In this episode of the Agents of Innovation Podcast, David Knies breaks the news that guest Anna Palmer has joined Boston’s Flybridge Capital Partners as its first-ever female General Partner. Anna is a Harvard Law graduate who chose to follow her passion for entrepreneurial adventures instead of a law career. She has been the co-founder of luxury reseller Fashion Project, women-owned business marketplace Dough, and X-Factor Ventures, a fund focused exclusively on female founders. They discuss Anna’s infinite curiosity, encouraged by her parents, her reasons for choosing a different path, her approach to investing at Flybridge will be, and how to close the gap in venture funding for female founders.
Podcast Highlights
2:07 – Breaking News, Anna Palmer joins Flybridge Capital Partners at General Partner: “I am super excited that I’m going to be now investing full time and joining flybridge capital as a general partner.”
14:27 – Living her passion: “There was a moment where I was like I don’t particularly enjoy what I’m doing during the day. I’m just living for what I’m doing at night.”
20:00 – Infinite curiosity: “My parents did a great job of letting us just figure things out on our own. Both of them would role model that. I can remember coming home and my dad would be working on the computer, doing something. And by working on the computer, I mean, actually like the inside of the computer, it’d be like spread out on the kitchen floor cause he’s upgrading something and so I got to see him tinker a lot. And then my mom was always just really curious and was reading a ton of books about a lot of different things…those two values of just infinite curiosity, and then building things to solve your own problems.”
24:50 – Growth in thinking: “What I realized though, now over time, like when I reflect back on my Fashion Project experience and my co-founder and I still talk about it, back in the day, the things that we’re actually most proud of are the people transformations that happen.”
32:22 – Brand is the way somebody feels: “I think brand is the way somebody feels when they interact with the thing that you’ve built. So like there’s a lot of things that go into that, which is, you know, the aesthetic or the customer experience, etc. But it’s really the emotion that it generates when they see what it is that you’re putting in front of them.”
36:33 – What’s important when listening to a pitch: “First thing I look for is what I would consider founder superpower, and having a super power that relates directly to the business that they’re building.”
40:55 – Inspiring others to become entrepreneurs: “I didn’t even know what venture capital was. One of the things I’m really passionate about related to that is trying to just expand awareness beyond the big tech hubs, that this is an option for people.”
