Check out Kimberley Nixon online!

• Website - openventure.capital.com

• Linkedin - KimberelyNixon

Note: This is an original transcript–edited for sense, length, and clarity.  If you have any questions or concerns, please email our host, Doria Lavagnino, at doria@sheventurespodcast.com.

Intro: 

Doria Lavagnino: This Los Angeles–based venture capitalist is the founder and managing partner of Open Venture Capital and a partner for the well-known accelerator Techstars in Los Angeles. She is passionate about increasing access to investment for women of color, which we know raised less than 1 percent of all venture capital in 2022. Prior to her pivot of founding Open Venture Capital, she was in executive management, in sales roles, in the health and fitness industries. And health is a topic she knows intimately as she can also share how she overcame cancer in her late 20s. She is balancing, like many of us, her passion and also being a wife, and mother to two tweens. I believe they’re still tweens. I would like to welcome Kimberley Nixon. Welcome to SheVentures.

Kimberley Nixon: Thank you so much for having me.

Doria: It is great to have you, and, as I said before we started recording, this is a topic that is very close to my heart. I always like to start with a bit of background for context. Can you tell us a little bit about where you grew up, and a person, place, or thing that is memorable to you, even today?

Kimberley: I love that as an opening question. I grew up in Brooklyn, New York.

Doria: Woo! That’s where I am.

Kimberley: Before the gentrification and the artisanal mayo and breads and everything showed up. I grew up in a Caribbean neighborhood. My family is Jamaican. I grew up in East Flatbush, and then we eventually moved to Canarsie, and I also lived in Bed-Stuy while I was in business school. Yeah, my memories from my childhood are, I talk about this with friends a lot because I grew up in a very, very diverse and eclectic neighborhood. My schools were very diverse. I was probably in my middle school years before I realized that not everyone had schools as diverse as the schools that I attended.

And I mean, every different ethnicity. You know, you could get any kind of food. And that’s basically all of my motivation is food-related. So I was always, I was always looking for the best everything, the best dumplings from Chinese restaurants, the best baklava, the best, you know, beef patties, all of the things. 

And so I, I think I was, was given an opportunity to understand and really appreciate culture, cultural differences, and the beauty in the mix and the melt of it all from a very young age. I loved my childhood and I’ll stack it up against anybody else’s any day.

 Doria: That’s wonderful. And I don’t hear that very often, so it’s nice to hear. Living in New York, having been raised on the West Coast originally, I remember coming here in ’96. And it was a little pre-, or like right when the gentrification that you’re talking about started to happen. And it did lose a lot, Brooklyn did. And it happens everywhere. I’m sure you know, it used to be like... a little scary, quite frankly, like dark alleys, and now it’s super hip, and that is an ongoing issue with big cities. I will say about New York one thing, is that it has many challenges, but it does show that diverse people can live together.

 Kimberley: Yeah, New York is a living, breathing manifestation of resilience.

 Doria: Yes.

 Kimberley: It’s a city that, for all of the changes that it’s been through, the culture has always been tried, people have always tried to shift the culture one way or another. And you just can’t, you know, you just, you can’t get rid of what made New York great. You can clean up all the streets, you can get rid of all the rats, you can try to get rid of all the, you know, the little corner stores, the guys selling things on corners, you could try, but the fabric and the culture of the city remains. It doesn’t matter how many skyscrapers go up.

 Doria: I love that, and it’s so true. Can you tell us about your personal journey in terms of your career and what led you to create Open Venture Capital?

Kimberley: Yes, one of the things that I’ve started to do more, I didn’t realize I was an elder in this career game until people started recently asking me for advice. And I was like, I’m still figuring it out too, guys. I don’t have all the answers. But I have been sharing a bit more about my career journey because I think it’s important that young people understand that none of us have it figured out. Those of us that have the most stellar careers and really thought that they were gonna stay on one path and even maybe stayed on one path, at some point or another had to question whether or not they were moving in the direction that best served them, whether or not they were going to be able to work at this pace for the rest of their life. There are lots of questions along the way. And so I appreciate you giving me an opportunity to talk through my very windy path of a career that has led me here. And I know, on the surface, being a venture capitalist can look really compelling, but it is frankly the hardest work of my life.

Doria: Oh, I can only imagine.

A Stranger in the Lobby Answers a Prayer

Kimberley: So I started my career as a management consultant at Deloitte Consulting right out of college, which, even that was pretty abnormal, given my background. I went to a liberal arts college, a small liberal arts college. I wasn’t an econ or a finance major. I was, for lack of better words, a poli-sci and African-American studies major at Wesleyan University. And as far as I can tell, now that I look back on it, what I’m sure happened is that someone decided to drop out of the program for new graduates late spring, before we all started in the summer. So they had an open slot and they had kind of like an open call for an open slot. And I managed to snag that spot.

