1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Patricia Nakache of Trinity Ventures (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: In terms of segment besides real estate tech, what else do you particularly like to invest in? Is healthcare It one of your sectors?

Patricia Nakache: Broadly, I spend a lot of my time in the consumer space. That can be anything from marketplaces to e-commerce or online services. In the marketplace arena, we’re an investor in Turo which is a peer-to-peer car rental marketplace. I’m an investor in Thread Up. It’s a marketplace for used clothing.

In the marketplace arena, I was also investor in Care.com. Another investment theme is she economy which is recognizing the important role of women as Chief Procurement Officers for their households. Also I’m a very active participant in social media, which is important for customer acquisition and building referral networks. That was one theme. Those are some of the areas that I spend time on.

I continue to think the sharing economy is interesting. The intersection of that and real estate are some really interesting concepts. How do you make more efficient use of real estate? A lot of these themes also coincide with an emerging consumer theme around being more experience-driven than in ownership.

Sramana Mitra: It’s a big trend right now.

Patricia Nakache: Instead of owning a car, you might take Uber or Lyft. For multi-day trips, you might rent a car on Turo. Instead of owning your furniture, you might rent your furniture. That allows you to not  be burdened by ownership. It also allows you to change things more readily. There are some interesting consumer themes.

One of the interesting things that I’ve been spending some time thinking about is the opportunit to build brands at this juncture just because I think younger consumers don’t feel a lot of affiliation to the larger CPG brands that are out there. They are embracing new brands that are values-driven. I was just meeting with a company. It’s been fascinating to see a lot of direct-to-consumer brands emerge that really speak to a new generation.

Sramana Mitra: Good segue into the hairy question that our industry is really grappling with. It’s the issue of women and entrepreneurship. Give us some general thoughts on how you are parsing the whole world around us on those topics.

Patricia Nakache: There are two separate topics. One is sexual harassment. The other one is the lack of gender and ethnic diversity in the investing community, which translates to lower funding to those populations. There has been a spotlight on the sexual harassment piece. I was surprised at the depth of it.

I lecture at Stanford Business School. I remember when some of these stories started coming to light a few years ago, I was surprised at the number of women in the class who have their own personal stories of having been harassed in conversations with investors. I’m delighted that there’s a spotlight on it. There are means to surface that behavior more readily than there was in the past. I applaud a lot of the young women who raised their hands very bravely and put themselves out there.

This segment is part 4 in the series : 1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Patricia Nakache of Trinity Ventures
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