Speaker 1: Welcome to Getting Rich Together. I’m your host, Shama Bunton. This show was born for my own journey. Coming out of a divorce, I reached out to 50 women to talk to them about money.

95% of them did not want to go there. That’s when I realized we need spaces where wealth isn’t hidden in silence but shared in possibilities. Here, you’ll meet women from all backgrounds, trailblazers, risk takers, visionaries, each expanding what wealth can look like. This is your place to be inspired to discover new pathways and to remember that we rise by building wealth together. Getting Rich Together is a wealth catalyst production. At Wealth Catalyst, we bring together education, networks, and great opportunities for women to build wealth and change the world. Now, on to today’s show.

Speaker 2: I am here today with the brilliant and beautiful Patty Wexler. Patty, it was such a gem to have met you this spring. I loved your spirit, your energy. That only are you backing bold founders, reimagining the future economy through Avila. But you are also someone who I believe has had such a unique story on this earth and who you are today as a mother, as a venture capitalist, as someone who sees the future. It is just such a privilege and a pleasure to have you here today on Getting Rich Together. Thank you for being here.

Speaker 3: Thank you so much. I felt the same way. Honored to be here and hope somebody finds some of the tidbits of my story interesting.

Speaker 2: Oh my God. Well, I remember we sat down with some sort of cocktail and I remember looking at your beautiful shoes and being like, wow, this woman’s got some great style.

Let’s double click more on those things. And then I got to find out all about your juicy, rich, beautiful history. And so I’d love to take us back to a young Patty, to a Patty who was maybe seven, 10, 12 years old. My darling, where did were you growing up? What was life like around you? And what were some of the early money stories you were picking up?

Speaker 3: Amazing. Six, five and six years old was really significant in that I was born and raised in Venezuela my whole life, except for first and second grade. I’m to New York and my parents were doing graduate studies sponsored by the Venezuelan government during the oil boom. And as a result, I was thrown into PS 131 in Queen and I came back home and my mom asked how it was and I said, I didn’t understand anything, but I liked it and had a great time. I have that excuse to thank for my very, very mild English accent today. So I grew up in Venezuela up until I came to the US. It was my mom and my dad and my older sister and I. And when we were here in the US, my parents split up and my mother and my sister and I went back home and my father ended up staying here and getting married and we built his life. And we never lectured anything, but as a result of having a single working mom and sealing less but wealthy than most of my friends around me, I think that was incredibly formative in my life. One is I definitely appreciated the value of money, my family, my tight knit family, which was my maternal grandparents, my mother, my sister and I. There was definitely a culture of watching every penny.

My grandparents were Holocaust survivors and arrived in Venezuela with nothing. And so there was definitely a culture of counting every penny. And so that was just part of it.

And then when we went back, I had a working mom who could never pick me up, could never be at the PTA things and we just kind of figured it out in that crazy world before cell phones and easy solutions to everything. And so I think those things really shape me.

Speaker 2: Wow, that’s so incredible. So many things are going through my mind. One is the epigenetics of trauma and what that means as you’re young and sort of absorbing these inner generational things that are really living through you, especially when it comes to money and potentially self-worth and values and these things at such a young age and being born with that sort of trauma certainly I think can inform us in ways that we don’t even really realize. And then the second thing that’s coming through my mind is, my gosh, like what a sense of potential self-driven desire to exercise independence. Were you at a young age, given these circumstances, did you feel inclined to, I’m going to double down on my studies and I know that education in high school is the way forward? Was it, let me go get a job so I can figure out how to start to have independence? How did you start to express yourself as a young girl in this world given this dynamic?

Speaker 3: Yeah, so first of all, even though when I look back and I understand the reality of clearly my grandparents must have had serious trauma and all the other things that happened, I think back to my childhood and my growing up as incredibly wonderfully privileged. My grandparents loved me and we spent a lot of time with them. My mom was, she wasn’t around very much what she was as present as I needed her to be when I think back. And so just want to make sure that when I look back, it’s great. And I probably even now think with my kids having a lot less, let’s say, surrounding trauma.

I sometimes worry that it’s not even as you know, I may have felt happier than they did. I grew up in a really tight knit Jewish community. I would say fairly conservative and also just what it was like to go up in the 70s, 80s and 90s.