Doria: Awesome, I think.

Kimberley: I’m going to say this here because I’m still searching for this person, but this is how unprepared I was. I went to the interview. I went to college in Connecticut. The interview was in New York. So I took the Metro-North down to New York. I wanted to be early. So I was very early. It was about an hour, maybe two hours early, and I sat in the lobby with my GRE study book because I thought I was gonna go get a master’s. This was like, I was doing this interview on, like, a wing and a prayer.

And I’m sitting in the lobby across from a gentleman that’s also interviewing, but for a role post-MBA. And he’s like, “Hey, are you prepared for your interview by chance?” And I was like, “I don’t know, not really, kind of like, you know, I’ll figure it out.” And he sat in that lobby and he prepped me for an hour.

Doria: Incredible.

Kimberley: I went into my interview and said everything that he said and nailed it. Now, was I able to add a little bit of my own pizzazz and razzle-dazzle?

Doria: I’m sure.

Kimberley: Certainly, but that man whose name I cannot remember and who I’m absolutely certain did not accept a role in that office, I looked for him for years. I believe his other option was something in fashion in Paris, and I think he took that, as I would have. 

Kimberley: And, but yeah, so he was sent simply for, you know, the opportunity to prepare me. So, and I talk about that because I think there’s a lot of serendipity in our careers and I encourage people to look for them and take advantage of them.

Doria: Yes.

More Serendipity Leads to Panama

Kimberley: So, I was a management consultant for several years. I went back to business school. I went to business school and went back to consulting thereafter. And in another serendipitous moment, one of my dear, dear friends was working in recruiting at Under Armour. I had moved to Baltimore to be with my then-boyfriend, now husband. And one of our dear friends was working in recruiting at Under Armour and she said she was looking for people with a consulting background. And I was not interested. I didn’t know where Under Armour was in the city. I had a two-year contract with Deloitte, and I was probably a year in at the time that we were having this conversation. And so I was like, “I can’t help you. I can maybe find some other people for you.” But she really wanted me to interview.

Doria: Right.

Kimberley: I did eventually end up meeting with the team. I met with Gene McCarthy, who was the head of footwear at the time. And Gene is a legend in footwear. We hit it off immediately, although Gene is such a wonderful person that he could hit it off with anybody immediately, but at the time I didn’t know that. I thought we had a real chemistry.

So I ended up taking that role as head of strategy for footwear. I spent about eight years at Under Armour doing a number of different things. It was an incredible time to be a part of the brand where we were just growing like wildfire. There were so many things to do, never enough hands to do them. And so, if you were enterprising and smart and willing to take on things that were probably well above your pay grade, you were given an opportunity to do so. And that is so, so, so rare.

So I started in footwear. I ended up on our connected fitness team, launching our first smart shoe. My last role at Under Armour was as Head of Marketing for Emerging Markets. I moved my family to Panama, which was an incredible experience.

Once we had already uprooted our life, you know, starting to look around, figuring out what we wanted to do next, I was very much a proponent of taking these risks now while our kids were young and before they really needed to get settled into a school. So we moved to L.A. I moved to L.A. for a role as GM of the Americas and Head of Sales for Manduka Yoga, which is in El Segundo. We fell in love with L.A. and we’ve been here for about five years now. 

So [then] I left Manduka. I went to a startup called Health House as COO. In those last two roles, which were private equity backed and VC backed, I started to really get a sense of what private capital looked like and what it looked like to really infuse capital into a business in order to boost its growth. And I started to think about how my path from an operator could meld with that path of private capital, and the rest is history. There’s a lot there but I’ll stop talking now.

Doria: No, no, it’s fascinating. And what I was thinking about, firstly, Under Armour, this is kind of a shallow observation, but it was a brand that was completely reinvented because it’s been around, I think, for a long time. And then all of a sudden, it had this huge resurgence. So interesting to know that you were a part of that. It’s also interesting to me that you were able to move around and have the foresight to do it while your children were young because it is true. I have daughters now who are 18 and 15. It’s much more difficult as they get older to do those things. And so Panama, what do you, what was one thing that you miss about Panama?

