On the show today, Apollo speaks with Devin Nash, Vice President of Brand & Experience at Underscore VC. Apollo about her “get stuff done” attitude, how she first discovered her passion for VC, the methods she and her team employ in order to build a committed community, and what she hopes for in the future of impact investing.
On the show today, Apollo speaks with Devin Nash, Vice President of Brand & Experience at Underscore VC. Underscore is an early-stage, Boston-based VC Firm backing bold entrepreneurs with an aligned community designed to fit each startup's unique needs.
Devin is the driving force behind the Underscore brand, from strategy and creative to communications and founder products. The epitome of a community builder, Devin is also a passionate champion of Underscore’s ESG efforts, continually pushing the Underscore Core Community to strive for more, with a particular emphasis on diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Devin was shocked by her own results on the PLE test, scoring highest in Prioritize, and lowest in Execute. She chats with Apollo about her “get stuff done” attitude, how she first discovered her passion for VC, the methods she and her team employ in order to build a committed community, and what she hopes for in the future of impact investing.
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Guest Bio
Devin Nash is the Marketing Director at Underscore VC, an early-stage, Boston-based VC Firm backing bold entrepreneurs with an aligned community designed to fit each startup's unique needs.
Fueled by purpose and her belief that entrepreneurship can change the world for good, she is a Board Member and Ecosystem Advisory Committee Co-Chair for Visible Hands and previously served as a Board Member of the VC Platform Global Community and held the role of North America Managing Ambassador for One Young World.
When Devin isn’t actively improving the world, she can be found improving her home through jaw-dropping DIY projects, decorating cakes (funfetti only, non-negotiable), and listening to “How I Built This.”
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Guest PLE Score
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Guest Quote
“I am the person that is generally onboarding our founders, and I'm very intentional about asking: ‘What are the reasons that you selected us?’ What I hear time and time again is that number one, it's our people. And number two, it's this opportunity to engage with the core community, both from the advisor perspective, but also from the pool of talent that they get access to as a result.” - Devin Nash
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Time Stamps
*(3:24) Devin’s Achievement Index
*(5:58) A bit about Underscore VC
*(14:53) How Devin grows her local ecosystem
*(16:54) Underscore’s Core Partner Makeup
*(23:21) Navigating the transition from Execution to Leverage
*(24:26) Rewriting your mission statements
*(29:08) Building diversity from the ground up
*(31:33) How to take the next leap in your career
*(36:36) Building culture at your firm
*(37:44) Apollo’s Takeaways
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Links
[00:00:00] Apollo Emeka: Improving your leadership skills will help you in every area of your life. But it's tough to know where to get started, and that's why we created the Achievement Index Assessment. You can take the assessment@theachievementindex.com. It takes about five minutes, and it's gonna generate a personalized report that breaks down how you prioritize, leverage and execute.
Go to the achievement index.com or find the link in the show notes.
[00:00:28] Devin Nash: If I were advising somebody who's starting a firm fresh right now, I would tell them to go back to the drawing board and cross out every single thing that's already been done and give themselves the challenge of coming up with something that is truly new and differentiated. At this point, what this industry needs most is to forget some of its history and really lean into reinvention.
[00:00:55] Apollo Emeka: Welcome to the Achievement Index, a podcast designed to help you understand and accelerate the ways you perform. I'm Dr. Apollo Emeka. I created the Achievement Index based on my experience in the FBI, U. S. Army Special Forces, According to the Achievement Index, vibrant success is the result of doing well in three areas, or as we like to call them, orientations.
Prioritize, leverage, and execute. On this podcast, I'll be getting inside the minds of noteworthy leaders to explore how their unique orientations inform the successes and challenges they've navigated throughout their lives and careers. Woo! On the show today, I'll be speaking with Devin Nash, Marketing Director at Underscore VC, an early stage, Boston based VC firm backing bold entrepreneurs with an aligned community designed to fit each startup's unique needs.
