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Interview with Minnie Ingersoll, TenOneTen Ventures

What's the hardest part of being a startup entrepreneur? Minnie Ingersoll, who recently joined Los Angeles-based venture capital investment firm TenOneTen Ventures (tenoneten.net), gives some great advice to entrepreneurs, on the biggest struggles for entrepreneurs, based on her most recent experience in starting Shift.com, an online used car marketplace, and also tells us about her recent move to venture capital here in Southern California.

Tell us a bit about yourself?

Minnie Ingersoll: I grew up here in Southern California, in Pasadena, and have been in the Bay Area for a number of years, and just became a new partner at TenOneTen Ventures. TenOneTen Ventures is an early stage, seed investor here in Southern California.

What were you doing before joining TenOneTen?

Minnie Ingersoll: A few things, but most recently I started by own company, in 2013. I started a startup called Shift.com, it's an online marketplace for buying and selling used cars. I've been going through the startup journey, and just finished our Series D investment. That allowed me to take a step back, and relocate.

Why did you decide to move to venture capital?

Minnie Ingersoll: That's a good question. We went from zero to 200 people at Shift in two years. A lot of what I was doing at Shift was meeting with people. My job was hiring people. I love meeting people who are at the forefront of exciting work. One of the things that really gives me faith in our country, and excitement about the state of our nation, is the innovation that is going on everwhere throughout our country. There's an innovative spirit. I wanted to be part of that.

What does TenOneTen Ventures invest in?

Minnie Ingersoll: We do early stage investing. That could be pre-seed, seed, seed-plus, A-minus, whatever you want to call it. We write checks from $500K to a million dollars, and we like to fund engineers turned entrepreneurs. We all have backgrounds in technology, and it's what we understand the best. Sometimes what I say, is if brand is your moat, and you're a direct-to-consumer company, versus where you really have some technology, and you have some IP, that's the side of the spectrum we play on. We aren't just technology, exclusively, but we're definitely on that side of it.

What do you look for in entrepreneurs?

Minnie Ingersoll: Probably the biggest thing is the ability to sell. It's not necessarily to be the sales person, but to be able to sell me on the vision. Not only do you have to know what the vision is, and you can get me and other people excited about that, but that you are willing to dedicate all your blood, sweat, and tears into making that vision a reality. I think the vision and the selling, for investors, for employees, and for customers, is really a core skill.

What was the hardest part of getting Shift off the ground, when you were an entrepreneur?

Minnie Ingersoll: So much was hard. It exceeded all of my expectations in being successful, yet, it was incredibly hard. I think that the hardest thing for me, generally, is that emotional resilience. That's not any one thing. We had ups and down. We were up and to the right, but like a roller coaster. We had to do a reduction-in-force and layoff early in our career, and I thought we were done. I was losing sleep, I was pulling my hair out. It was multiple times. We just had to keep going. You have to have that emotional resilience, you had to have something you cared so much about you'd be willing to keep going through the downs.

How did you deal with that, as an entrepreneur, with all those ups and downs?

Minnie Ingersoll: Different people have different techniques. For me, being able to name it, and talk about it, has been incredibly helpful. There were some tough times where I was able to talk to our board about things, and being able to say—I think we're going to have to have a layoff—and having the board say—lots of companies have to go through this. That minimizing of something that was giving me so much stress, actually gave me a lot of comfort, figuring out that it was not that big of a deal when you're able to talk about something. For me, sometimes just being able to talk through things has been incredibly useful. It was being able to go to bed, and knowing that I'd done everything I could, instead of not being able to sleep and having my health suffer.

What's the most exciting part of technology excites you as an investor?

Minnie Ingersoll: My most recent investment was actually in a direct-to-consumer genetic testing company. I think the world of health is so interesting right now. There is so much we don't understand but where we're increasingly understanding. I don't have a lot of depth there, but I'm looking for great entrepreneurs who really understand what's possible. Our healthcare system needs fixing, our health needs fixing, and it's under the broader umbrella of how can technology benefit society. There are a lot of things that are broken, but we have a lot of potential and have a lot of ability to fix things. That's what makes me excited.

Thanks!