 Kimberley: I miss everything about Panama. I had the most incredible experience in Panama. And again, maybe because my family’s Caribbean, Panama felt like a bit of Jamaica and Miami pulled together. And so, very accessible. The Tocumen Airport in Panama is kind of like the hub for essentials in South America. So anywhere else you need to go, you’re going to go through Panama, so it’s an incredibly accessible country. And when I was telling people that we were moving, people don’t really — Americans specifically, if they haven’t traveled, they don’t really — have a sense for what we’re talking about in terms of development, roads, internet, all this stuff.

 Doria: Yes.

 Kimberley: Panama is as developed as any other major city. And in fact, it is a country where a lot of companies put some version of their international hub because of its accessibility and because they use the USD as a currency. There are some tax treatments there that companies like as well.

Doria: I didn’t know that.

 Kimberley: Yeah, so there’s an actual currency, but USD is very much accepted. And my favorite thing, my dad lives in Florida, and so it was just a hop, skip, and a jump for him to come down and visit. And every time we would take him to the Panama Canal, you have to go early in the morning to see a ship go through. But it is, everyone should go look it up on YouTube. I kid you not. It is a feat. It is an engineering feat.

It doesn’t matter whether you care about engineering or not. You’ve never seen anything designed as brilliantly as you’ve seen the Panama Canal designed. It is insane the way that they use water as an elevator to get a ship through the canal from one body of water to the other. It’s insane. It’s beautiful to watch. And we would do it every single time my dad came down.  

Doria: That’s on my bucket list. I want to see that in real life. And I think so many people probably don’t realize that had the Panama Canal not been created, commerce would have been really difficult.

Kimberley: Yeah.

Open to a New Venture

Doria: And so it’s historically incredibly important as well. So when you... I’m trying to decide how to ask this. So, okay, you started Open Venture Capital like two years ago, but you were thinking about it before. How long did it take? Because I know part of the job is to raise the capital so that you can invest in companies. How long did that take? And talk a little bit about that.

Kimberley: Yes, so I will, I’m going to rephrase your question and then I’ll answer it because I think there are two parts to it. One is how long have I been thinking about starting my own fund? And the second is how long did it take me to raise this fund? 

So I’ve been thinking about the fund or some version of raising a fund for quite some time. I wanted to. I thought I was going to do this first as a real estate investor. I’ve loved real estate and have been investing in real estate for most of my adult life. And I thought I was going to do it from a career perspective as well. I thought I was going to go into real estate private equity after business school.

The global financial crisis that we all experienced back in 2008–2009 really impacted that. And so again, things that — I don’t know if I’d call it serendipity, but — pivots that I did not intend to take, I took because of the circumstances that I was handed. So I was trying to figure out my way back to real estate private equity first, and then starting to look at the instruments, the ways in which people raise capital, the ways in which people invest as one entity.

And that is how I started to become more comfortable with VC and PE as a means to an end from an investment perspective. And then again, as I was working with these teams, both the PE- and VC-backed team, I was very curious. I asked all the questions. I wanted to know how people got those jobs, who was on their cap tables, what kind of funds they raised, how much you had to have in order to become an investor in one of those. 

By the time I had moved on to Health House, as COO, Health House’s majority shareholder was essentially partnering with the company to hire me and also to bring new investment into the startup. And I took that role with the intention of becoming an operating partner for VC-backed companies, not as...not for the sole purpose of becoming a CEO for a startup, but instead for being able to continue to kind of pop in and out of companies and add value, you know, as I go along.

Doria: Absolutely.

Kimberley: When I left Health House mid-pandemic, again, another pivot that no one could have anticipated, I thought about how I could still do that: pop in and out of different companies, but without having a whole fund behind me. And so I was advising a handful of startups just on my own. And then I was consulting for larger brands like Headspace and Tonal at the same time. And I mean, mid-pandemic, you could do that. We didn’t have anywhere else to go. All I had was work, right? And I enjoyed my work. So I took on a lot in a short period of time, but it was also very beneficial, in terms of testing my thesis that I could add value in this way without having to be a full-time employee in these roles and that there was a way for me to also invest alongside adding value. 

So all of that is the lead up to, “Oh, I should probably start a fund.” Starting a fund is very difficult and I actually am still raising, so I raise and deploy at the same time. And I started the fund last year. I started advising in 2021, but started the fund in earnest in 2022.

Doria: And how much and who do you raise from? And are you able to say how much you’ve raised?

Kimberley: I won’t say how much I’ve raised, so you can probably dub that part out, but who do you want to ask the question about who do you raise from?

Doria: Yeah, I’m asking who do you typically raise from?