Devin is the driving force behind the Underscore brand, from strategy and creative to communications and founder products. The epitome of a community builder, Devon is also a passionate champion of Underscore's ESG efforts, continually pushing the Underscore core community to strive for more, with a particular emphasis on diversity, Equity, and inclusion.
Fueled by purpose and her belief that entrepreneurship can change the world for good, she is a board member and Ecosystem Advisory Committee co chair for Visible Hands and previously served as a board member of the VC platform Global Community and held the role of North American Managing Ambassador for One Young World.
When Devin isn't actively improving the world, she can be found improving her home through jaw dropping DIY projects, decorating cakes, funfetti only, non negotiable, and listening to how I built this. And you know, I can attest to her DIY skills because her backdrop looks like a straight up virtual background.
Devin, how are you doing today?
[00:03:03] Devin Nash: I'm doing awesome. Thanks
[00:03:04] Apollo Emeka: for having me. Oh, man, that is so great. If your cakes look anything like your background, then you need to like go on a baking competition show. I think that should be in my future. Sweet. You heard it here first, folks. Devin Nash is going to be popping up on a baking show.
All right. So before we dive into all of the amazing things that you've accomplished, we're going to take a look at your achievement index score. Love this one. You've got 52 percent prioritize. And for those of our listeners who are brand new here, prioritizing is all about understanding what must be done.
Prioritizers are often dreamers and love looking at the mountaintops, deciding where to plant the flag and where to go. So your score is 52 percent prioritize. It's 44 percent leverage. Now, leverage is all about Building out that base camp at the base of the mountain and implementing technology, information, people, and systems to make climbing the mountain easy.
And then you were 4 percent execute, which I think we've tied on execute, you and I, and execution is all about actually climbing the mountain, you know, charting a path up the mountain and climbing it. So, 52 percent prioritize, 44 percent leverage, and 4% Execute. How does that score strike
[00:04:27] Devin Nash: you? You know, I take a lot of these assessments.
I think they're really interesting tools for self discovery and reflection. So I was comparing and contrasting a lot to my Myers Briggs and my Enneagram results. Okay. And so, in some ways, I felt like it was dead on, and in other ways, I felt like maybe I was an unreliable, you know, narrator for the assessment.
I think it could reflect where I hope to be in my future, and maybe where I'm... Moving towards right now, but I also think that like, I'm a crazy executor. Like, I am totally the person on our team that gets shit done. Um, so in some ways I agreed, in other ways I felt like I spike pretty high on all three of these.
These components.
[00:05:27] Apollo Emeka: Yeah. So for those of you who haven't taken the Achievement Index, it basically, it forces you to choose between a prioritized choice, a leveraged choice, or an execute choice. And so people who are the get shit done people on the team, and they come in and they have these low execute scores, they're like, Hey, what gives like, Oh no, I thought I was the get shit done person.
But. I have 4 percent execute, but can you tell me a little bit about what does your team look like and how do you do your work? Sure.
[00:05:58] Devin Nash: So we are a small venture capital firm and our team is made up of 14 individuals. So we have, Five investing partners, and then we have support infrastructure. And so my role is to deliver on that support infrastructure and brand for the firm.
So essentially helping us to determine how we support our founders and how we present ourselves to the larger startup universe. And so 14 people, we. So, we have a very flat organization, uh, which makes a ton of sense for a venture capital firm of that size. And so we all... report into a partnership. So every single person on our team needs to be scrappy and be able to get things done, but they also need to have autonomy and direct their own work.
So it's a pretty unique individual that can thrive in that type of environment where they both have to, you know, set the compass and execute on the strategy. I love
[00:06:58] Apollo Emeka: it. And. You know, you have a, a higher leverage score than a lot of the folks who we see on the show. And so, you know, leveraging again is all about leveraging technology, information, people, and systems to make the work easier.
