Are women entrepreneurs facing obstacles in paying themselves fairly, which might be impacting their businesses in more ways than one? In the episode, Marcia explores this topic with guest Nicola Corzine, the CEO of Nasdaq Entrepreneurial Center and an experienced angel investor. Nicola shares her insights into entrepreneurs' challenges and how they impact their businesses. She also discusses the open deal source model she developed to provide fair access to startup founders and the focus of Nasdaq Entrepreneurial Center on providing free resources and support for entrepreneurs, particularly in terms of gender and race equity in entrepreneurship. This episode is a must-listen for entrepreneurs, angel investors, and anyone seeking a deeper understanding of the challenges faced by diverse entrepreneurs and those interested in fostering a more inclusive and supportive startup ecosystem.
Are women entrepreneurs facing obstacles in paying themselves fairly, which might be impacting their businesses in more ways than one? In the episode, Marcia explores this topic with guest Nicola Corzine, the CEO of Nasdaq Entrepreneurial Center and an experienced angel investor. Nicola shares her insights into entrepreneurs' challenges and how they impact their businesses. She also discusses the open deal source model she developed to provide fair access to startup founders and the focus of Nasdaq Entrepreneurial Center on providing free resources and support for entrepreneurs, particularly in terms of gender and race equity in entrepreneurship.
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Marcia Dawood
Well, Nicola, thank you so much for being on the show today. Welcome.
Nicola Corzine
It is my pleasure to be here. Thank you so much for having me.
Marcia Dawood
Well, I'm excited to talk to you more about all of the great things that the Nasdaq Entrepreneurial center is doing, and especially the fact that you have been helping over 80,000 entrepreneurs. Incredible. But let's just get started by telling us a little bit about how you became an angel investor and how you found an angel group in your backyard.
Nicola Corzine
Thank you. Well, I always like to start by saying I was really fortunate. I was the daughter of an entrepreneur myself. And so I actually was born in England and I spent my first many years there, actually went back to university in the UK and did my first business in the, you know, at the time, access to capital was really difficult to do as a young woman entrepreneur who did not have a whole lot of capital around. And so I became really fascinated with what does it look like to really think about this idea of finding value add investors and trying to go as far as you possibly can in the most efficient way possible, which is how my dad had really started his businesses along his life when he came to California. When I moved back stateside from university, I ended up not raising any capital in the UK, and it became a great standalone business with two co founders, and we did a huge deal with BT Telecom. But when I came back, I was really intrigued with this idea of continuing on on my own startup journey. And so I went off to do two other startups, both in Silicon Valley.
Nicola Corzine
And interestingly, my second company, we were fully angel backed, and we ended up in a bit of a bake off with two acquirers. And I was so thankful and so grateful to have the intellectual capital that we had around the table in those very complex negotiations between two very large companies that helped guide us through what was a complex environment. And that really stuck with me. And I thought, my goodness, I wonder how many other founders, how many other entrepreneurs are lucky to be able to find those same opportunities. Short story long, I did another company that raised way too much money, actually raised more on the venture side of the house. And it was our fault on that one. We forgot to pay attention to the idea that, I don't know, customers actually tell you whether or not they need a product. It's not about how much money you raise.
Nicola Corzine
That's going to tell you whether or not that happens. And it was in the ebid procurement industry, which, as you probably know, there's a handful of industries that are hard to change, and that is one that you really want to be aligned always to your customers. And we just weren't. But we ended up closing that down. And I had a moment of going, what am I going to be when I grow up? And I ended up turning around to those backers of my second company, and they had started a first time fund in Palo Alto called Propel Partners. And it was to help immigrant entrepreneurs really be supported in a way that when they didn't have access to network and they know, based on your journey, based on what you look for and who you align to, do you think this is something you'd like to come help us do? And I said, sure. What would that look like? Do I have to pay you for the privilege? And they said, no, you come join us and help us as an associate. Well, a year later, through deals that I'd syndicated with propel, I got introduced to band of angels, and Ian Sobieski and Hans Severance at the time had raised a $50 million institutional fund, sort of, in many ways, one of the larger angel funds of its kind.
