So five years with a seasoned team and also amazing LPs, you seemed like you did a lot of everything so that accelerated your learning and all these different protocols. What encouraged you to leave and go somewhere else and where did you end

up going? After a bunch of years at the company, I felt like I had learned a ton and gotten a ton out of it. But I also felt like I was starting to plateau in terms of where I was at there and opportunities within the company. From there I went to Slack actually. And Slack seemed like this incredible opportunity. It was a rocket ship. This was when they were around 5, 600 people. It was, I guess, 2016, 2017. And it was a very cool new collaboration tool. It was something a little bit different than what I had been doing. We were doing top-down enterprise sales. These were many hundred K, if not million dollar deals, which was really fun to get to work with a sales team and learn how to build up that sales go-to-market motion. But coming from a different direction of that bottoms of SaaS was something I didn't know and wanted to get experience in. So really cool opportunity to see that and see that grow and be a part of a hyper growth company.

And obviously now, certainly a lot of people know what Slack is. How long were you there for and what was it like for you to learn the culture and work in that environment?

So that was ultimately not a great fit for me. And I think I learned some really interesting lessons there. One, I'm a very irreverent person. I am not a great employee. I am a very good person when you give me a ton of autonomy and you give me a goal and you let me free to figure out how to do it. I will hustle and pull every string imaginable to hit that goal and I will make it work. I do not drop balls, but I do not like being told what to do. And I do not like being slowed down with red tape and bureaucracy and things like that. And even at five, six hundred people, you're going to run into that. And it was something I was not used to. And also something I just not particularly equipped to deal with well. So it was a good learning opportunity for me to also realize what I'm good at, what I like to do and what I don't like to do, what I'm not particularly good at and what I'm not patient with to be quite frank. I was there for about six months and I think it was a really interesting time for the company in that historically Slack had been very SMB focused and they were 100% bottoms up, grew like wild fire, organically, almost accidentally. And then they started moving up market into the enterprise. And the company had been relatively famous for a while saying they didn't have sales and wouldn't have sales. And then ultimately needed to hire sales and needed to build out the enterprise function. So not only did we build out an enterprise product called enterprise grid, we had an entire new arm of the business that was coming from more traditional enterprise software top down sales heavy. And I joined to be in support of that side. And it was an interesting time when you have a DNA of a company that's much more consumer-y, now trying to mix and mingle with something that's much more enterprise-y. So it was also kind of cool to see how you try to do both. I think it's a challenge that Slack has done better than most companies, but it's a challenge in general. Most companies have to pick one or the other and can't be wildly successful at both.

I love that. Did you ever read Ben Horowitz's first book, the hard thing about hard things? Yeah. And I loved how he mentioned the tension between the two businesses of sales and engineering and how that could just kind of butt heads. But for you going back to Slack, what were you thinking being there for six months where most people would kill to be there? It's an amazing company. It's quite an not perfect trajectory. And you had the courage to say, no, this is not for me. What were you thinking and what did you think would happen after

that? Part of my irreverence and impatience also comes with recognizing that life is short. And I, for one, believe life is too short to be in things that make you unhappy. And I knew, I think by that time, I had been in Silicon Valley long enough and had enough confidence in my own skill sets, abilities, and networking capabilities. I'm very extroverted. I had met a lot of people. I had found different pockets of people. I had started my own side hustle consulting business. So I knew I could always fall back on that. And to me, it was just one of those situations where I don't even care about the upside. I just don't want to do this anymore. And I know that there's a bazillion other opportunities out there for me. And I'd rather go and push on something else. At the same time, I had also gotten really involved in the blockchain crypto space. This is early 2017. This is before the whole hype cycle. I had actually gotten very excited about it when Ethereum launched. I had met Brian Armstrong briefly at the Andreessen Horowitz office back in 2013 or 2014. And I didn't quite understand Bitcoin. It was not something that got me excited or I really fully wrapped my head around. But Ethereum, to me, opened my eyes because I love this ability to program smart contracts on top of the blockchain and create programmable applications, not the money piece, but the application on love and removing the middlemen. And I got bought up in all the ideology around that. And that's what really got me excited. So I was doing a ton of research. I helped a woman who was an immoratian, who runs probably the most successful podcast in blockchain called Unchained. I actually called out reached her and said, hey, I'd love to help you with the podcast. Here's what I know about podcasting. Here are all the things I can do. Will you meet me for coffee? And I sent her maybe four emails and she responded. And we went for coffee. And I ended up helping her get that off the ground and do a bunch of the backend stuff that wasn't Laura. And that was my entree into the space too, because we were bringing on every major guest you can imagine. And so I got to see it from a 10,000 foot view and decide where I wanted to land. So I had gotten pulled in that direction while Slack wasn't really fulfilling me on the work side. And I felt like a great opportunity to say, hey, I'm going to cut my losses and go do something that's really pulling me as opposed to something that's hindering me.