Kimberley: So my fund is a small fund. This first fund is a proof-of-concept fund, meaning you wanna prove that your thesis works, that you know what you’re doing as a fund manager, that you can be a good fiduciary and you have a strong diligence process. And you can pick them, you can choose good companies. And so we’re targeting $10 million for this fund. And when your fund is small, that’s small. Someone told me it’s called a nano fund and that made me feel great, but, you know, larger funds are $50 million, $100 million, $200 million. A lot larger firms have a billion dollars of assets under management, over the course of several funds. 

And so when your fund is small, when you take investments from high-net-worth individuals, people that have maybe been at their jobs for a long time and also have an equity component or a bonus. And so they kind of have access to cash in a way that they’re not really sure what to do with it outside of the normal investment paths. They’re probably not going to go into an active investment role and buy a business or anything of that nature while they are working. So they’re looking for ways to gain access to potential outsized returns on their capital. 

And that’s important to say because venture is really risky. So I need to say here that I’m not a financial advisor and nothing I say here is financial advice. But the way that a lot of folks think about their portfolio construction is they’re putting a lot of it into the public-market, into stocks, bonds, equities. And they kind of have a sense for what that return looks like, especially averaged over an extended period of time. And then if you feel like your portfolio is pretty sound on that side, you would slice off a chunk, a small chunk, and put that at risk with something like an alternative asset, like venture PE a year ago, two years ago. You probably would have included crypto in that bucket. 

And the goal is to see if that small slice can really have an outsized return. You have that outsized return, you can return your original principal back to your regular portfolio, and you can continue to put that return, the returned principal, the returned amount, at risk. And if it doesn’t return what you think it should return, it should have very little impact to your overall portfolio, and your portfolio should recover without much incident. So  that’s really the goal.

Doria: I was going to say that it sounds a lot like money to you, that an individual or a family office or whomever it is, if they lose it, it’s not going to mean that they have to sell their house. It’s money that either could do incredibly well if you get in on the right opportunity at the right time. And you’re doing it for either purely financial reasons or there might also be a social component to it, right, or an ESG component. That makes a lot of sense to me, but I also understand why. And you know that you’re the first person, I’ve interviewed several people, women who have funds, and you are the first person who has been humble enough to say I’m starting with a proof-of-concept fund. Maybe they all did, but, like, that makes so much sense because just like if you are starting a startup, you need a proof of concept to prove whether it works or not, if it’s a good market fit, all of those things. And so why wouldn’t that be true of a venture fund?

Kimberley: Well, thank you. And yeah, I’m a big believer in testing and iterating and doing it in a way that doesn’t cost you your house or your shirt, you know, the shirt off your back. I absolutely understand that there are learnings to be had. If I make mistakes, I want them to be things I can fix easily and quickly and with very little incident.

Doria: Right.

Kimberley: And that’s the goal of building in this way. It also prevents me from taking on more people, building a team that I can’t actually, fully financially support. I wanna do things in a way that’s sustainable. And I like to say, part of the reason why I believe this might be the first time you’re hearing this is because there’s this real — especially over the last three or four years —  there’s been a lot of rhetoric around these major massive returns that have come out of venture and people getting, like, incredibly wealthy overnight, and anytime you’re looking at anything as a get-rich-quick scheme, it’s trouble, right? This is the truth about venture. It’s a low and slow game and I’m not surprised that I was attracted to it because that’s also my approach to real estate. It’s a low and slow game, it’s a long-term game.

Doria: Right.

Kimberley: And so If you approach your career, or, in this case, you know, this investment path as long, long term, then you want to think about how you start today and how you can double down on what’s working tomorrow and you can reel back in the things that don’t work. So if I’m starting way too big and it’s, like, taking me too long to reel that thing back in, and this is a long-term game. That’s a long-term cleanup. It’s not something I can just jump out of tomorrow.

Doria: Exactly.

Kimberley: So this is a 10- to 20-year game and a 10- to20-year path for me. And so, I wanna be really strategic and thoughtful about what I do today and what impact it has tomorrow and how long I have to withstand and clean up after any mistakes I’ve made early on.

Doria: And there are these other factors at play right now, like inflation, and I assume that would probably affect how venture capital is being dispersed. So like you have to iterate just like a startup founder. 

Kimberley: That’s right. You have to think of your strategy, just like a startup fund, your strategy is going to change based on lots of macro factors in addition to consumer behaviors and otherwise. And yes, interest rates are a really large part of the equation that I don’t think we’ve seen the end of what the impact will be. The impact of interest rates has already been seen in some of the bank failures earlier on. But also, interest rates impact how people invest because the higher the interest rate, the easier it is for people to put their money somewhere safe and see a return. So safe like a bond or safe like a savings account.  

