Before
An operator through her twenties: a startup that reached a 700 million dollar valuation and then crashed, growth at the nutrition company Rise, and launching One Medical's telemedicine practice before its IPO. Then a sabbatical and consulting.
The move
Angel investing with no thesis and no obligation to see every deal, purely into friends and friends of friends. She has been explicit that this was informal rather than strategic. The pattern compounded quietly until other people asked to invest alongside her.
The turn
Early checks into Mem and Levels became the signature positions. A friends-and-family vehicle formalized into an institutional Fund I with backers including Marc Andreessen.
Timeline
- Operator roles through her twenties
- A sabbatical, then consulting
- Informal angel checks into friends
- A friends-and-family fund
- Institutional Fund I at Awesome People Ventures
What this route asks
People worth backing who are already in your life, and money you can afford to put into them. The honest part of her account is the discontinuity: managing someone else's capital made her more diligent and more thesis-driven, which means the informal phase does not simply scale. It is an on-ramp, and the second step is a real decision.