Before
Six years as an operator across three financial technology companies: early at Blend Labs, co-founder of the neobank One Finance which Walmart acquired, and then Built.
The move
She deployed personal savings into four seed deals in spring 2020 while still working full time, and then documented the result precisely. Vesta, Pine, Nuvo and Trustlayer went on to raise from Andreessen Horowitz, Greylock, Founders Fund and Craft respectively, giving her a personal multiple of 4.46x. A documented number on a small sample beat a resume.
The turn
A venture partner told her to raise a fund. She sent a plain email with no deck. Fund I closed at five million dollars and she capped it despite ten million dollars of demand.
Timeline
- Spring 2020 first four angel checks from savings
- Early 2021 approached about raising a fund
- Mid 2021 Fund I closed at 5 million dollars, raised by email
- March 2022 goes full time as a solo general partner
- December 2022 Fund II at 20 million dollars
- September 2024 Fund III at 50 million dollars
What this route asks
Savings you can afford to lose, judgment good enough to survive being measured, and the discipline to write the multiple down. The compressed timeline here depends on a liquidity event from the One Finance acquisition, which is the part that is hardest to arrange deliberately.