Doria: I was just going to say, the other day, I was walking by a regional bank and they were, it was, I think, a 12-month or 9-month CD. There was a certain minimum you had to put in, but it was 5 percent. I haven’t seen that since, I’m going to date myself, since the 80s, where it was much higher. But you’re right. It is easier than to go for something like that.

Kimberley: Yes, and that’s a good chunk of the dollars that were invested into funds, smaller funds like my own in the last few years, those were in a negative interest rate environment where dollars are going to move to their highest and best use and they’re going to always take risk into account. And, so, absolutely, it’s a different environment for raising a fund, deploying capital. [They] are using debt as part of their equation because their interest rates are higher as well. It’s a different environment for high-net-worth individuals that want to invest in a fund and may have thought about buying a house, but now they’re like, “I can’t afford that house so where else do I put this capital? So there are lots of moving pieces all happening at one time. But we look for limited partners or LPs, also known as investors in the funds that are high-net-worth individuals, family offices, as you mentioned. There are a handful of funds that are specifically focused on emerging managers and under-represented managers as well. And, so those are our initial sources for capital.

Doria: Incredibly exciting, I think. How do you prioritize educating and investing in other Black and minority founders at Open Venture Capital?

Kimberley: Yes, so I actually have a bit of a different approach when I think about diversity in this space. And I’ve talked about this pretty broadly, so I don’t think any of this will be a secret. So on the fund side, the fund is health and wellness based, and so I focus on which of the founders I’m investing in and which of the opportunities I’m investing in are increasing access. I’m a big believer that our health and our access to health pathways are so individualized and change over the course of our lives. The things that we wanna do at 20 for exercise and wellness, and even preventative care, look completely different from the things that we need to do at 40 and 50 and beyond. And along those equations, along that spectrum, if the path to access continues to be defined and built for a mass of people with capital, with wealth, then there are going to be other people that get left out. And we see that already in food deserts. We see that already, you know, there’s a lot of conversation around Black maternal health rates. We see that in this loneliness crisis we’re dealing with. We see it in elder care. We see it in LGBTQ care. We see it in lots of different places. And so I think about two things from a diversity perspective. Number one, access. I don’t have a diversity mandate for my founders in the fund. I’m thinking about access only. 

And the second is on the LP side, meaning the investors in my fund. I’m actively, actively driving to bring more Black women onto my cap table. And that is because it’s been my experience that unless you are speaking directly to said Black woman and asking her to join said thing, it often feels like, well, I told everybody. And it’s like, “no, but you didn’t talk to me,” right? And that could be for a lot of different reasons. Like just saying it doesn’t feel, doesn’t always feel inclusive. 

Number two, sometimes there’s an educational component. So you’re saying things. Even as I was starting to talk through becoming an LP and what the commitments were, helping people understand the capital call schedule, because at the start of these conversations, it really does sound like you’re asking someone to write a $250,000 check today, and that’s not the case, right? That’s over, capital calls are over years, over a period of time and over years. 

And so when I say, unless you’re talking directly to that person, that means unless you really understand, number one, what their starting point is, and number two, what their interests are, what their agenda is, what they’re looking to do, it’s very hard to have one generic conversation saying, “I’m raising capital without understanding the nuances of that specific audience.” 

And a generic conversation saying, “I’m raising capital” assumes that everyone’s starting with the same understanding of what it means to be an investor in a fund, what it means to take this type of risk that they’ve been exposed to the asset class before, that they understand how to diligence  a fund manager. And so I’m taking the opposite approach with my goal to get more Black women on my cap table. I’m saying, let’s pretend we know nothing at all. And if you do, great. But I’m going to start from the point of like, “you’ve never been exposed to this asset class. You don’t know how to diligence a manager.” I’m taking all of that off the table so that we don’t have to have a conversation about shame or what you should or shouldn’t have done by a certain point in time or whether or not you are or are not the right person for this asset class. We’re going to start with education first, at the very least, so you know and so you understand the asset class and then you can make a decision about whether or not this fits your risk profile or not. And that is, again, a low and slow approach, and that is unique because we don’t actually have low and slow time as venture fund managers. That’s my goal.

Doria: It’s incredible. I want to reflect back [on] what I, what I have understood you to say. So rather than focusing on the gender or the race of the founders, you are looking at access because that is actually where more inclusivity is going to happen sooner, when we are able to allow access to the same kinds of healthcare and have every different voice. I think about, from a woman’s perspective, the fact that pharmaceuticals, I think, until recently, were tested on a white male standard.

Kimberley: That’s right.

