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Female Entrepreneurs, AI and Investing: A Chat With Meredith Finn, March Capital

Earlier this month, the annual Montgomery Summit conference was held in Santa Monica, including a special portion of the conference dedicated to the Rise of the Female Entrepreneur. The summit is now associated with March Capital Partners (www.marchcp.com). We spoke with Meredith Finn a new Partner at March Capital--who headed up that the Rise of the Female Entrepreneur sessions this year--to hear more about her perspectives on investments, what the Rise of the Female Entrepeneur was all about, March's interests in artificial intelligence and more.

What's your role at March Capital?

Meredith Finn: I joined March Capital at the beginning of the year. I was previously at Salesforce Ventures for almost four years, focused on investments in companies in the enterprise software space which were strategic to Salesforce. That carried through to March, where the big theme is Artificial Intelligence in the enterprise. For myself, I'm largely focused on investments in enterprise software, primarily in the areas of application software and intelligence. I got started in investment banking, focused on helping medical companies buy technology companies, and then later in the enterprise space and in the cloud. I did a lot of M&A deals in those spaces, and had some earlier, startup stage experience. I went to business school in between all of that.

How did you end up joining March Capital?

Meredith Finn: I was in the Bay Area for a total of eight years, and more recently had moved to New York, whre I'm from. However, I had gotten to know Sumant and the rest of the March Capital team for about 3 years from going to the Montgomery Summit, and also had met Jamie before that at Salesforce. I really got to know the team well, and had grown an appreciation for the companies and portfolio they have built. I liked their approach to investing and really like what they were looking to build here at March, so I was really excited about the opportunity to come out here. I also think there's an interesting opportunity in Los Angeles, as the tech scene continues to develop and mature. If you look at the rise of enterprise technology here in LA, there's a great opportunity. So, I was really excited to move out to LA a couple of months ago, and am enjoying it so far.

I see you were involved in the Rise of the Female Entrepreneur effort at the Montgomery Summit this year, tell me a little about what that is all about?

Meredith Finn: I think this is the sixth year that program has been part of the Montgomery Summit. It took about half of one day for the event, focused on the Rise of the Female Entrepreneur, and showcasing what women are building. What you saw this year was the spectru mof businesses, and the scale at which female entrepreneurs are building businesses. We had everything from much earlier stage companies and companies at the seed stage, to companies that had already raised $70M through their Series B. For example, Trina Spear from Figs, which you know as a hometown favorite, has done amazingly well in terms of rethinking apparel and that space. Obviously, there's a fantastic track record of leadership across a number of those tech companies, and this year, it was such a dynamic group. It was not only very early stage companies still trying to prove itself, it was women who have raised substantial capital and running businesses doing tens of millions in revenue. I joked afterwards that it shouldn't have been the Rise of the Female Entrepreneur, it's actual that the Female Entrepreneur is here, and this is our time. I think it's a fantastic program. We had over 400 attendees, including some who came from the core conference. The core conference attracts a number of investors, private companies, and corporate investors, and it's great to have them participating in the event, in addition to the female entrepreneurs from the local community. It's a great event. The key thing in figuring out how to design this kind of event and content, is you want to be able to provide really practical advice, and make sure you bring in people who tell it like it is. You want to get some candor from the executives who are presenting as part of the event. One thing that struck me, was just how practical the advice as, from team building to fundraising to scaling out a product and operations. It was just really great content, that frankly, all entrepreneurs, not just women, can benefit from. The lessons you learned just hearing their perspective were incredibly valuable to the audience.

Any good tips you gathered from listening to the speakers?

Meredith Finn: There were a couple of things. What really struck me about everyone on the stage, was how big their vision was. I think, sometimes at an early stage, many entrepreneurs focus too much on a very small market or a niche market. It's because they saw a particular problem and maybe are trying to solve that one individual problem, but all of the entrepreneurs there had a really big vision, and saw that what they were building was going to be transformative. I would say, having a big vision is an incredibly important piece of the story, because all investors are looking for the next big and hot company. A big vision is part of it. I think two, every entrepreneur talked about building a team. The ability to build a team, as a CEO and founder of a company, is important. Although a lot of the part of the job is a vision and understanding that first product or second product, at some point for a business, you need to scale and need to be able to build a team. The ability to attract talent, retain talent, to manage and grow that talent, and nurture that talent in a company is incredibly important to be able to build and scale a company. The last thing, is understanding how open and receptive all of these CEOs were to feedback, coaching, and improvement. It's incredibly important for every entrepreneur to be self-reflective, and realize you can't do everything. You can't be the best at everything. If you show up with an idea to build a company, the question is how do you gain those skills, and continue to grow into your role? These are some pretty consistent stories and themes, about how all of these entrepreneurs have made an investment in building their businesses, and figuring out places they need to grow and improve on a personal level, as well.

Where do you think we are today in terms of barriers to women in entrepreneurship?

Meredith Finn: If think if you look today, there is certainly more awareness, which is a good place to start. However, I don't want to see we are there. If you look at the funding numbers for female-led and founded businesses, it's probably still only about two or two and a half percent of total funding. So,I can't say we're at parity from a dollar basis. I think there are still barriers to women raising the same amount of capital that men to. The problem with that, is if you can't raise a lot of capital, you don't have the same ability to move as fast as other companies. I think what we are seeing though, is that women are approaching the market with big and game-changing ideas. Whether that's in the consumer or enterprise space, that really can attract the big dollars and support big dollar investments. The more we continue to see that, the better we can do. Obviously, the conversation in the market about more female investors is also an important piece of the puzzle, and that will help provide improvements as well, because I think the greater parity we see in people writing the checks, the more parity in where the dollars go. I would say I'm optimistic, because we are seeing great companies being built by women, and more women in the venture ecosystem, but I'll also acknowledge there is some more work to do.

Finally, what are the areas you are most excited about looking at with AI?

Meredith Finn: I think we're at an interesting point with AI and the enterprise. I think there has been a lot of hype to date, and some very basic use cases. I think that finally, with AI companies, we're starting to see some real technology in this space, which has the opportunity to go horizontal, to look beyond just AI for a specific vertical or a specific function. I'm particularly interested in looking at the productivity gains we can see from AI in the back office, looking at human resources, finance, and operations in general, and how we can help streamline and improve processes. There's a lot of the promise of artificial intelligence that we haven't seen yet. You're now starting to see some companise with real technology emerge, which I'm excited about. Also, if you look at the power that AI has to enable companies to create better interfaces and interact with their customers, whether that creating a better marketing experience, a more intelligence marketing experience, a better sales process, or quite frankly, customer service, they're obviously a massive opportunity to create an improved customer service experience and also use that to market and upsell other products. I still think we're relatively early and only at the beginnings of AI, but there's starting to be maturation in the technology, so that we can really start to deliver on some of the promises of AI in the enterprise, which is where we are largely focused on as a firm.

Thanks!