Elicia McDonald of AirTree Ventures Shares Her Daily Routine
Venture capital is all about finding the right outliers, says AirTree Ventures partner Elicia McDonald.
06:10
My day starts with my two-year-old coming in to say, “Mama, the clock is yellow”, and I get a kiss. On a bad day, my two girls wake me up closer to 5:30am when their clock’s still blue. I check Slack, emails and WhatsApp and negotiate with a four-year-old about what to wear.
07:30
I drive the girls to daycare and walk to the station. The train is packed but I’m six months pregnant [at time of interview] so people shuffle over. I listen to an audiobook, Winners Dream, that quotes Theodore Roosevelt: “No one cares how much you know until they know how much you care.” I like that. VC [venture capital] is a people role. For a diverse portfolio, you need to build genuine relationships with a range of founders and support them through ups and downs. When AirTree’s recruiting, empathy is a non-negotiable.
08:30
Meet with Regrow, in the resilient agriculture space. Anastasia [Volkova, co-founder and CEO] closed her $50 million Series B at the same time she was getting her mum out of Ukraine.
09:00
Guest prep session for our Stacking the Odds series, where great operators share knowledge with the local startup community. Sara Clemens, a board director at Duolingo and Hootsuite and former COO of Twitch and Pandora, talks about thinking of the COO role differently depending on what a company needs at a particular time – when to stay scrappy and when to put in process.
09:30
Coffee with an early-stage founder. There are misconceptions around what a first meeting with a VC looks like, that you’ve got 30 seconds for the elevator pitch. But you don’t need to be a polished pitcher. The initial meeting is about getting to understand the founder’s motivations. Are they able to convey their vision with a passion that gets us excited and will excite other investors, customers and potential employees? I also leave time for them to ask heaps of questions. Great founders will be choosing between a number of investors.
10:30
Partner presentation. A founder comes in to meet the rest of the partnership. I’ve read the investment committee [IC] paper – a memo prepared by the partner and investment manager who did diligence. Now’s an opportunity to hear the vision firsthand, to ask questions and for founders to ask how we’d work with them. I’m mindful it can be intimidating. We always say, “We’ll try not to interrupt you too much”, but it’s better when it’s a conversation.
11:30
As soon as the founder leaves the room, we have a blind voting process. No-one speaks or reacts. We fill in a Notion form with our initial vote: a “strong yes”, “supportive”, “not supportive” or a “veto”. The process is to avoid bias and groupthink. It’s important that the loudest person or the first to speak doesn’t influence others. [See The Real Deal.] Then we chat and debate – starting with the person with the strongest view – and give people the opportunity to change their vote. We need two “strong yes” votes from the five investment partners to make an investment. The deal lead might do additional diligence. Otherwise we call the founder that day.
12:15
Team lunch in the office. Everyone’s in on Tuesdays.
13:00
Weekly IC meeting, where we review companies we met over the week. The partners and investment managers meet about 40 new companies each week and score them from 0 to 10. We discuss only those that score six or above. If an investment manager gives a new opportunity an eight or a nine, a partner will jump on and we decide what we want to get comfortable with in our diligence. We make around 12 new investments a year.
14:00
Emails. Messages. Siobhan Savage, CEO of [talent platform] Reejig, WhatsApps about aligning goals before the next funding round. She’s getting a lot of interest from international funds and wants to stay focused on executing.
14:30
Weekly meeting for the portfolio success team, which runs executive C-suite peer forums. We’re planning a deep dive into ESOPs [employee stock option plans] and hosting our inaugural CEO summit – an opportunity for the CEOs within our portfolio to network in person.
We have 90 portfolio companies now, including eight unicorns [privately owned companies valued at more than $1 billion]. People are incredibly willing to help others avoid mistakes they’ve made. There’s also that element of talking to someone who’s going through the same challenges. The founding journey can be very lonely.
15:00
Call a customer of a company I met two weeks ago. We want to unpack how the product has impacted their workflow, what other solutions they’ve considered and how they’d feel if the product was no longer available. You get nuggets of wisdom. We typically do four calls and only when we’re very serious.
15:30
Monthly founder call with Human, a pre-seed early-stage company in the healthtech space. Georgia Vidler and Kate Lambridis are building out their first version of the product and we discuss hiring.
We strive for relationships that when something goes really well, we’re the first people the founder wants to call. And the first when something goes really bad.
16:15
Emails. Slack.
17:30
Time with my family. I try to stick to that.
19:30
Once a week, I join a running club with a friend. I hope to keep it up a bit longer.
22:00
Parenting two kids, working full-time, being pregnant – I don’t have trouble falling asleep.
The real deal
AirTree’s blind voting process documents each partner’s opinion; the voters include pros, cons and whether additional diligence would change their mind. There’s a lot for AirTree to analyse later – what correlated to success? – and the data will become more valuable over time. “It’s a long feedback cycle knowing whether your swing is right or not,” says McDonald. “You have signs as companies progress. But it’s 10 years until we’re giving the money back to our investors.”
The investment manager also votes, without changing the outcome. “When you’re training up talent in VC, this is an incredible learning experience,” says McDonald.“It’s a way to get comfortable with having a view and leaning into that with conviction.”