I think generally seeking the culture was marry young, marry within your community, focus on your family if you’re a woman generally. And so I don’t think that I grew up deeply questioning these things. But when I look back, I happened to be a very good student. I have always been a little bit of a whore, met a nerd in a in a natural like I find interesting conversations interesting. I like to analyze things. And I just happened to be pretty good at school without giving it too much effort. But I think in the back of my mind, not understanding why there was a drive to be independent to not know why husband for my future and my income, and also maybe recognizing that I have the potential to generate something in the world that I could contribute to. So I don’t think that I was putting it together very thoughtfully or organized that looking back. I think those germs of behavior were there at the age of 21, where most of my friends were starting to think about, you know, who am I going to marry?

And then typically like your family will help you with the wedding and help you buy an apartment somewhere driving distance. I somehow got on a plane and moved to Mexico to take my first job at BCG, which is a consulting firm that I had fantasized about, that you can have offices in Venezuela. And that really, you know, led my career in many, many ways down here today. And so probably that wouldn’t have happened had I not had those official things.

Speaker 2: So much in there, I’m going to carve my own path. I’m going to break away from what tradition my social traditions might tell me to do. But then also to sort of start to understand, you know, who you are in the world and taking those steps forward. When you went to university before you had your first job at BCG, did you already have an inkling or an idea of this is the path that I want to take? And I do want to go into this realm of consulting. Or did you sort of uncover and discover these things about you through the university process?

Speaker 3: Yeah, I went to college while living at home. So from a social and developmental life, it didn’t change as much, except obviously you’re growing up. But you’re still actually kind of living in the same bubble that you led because your high school records are still there. And so you have a few new university friends, but your life is still pretty similar. And I don’t think that during college, it really crossed my mind to leave after college. What was somewhat common was if you were driven and strong academically, maybe you would go to do a graduate degree, you know, my mother had done her MBA, maybe I would do something like that. My career aspirations, because I’ve always loved big picture thinking and strategy.

And I love economic development. I had some view of working at the World Bank or something of that nature. I guess deep down inside, I knew that I was like really smart and wanted to do something intellectually stimulating.

I haven’t guided to a specific career. When I studied engineering and how I picked my major was really almost by default. I was like, do I want to be a doctor? No, do I want to be an architect?

No. And then engineering was this really broad door opening career that was if you’re smart enough, it’ll be good. And so I went to great, like the MIT of Venezuela had a great time. While I was studying industrial engineering, BCG was one of the companies that I had come to admire just from different things you learn in school. I had to do a thesis.

I did an externship at SEMEX, which is a SEMENT company that had offices in Venezuela. And one day, it was a six month internship, and my boss called me into his office and he said, what are you doing after college? And I said, I don’t know. And he said, you are super smart. You are an incredibly competent, what are you doing here? And without telling me, he picks up the phone, calls BCG, which they were a big client in Mexico, and says, hey, I’m sitting in front of the smartest neurons that would work for me. You should really interview her. And basically sent me to Mexico.

And I think if I had thought this through solely, I have not been brave enough to do it, but they just kind of one step in front of the other. I interviewed, they gave me an offer. I came back. By the way, I will never forget that the offer was $28,000 a year. And I had never seen so much money in my life that I couldn’t understand how I could possibly spend that. I was like, I’m rich now. I don’t know what I’m going to do. And my signing bonus was $5,000. And I was like, oh my God, this is so much money. By the way, I went and that changed everything.

Speaker 2: Wow. This first experience, because subsequently from Mexico, it seemed that you got both the career slash travel bug at the same time, your work sort of started to take on all these shapes and directions. And I feel like once you open the door to possibility, so many things can unfold for you. So when you were starting to plant your feet down in Mexico, as a young woman, knowing that you’re smart, getting the best recommendation that anyone can give, which is a phone call to land your job, which is so amazing. How did you start to settle into this new life of yours? And what were some of your early priorities as you were now making $28,000 more money than you ever thought you would make in a year? How did you start thinking about spending, savings, and planting your feet?

Speaker 3: First of all, it took me about three months to realize that I really didn’t have enough money to do anything. But I was so full. I didn’t understand that by the time you paid rent and gas, I didn’t sure if it was a car or it was calling my mother to ask for it.

She’s, what are you going to come home? I was like, well, if you don’t buy the ticket, I’m not going. So that was a very quick learning experience. The good news about this whole thing is that you’re basically working all day and traveling for work.