I love that. Well, Laura's show is pretty much how I gained a lot of my crypto knowledge because in the beginning several years ago, she had Olaf and Vitalik and all these guys who gave me the fundamentals at the time were now, there's so much content that you're like, gosh, where do I start? But she really broke it down well. So could it was to you for helping her build that?

It was

fun. You were at Slack. It's up and coming, but you decided to leave. But also you glossed over it very quickly that your site hustle is most people's full-time job. And you were doing that in combination at Slack and also helping someone launch a podcast. But after you decided to leave Slack, where was your mindset? Where were you thinking?

I'll go back to the side hustle for a second because this is actually an interesting story. And I try to help a lot of people who are trying to get this off the ground, think through it in a little bit more systematic way. It happened completely accidentally. Back in 2012, 2013, early days when I was at Capriza, that enterprise software startup, I had gotten really into growth marketing, growth hacking, and then everything around sales and marketing ops, all the things you need to grow a business and had gotten drawn into the growth hacking movement, met a bunch of people around that. But I also love meeting new founders and meeting new people. And so anytime somebody was looking for help or advice, they'd usually point them in my direction. And I'd be happy to give people an hour of my time, but that was it. And I kept getting asked over and over and over again, would you either join us or would you do a project with us? And finally, I agreed to do a consulting gig with a company. And it was great. I spent maybe five, 10 hours a week with them. I felt like I really could move the needle quickly. I could show immediate impact. I could get them to a place where it was good enough and then they could bring somebody in either fuller part time to take it from there. And they referred me to more people and they referred me to more people and it snowballed. And I also realized at the same time that if I started working with venture capitalists, their portfolio is constantly growing and they're investing in new companies. Every single net new company, early or growth stage has trouble or needs help on growth. That is the number one thing companies, once you have a product and market are focused on. I had an unlimited number of deals coming my way and I would decline most of them. I typically only would do one to two at a time. I tried to carve out only 10 hours a week, but it was just such a fun way to not only get to meet a ton of founders, but I also got to see 30 different businesses and business models. I did bottoms up, sat us top down enterprise consumer things that were selling to only 400 applicable customers in the wireless carrier space to people selling to millions of consumers. And so you start to get this muscle really taking every company with fresh set of eyes and trying to think from first principles of, okay, who is the audience here? Where do they live in the physical and digital world? How do I find them? And then how do I acquire them at a cost efficient way given the price point of the product? And it was a really good analytical skill to hone and just channels to learn. I know a lot of people I'm seeing more and more these days are opting not to go work the nine to five job and to do that full time to your point. And I think it's a great way for people to get a work on a lot of projects and have a lot of fun and have a little bit more of a chill life and better work life balance. But I like to keep myself busy, as you mentioned, that was always a side hustle for me. And some of the podcasting or content things have always been side hustles. When I left Slack, I ended up going to consensus, which is a very fascinating company. If you're not familiar with it in the blockchain space. One of the co-founders of Ethereum, his name is Joe Lubin. He created this company called Consensus, which was meant to be a venture studio model. We were spinning up and incubating around 50 different projects building on top of Ethereum. They were across pretty much every application category you can imagine from things like music and digital rights, all the way to supply chain and asset tracking to define financial applications to everything in between. I essentially was running the product marketing and growth functions to sit across the entire spectrum of companies, thinking through how do you build templates, guides, tools that scale, as opposed to having to do one off. That was a really great way for me to understand portfolio approach, which I can now take to the venture capital side. But man, that was such a fun time to be in the blockchain space. That was right when everyone first got introduced to blockchain and crypto. And I remember the holidays that year, everyone was asking me, what is this? Explain it to me. So it was a fun opportunity to release it at 10,000 for you.

That's awesome. And how long were you at consensus for?

I stayed there for a little over a year. And at the same time, I had also been already an active advisor at SignalFire. And so ultimately what pulled me away from consensus was SignalFire gave me an offer I couldn't refuse.

I love that. Well, I know of Joe Lubin because with an mind, think about Ethereum, I think about the Tolic. But I saw one of my favorite things was Ronnie Chang's video about what Dogecoin in Bitcoin was. And he was there, he described it. And he just had such a great demeanor as he's getting this comedic representation of what Dogecoin in Ethereum was that I just loved his poise in that video. But so one thing is, I know we in a prior conversation talked about your path. And before consensus, you took an international trip that I thought was so life-changing. Was it before you went to consensus?

It was when I decided to leave Slack before I had made a decision as to what I was doing next. I kind of decided I need to just get away.