Doria: And it’s like, “yeah, of course, hormones are going to affect the results.” But isn’t that something to think about? And there are 100, you know, when you put race and all in, the intersectionality of it all, there’s so much to be considered. So that’s one thing that I’m hearing from you. And then the other is, and I really appreciate this because I actually didn’t know until you said it, that I thought that one did have to write a check, like right that instance. And so the fact that you realize that people don’t necessarily come with the financial sophistication, but may have an interest, or may not, but at least to provide them the education so that somewhere down the road, if it’s not with your fund, they will make an impact.

Kimberley: Yes, and that’s been an evolution for me over a period of time. Years ago, I used to help women diligence their real estate deals.

So I had my own real estate calculator and everyone wanted to figure out how to build an investment portfolio. So I would say, “okay, let’s go through it and send me the deal.” I would tell them how I thought through the opportunity and whether or not I thought it was good or not, just based on my own little real estate calculator. And I would do that either for individuals or in groups because, and I believe this about working out too, sometimes you learn just by being in the room or by watching other people, like, through osmosis, essentially. I tell people all the time, if you really want to work out and you don’t have the motivation, just fill your Instagram page with trainers. You will get up and work out eventually.Just start following people working out. Just watch other people work out long enough and you will lift a barbell. I promise you, you will eventually lift something up.

Doria: Yes

Kimberley: So I believe the same is true for getting people comfortable with doing something new and in this specific case, building a muscle around building an investment thesis or building an investment style or taking into account what their risk profile is. And so the goal of doing it this way is to find more ways to include people in the process, even if they’re not going to write a check at the end state, I want them to know that they were chosen, that someone approached them directly, that someone said, “Hey, I think you’d be a great partner in this fund” and that someone would have spent the time to walk through the process with them. That someone, me, was willing to put myself through the process of being diligent by them.

Doria: Yeah.

Kimberley: You can ask me questions about me and my background. You’re absolutely encouraged to ask me these things. So that even if you find yourself not investing in this, but in another opportunity, you get very comfortable diligenting someone and asking them questions until you are comfortable parting with your money. And it shouldn’t feel like a burden to ask someone to prove that they are the fiduciary that they said they are.

Doria: Yes, and it’s so true. And as women, we often internalize this, “don’t ask too many questions, go with the flow.” And especially when it comes to money, when it’s your money, like, any question is a relevant question.

Kimberley: Yes.

Doria: And I love that you’re doing that, that it’s like it’s your... not only teaching, but you know, it’s making activists out of people that you’re speaking to in a certain way, right?

Kimberley: Yep.

Doria: With the information, which I think that’s very…I’ve never heard that before either. And that’s sad to me because it’s like that when you’re saying it, it sounds like, well, that should be a no-brainer. And yet, right? And yet.

Kimberley: Yeah.

Moving in Silence (Like Lasagna)

Doria: It brings me to a question that I always ask women of color who are in venture capital. Have you faced any challenges as a Black female entrepreneur? Sorry. Have you faced any challenges as a Black female venture capitalist?

Kimberley: Yes, I have.

Doria: The short answer.

Kimberley: That’s the short answer is yes. And I’m gonna elaborate by saying first that I have been blessed with the ability to be oblivious to a lot of it. And that may sound odd, but my friends know this about me. Everyone knows this about me, like, I don’t, I can’t do cues. You need to be very, very direct with me. I don’t pick up on cues easily. So if you’re being subtle in your racism, I’m not picking up on it. And so I can’t see it, which means I don’t internalize it, which means I’m just gonna keep pushing. If you said no, and you don’t wanna have the conversation with me, or this new thing that I see a lot of people doing, saying they don’t wanna waste my time, and I’m like, how’s relationship building wasting time?

Doria: Right.

Kimberley: But whatever.

Doria: Yeah.

Kimberley: So if you’ve just kind of decided on the surface that I’m not the person for you or that this can’t potentially work or that I can’t potentially be a fund manager, but you’ve been subtle about it, it takes me a very long time to pick up on it. This has actually worked throughout my entire life for me in a way that I don’t think it was intended to work. I think people actually were working very hard to try to tear me down, but I was oblivious to it. So I may not even know all the ways in which I have faced friction. I’m just so used to facing friction that I’ve built a pretty good approach to being resilient. I have finally, in my life, learned how to make rest a part of the equation.

Doria: So important.