So we covered a lot of that. What is true is that first leap is the hardest. And once you’re no longer in your hope country, once you’re an immigrant, then there’s more optionality and there’s also more possibility because you don’t feel the roots as intensely. And also, I did get into a world in which it was a totally different world. I was surrounded by really smart people from all over the world that were very career driven. And so it was a very fast track learning into the possibilities that presented.

So then I was just rebelling in. I needed, somehow, through the various walks of life, I think I was going to land in an environment like that, full of smart driven, hardworking people that are thinking big things. And so once I landed, and it was a little bit of factory, like consulting, banking, business school. So after I did consulting, I was convinced that you should also try banking before business school. And I even, you know, dabbled in the DAPK, how we moved to Sao Paulo before landing in business school, which is kind of like the path. And what worked for me was I came to the US and it was a really lovely way to enter a country. I mean, I have, as you may know, but it’s not lots of trials and tribulations and probably have to be like, what we’re now with here. And it’s a very different way to arrive young, building a network, being someone, having a career services thing that puts jobs in front of you and versus arriving with your husband or wife and two little kids, not speaking the language perfectly to like, you know, because business got shut down back home or somebody can knock your relative and you’re like, I can’t live like this. So in hindsight, you know, I left right at the tipping point where things started increasingly getting worse. And so I built up, you know, it was the best possible way to build a life in the US. Anyway, so that’s the That’s amazing.

Speaker 2: And so obviously, you know, business school isn’t cheap, right? A lot of people will have their, their companies that they work for sort of help push them through or they’re of different sort of financing ways to think about it. Seems like for you, it was really clear that business school was the next step, right, in terms of building out what the future of your career and professions would look like. How did you think about financing business school?

Because hard-bodied is definitely not not one of the cheapest. And I was just talking to someone the other day and they’re like, pretty soon, it’s literally going to cost a million dollars to put your kid through university, let alone an elite business school program. So how did you think about that?

Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, first of all, that’s a whole separate topic for in 2025. Do I feel like the value prop of elite business schools is still worth it? I don’t know. In my particular case, it was amazing. At that time, it was now obviously a ticket to a specific community. I was like, I actually wanted to go to Stanford, I applied, I got in, I ended up going to Harvard for a whole other story, but the network you would build, especially if you’re coming from abroad and you don’t have that community.

I went to Simon Bolivar University in Paracas, that it’s different than if you had a different background here. So that was huge. Also, everyone I knew had gone and had the time of their life. But the other thing that really made a difference was that at that time, there was a program, I think sponsored by Citibank, where if you got into Harvard, no questions asked, they would mow you the money, which at that time, all in was 100K, which felt obviously like a fortune, but I have now realized it’s like 3S that today. And the reason I was willing, first of all, I thought it was a great trade, but also the way it still works. But at that time, it’s like, you can get sponsored by the firm that you’re working out if you’re a consultant or bank. And the problem is obviously you need to go back.

But it gives you optionality, because if you find something better or you understand, and I got some really, really good advice for people older than me at the time, when I almost stayed in banking when I went to the start, and I think it’s the bonus, and they were like, the numbers that see so big to you right now are not that meaningful down the road, really optimized for career experience, which is true early on in most circumstances, not all, but in May. And so I did that. And right after business school, I went to work at Disney, and I worked on a project and a year into the project, it was very successful. And then they gave me a pretty size of the bonus. And I immediately wired it and paid down all that was remaining from my business school loan.

And that was the incredibly gratifying. So basically two years out of business school, you know, I had never been a person that had like credit card debt. And in fact, I was encouraged to do something because otherwise I couldn’t even get a car because I had no credit history.

Speaker 2: What an incredible story and opportunity to do that for yourself. Something sizable, like that off early to really set you up to be able to live, I think, a lot more free, the mental jail cell, right? If you’re thinking about this thing you have to pay and, you know, and it feels like a burden and you’re just getting started.

Speaker 3: At one point in my career, I saw him and getting a JDMDA. I had these fantasies of working at the World Bank. And some of it was that I loved what I was doing. But probably underneath is, you know, there’s a math component with like if you happen to love banking and consulting and investing, the path is much easier.

I think it’s made really difficult. Like if you really wanted to vote yourself to like, you know, be a teacher, you know, I think it’s a responsibility of society to pick some people and help them fund these things.

Speaker 2: Of course, you know, it’s so interesting because your career feels like tasting excellence at a buffet. You kind of went from Walt Disney and you start an M &A and then you started taking on these different roles that really started, it feels like tasting and experiencing and starting to really round out almost your body of knowledge of how business and operations and things scale and operate and really move in the world.