And I would love to explore that because for when I heard it the first time, for me, that's what education is about. It's not academic education, but it's the idea of the social education and the way you describe this trip and all the learning lessons you did and also the self-reflection and self-awareness you got from the trip and then after. I just loved it so much. And so if you don't mind sharing why you decided to go where you did, the structure that you placed on yourself and then some of the lessons learned.

I love solo travel. I'm also five to 110 pounds. I'm very small, but very fatigued. But I've always loved solo travel. And I don't get scared or nervous about being alone or having to find my way in countries where I don't speak the language. I find it to be such an eye-opening experience and just such a test of will and fortitude and just figure it out in this. I've always been very fascinated by Asia. When I was in high school, I spent some time in India. We were sorry to my prom. I've been obsessed with doing Hana and Vendi. I still have some in my refrigerator right now as a hobby in past time. And when I got to Stanford, I decided I wanted to study Mandarin. So I took a few years of Mandarin in college. It is a very surprisingly simple language to learn from a spoken perspective because there's very little verb conjugation or tense. However, from a writing perspective, very, very complex. And from a Western speaker, the tones were not so easy for me. But I love the language and I love the culture and I had never been. When I quit Slack, I decided I was going to buy a ticket to China and I decided to start as far Northwest as I possibly could. So I flew into Kunming in the Northwest province right next to Tibet. And I wanted to get about seven weeks later out of Shanghai and I had no plan. But I gave myself three rules. So the rules were no data plan, no VPN. So I couldn't access things like Google or Facebook or most of the Western websites and only public transit. And there's some great apps like C-Trip that make it really, really easy to be able to take buses and trains and things like that. And I decided that every day I'd wake up and decide, do I want to stay in this place? So do I want to move somewhere else? And so I was just going to figure it out day by day situation. And it was awesome. I would say the first seven to 10 days, I did not see another Westerner at all. And the way that they speak versus the way that I speak is quite different. And so I struggled a lot, even asking where the bus station is. I would go up to somebody and ask how I thought to say, where is the bus station? And they'd be looking at me like, what? And then they would finally figure it out. And they would say, bus, how they say it. And I never learned that word. Like just totally different way of speaking in a dialect. So it was just one of those situations where you figure it out. People are friendly, people are nice. I kept getting so many funny looks because everything specifically the food was so inexpensive compared to things here. And I just wanted to try everything. I would go to a restaurant by myself. All the kids with their families were pointing at me and laughing. But I would order these huge dishes. And everyone's sitting looking at me going, is that just for you? But it was an awesome, awesome experience. And I made my way through the country, went around the West. I love outdoor stuff, as I mentioned earlier. So I went to a bunch of the national parks. I went to probably my favorite was Jamjajia, which is where they filmed Avatar. So if you've seen Avatar Mountains, it was spectacular. I planned to stay for a day or two. I stayed for four and a half. I could have just gone everywhere

there. Did you map any place or city you wanted to be? Or otherwise, you just knew in seven weeks you wanted to fly out of Shanghai.

I had a few places I knew I wanted to go to. Jamjajia being one, Huang Shan being another. And then I wanted to go rock climbing in Yangshua, which was actually the place I found the most Westerners. It draws a ton of rock climbers from around the world, specifically Europe. And that was fun because I stayed at a rock climbing hostel. And the people were way better than me, but it was a great group of young people that I could actually go hang out with. So that was fun. And I really wanted to go to a few other small cities. I didn't get to Beijing. I didn't get to Shen. I have plenty of places that I didn't get to explore. But I got to see a lot of more outdoorsy places. And I did go to Shenzhen, which was so fascinating because I think in the West, we think of it as manufacturing capital of the world. But it is the most pristine, modern city, gorgeous buildings. Everything was so new. It was not what I was expecting. But very cool opportunity. I will say, after five or six weeks of traveling by yourself, it definitely gets lonely. And it was so apropos. I was walking one night back to my hotel. And it was down this really narrow little street. I had seen it wasn't really graffiti. It was more like a poster. And it had said in English, actually, if you want to go fast, go alone, if you want to go far, go together. And I took a picture and it just resonated so strongly because I go fast. I don't stop. I don't sit down. And I'll put my backpack down. And I saw a ton while I was there, but you do get lonely after a while. So there is something to be said about slowing down and being with the people that are important to you.

Amazing. Well, speaking on that, you clearly went fast alone. But at what point were you thinking, OK, I don't have VPN. I don't have a data plan. Did you miss it? Or were you in that headspace work seven weeks I get through it? Or at what point were you like, gosh, I really miss working. I really miss the states. I really miss all the things that you thrived on.