Nicola Corzine
And they were looking for someone that could come over and help them see deals differently than they had done before. And what I meant by that is, obviously, for a lot of angel groups, it was a closed network. You had to know someone to be able to present to an angel group. And band had this idea of, what if we're missing great deals by simply having that closed loop environment? And that was something that I was really intrigued with. And so what started as a notion of helping entrepreneurs get more connected into angel groups, wherever that may be, whether that was with the band or otherwise, ended up becoming a decade long amazing legacy where I learned every single day from 120 of the most brilliant minds that I'd ever come across of how to help entrepreneurs and really be there for them in ways that inspired great outcomes and supported change in our world. And I created the first open deal source environment for the band, was fortunate to help build the first couple of Angel Capital association events when it was just being started out of Kaufman foundation and was part of Startup America as an early advisor during that time, too. So it was the most amazing moments, the biggest highlights. I never knew it was a job opportunity.
Nicola Corzine
I tell people now when they ask, how did you get where you got? I was like, luck and fortune and just the biggest gift that could possibly have ever happened. But it was an amazing journey. One of my companies ended up getting acquired by Nasdaq. As to how I ended up here. And they told me that Nasdaq's foundation had made a huge investment to say that they wanted to do something similar, but on a global scale for founders, meaning really make access and equity different than it had been. And as I'd been working beside startup America and had seen all the founders that we were able to support at band, but all those that we weren't able to by geography or just by the nature of our industry focus, it became clear to me that with everything we had going these days, we could do differently. This idea of making sure that resources were going to those who deserve them and really change access in a major way. And so, as you kindly said, that's now in the last eight years, grown to be supporting 80,000 founders from 120 countries, 51% women, 64% who identify as entrepreneurs of color.
Nicola Corzine
We really say we focus on the founder first, meaning that we're all about being able to lean in and say, what do our founders need the help with and how do we build in support for them, for the journey that is entrepreneurship? And when I first started, you could say you'd see an exit in seven to nine years. These days, that timeline has expanded to more like 14 to 16. So it's ever more the marathon than the sprint. And as always, it takes a village in entrepreneurship. So we're humbled and inspired to be part of that village. And everything the center does is pro bono. We don't charge for anything. We don't take any equity.
Nicola Corzine
It's really built with a pay it forward philosophy that I think has been the ethos of Silicon Valley. But now more increasingly, all parts of the globe that realize what is at stake if we don't support our entrepreneurs and do it purely and fully with all that we have.
Marcia Dawood
Absolutely amazing. We could do about five podcast episodes on all the things that you just said. But let's just start back with, first of all, you had a startup that was fully angel backed. And so from that experience, tell us just what were some of your lessons, your takeaways? It sounds like they were instrumental in helping you to navigate your way through an exit, but what were some of the things that really stood out to you?
Nicola Corzine
Yeah, well, I mean, first and foremost, I think there's a prevailing mythology, right, that says it's a hierarchical. Once you take somebody's money, they're sort of like, going to tell you what to do with it. And there's this onus that lives over the founder from a pressure perspective. And I'm not going to say that there wasn't these recognition moments of going, we have to do right and we have to do well by our funders, but we also have to do that for our employees and our customers and everybody else. So it was no more, no less. But the difference was our backers were leaning in, rolling up the sleeves, opening up that network, saying, what is it that you're struggling with? How can we help? As you go into these conversations? Once we got into an environment where we had an unsolicited offer and we'd heard, anecdotally, sometimes those are the best offers, and we were sitting there going, this was not the time that we were thinking about exiting, but what does it look like? How much would we need to raise? What would the dilution look like to, again, our employees? What would it look like and mean to our company petition if they saw us raise more? Were they better funded? And all these really hard questions that you go, is this the right time? Are these the right questions? Are we doing the right thing? It's so hard. Nobody's got the crystal ball. But I can't tell you how much more confidence we all had in those executive sessions to be able to sit with a board who not only cared so much, but were grappling with the same depth of these questions in ways that showed that they cared so deeply about the humans that were involved in the business, not just the pure financial outcome.
