Good morning, Broadsheet readers! An ad for lactation cookies is barred from Times Square, Betches is a digital media success story, and GV’s youngest-ever partner launches her own fund. Have a productive Monday!
– Take the heat. During Terri Burns’ five years at GV, where she was the venture capital firm’s youngest-ever partner at 26 and first Black female partner, she saw a common flaw in how deals get done. Venture capitalists wait for signals from other VCs that an investment is worthwhile. No one wants to take a risk without the prodding of competition from other investors—a phenomenon she calls “heat.”
“A lot of investors are driven by heat, versus being driven by true innovation,” she says. It leads to “poor experiences for founders, who have this ‘chicken or egg’ fundraising problem,” she adds. “They’re talking to amazing investors, they’re getting some interest, but no one’s really willing to take the leap to anchor a deal unless they see that other people are involved. But if everyone [holds out], that creates a really challenging dynamic.” The same can happen in reverse; take a phenomenon like crypto and its meme coins—entire categories driven, almost solely, by heat, Burns argues.
Burns is now launching her own firm, Coins2Day is the first to report. And she wants to do things differently. Type Capital will aim to be the first in and write checks without signals from other investors that it’s a good deal. “I want to move quickly and move efficiently and not over-index on heat,” she says.
She is in the early stages of building the pre-seed and seed investing firm and hasn’t deployed capital yet. Burns, now 30, plans to hire a team and wants to “find founders before other VCs find founders”—and then help those founders find follow-on investors. She’s interested in digital consumer companies, tools for developers, and AI, especially from Gen Z founders.
At GV, she was hired for her different perspective and insight into young founders. She led GV to invest in Partiful, the event-planning platform popular with Gen Z. While that deal closed, Burns says it was slower than she would have liked and helped form her “heat” thesis. After GV’s investment, Andreessen Horowitz followed; Partiful has raised more than $20 million.
Taking the risk to invest first comes with early ownership and the opportunity to build alongside founders. “Not being super caught up in this ecosystem of heat that is really popular right now is the path to winning,” Burns says, “and also the path to more collaboration and respect from founders.”
Emma Hinchliffe
[email protected]
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ALSO IN THE HEADLINES
- Semester of stepping down. Martha Pollack announced that she will resign as president of Cornell University at the end of June, making her the third woman to step down from leading an Ivy League university in the past six months. Pollack said the decision was “mine and mine alone” and wasn’t pushed out over protests and instances of anti-Semitism on campus. Wall Street Journal
- Ad swap. A billboard operator in Times Square last week replaced an advertisement for lactation cookies because it violated “guidelines on acceptable content.” The billboard depicted a pregnant Molly Baz, the cookbook author, wearing a bikini top and two cookies. Critics say the swap promotes a double standard since ads in Times Square regularly feature near-naked underwear models. New York Times
- State of mind. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R–La.) Told Politico that he does not expect a national abortion ban to pass even if Donald Trump wins the White House and Republicans take control of Congress in November, deferring to Trump’s stance that states should decide. Politico
- Oprah owns up. Oprah Winfrey took responsibility for promoting unrealistic diets during a YouTube live event with WeightWatchers last week. Winfrey told the audience that she “set a standard for people watching that I nor anybody else could uphold.” The TV icon also spoke with other participants, like WeightWatchers CEO Sima Sistani and actress Rebel Wilson, about body positivity in the era of weight loss drugs. CNN
- Betches love this. Betches is a rare digital media success story. The female-run brand that grew through Instagram memes recently sold to the owner of LADBible. Its three founders, who have known each other since elementary school, are figuring out what to do with it next. New York Times
MOVERS AND SHAKERS: Eiko Osawa, Keiko Akashi, and Tiffany & Co. Executive Miyoko Demay will join the board of Nintendo, which had been all-male until 2020.
ON MY RADAR
Book bans are surging in Florida. So Lauren Groff opened a bookstore New York Times
Magic city undercover Financial Times
The feminist roots of the Chinese Qipao Elle
PARTING WORDS
“But in life, just being a woman, it’s taken me a long time—and having children and having ups and downs in a career—to realize that I have to be my own best advocate.”
— Actress Brooke Shields on finding a voice in Hollywood
