller check. Uhm, you work. You worked a little deeper, a little harder in some ways, but I think it’s worth that extra mile because the geographic distance is real.
Elizabeth Macbride
I also wanted to ask you about women in venture capital because it seems like an essential change to me that more women should get involved in venture capital. I wonder if you agree. I think in venture capital it’s still probably fewer than 5% women who are actually decision in decision making rules in venture firms?
There aren’t really great stats but the one piece of the puzzle that women have not had up to this point is a big presence in finance.
Here’s Pia again. Yeah, sorry about the crash. I was filling in our airspace by talking about why I think it’s important that there are women in finance? Because what I was saying is that women that now make up the vast majority, not the vast majority, the majority of new business owners in the USA owned by women and around the world, women are increasingly starting companies, but there hasn’t been a big presence of women in the finance sector, not in banking not VC , not anywhere. So one of my thesis is that if we get women into finance, these companies women are starting will grow bigger and that will be good in just a million ways for everybody but I would love to hear you talk a bit about that and how you think we might diversify venture capital, which is an incredibly powerful part of early stage finance.
Pia Sawhney
Yeah, you know, it’s like I’ve been watching this for for several years now, and of course in some sense, you know, I I watch it with some remove because I’m I’m outside the major hubs and I see like the flurry of activity I have been to always, which is a conference designed to aid women in finance and to enter or venture capital, which is, you know, as you identified, a rarified industry. I think that what I’m hopeful and optimistic about is women starting businesses, and whether they’re venutre backed or not and I see and and and like you’ve outlined in your book. It’s happening all over the country, but it’s just that women are not being supported at the early stages in business and Uhm, you know that can be alleviated and and venture capital has a role to play in in that regard, not necessarily through financing, but through counseling, making introductions, guidance, providing support and networks that a lot of you know, women and minority founders don’t have access to, so I think I guess what I’m trying to say is that venture capital you know serves just this infinitesimally small number of entrepreneurs and we have, you know, several women founders now in our portfolio. WE have witnessed what the process is like for them. How can we be the guide and bring them to a stage where we see women having more control over their livelihood. Which is essentially what women founders want. In preparation for this interview I spoke with women founders and and they all said to me that that it was essential that women have the room and independence to build a business on their own. and so, whether thats venture backed or not venture backed is not that critical.
What’s more critical is that they have that control and that opportunity and that really, you know that again, like that speaks to my own family’s history. You know, having witnessed all of that, I had seen, you know, with three generations what it means to to have a pathway to a livelihood independent of what your husband is doing, what your uncle is doing, or what your father is doing. You know, it’s just about having that your own opportunity and the American dream, right? And so that is what the American dream has always been about and I think we have to infuse investment capital a little bit of that spirit, you know that’s sort of like. Uhm, small business ethos and and so that’s how I think about the problem. It’s I’m I’m trying to answer question but I’m also.
Elizabeth Macbride
Venture capital does have a bit of a PR problem, right? So if venture capital I think became part of this larger conversation about small business about women in business and women economic power, I think it would just be a win win for everybody because there’s so much capital in that space, so much buzz, so much narrative and power around fast growth businesses. To lend some of that to small businesses would be really powerful.
Pia Sawhney
Yeah, and we will, yeah absolutely, and just a word example, you know the the Tory Burch Foundation, for example, wants a fellowship in which you know, they select 50 fellows each year and they provide them with mentorship and guidance, and they create a space for them to connect with one another and then year on year, they’re connecting with the founders who follow. Right, and then, if you’re a Tpry Burch fellow, you have the opportunity to write someone in any department at anytime and ask them for guidance. That is the kind of thing that every founder at every female founder aspires for like to have that opportunity just to have a simple conversation about different phases of startup and entrepreneurship, and I think the other thing that came up in some of my discussions was that there’s not enough focus on sort of like you know what kind of runway you need to start a small business. You know you have to go out and experiment to be able to create the right suite of product, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t invest in it, you know if you have six months of runway from an investor of some kind and you can demonstrate that you’re generating some revenue and you can get to break even you know, even if it’s not in six months maybe in 18 months, but the fact is that is like a considerable improvement over what that founder might have been doing a lot and so I think we have to sort of think creatively about really investing in the future of women and minority founders and looking at them as sources of and engines of you know growth and entrepreneurship Uh, for a tech ecosystem just as much as a community, if that makes sense.
Elizabeth Macbride
It’s an idea that the mainstream business world can borrow from venture capital, right? This idea that company, successful companies need a runway, they need time and money to experiment and find the business model that works the business model or the location or the people, right whatever it takes to make it into a real business and in some ways that American dream narrative. There’s an example of it’s in our book, right? You start your company on $37 in food stamps. Well, she’s a hero. Denaris is a hero, right? But we shouldn’t expect that to be the norm and that is like this illusion people have in their heads that entrepreneurs don’t need support. Entrepreneurs across the board do need support to get businesses off the ground.
Pia Sawhney
The other thing that came up was that a lot of small business owners don’t know the terminology when they enter the business world. Questions that could be answered quickly and easily are left unsaid or forgotten because the person doesn’t know who to talk to or where to go. MA in general has a number of innovative start up programs where they invite women to workshops and they explain to them how to start a business and how to hire a team and create a business plan. Some programs do use business plans as a marker or assessment of talent. In my conversations I have found that may not necessarily be required. Having said that, whatever metrics you design for a program to council your small business entrepreneurs, every aspect of that has a material impact.
Elizabeth Macbride
So there’s two more questions on my list. I think we have 8 minutes. I have a hard stop at one unfortunately, but one question is what personally drives you or what kind of keeps you centered in the day, and I’m looking for, you know. How do you like basically advice for people? How do you keep going in a world that that makes that feel hard sometimes?
Pia Sawhney
I think you know having bits of novelty in your day make every hour more meaningful I think yeah, nobody likes drudgery, right? I mean that’s why we hated our investment banking jobs. It’s like you go to the desk and then the little cubicle or like you have to do all the tasks and you have to go look that is it doesn’t matter like who you are or what you doing. That’s not something most people want.
Just you know. I, I reckon this flies in the face of routine because I know everyone likes the idea, routine is very important but I think having like moments of novelty, figuring out, you know, is that a walk or is that listen to your favorite music or talking to, you know, talking somebody that you haven’t talked to quite a while. Whether is drumming, yeah? Yeah, but the possibilities are endless, but I think those kinds of things right, like they create a moment of joy and I think that the that personally, that that’s what keeps me going. I also write on the side and that helps.
Elizabeth Macbride
What women do you have your eyes on in the world of finance that you jut want to mention here.
Pia Sawhney
Yeah, so, first and foremost we really have to mention Crystal Mobieni who is the female founder we backed in fund one with bento Box. We invested in them in 2015 and changed the hospitality space. Crystal was very passionate about helping restaurants in NYC improve their operations.
Another person we love working with is Saima Chowdhury who is a Bangladeshi American entrepreneur who runs two clothing lines: Noi Solutions and Grey State. Saima has created a thriving business with tens of millions in revenue each year, and she started that essentially on her own in New York City. She knows the whole supply chain because she collaborates with factories back in Dhaka where she grew up. We are very fond of Saima.
There’s also a small business owner I mentioned earlier, a Tory Burch fellow, who runs an upscale nail salon business in Berkely, California, and happens to be my sister-in-law. Her name is Rebecca Sawhney, and the company is called Marlowe and she built that company from scratch. Initially we were a bit hesitant to work with her, but she has done really well, shown a lot of resilience throughout the pandemic. A remarkable entrepreneur.
