In The Room with Paige Finn Doherty
Welcome back to another episode of Movers & Shakers! In this episode of The Room Podcast, Madison and Claudia chat with Paige Finn Doherty, Founding Partner of Behind Genius Ventures, an early-stage fund investing in product-led growth companies at the pre-seed and seed stages. BGV is backed by Bain Capital Ventures, Tribe Capital, Bonfire Ventures, and many other incredible investors. The fund also focuses on API-first products, wellness, the creator economy, and developer tools. Paige is also the author of Seed to Harvest: A Simple Explanation of Venture Capital, a result of her conversations and experiences with a multitude of venture capitalists, entrepreneurs, angel investors, and kids!
This episode focuses on Paige’s passions, how she got into venture, and her take on future tech trends. Let’s open the door.
The Room Podcast is proudly sponsored by our friends at Silicon Valley Bank and Cooley.
Key Theme 1: Being your authentic self and prioritizing your passions
Paige’s advice to emerging managers and entrepreneurs is to dig into what makes you unique. At first, Paige was thinking about focusing on B2B software in their portfolio but realized that this area was’t truly what she was passionate about. Paige instead realized that her niche is the intersection of future of work and future of play. While BGV does have B2B software in the portfolio, Paige emphasizes the importance of going after your true passions. Whatever your “thing” is needs to have that fun and excitement factor.
Key Theme 2: Breaking into venture
While Paige is now a Founding Partner of her own fund, she didn’t know that she wanted to go into venture growing up. In college, Paige was an intern for Northrop Grumman, the multinational aerospace and defense technology company. Her experience at Northrop was pivotal in Paige’s development in a professional workplace environment, as she became comfortable with her opinions despite her young age. Ultimately, this confidence led her into the space of venture. Paige met her now Co-Founder, Josh Sclisserman, on Twitter, when trying to figure out her first syndicate deal. Paige got into investing about a year ago, but it was her willingness to ask for help, voice her opinions, and leverage communities around her that contributed to where she is now.
Key Theme 3: Gen Z and the future of tech
With the new Gen Z, Paige sees a strong motion to build a portfolio career, meaning that people are no longer tying their whole professional worth to one job aymore. There’s more collaboration, openness, and willingness to be involved with different organizations. Take decentralized autonomous organizations in the crypto space as an example. Paige sees a Medici effect happening in the tech space as diversity of assets is leading to more innovation. An individual who might be in technology as a founder might also just be a creator on the side or have a completely separate side hustle.
Thank you so much for joining us on another episode of The Room Podcast! We have one more episode of our Movers & Shakers series before we launch Season 5.
This episode is now live on all podcast streaming platforms, including Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