Nicola Corzine
And I think there's always this euphemism, right, that your company is your baby. And I've often kind of laughed about that. I have two little boys, and I'm like, I'm not sure that I would say I want that sort of being called in the same environment for all the love and all the challenge and all the heartache and all the wonders that is raising a child. But in many ways, the intensity of what you care about and the protection of what you're building really emulates at a founder depth in a way that's unlike anything else. And for people to be part owners in that same journey with you, who care, at least to a certain degree, to make sure that those same priorities are there, that value alignment is there with your funders, it's just exceptional. I never felt we were one of a number. I never felt that it was just a pure irr. I always felt that there was a safe environment from which we could be vulnerable and have hard conversations and show up and say, we're not sure.
Nicola Corzine
And the irony is, the more successful you get as an entrepreneur, perhaps the least or the less access you have to people that you can count on to be that vulnerable with. And I just think angel investors, especially aligned angel investors, can give you belief and opportunity to have that vulnerability and to have that safety net in place when you need it the most. As founders grappling with these really difficult and tough decisions, whether for positive or for the challenges of these last few years, that certainly this has been a wild market, to say the least, with some exceptionally hard and long, painful winters for our founders.
Marcia Dawood
That's definitely the truth. And what you're saying, this is what I love about angel investors, because, yes, they're putting in money, yes, they expect a financial return, but there's so much more to it than that. They are really there to care about the cause. Whatever it is that you're working on as an entrepreneurial team, they're there to help you and to really push things forward. Growing a business is extremely hard, as you know, and raising money is also extremely hard, especially in the more recent environments. So having those people around the table that can help navigate all of the things I just find so beneficial.
Nicola Corzine
Yeah, 1000%. I always thought it was so funny. One of my dear champions at band that I learned a lot from and was part of one of the early prescreen committees inside baseball language, but just meaning helped us look at exorbitant amounts of numbers of deals in a fair and unbiased way, which is very hard to do. And he said, it's never the technology that's going to let you down. It's always the execution. And so what you want to be clear of and what you want to be fair with is slowing down to really make sure you know what drives the execution priorities of that founder. Because if you can see alignment and alliances to how you can support them there, then it's potentially a good fit. Don't worry about the technology.
Nicola Corzine
The technology in many ways will sort itself out. That can be solved. But what can't be solved is when there's a misalignment between the execution goals or the ways in which the founder is really driven to build a business that's making a difference in their family and their community and in the world.
Marcia Dawood
Yes, that is so true. It's not the tech that will let you down. It's the execution for sure. So now back to this. I love this idea that you had an open deal source because Hans and Ian were thinking, wow, this is kind of a closed network. I mean, as I talk to people who don't really know a lot about angel investing, the myth still to this day out there is that you have to be rich. And when I say rich, I mean like flying on a private plane. Know some of the people on Shark Tank do, and that you have to be very well connected or else you're not going to be able to even see any good deals.
Marcia Dawood
Plus, the fact that Hans and Ian raised a $50 million institutional round that long ago, that's impressive. So tell us more about how the open deal source started and how you even figured it all out.
Nicola Corzine
Yeah, once upon a long time ago. Now, it seems we had this opportunity to meet. Like this was started with people like Ron Weissman and Art Ridell and so many others that cared passionately about being available to mentor and support founders. And we would hold these open days, and these open days were held up and down Silicon Valley, and any entrepreneur could come in and just ask questions of like, how do I pitch an angel? Presuming I can find one, how do I pitch them and how do I connect? And what's my story missing? Or how should I even be thinking about how much money to ask for how to syndicate? I mean, talk about herding sheep. It's been one of the hardest things around angel groups and syndication for such a long, long time. Anyway, through all of that, we started meeting these fabulous founders and realizing, what do we do differently to really be able to give them more opportunities to get into band in a fair way again, we would have what we called sponsored deals, right? This is where an angel has committed to investing or is already invested in a deal. And there are only a finite number of spots that the band would have every month at their monthly dinner to be able to invite companies to present and to share what they were looking for. And if every one of those was going to sponsored deals, then it became really hard to imagine what an unsponsored deal environment could look like.