So when you look at leveraging through that lens. Does it feel like there might be some kind of some execution hiding there in the leverage? Because it is a much larger component than we usually see. Yeah, that could,
[00:07:24] Devin Nash: that could definitely be true. One of the assessments that I've taken in the past is the strength finders assessment.
And on that, I always come across as a maximizer. And so I do think that leaning into both my own strengths and the strengths of others and finding ways to get more done with less has always been kind of a part of my ethos.
[00:07:46] Apollo Emeka: Got you. Yeah, I love it. Under the worldview section, your only leverage response under your worldview was you believe that success is most dependent on working smart, which is leverage, while others believe it's dependent on having the best ideas.
or on taking action. So again, you can see how we're really forcing you to make tough choices between these three. There should be almost no easy options here, but it seems like that lines up. It does.
[00:08:10] Devin Nash: And I also think it might be a product of my work environment. I mean, I work on a team that requires us to do things in a highly leveraged way in order to Get the outcomes that are outsized in the way that we want them to be.
Cause you know, 14 person team, there's only so many things that can get accomplished in a single day. So doing it through partnership and really scalable means is an important factor.
[00:08:34] Apollo Emeka: Where do you feel like that comes up the most in your
[00:08:36] Devin Nash: work? I work a lot in the PR for the firm, um, and thinking through when, you know, when a startup is announcing their funding, how can we do that in a way that is both leveraged for the founder and leveraged for us as a firm.
That's a piece of the work that I've built out a lot of partnerships in order to accomplish. I've also started to integrate AI into that work, um, and really templatize it. With AI components to make it super scalable and easy.
[00:09:08] Apollo Emeka: Oh my goodness. So you're, we're talking about partnerships, which is, I would say is people under leverage and then AI, which is obviously technology.
And then I imagine that you have some kind of a system that kind of, that's now your SOP for pulling this stuff together. Right? Yeah. What are the big triggers then that kick this system off? Is it, is it a particular fundraise? Is it a deployment? Is it a, you know, like what are the triggers that kick this system into action and how do you operate it?
[00:09:32] Devin Nash: Yeah, so we are a seed stage firm, so we invest in B2B SaaS founders at that early stage of pre seed, or primarily seed, and we seek to be a founder's seed to Series A partner, and when you first raise that seed round, you're You actually have to file with the SEC, it's called a Form D, and it's just an indication that, that capital has changed hands.
And so that's usually the trigger that is like the forcing function to make some sort of announcement if you choose to make an announcement. And what's great about doing it at the early stage of seed is it kind of builds this PR muscle early on in a startup's journey. And I think that PR can be like the ultimate.
Flywheel for startups if they get it right and can really accelerate their growth over time if they focus on it meaningfully So yeah, it's it's usually that form defiling that is the the forcing function to start thinking about Hey, maybe we should we should be announcing
[00:10:36] Apollo Emeka: our funding. Oh, man, that's awesome thinking about that as a differentiator Can you talk a little bit about what?
makes Underscore special when it comes to supporting founders and what that ecosystem looks like and specifically, what's your role in that? Yeah,
[00:10:51] Devin Nash: this is perfect because this speaks to leverage as well. Uh, so Underscore VC was founded under the premise that it takes a community to build a truly iconic and enduring company.
And so we have this unique model that was inspired by open source. That essentially, we have set aside 10 percent of our carry in the fund that we allocate to community members that either help us source or select a portfolio company, someone that we, you know, invest in. And so, in that way, this community that's now over 1, 800 people, primarily in the Boston ecosystem, but also beyond, has allowed us to...
to not only see more deals, which is incredible and the art of the pick, as they call it, is really important in BC, but it allows us to make those selections with a really broad community informed perspective. So there are domains that we just quite simply can't all be experts in, but we have people in the community that are an expert in that domain or that function that a startup is building around.
So you get to leverage that.
[00:12:00] Apollo Emeka: Okay, so, according to her Achievement Index score, Devon is way more prioritized and leveraged than she is execute. And it feels like she's found the perfect organization because what they're doing is setting aside 10 percent of their carry. To go out and activate folks to bring amazing companies to the fund.