Did you sort of look at these different roles, you know, let’s say the next few roles, right? As you’re picking and choosing and tasting from the buffet of excellent opportunities, how much of that was really motivated by, let’s say, the salary and the opportunity to sort of sort of increase your wealth, earn more, make more. And then how much of that was also then really informed by, oh, this seems really interesting. And I want to go figure this out or learn this piece of it out. What did that balance look like?

Speaker 3: Yeah, obviously, I think the money was important, but all the opportunities that I was looking at were at least minimally compensated that I could like make hands meet. I think a lot also was, in some ways, luck and in some ways, having been surrounded by really great mentors that just cared to get really good advice. Once I landed in consulting and I was there for a few years, knew that I was ultimately going to go to business school. So I, you know, I was thinking about a three-year plan or not an extensi. Many people, including one mentor, was like, everyone in business school, it’s like a third go to banking and a third go to consulting. Do your third year, I decided to do a third year, just don’t stay here.

It’ll be marginal benefit. Explore one new thing. And that was really great advice because at the beginning, you really want to do exactly what you said, which is experience a few things and figure out what you like, what you don’t like, work for different people, learn new skills. I then threw a lot of reasons, but also in this sort of trying new things, set a very brief startup thing during the dot com bubble, which was awesome. And so when I arrived in business school, I had this incredible privilege of having a very well-rounded experience. And I knew what I loved about all my previous roles.

I also had this incredible, I love them all enough to go back. So I didn’t feel too much pressure going, finding something because the backup plan was to return to either consulting or banking, or even a startup. But then when Disney showed up, ticked everything that I wanted for my previous roles, and also then moving on to technology investing, which is what I’ve done for the last 20 years was the perfect culmination of having done what I had done before realizing all these things have made it very clear for me that investing in this space is the thing that’s going to be the most fulfilling and then I’ll be the best at. So I think a lot of it is luck, but also some good advice from people who cared and maybe some common sense in making sure that when you’re young is when you can experience and try to figure out what makes you tick.

Speaker 2: That’s so cool. And at these companies like Disney and the companies thereafter, were you always sort of thinking like, okay, I’m checking off the boxes on automatic 401k contributions? Like, as your sort of wealth started to grow, at what point did you start to really think about diversification? You know, obviously business school is great in terms of exposure to opportunities, being able to see what more your assets can do beyond I think what most people are taught. So at what age and how did you start to think about diversification of asset classes? Yeah.

Speaker 3: So pre-business school, I would say I thought about it very little or very abstractly and theoretically like I knew everything about the theory, but if I had any money, you know, I wasn’t optimizing because my debt is cheaper than my earnings. It is all very conservative. I don’t like to have debt. Obviously I have to have my HDS debt, but I wasn’t trying to finance a nicer car or save any money. And I didn’t even have mental bandwidth to invest directly and maybe this is something from business school that when you understand the theory of finance and you’re like, look, it’s really, really hard to beat the market, you actually get more conservative in a way.

If you’re not naturally a person that’s invested, actually only later on starting with the angel investments and investing in companies. And I was really very conservative. I had, you know, my 401k from work and I was very happy that it was, you know, pretty diversified. And again, the first time I ever came into real money, I never thought, well, let me keep my debt for another seven years.

It’s not a bad rate. I was like, I need to get rid of this debt. So it wasn’t even, I would say necessarily financially savvy, but it was in my personal finances, even to this day, but certainly at that time I was very conservative. I didn’t have anywhere to sell back on. So it wasn’t like I was comfortable taking too much risk after business school again. So that first, let’s say, first time I came into some money, I paid down my business school debt. After that, the next time that I had some money, I remember giving it to a friend that was a money manager who said, you obviously don’t have that much money, but I’m taking your money as a potential high net worth over time.

The financial crisis, and he like everyone else lost 30% of my money. And I was like, all right, I’m no longer paying a third party to manage my money. And so I started managing it with Vanguard, which I mostly still do actually. And I still do a lot of vanilla investing because I feel like both my husbands and my careers are really high risk. The other stuff where much more digress is high.

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Speaker 2: I love thinking about high risk versus low risk and how to sort of ensure that everything feels really stable, this concept of creating stability. Let’s unpack and double click more on tech investing. Obviously, I feel like this is a topic where a lot of people who are listening are like, okay, this sounds big.