Nicola Corzine
But what we ended up sort of finding is we had 60 members within the band and subject matter experts that raised a hand that said, I would love to volunteer and just sort of help within the industry that I know really well to evaluate unsolicited deal flow, to see whether or not we might be able to find a handful of great companies that we could nurture, that we could get to know, and that we could potentially bring them into a band dinner on. And so what became sort of this very good idea of like, what if we're missing out on some really great deals, became a very streamlined process. We actually had to build a tech stack because we didn't have one that was available at the time. There's now some, obviously, probably everybody knows, David Rose and Gus. But at the time, there was absolutely nothing out in the market. So we built our own, and we built it in PHP, and it was good. And it was a way in which five to ten people could come and look at a deal on paper, and then ten to twelve deals per month could come into a screening committee, which is how the band sorted. And we made sure that it wasn't overweighted to anyone industry, and fairly divided.
Nicola Corzine
And we went out intentionally seeking to attract women and diverse founders into the mix. And then we would find an internal champion on the screening committee that would basically shepherd that deal to be able to stand up with the same clout, with the same opportunity at that monthly dinner meeting. Some of our best deals came through that process. We didn't know it at the time, but again, I think it makes sense. If you limit it to only the exposure of a finite few that get access, then obviously we're limiting those that are just one or two steps removed from our own networks. And that became a huge opportunity and advantage to the band. We went on to raise two other funds. I'm going to say that that process, absolutely, with all the help and the support of the band members who made it possible, became a differentiator, even in the speed from which we were able to close those next two funds.
Nicola Corzine
Even in 2009, when we raised Acorn fund, were it not for that process, we went from raising a memo to closing the fund in 65 days, which is almost unheard of now. It was a smaller fund, it wasn't the $50 million size, but nine was not exactly the best market from which to raise a fund. So it was a highlight. Again, I think of like people, lps, investors, those that believe in entrepreneurs really do seek to be able to find change agents and they don't worry so much about, like, they have to come from the usual suspect place. We were 5 miles away from Stanford. We were next door to SrI. We were friends with Sandhill Road crew, as you would expect. But the fact that we were able to change the environment from which anyone with an idea could apply in a fair environment and have a shot at getting to know.
Nicola Corzine
And we met some amazing founders. Not all of them did we back, but many of them went on to join great companies. And many of them actually came back and became angel investors through one way or shape or form. And nothing made us smile more when that happened. Full circle, obviously.
Marcia Dawood
That is awesome. I love that. So then you went on to have one of your companies get acquired by Nasdaq. And now the Nasdaq Entrepreneurial center is helping entrepreneurs, but there's no fee. It's all pay it forward, which I think is amazing. So tell us more about what are some of the services that are offered? How can entrepreneurs find you and get help?
Nicola Corzine
Yeah, well, again, the big fan is sort of like before we built anything, needing to do a bit of our own swot analysis. And believe it or not, eight years ago still to this day, this number shocks me. There were 4500 accelerators across America. When you think about that number and you think about then how many people were still leaning out going, I'm not an entrepreneur. I don't feel that I have access to resources or help or support. It was a little heartbreaking because it didn't seem to me, and this is not picking or pointing on any accelerator program, it was just realizing that there still continued to be this investment that was often happening in the zero to one phase. Meaning you have an idea and you really want to get it off the ground, but that the ongoing journey of support for our founders wasn't built in a twelve week program alone. And so the center really said, what does it look like to be able to be in support of founders, the whole entrepreneur? Meaning that we very much focus on their health and well being, trying to understand the barriers and biases that restrict the full opportunity being realized for these founders in this ongoing journey that they're on in ways that matter.
Nicola Corzine
And that started with us just asking a very important, poignant question to every single founder in the community. What's keeping you up at night? That quintessential question. And then listening and understanding that as market conditions were changing, there was more and more need for different kinds of programs to emerge. Now, a lot of our programs are short form programs and they're open access to everyone, meaning that we can have classes that have upwards of 3000 entrepreneurs participating, and then we have a lot of near peer learnings that happen. One of the most interesting insights that emerged about five years into the center was realizing that transformative change occurs when you can have a founder be supported by another founder who's gone through a similar experience about 18 months ahead of them. And for whatever reason, we think it's probably like it's a far enough distance that you're not remembering every single pin prick that you got along the way, but you're remembering the critical decisions that change the trajectory of that choices that you were faced with in that moment. And so we want to be able to catalyze meaningful networks of support for founders in their full journey. So usually every month we're hosting somewhere between ten to twelve open classes that our founders are telling us they need help with, based on their challenges that they're facing in market.
