Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Christina Brodbeck, Silicon Valley (Part 4)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Irina: Do you serve on the boards of any of the companies you invested in?

Christina: No, I don’t. I do serve on some advisory boards, but those aren’t the companies that I have invested in.

Irina: What do you think entrepreneurs could do better?

Christina: Going back to what I was saying before, try to engage your angel investors as much as possible. They’re your resource. Use them as advisors, any time you have a question, any question about your product or how to go to market. Just any questions that you might have with what you’re working on.

Irina: I saw you are a mentor with Dave McClure’s 500 Startups; can you tell us about that?

Christina: I’m really excited to be a part of that. It’s a great group of mentors and a great group of companies, so far. I think Dave is trying to do something incredible, and I’m excited to get involved.

Irina: How does their mentorship system work?

Christina: Right now, that’s being figured out as things go along. But, what I got out of what Dave is trying to do is really try and have a community where the mentors are not just figureheads, but they’re there whenever possible, in the trenches with the founders, to get their hands dirty and offering advice.

Things right now are getting figured out, but there definitely are things like pairing mentors with companies. There are all sorts of ways to get involved. And if you’re a mentor and you have an idea on how you want to help out, it’s great in the sense that you can ping Dave or Christine [Tsai] or any of the people involved, and they definitely seem amenable to helping out any way that you want.

Irina: How did you become a mentor for 500 Startups?

Christina: I had worked with Christine, who works at 500 Startups, in the past at YouTube and Google. So, I knew her that way. I had worked in mobile and UI [user interface] and they wanted some experience in that, so she asked me.

Irina: What are your personal daily challenges?

Christina: Right now, my primary focus is that I’m working on my startup TheIceBreak, so I really would like that to succeed. That’s my day-to-day focus. On the angel investment side, [my challenge] is just making sure that I make decisions to get involved in companies, not just because I think they’re going to make me money, but because I really passionately believe in them, and I really want to see them succeed.

Irina: Have you or will you seek investors for TheIceBreak?

Christina: Yes. We were self-funded, and we started talking to people recently about funding.

Irina: What do you think about women and angel investing?

Christina: That’s a very good question. I’ve only been doing this for a short time, but honestly, I haven’t come across that many females. There aren’t that many founders, and then it seems like there are even fewer angel investors.

I think a main reason for that may be because you have to have money in order to angel invest, unless you’re part of a fund or a VC and you’re using other people’s money. A lot of times, unless you have a very technical background, you’re usually not very early at a startup and you probably don’t get a large portion of equity. I think if we can get more women to be interested in technical fields, then later on, we’ll probably see more women making money from exits and also pursuing angel investing.

Of course, things need to change on both sides, but honestly, the best advice is if you’re a woman and you have an idea, don’t be afraid to take a risk and go after it and do it.

Irina: How often do you think about yourself as a woman?

Christina: On a daily basis, I don’t think about myself as a woman when I’m doing my job. Sometimes somebody will say something or you’ll walk into a room and realize, like, wow there’re only three women here and 100 men, and then you’ll notice it. But most of the time, I don’t think about it.

Irina: Thank you, Christina. Fantastic insights. I hope we’ll see more women soon, both in tech and in angel investing.

This segment is part 4 in the series : Seed Capital From Angel Investors: Christina Brodbeck, Silicon Valley
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