Obviously, there are funds and there are all these companies that I see IPO and how to think about contacting what this might look like, not just as an institutional investor, but certainly as someone who’s a prospective limited partner at a venture fund. How is it as you started in your career and you started learning more about how this operated and worked? What were some of the things that really landed with you that made you gravitate towards, hey, this is really where there’s huge opportunity to be gained and this is where I want to spend my time and energy in investigating the ways in which I can contribute not only future wealth, but also the future of our society and our planet. Talk to me about how these different pieces started to come together and what pulled you in that direction.

Speaker 3: So, let me separate the two parts, the GP and the LP. So, the GP is me running this part, deciding to spend my life doing this. First of all, how I got here was I came from the top down meeting. I first started my career investing in big billion-dollar companies like Facebook, like Yale. So, I did a lot of financial analysis.

These were big deals that are written up in Wall Street Journal. And over the arc of my career, based on the people that I knew, the relationships that I had, I was able to learn early-stage investing and I fell in love with understanding where the world is going, finding those really unique people that have such passion and understanding of the space that are going to do the hard work of making it happen. And I almost felt like I can’t believe I’m getting paid for this because I would pay a subscription to be able to spend my day thinking about where’s the world going, go find these incredible people, ask them to explain to me what they’re doing.

Then I ask them follow-up questions and they get me the answers and that if I’m lucky, they let me give the money so they do this super hard work. I fell into it from later-stage investing into earlier and I found over time that I had developed investment judgment, which is a combination of experience and in some way some taste to invest. And I love researching this stuff and even from the beginning where I cared about big picture things, if you think about what percent of our economy was technology 100 years ago. And again, technology is everything.

The wheel was technology. But if you think from an asset class, over the last, over our lifetimes, technology has become a peripheral thing or a layer that every industry has to transit to where the world is going. So obviously as an investor, if you put your chips into the technology sector, it can move and obviously you can better or worse, chips does as a category. It’s hard to argue that’s not going to drive our future.

I would argue that today, VAC to buy with energy, which powers the technology revolution or the two big sectors. So that’s how I did it for me and I find so much purpose and joy and passion helping do that. And I’ve been doing this for 20 years, the big pivot that I made 10 years ago that ultimately led to sounding avi-mola that I felt that venture had gotten really narrowly focused, pretty lazy and everybody investing in the same five or six ideas and the same stereotypical founder. And the economy is so broad and so big and ripe for reinvention.

And we’re ignoring it. And I think returns will be better. And also, I’ve been an engineer that worked in industry that has a broader thought like, why do I tackle that? And so that started the journey. So now I investing instead of the difficult flat AI startup or the B2B SaaS thing, my team of sweets and investments or something in nuclear fusion and in geothermal energy, a little bit different than your typical measure fund. So that’s on the GP side, on the OP side, which I’m also an OP in various funds. And I would say there are lots of reasons that people should invest in funds and many of you said why they shouldn’t. So first of all, it’s a very illiquid asset class. It should be the portion of your assets that you envision compounding for value in the very, very long term, as opposed to what I might need to take out in the next three to five years for a mortgage or any other use. It’s not for every, but for the people that have assets to invest for long term growth, I think it’s an indispensable part, both from returns, because of what I said before, because it is you’re investing in where the world is going. But then how you invest it and where you invest it, it isn’t just dollar and cents. I think if you have a big portfolio and you’re trying to understand and learn from the world about how to deploy that capital, putting some of that money into funds that will teach you something that will guide you has more benefits than just that. If you have a relationship with that fund that needs to other investments, to co-investments, to building a community, perhaps you have a desire to invest directly going forward.

And so you want to partner with some investors that can expand your network that can expand your horizons. Investing in small funds is really different than investing in a big multi-fillion dollar fund. If you invest in a portfolio, if you kept it in with a small check, but you can’t, let’s say you could, you will get a beautiful report. And if you invest in a small fund, you probably will be able to have conversations with the general partners and understand a little bit more what’s happening under the hood, which can teach you something. And a lot of the ties, where you’re making angel investments and sometimes people make investments for non-financial decisions because you believe in the person and your best friend from childhood is starting an ice cream shop and you really think he or she can pull it off. And that’s fair. Those are not crazy reasons to deploy capital.

Speaker 2: So let’s go back to the first times that you found yourself in, we’ll start with the LP role and then we’ll move to the GP role. But obviously, writing a check into a fund for the first time, I think can be a little intimidating. You know, I think it can be a little bit like, okay, I’m putting money into a fund.

