What is the first company you invested in?
When I first met Ahmed and Jeff from AutoComplete, I was immediately struck by how they were applying the same B2B2C distribution principles I learned at Affirm but in a different domain — auto insurance. If you could make shopping for insurance as easy as a few clicks when buying a car at a dealership, most drivers could save money by switching providers. I have been blown away by the drive (no pun intended) of this team and their desire to offer better and more transparent options to consumers, which are values I deeply resonate with.
Do you have an investment ethos? Is there a portfolio company investment that exemplifies that ethos?
I am a product manager at heart. I want to know how a founder empathizes with their customers. How deeply do they understand the problem? What is their earned insight? How do they make hard tradeoffs with limited resources?
Nico, the co-founder and CEO of Catch, was a product manager I worked with at Affirm, and he learned first hand how existing payment and loyalty programs are missing the next generation online shopper. Albert, the co-founder and CEO at Aleph, was a CFO at a startup where he realized siloed, disparate data was leading to a big opportunity in FP&A tooling. Sophia, the co-founder and CEO of Ansa, was a product manager at Ayden and wrote a book on payments. That gave her deep insight into how merchants with small average transaction values and frequent purchases (like coffee shops) were underserved. I look for a deep level of obsession with the problem.
