E9: From 500 Global to Launching Southpaw Capital: Tanya Soman's Approach to Unbundling the Accelerator Model

At Slice, we look for emerging managers with a chip on their shoulder, a relentless drive to defy the odds and get sh*t done. In this conversation, we sit down with Solo GP of Southpaw Capital, Tanya Soman.

Her story begins in Brooklyn, where she learned the fundamentals of entrepreneurship through her family's ventures. 

"When my parents moved here, they had sold everything in India, we all slept in the same bedroom and my dad pumped gas at a gas station." 

From that gas station, her family built a series of businesses—an auto body shop, a car dealership, and real estate ventures. She recalls one particular memory where she learned a crucial business lesson: after renovating and selling a foreclosure home, she watched the new owner demolish it. When she expressed frustration,  her father’s response was so simple: "Wasn't the point to make money? Did we? Then that's it."

This pragmatic approach to business would serve her well in Silicon Valley. When traditional job applications went unanswered, she got creative: "I said, 'hi, is this weekend available [for a coffee chat]? I happen to be in the neighborhood.' And within five minutes, every single person replied." With that, she bought a plane ticket to San Francisco, lined up interviews, and ultimately secured a role at 500 Startups. Over the next six years there, she played a pivotal role in shaping one of tech's most influential accelerator programs.

At 500 Startups, Tanya invested in early-stage at scale. "We invested in over 2,600 companies in 74 countries…Every cohort was 30 to 50 companies... You meet with your companies every single week for three to four months." The network she built during this time remains invaluable

"There's not a place in the world that I go to where I don't run into someone from 500 or someone I have invested in. A lot of the investments I make are in relation to a founder I met during my time at 500” 

Watching the accelerator landscape evolve, Tanya observed significant changes: "There are clear leaders in the accelerator space. They move a little bit, but YC takes the cake. And then once you have so many, the market is saturated." The shifts in early-stage funding have been equally dramatic: "The seed stage funds have moved up market and they're doing A's and B's... Companies aren't raising necessarily from typical seed funds. They're raising from friends and family or different institutions."

We strongly agree that there’s a huge unbundling of the traditional accelerator model, leaving a large opportunity in the earliest stages for emerging managers to “join” the teams and shape the future of the companies they invest in. 

These insights informed the creation of her own fund, Southpaw Capital. Named after left-handed fighters in boxing, the firm embodies Tanya's investment philosophy:

"Southpaws don't train with everyone else. They have a lot more grit and perseverance to get to the same place... They statistically win, which is really the core definition of the ethos in the founders that we look for."

On the other side of the table, Southpaw interestingly taps into Donor Advised Funds (DAFs) as an LP source. "There's over 200 billion dollars in donor advised fund capital that is already allocated today," Tanya explains, and we thought that this creative approach to fund structure exemplified her ability to spot overlooked opportunities.

Finding promising founders requires recognizing familiar patterns of grit and determination. "I grew up on car lifts, in foreclosure homes and Home Depot, at auto garages and motels, breaking down buildings and just seeing that same hustle in another person... it's special."

To connect with Tanya and learn more about Southpaw Capital, visit southpawcap.vc or reach out at tanya@southpawcap.vc.

To hear more, visit slicefund.substack.com