I intellectually understand what this means, but obviously, it’s very different than having your cash in real estate, which you can see and feel or even in Vanguard, which you can get out. So tell me a little bit about what it was like for you and how you decided to write that first LP check.

Speaker 3: My experience was much easier than many others that I’ve seen, even like first LP’s that I’ve written to me. I’ve seen the range of paths. For me, the first time that I had to make this decision was as an LP in my own fund elevation. And they just had an option where it was very tax advantaged for me to take a big portion of my paycheck and put it in as an LP. And there was a and so the choice was, do I want to put it into this risky thing with a big tax upside? Or do I want to not double down on this risk?

And I did that. And what was the really interesting story is it ended up being a great investment, but there was a time when I did not believe that that was going to be the case because the crisis happened in the middle. And so it was a good lesson in if you’re going to invest in illiquid assets, first of all, understand that you invest in equities, there is a chance that it’ll go down and that’s a slight and there’s no free launch. So if there’s upside, there’s downside. And so going through that and with a happy ending, obviously, I think left a good taste in my mouth, but it was a good lesson. So don’t do it with capital that is absolutely central to your well-being if you cannot imagine the situation in which it’s a loss or one X after a really long time, which is also really disappointing.

So I had that cure. So when I had a moment to start investing, what I counsel people is once you decide to do it, set a number in your head and maybe do more than just one, right? So if you say I have this amount of money to invest, maybe I’ll do five different things with it. And there are funds that take tiny checks, there are funds that take big. So this applies to almost anyone that has some money to invest.

And you can do it for different reasons. I’m in funds because I want to learn what they do. I’m in funds because I am friends and admire the general partner and want to show support. I am in funds that we share deal flow and I think it’s constructive to be a supportive member of the ecosystem.

I’m in funds that I thought the thesis was really interesting and so orthogonal to what I do, that I wanted what I said before, like I want to get some insights into a space then just reading a little bit on the Wall Street Journal doesn’t cut it. Less than 10 total LP commitments I’ve made. And the main reason being that all my personal capital is tied up in Avila and all my LPs know that I have put way more than I should into this. And that’s how you want your GPs that you’re backing to be.

So I understand it from both sides. There’s a lot of that in the CPE that I now have a level of founder empathy that I didn’t have at elevation because now I am a founder myself. I think when you’re an LP, you really have the empathy of the people you’re pitching to give you money. So what I like it when I know that the GP is all in and way over invest in. I love that.

Speaker 2: And Patty, let’s talk a little bit about this sort of sense of responsibility as a GP. I feel like there is so much responsibility not only on the diligence inside, you’re obviously dealing with the emotional aspects of people parting with their capital sometimes, especially in areas like yourself that are really divergent from what let’s say people are reporting at on the New York Times around, right?

This isn’t the headline, pop culture, open AI is now valued, you know, more than the world is valued. So this is like, you know, a different way of thinking about things which requires different levels of education, emotional hand holding, and really sort of guiding people through this. The first time that you found yourself in this GP role and having these conversations and feeling a sense of responsibility, what was that like for you? And how did you know that you were the best person to continue to go down this path? Because I do think that it takes really specific skill sets to be able to be excellent in this type of work. Yeah.

Speaker 3: I mean, first of all, I never would have been even remotely able to think I could if I hadn’t had a decade plus of experience working in and with some of the most respected famous investors in the world. So it was in a firm that did things the way they’re supposed to be done.

I had mentors that really kicked me and said, this is what you should do, you’re ready, do it. So that probably was part of it. And that doesn’t mean that you’re not constantly wondering like, can I, but you know, that was foundational. I really had such a strong belief in my thesis. And at the time in 2015, when I would tell people what I wanted to invest in, they thought I had three heads or they thought I was like doing a charity. And so almost by default, I think if somebody had said, just come here and here’s $50 million and go and deploy it within my fund, I probably would have not had the courage to start my own thing.

But out of sheer necessity, I kind of did it in one foot in front of the other, let me. It is a really hard thing to do for all entrepreneurs if you’re starting a bracelet making business, like I made my daughter start to finance her Sephora habit or what I’m doing because the first people that need to believe in you are the people who know you. And so to mix money and personal relationships is fraught in so many ways. I hate asking people I know for money if you do it and they say no, it’s awkward.