Kimberley: And it took me a long time to even want to have conversations like this because my goal was always to be to move in silence. And there’s a quote from the illustrious Lil Wayne that says, “real G’s move in silence like lasagna.” And so just don’t talk to anyone. Don’t tell them what you’re doing. Don’t share. And you. and you can’t actually get hit with bullets. Like you won’t be a target. And so that was kind of the approach I was taking for an extended period of time. And what I think has helped instead is my low and slow approach and my ability to test and iterate as I go and to be incredibly intentional. And so, even in that intentionality, I don’t think the best way to talk about the challenges I’ve faced is to, like, call someone out in this particular forum, but instead to just say, “it’s gonna happen.”

Doria: Right.

Kimberley: There’s no question it’s gonna happen. And so the real question is, “How prepared are you? How prepared are you to withstand double the friction, triple the friction?” As what your white male counterpart might face. “How prepared are you to stay in the game with half the money that your white male counterpart might raise? How prepared are you to stay and do the work that you think is critical and important to do if it takes you two to three times as long as your white male counterpart?”

And so, because I’m used to friction, I built all of that into my approach when I started. I anticipated that it would take me longer. I anticipated that I would go slower. I anticipated that there would be a lot of nos. And you almost have to be prepared to have all of those walls put up against you and then be surprised and delighted if something moves faster. 

So I think a lot of dealing with the challenges of being a Black, female, solo GP in this space is about understanding, you know, if you’re building a model, a financial model or a life model and you’re putting in all the inputs that will have an impact on your success. Like making sure that you’re actually being really thoughtful about the probability of you making it and what the inputs look like to actually get there.

A Massive Misdiagnosis

Doria: What you’ve said is so powerful that I can’t even expand on it because I feel like it would be taken away and I don’t feel like it’s in my place to do so either. But it really made me think of a lot. You focus on healthcare, as you mentioned, and healthcare is something that is also personal for everyone, but personal for you. You had a cancer diagnosis in your late 20s. I understand that while it was a very curable form of cancer, it was still cancer. So I wanted to know how that impacted how you view life today and how you got through it, and if you have any tips for women who might be facing something similar.

 Kimberley: Yes, it was, I had Hodgkin’s lymphoma and I will say that in our healthcare system today, I had the best care. I had a great healthcare plan. I was at Deloitte at the time, and our healthcare plans were great. I had the ability to take a leave of absence, a paid leave of absence. And I think that’s also important to say. I was, of all of the ways one can experience being ill, I had the gold standard of illness. And I say that because I still had a terrible experience and I can’t imagine what people that are not as, I call it being “medically rich,” I can’t imagine what people that are not as “medically rich” as I am, I can’t imagine their experience. I’m going to tell you about everything leading up to the diagnosis because post diagnosis everything was fine. 

I was living in Baltimore. My treatments at [Johns] Hopkins, you really can’t get better than Hopkins. Frankly, you can’t get better than medical care in Maryland is my personal belief. The treatment was incredible. The team was incredible. I was in and out in six months. I was scanned and monitored for five years; after five years that’s considered your cure date. The team is so magnificent that when my mom had cancer I made her move down to Baltimore and go to Hopkins. 

Leading up to it was actually quite the challenge. I felt a lump in my neck and my mom’s a nurse. I found it while we were on our way to Obama’s inauguration event in D.C. And I’m like, “Mom, feel this thing.” And she’s like, “Oh, you should get that checked out.” At the time, I was, I believe, still in business school. I won’t say too much, but I went to a center to get it checked out and they did an ultrasound. So, at this time, I didn’t have that really great insurance, right? But I had insurance. So I went to get it checked out. They did an ultrasound and they said they saw nothing. They said it’s just a mass and it’s not a thyroid issue, it’s not cancer, it’s fine.

Doria: Just a mass.

Kimberley: Just a mass. Maybe a year and a half later, thankfully, this is also very slow growing cancer. A year and a half later, I went on vacation with some friends. I came back. I had the worst acid reflux. I was like, I had way too much beer and way too much jerk chicken. And so I had this terrible acid reflux. I could not sleep. I’m in Maryland. I go to a doctor and they do the scope. My doctor asks me if I have any other issues. And I am the type of person, I suggest everybody do this. I’m the type of person that will tell any doctor everything. If it’s an ENT doctor, I will tell you about my toe. If it’s a podiatrist, I’m gonna tell you about my ears. You’re gonna know everything. I’m going to tell you everything under the sun.

Doria: Yeah.