I was ready to come home at the end. For me, the no data plan VPN, I don't mind that at all. It's a challenge. It's a puzzle. It's making my life harder, but in a way that I find that challenge enjoyable. So I liked that piece. I think by the end, there's so many logistics and planning nuances that happen when you're traveling alone that it kind of wears on you after a while and also the constant motion, the constant moving. You kind of just want to sit still for a bit. So I think I was ready, but I love the trip. I love seeing as much as I did the second I get home from vacation. I don't know if you're like this too. I'm constantly planning the next one. The day I get home, I'm like, OK, where am I going next? This year has been really hard not being able to travel, but I look forward to that opening up again soon. Amazing.

So then you get back from China and did your perspective change in terms of what you wanted to work on or how did you think about work in that structure where six or seven weeks away anywhere and little in China. It changes perspective in so many ways. And so how did you think about work? Do you think, oh, let's just start making my side hustle, my main hustle, or how did you think about conventional nine to five structures?

This is actually an interesting story that I haven't told very many people at all, but one of my colleagues from the first startup, he was our VP of product and a really good friend. I'd gotten to work with him for nearly five years and thought the world of him. He had left and started a company when I was at Slack and he had tried to convince me to join, but obviously I decided to go to Slack and give that a try. And I've been trying to help him and his co-founder get it off the ground and be as useful as I could. And when he found out that I was leaving Slack, which I don't even know how because he found out before I had told people, he calls me and says, you have to join us now. And my heart said no because I wasn't excited about the idea, but I love the idea of working with him. I really liked his co-founder and they wanted to bring me on as a co-founder. And the idea of being a co-founder is something I think I've always wanted to do. And I told him that I was going on this trip and I wasn't making any decisions until I got back. And I had an offer from consensus. I obviously had this offer to join as a co-founder and I had a third offer as well. And I decided no decisions, I'll figure it out when I get back. And when I got back, I ended up deciding to say yes and join him and his co-founder. And I decided I'm going to do this. I want to start a company. This is a great way to do it because I know he'd trust him. And within even a week or so, I knew my heart wasn't in it. And I knew that having spent five years at a company, you have to be all in. And I wasn't all in. And it was funny, my husband at the time, I think we were engaged or dating. But I called him and was strong. I couldn't figure out what to do. And he asked a really, really great question. I had this like pit in my stomach. And he's like, if you decided that you were 100% in going to commit to this, would that pit in your stomach go away? And I was like, no, it wouldn't. And he's like, well, then you know your answer. And he was right. And I decided I told him, I don't think that this is the good opportunity for me. I want to be 100% there for you if I'm going to do this company. And if I can't be, you don't want to hear either. And I think we had a great conversation about it. And ultimately, I had wanted to get in on the ground floor of this whole new blockchain thing. And I was like, oh, this is where my heart was. And so that made the decision a little bit easier to then go and join consensus. Amazing.

So you were there for a while and you built up quite a team. But if I know you at this point far enough, I know that you're going to move on to something else that nurtures your soul. So how long were you at consensus? And then did you pivot from blockchain or what was the next step after consensus?

I spent a year at consensus. This is a crazy time to be there. We went from maybe 200 people to 1200 people in under a year. We also were operating as a holocracy, which is a term most people are not familiar with. It is a flat company organization. So the most famous example of a company trying to do this was Zappos and Tony Shea. And holocracy literally means no management. It is completely democratic. Everyone is flat and it is very much voting by committee. So oftentimes people self select to be on various committees to take on ownership over certain things or certain decisions. A good example is we needed to figure out compensation given we were a remote first holocratic company. So how the hell do you figure out how to pay people? Especially if you have somebody who is living in Thailand and somebody who is living in New York City. The way we did it was every different part of the business got to, I call them tributes, but got to select a tribute who was going to go and be the representative on that team's behalf. And they were going to talk to their constituents and stakeholders to understand what mattered to them. And they were going to bring that information back to the committee. And the committee was going to go and create a framework around how compensation was handled at the org holistically. And that was how things were done. It is a fascinating model. I think it scales not super well. I think that is what happened with every other company that's tried it. But it was a really cool thing to see and to be a part of. And there was some magic there. I don't know if it still exists. I would imagine parts of it do. I think the org looks different today than it did in 2017. But it was magical. It truly felt like a parallel universe or something. I really enjoyed my time there. It was also a crazy time. It was this hype cycle, crypto boom and bust. Everyone wanted to be in and everyone wanted to be out. And I really loved it. I don't think there was anything negative I can say about it. It was more of I had this opportunity that I don't think I could turn down. Signal Fire, I had gotten to know the team there for about two years as an advisor. I had worked with close to 10 of the portfolio companies as somebody that was helping on growth and go to market. And I just saw how different the way their approach to venture was compared to every other VC out there. And I also recognize the fact that it's not easy for somebody that has zero finance background. I quite literally have never taken a finance loss in my life and somebody that isn't a founder that's had a successful exit to enter as somebody that's in a mid level, not junior position at a venture capital firm. So it felt like a really awesome opportunity and a team of people I just wanted to be around.