Everything about it is awkward. Unfortunately, there’s no getting around it because when you are going to get the quote unquote real arms length money, one of the first signals is do the people that know you best believe in you. And so there’s no getting around that my former bosses at Elevation and people I’ve worked with had to signal yes, she’s somebody worth giving money and responsibility to.

I take super seriously, this is so basic, but if you’re not going to be an upfront, honest, ethical person as like a baseline to even have a conversation, people have known me for many, many years, I’m starting to get some wrinkles. And that’s something foundational. And I think many, many people, you know, you build a network over time, the world is much smaller than one thing. And so hopefully there’s enough people to pick up the phone and be like, does she know what she’s doing? And is she a good trustworthy person to give your money? You’re giving somebody your money. So that was hard, but necessary, I would say. And I felt like I’d had enough examples and prodding to take that lead. Wow.

Speaker 2: That’s that is. It’s so beautiful to hear the number of people throughout your life that have really pushed you. They’ve seen things in you and they’re like, Patty, you got to go out.

Speaker 3: I really try to be for people that work for me or that I see around to be what I would have loved and received, which is blunt on a speed back and as much opportunity as I was willing will work well.

Speaker 2: Yeah, of course. I want to double click into another area here, which is, you mentioned talking to founders and being able to hear what they’re building, but also being on the other end of being a key decision maker as to whether or not those assets are going to come from you, which requires another set of emotional intelligence and complexity around maintaining founder relationships and being able to sort of not only find great deals, but get access to them, but also be in good relationship with them. In your experience, now it’s like the third side. The LP side, the GP side, certainly as a GP founder, but also not only working with investors, but now working with these founders. What have been some of the insights, especially, and money is so personal, right? These founders are fundraising. They need capital for their businesses at whatever stages that they’re at. They’re also trying to make a living for themselves and trying to figure out, in some cases, am I going to pay my rent or am I going to pay employees? What has been your experience in working with founders and seeing them navigate the apartment rent versus employee sort of situation?

Speaker 3: It’s funny. Today, earlier, I did a session for a group of founders like a bootcamp about fundraising and various things that I said there, which I’ll say here. One is venture really isn’t for everyone. Knowing what business you’re trying to build and then finding the financial partners that is the right one. Venture, for example, has incredible pros and incredible cons. If you’re gunning for something huge with a pretty high likelihood of failure, but an incredible outcome in success, venture might be the right fit.

If you, for example, are trying to build a business and you would be incredibly happy if you build a business that has 5 million of free cash flow every year and that would be delightful and you’re bringing joy to whatever customer you’re satisfying, you should not take venture money because that is an incredible success, but the venture capitalist is going to ruin your business because they’re going to try to make it into a $500 million business and in the process probably mess up the chance you had. A little bit about what are you trying to build be very clear and then, okay, adventure is the right path and there’s a few other tools and two very obvious ones are one is this is not even a marriage. This is like a marriage with kids. This is how long this relationship and the impact of those decisions will be.

So it’s not just getting to yes, is this a partner that I want to be in business with for a long time and I’ve seen many venture investors who seem fine at the time of investing and then over the years with the inevitable ups and downs of building a business not act in a way that is either thoughtful of the fact that you have a partner that’s aligned or even sophisticated enough, like the venture investor has their own biases and problems and maybe they’re not being respectful of the fowler. So I think that’s really important. And then the other thing is that like everything else in life what you see is a very small sliver is the tip of the iceberg. So the work that goes into building a business and preparing for a successful fundraise and doing everything and then people say, oh, it’s all storytelling and it’s that process. No, but the only way to make a great story and a good process is because there was a lot underneath that tip. You have to know what you’re building, really put the love and effort into it.

Speaker 2: That’s really beautiful. You mentioned that the relationship is like a marriage with children. Well, you are married with children and I’d love to ask you, as you are raising a beautiful family and sort of thinking about their life, you mentioned selling bracelets to be able to satisfy and never ending hunger for Sephora, which I understand and that’s a wonderful outlet. How do you sort of have these conversations at home? You are day in and day out in this realm of money.

You’ve been in it now for quite some time. What sort of understanding do the kids have about what mom is up to and how do you sort of reconcile some of these conversations at home around the dinner table?

Speaker 3: So my kids are 14, 12 and 10 right now. So mostly their entire life I’ve been doing tech investing and often have been traveling quite a bit. I’m based in Miami.

