I have some news.

After two years of soul-searching, experimentation, and saying no to everything, I’m finally saying yes. I’ve joined Natty Zola, Ryan Broshar, and Shannon Shroyer at Matchstick Ventures. Like a moth to the flame (pun!), I’m getting back into venture capital. 

That’s pretty much my news, short and sweet. However, I’ve had several people ask me how I’ve thought about this next chapter in my life (looking at you, Alex!) – so if you want to learn more about why Matchstick, and how I got here, keep reading.

What I Did During My Pause

After leaving Techstars in October 2022, I wasn’t ready to make any commitments or moves. I felt broken, exhausted, cynical, and incapable of making decisions. I needed space from venture, an industry that is broken itself. I needed to clear my head, to do nothing for a while and figure out what I wanted to do next. I promised myself I wouldn’t make any commitments for an entire year, and I estimated it would take me about 2 years to figure out what’s next.  Luckily, I had the privilege of time. 

In that timespan, I learned that I don’t idle well. (Who knew?! Don’t answer that.) I helped start Colorado’s first women’s professional soccer team, and I ran a 6-month performance program for early-stage founders. I traveled, biked, read, journaled, and wrote. I invested. I reorganized my whole financial world. I re-engaged as an active parent with my kids. I sit on 4 boards. I have a few consulting clients. I took a few classes (writing, coaching, AI). I ended up as busy as I was before, and I had no one to blame but myself. I have Jerry Colonna’s annoyingly insightful question in my head: “How am I complicit in creating the conditions I say that I don’t want?” Turns out, I DO want the conditions I say I don’t want. Or rather, I want what they represent. So this launched me into exploring what I actually want and don’t want.

I did a lot of reading during this exploration, but there are 2 books and exercises I’d like to highlight. 

Designing My Life

The first book I read (well, re-read actually) was  Designing Your Life by Bill Burnett & Dave Evans, specifically the Odyssey Planning exercise.  The goal was to come up with various versions of interesting careers, each option condensed to 1 piece of paper, and include some information to help make a decision. Here is my full list, for the curious – and don’t judge – you have your own list too!

• Run an entrepreneurship center
• Start a gym for people over 45 (I know, Boulder, gah…)
• Start a software company (at that time it was around a CRM)
• Start my own venture fund
• Become a partner in a venture fund
• Run a B&B in a tropical foreign country
• Run a cohort-based program for early-stage founders
• Become a writer, public speaker
• Join an existing company as CxO
• Own a professional sports team
• Run a 15-bedroom house on a lake with a dock and a staff, a farm-to-table regenerative farm, sustainable energy generation, and a retreat for families and startups
• Launch a think tank around social entrepreneurship
• Start a town (yes! I even looked at buying an existing town, no not Schitz Creek)
• University professor
• Start a larger-scale co-living community

After a few months of diligence each plan, I discovered that some of those paths were things I romanticised about but didn’t actually want to do.  Run a B&B in a foreign tropical place? OMG bugs & laundry! This exercise allowed me to dream, to figure out what I needed to do for next steps, to figure out what questions I needed to answer, and then confidently throw out potential versions of my life without having to wonder “what if”. If you’re in a time of transition, I highly recommend this exercise.

But Odyssey Planning alone didn’t do it.

Morning Pages and Facing Myself

The second exercise was to read Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way, a book from the 1990s about helping artists unblock and become more creative regularly and sustainably. (A strange choice, perhaps.)  The unlock for me was the concept of Morning Pages, which was to write 3 pages every day, in a stream of consciousness format, longhand. Some days, I just vented. Many days had to-do lists (insight!). Some days, I had no idea what to write about, so I just wrote “what to write about” over and over again. I wrote 3 lines of a poem once and then spent the rest of the pages expounding on what a terrible poet I was and how much I love Shel Silverstein. I wrote a scathing letter to sugar. I found myself complaining a lot, over dumb stuff. Over time, some themes emerged that allowed me to redirect my own inner voice, or realize that when I verbalized something, it wasn’t that big of a deal, or that likely to happen. I could dream freely, identify what was energizing, what was infuriating, and what patterns were on repeat in my head. Morning pages were (are) magical for me.

Between Morning Pages and Odyssey Planning – I had themes. And I wrote those out in my Morning Pages to highlight what I wanted and what I didn’t want.  Here’s a snapshot:

What I didn’t want:

• To be by myself, to be solely responsible.
• A boss, someone I had to go along with if it was against my values, a thing I couldn’t imprint upon, or any sort of power dynamics.
• To be repetitive or heavily process-oriented.
• To be distant from my family, mentally and physically. I only have a few years left with my kids at home. To be a slave to my calendar, to other people’s demands.
• To be around people I don’t trust, who don’t trust me.
• To be one of many. 
• To start from scratch, again.

What I did want:

• Partners, equals, people that I love, know, and trust who are values and lifestyle aligned. 
• To be inventive, to experiment with “how to do it differently, better”. To challenge the status quo.
• To be in charge of my calendar, to spend these last precious years with my kids.
• To work in a zone of genius, something I can be best in the world at (turns out, that’s working with founders)
• To be on the cutting edge of technology, the world is changing too fast to be in the stands and not the arena.
• To learn, to grow, to be challenged.
• To positively impact the world around me, to give back what I’ve been given 10x. 

This list became a decision matrix, so as I explored each Odyssey Plan, I could evaluate it through that lens. I went deeper on some of those plans (like ‘own a professional sports team, run a cohort for founders, writer/speaker) – but they were lacking for me for various reasons. 

One day, Natty called me up to talk about the Techstars Colorado reboot – and it just so happened that my Odyssey Plan of “Become a Partner in a Venture Fund” page was on top next to my desk. And as I was talking to Natty, the very famous TS Elliot quote popped into my head:

“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time”

TS Elliot

It became clear very quickly what move I should make.

Why Matchstick

All of the things I was looking for were right here in front of me, the whole time:

• I’ve known Natty and Ryan for over a decade. We worked together closely at Techstars, so we have deep trust with each other.
• I could have partners without power dynamics.
• Natty and Ryan are eager to experiment, to challenge the status quo.
• I can be in charge of my schedule, not have to live on planes, and be here for my kids for the next couple of years.
• I can work in my zone of genius, with founders, investing in teams and helping them succeed – and this translates directly to economics for the founders, our investors, and me.
• There is nothing repetitive about venture investing – each company and deal is unique.
• I will be constantly learning and growing every day.
• I can have a platform to be highly impactful in a positive way, not only in venture, but to startups, the people they hire, and our communities. Startups are a key leverage point for change in the world.

That brings us to today. I am so grateful Natty and Ryan are willing to give this a shot, to take a chance. Bringing on a new person in a small firm can be very disruptive, and I’m not exactly a wallflower. But I am sensitive to what they’ve built and will hold sacred what works, while helping to uplevel what can be improved. I aim to be a multiplier. I want to be one of the best in the world at this, I think I can be – and if that works, it can multiply my impact and allow me to still do some of the options in my Odyssey Plans that I haven’t yet crossed out.

So watch out world, I’m baaaack. If you are a founder between the coasts with an innovative approach to a problem or an opportunity using technology, and you have some product developed and some early signs of market interest, reach out. Let’s make something exceptional together.