Nicola Corzine
We catalog these as milestones. So we try to understand what are the milestones that our founders are working on to be able to get to the next level of progress and support and success. We do have our deeper immersive programs. These are programs that aim to workshop with a founder, a growth virality that they need to see within their business to get to the next level that they want to for their own founder journey. And then we also have a lot of future of work, future of talent. One of the ongoing struggles and challenges of our entrepreneurial needs is looking at how do we unlock more talent support for our startup community, and make sure that they too have on ramps for support, so that it's not just waiting for employment that they can't afford today to be the reason that they don't grow in this moment in time. We also do a lot of research. When we see an issue area that we can't fully understand, we go deeper to understand what's going on behind it.
Nicola Corzine
Right now, we have two primary bodies of work that have been in market for the last few years, and they've been cited in the annual SEC report over the last couple of years. Looking at the lived experience for our women business owners, some of the most interesting insights that have come out recently is realizing that for our women founders, the speed from which you get to pay yourself is critical to the growth of that company. So really encouraging and changing the mindset of go further with less into go further because you're feeding yourself what you need to for the journey is really important. Also, looking at age factors and equally, this inverse correlation of pressure to performance, and what I mean by that is there's often this mythology that women entrepreneurs, or all entrepreneurs, should be single, they should have no responsibilities. That's what makes you be able to go 22 hours a day. And the reality is that our women entrepreneurs who actually have caregiving responsibilities, who carry mortgages, who have a debt environment, are actually outperforming the counter and doing it fairly well. And so realizing that how we support and have biases in that field really needs to be addressed and more deeply understood for capital access and for other environments too. And then we also have another body of work that we've been doing around access to venture and venture equity work.
Nicola Corzine
When supporting emerging fund managers in this country, and again, realizing that the intersectionality of gender and race in America and geography is really a critical moment in time. There are some regions that are doing exceptionally well in advancing equity and entrepreneurship, but we don't fully understand enough about how it's happening, the emergence, the groundswell of what's at stake. Our thesis, and I think it's one that you share and support as well, is that it's a community rise that's occurring, that there are new people leaning in to say, how can I support diversity and entrepreneurship in my region? And do it through showing up as angel investors, even if they're not calling themselves that, looking at the support organizations that may be in those regions, understanding how policymakers are influencing choices and changes in those regions. And we want to celebrate that, and we want to recognize how more places and spaces can do that and do that well so that it rises our nation stronger in support of diverse entrepreneurship, which obviously is our new majority entrepreneurs in this country and worldwide.
Marcia Dawood
I'm so glad you brought all that up about women, especially paying themselves. I remember you speaking about that at the Women's Venture summit in San Diego last year, and I was just amazed at the statistics of how few women are actually paying themselves in their entrepreneurial journey and then just to see how much that has actually fueled them to do well. But at the same time, how sustainable is it?
Nicola Corzine
Yeah, exactly. And it's so interesting even looking at cash reserves and the correlation of cash reserves to performance indicators for women entrepreneurs. But just a couple of scary stats, and I say this as a woman entrepreneur and as a woman investor, where I think I've tried to do the right thing. But I wonder how often I've actually slowed down and asked these questions and made sure that I'm not contributing to just bad pattern matching continuing going forward. Our women entrepreneurs, on average, pay themselves $54,000 less per year than our male founders do. Equal industry, equal experience, $54,000 less per year. True, up 70%. Lowered valuation at seed and series a.
Nicola Corzine
And the sufferers of that are obviously our founders and their families and the communities where all those dollars should and would be flowing. But equally, the capital allocators who are putting those monies into those companies because we're not realizing the full market value and the full market potential of what's getting lost in those conditions. So we all have a vested interest in changing that dynamic. I just don't know that it's, again, always slowed down to realize the importance of those hard conversations and the importance of calling out the specific numbers at stake here.
Marcia Dawood
Wow. Yeah. It's very important. We need to change this for sure. Well, Nicola, thank you so much for coming onto the show today. We'll make sure to put in the show notes, all the links to where people can find you, and more about the Nasdaq Entrepreneur center. So thank you for joining us.
Nicola Corzine
Thank you. It's been so much fun, and I look forward to hopefully doing it again sometime soon.