Most of the stuff I do is not based in Miami. So for a kid, not only the fact that they see me on Zooms and I can’t come in, but also the fact that I’m out and that feels much more present has been a thing in their life. It has its obvious downsides. The upsides are we, my husband and I have really been able to create a clear connection between the life of privilege that we have is not random. It’s because we work very, very hard and I think that’s the good value to instill that at one point I remember many, many years ago I was in the car and I think one of my daughters was asking me for a doll. I can’t remember the whole story, but I basically said like it takes a lot of work to afford maybe she wanted an American girl doll or something like that and they hate when I leave and after a while she turns and says, Mommy, can you just go to the office now? So there was a connection between buying things and working hard, which is good. So I think they see that and having two of my three are girls, especially I think seeing that a mom can be a mom and also have a successful career is a thing I wanted to convey. And then as I described my childhood early on, you really can’t get that fully out of your system.

So I still naturally cringe when the lights are left on in my house or people are trying to throw away leftovers and you know that seeps into them. So it’s our bracelet making business because I was like a ten-year-old really can buy things that support, I don’t buy things that support. And my oldest was really happy having her first summer job and I loved that it was a minimum wage working in a store selling things kind of job, which I think everyone should have and not jump immediately fancy mentorship.

Those are some of the ways and also they can see that I love my job. I’m very lucky and maybe it’s not just luck, but did I invest in things that are so interesting and so often positive for the world? So I tell them at one point my son when he was eight years old invested in my fund and we wrote a little one-page contract to invest in my fund. And then there was this big deal that was incredible into a nuclear fusion company that I was doing like a separate little deal and he heard about it because I was talking about it, it was COVID. So everything was happening real time in the house. And at one point he said and he had $80 whatever it was he invested from things he’d saved and he said, can I please get out of my fund and invest into your other company because he heard what it was, which of course is a no, no legally, but I did make an exception. So anyway, I try to tell them in language they can understand what I’m doing and I think it’s super interesting for them.

Speaker 2: Oh my God, I love that so much, Fadi. Two final questions. We talked so much today about investing money and not having dad and sort of the seriousness around money, but money can also be extremely fun and there can be so many great things that we can do with our money. What have been some of your most favorite recent ways in which you have spent your money? All right.

Speaker 3: I was just how recent this is, but when you said this one of the most fun ways is we were on a trip in Turkey and I took my kids to the big flea market, you know, market and I gave each of them I think $20 or whatever and I said see what you can pull off and it was really incredible because they were so to their persona. Like my youngest was like, this is the money that I have.

What can I buy? Which of course led her to get nothing. My oldest was embarrassed and didn’t really want to have it too much and my son, oh my God, you know, he will be an excellent commerce or investor. He was like, I couldn’t believe the prices he got for the things and he just got so much joy out of like haggling. I had told him my friend told me the rule of thumb is about half and he got everything for like 10 cents on the dollar. They didn’t originally told him. So that was something super fun. That’s a good example, I think.

Speaker 2: That is so lovely. And then to really end this beautiful conversation, you know, you are obviously up to big things in the world. It’s no doubt to me that your legacy will be in shaping the future of the world and you’re doing so already. When it comes to things that you’re calling in right now, things that you need, how can we the audience support you? What is it you’re needing right now? What can we do for you?

Speaker 3: Oh my God, that’s a lovely question. I guess one big thing and one more personal thing. So big in the world, the world is moving so fast and it’s teetering. I came from Venezuela, my grandparents came from the bowels of World War II and I came to this super stable country. Now the entire world feels like it’s a little bit unstable and I just hope that people stay involved and use critical thinking and we’re all falling into our little silos and snippets and so big picture thinking, keep our eye on like the long-term future and listen to both sides or all sides.

I think is something I hope we all do and I look at my children and I’m like, oh my God, where is the world going to be in 20 years? And then for me, I would love to hear from anyone in this community that is interested in learning more about the kind of investments that Avila makes. One of my summer projects was launching our new website so everyone can go to avila.bc and check out what we believe in and what we do and would love to support anyone that’s out there thinking about contributing to this space.

Speaker 2: Wonderful, Patty. You’re so awesome. Thank you so much for your spirit of generosity, the way that you’re contributing to this world. I’m excited to be in community with you and this has been such a wonderful interview. Thank you.

Speaker 3: Love being here.

Speaker 1: Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Getting Rich Together. My hope is that you leave every episode feeling more inspired, more powerful, and more connected. Until next time, remember, you have everything it takes to create wealth on your terms.