Kimberley: So I tell this doctor about this lump in my neck. And he is livid. This man is an older Indian man. And he’s like, “and you haven’t gotten it checked out yet?” And I was like, “I did, sir, I did. I got it checked out and they told me it’s fine.” And he’s like, “nope, not at all.” He leaves, he literally storms out of the room, goes downstairs, calls. I was in Columbia, Maryland, for this specific appointment. So he calls the Columbia General Hospital, and schedules a biopsy appointment. And he comes back up, him and his nurse. with a piece of paper, he’s like, he shoves it, he’s so mad at me. He’s so mad at me. He’s like, she’s like, “next week. Like, he’s like, “next week you will get this done.” And I was like, “okay.” And so I go home and I call my mom and I was traveling for work. I go home, I call my mom and I’m like, “I have a meeting next week, I can’t make this thing.” I happened to be traveling to New York for work, and she’s like, “yeah, I told you to go and get it checked out again, blah, blah, blah.” She’s like, “I’m going to schedule your biopsy in New York.” So she goes, talks to her doctors. I go to work in New York. I leave work. I tell my team, I have to leave at three for an appointment. I go to the hospital. I get my biopsy done. I go about my business. A week later, they’re like, “so…”

Doria: Oh my God.

Kimberley: “You have cancer.” And so, what I think is really telling about that story is, number one, because I grew up with all medical professionals, like I understand how to advocate for myself in a room, I probably should have done more on the ultrasound side, but I let being busy stop me, right? I let being busy be the reason why I don’t like, I’m fine, I’m young, I just graduated, this thing, that thing, we had a lot going on in our lives at that time. But still, I let a lot of things kind of prevent me from going through and getting this diagnosis and getting this caught earlier on. 

It was still staged very early and I was able to get it handled pretty quickly. But I tell that story, number one, because everyone needs to get their lumps and bumps checked. And number two, because again, I had everything going for me, everything going for me, and I still almost missed it. So when I talk about pathways and access and... the ways in which we have to think about our care and preventative care and diagnostics and detection and all those other pieces. It is going to be a unique process for everyone. It’s going, it takes a lot of inputs. It’s not as easy as I take this supplement in the morning and I ride my bike, you know, five times a week. It’s never gonna be that. And the older you get, the more inputs it takes. to really stay on top of your care. And so that’s the approach and that’s what I’m looking for when I think about the fund.

Doria: That’s my gosh, such an incredible story. That, once again, you’ve left me speechless, which is unbelievable. The fact that you were misdiagnosed or that it was overlooked. I understand doctors are not perfect, but I also understand, like, that’s kind of their job. So I have a very hard time understanding how, but I’m truly sorry that that happened to you. 

If you have three tips for early-stage female founders as we wrap up, what would they be?

Kimberley: Find a tribe. You cannot do it alone. You need people. And you need different types of people. You need accountability partners. You need people whose arms you can just fall into. You need people that will make you dinner, that will require you to rest. You need a tribe. That’s number one. 

Number two is... Figure out how resilient you are today, and then start working to become more resilient tomorrow, whatever that looks like. Be prepared for friction. Build it into your equation, your timeline, your approach, your budget. And I think we’re past the point now where we just spew out stats and get really angry about the imbalance. Now it’s time to actually build a formula that includes it so that you can work around it.

Doria: Yeah.

Kimberley: And the third thing, something that I’ve been doing for a very long time is, I tell people to assess themselves, their lives, their goals, all the other things like you would any Fortune 500 company. They do it quarterly. You should also do it quarterly. So you should be figuring out for yourself what are the things you want to measure and then how do you want to take stock every quarter or so. 

We make annual goals, and then we don’t do anything about them, and then a year passes and we can’t believe that we made this goal and we didn’t do anything about it. And so instead I encourage people to think about what can actually be accomplished within a 12-week period of time, and then get after that. And in 12 weeks, if you didn’t get to the end of it, you don’t have to beat yourself up for not doing something for a full year. You can assess what took you off track, and whether or not you can do it in the next 12 weeks. And that is also a test-and-iterate approach that I love.

Doria: I’ve heard of that in, there’s a journal that uses that approach and it is very helpful, like starting annually and then honing in and then right knowing to your point because things do happen and they do tend to make you have to iterate or pivot and so, reassessing, as you said. Where can people find out more about you and Open Venture Capital?

Kimberley: You can find me on LinkedIn. It’s Kimberley Nixon. There’s an extra E in there, so it’s K-I-M-B-E-R-L-E-Y Nixon. Or Open Venture Capital also has a LinkedIn page. Or our website, openventure.capital. And you can email our kind of open inbox, which is hello@openventure.capital if you want to learn more about either becoming an investor or becoming part of the portfolio.

Doria: Thank you so much for taking the time to show up so authentically today.

Kimberley: Thank you. Thank you for having me