My guest for Ep188 of The Startup Playbook Podcast was Jessy Wu.

Jessy is a partner of AfterWork Ventures, a $20M pre-seed and seed stage Venture Capital Fund.

She has a background in English literature and linguistics and has used her power of storytelling to build a powerful brand not just for herself but also for AfterWork VC, allowing them to compete for deals against large incumbents.

In this episode we covered a variety of topics including:

• Jessy’s background in linguistics and philosophy and how she applies that to investing today
• The value of building a personal brand, and the strategy she’s used to build her own
• How to build a challenger brand that competes against large incumbents
• and much more!

Timestamps

• 1:37 Jessy’s background
• 15:50 Core tenets of storytelling and character development when writing
• 21:02 Strategies for building a professional personal brand
• 29:01 Building a challenger brand in VC
• 38:07 Dealing with the negatives and criticism that can come from creating content
• 42:27 Building a community powered VC
• 52:05 Insight into the investment decision making process for AfterWork and other funds
• 58:52 Grapevine: an initiative bringing awareness and pragmatic discourse around abuses of power in the tech ecosystem

Our partners

A big thank you to Fab Mackojc, Daniel Wang and Mike Forster for their help with this interview!

Also a big shout out to our partners for the show:

Scendar 

Scendar is the OG startup accounting firm in Australia catering to all stages of your business’ life. If you’re busy running your startup, you don’t have time to do your own books and forecast. Instead, fully outsource your finance function, giving you time and resources back to focus on what you do best in growing your business. Find out more at Scendar.com

Vanta

Vanta helps businesses get — and stay — compliant by automating up to 90% of the work for the most in-demand compliance frameworks. And with over 300 integrations, you can easily monitor and secure the tools your business relies on.
Join over six thousand fast-growing companies that use Vanta to manage risk and prove security in real time.
Startup Playbook Podcast listeners get access to an exclusive offer of USD$1000 off their plans. Head over to vanta.com/playbook to get access to this exclusive discount.

Links mentioned

Jessy’s links

• Jessy’s LinkedIn
• AfterWork VC
• Grapevine

People mentioned

• Daniel Petre
• Casey Flint
• Michael Batko
• Tom Alder
• Alex Brogan
• Fab Mackojc
• Mike Forster
• Daniel Wang
• Alex Khor
• Adrian Petersen
• David Wei
• Chris Withers

Companies mentioned

• NAB Ventures
• Dollar Shave Club
• Warby Parker
• Bailey Nelson
• Koala
• Casper
• Luxottica
• Blackbird
• Airtree
• Square Peg
• Investible
• Playbook Ventures
• Klikit
• Everlab

Feedback/connect/say hello:

Rohit@startupplaybook.co
@RohitBhargava7 (Twitter)
/rohbhargava (LinkedIn)
@rohit_bhargava (Instagram)
My Youtube Channel

Credits:

Music: Paycheck

Other channels:

Find all of the links for the podcast on Linktree here

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