And that gives them a level of diverse perspectives, but also activates this network of people who have now a vested interest in bringing rock solid companies. And it's not just in finding companies that this presents an advantage, but there's also a development advantage as well. Check it out.
[00:12:49] Devin Nash: And then on the flip side, if we have somebody in our community that is supporting a portfolio company and it could be, Hey, we want to bring on Apollo as an advisor to help our leadership really scale up and start to think about how they're going to build this team.
Well, then you, Apollo, could become an advisor in that company through that, that vehicle that we've created. Um, and it just means that it's 100 percent non dilutive to the founders. It comes out of underscore VC's pocket, and it's really the most leveraged way we can support founders, or at least the most leveraged way we've found thus far.
I'm sure we'll keep evolving and finding new and
[00:13:28] Apollo Emeka: exciting ways. Yeah, that's so incredible because I guess it really is truly high leverage rather than thinking about building out an accelerator or something that might be more. Resource intensive and may also kind of not be the right fit for every single founder, right?
In your portfolio, you're able to have these 1800 folks across the spectrum who are either going to be. Able to, yeah, like you said, advise or contribute in some way, or they're going to be able to just at least get the deal on, on your radar.
[00:14:02] Devin Nash: It's not a one size fits all approach. And I think that that's the point because company building is a super unique journey, depending on what stage you're at, you need different resources.
And so this community model essentially allows us to scale those resources for each stage
[00:14:20] Apollo Emeka: of that journey. That's so cool. So typically, I mean, you've got to worry about marketing to investors and marketing to founders, but you've got this third class of folks, right, that you also have to worry about marketing to, right?
And identifying and saying, Hey, this can be a wealth builder for you, um, where you're able to operate within your space and your area of expertise and build wealth and contribute to the growth of these awesome companies, right? Like how do you sell that? And how have you been able to grow from zero or five of these people naturally as they kind of float around different funds, right?
to 1, 800 of them.
[00:14:53] Devin Nash: Yeah, so, let's see, I think we, we surpassed The 100 core partner mark last year, um, and so core partners are folks within the community that have like specifically become like monetarily incentivized to support portfolio companies. There's a whole bunch of people in our community that they're not officially a core partner and maybe they're engaging with the community to become one eventually.
But they're engaging to uplevel their own skills. So for instance, we've got customer success community that's meeting bimonthly, and it's partly portfolio company, customer success champions, but then it's also, you know, the broader ecosystems, customer success leaders. Um, and they're all learning from each other.
So it's not purely this, you know, tit for tat relationship. It's also a more dynamic community. It's up leveling each other's skills. So there's a whole bunch of different incentives to, to be engaged and it's different from person to person. You know, some people just want to mentor and help out and learn some things along the way and then others are more motivated, motivated by the monetary piece of that puzzle.
[00:16:05] Apollo Emeka: So interesting. So thinking about like, it strikes me as kind of affiliate marketing. So there's like that affiliate marketing space. So there's a referral code for pretty much everything now, right? Like anything that you have that has any kind of. tech aspect to it. You've got a referral code, but then also a lot of these companies that have referral codes also have affiliate marketing programs, right?
And so it seems like most kind of funds have a referral code, but it almost feels like you have like an affiliate marketing program that's built out and that's a little bit more deliberate. Are there folks within your corporate partners program that are really out there kind of like, it also reminds me a bit of a scout fund where you're out there just doing work on behalf of the VC because there can be some enormous upside to it.
What is the composition of your partners look like?
[00:16:54] Devin Nash: You know, it's really across a pretty wide spectrum. We have folks who are in our community and our official core partners that Are towards the end of their careers and they've made their money, they've earned their stripes and they're at a stage in their life where they want to stay active and they want to give back to the community and most of those people are engaging with us, not because there's an upside opportunity, but because it is interesting and it keeps them engaged.
Learning and engaged and gives them a sense of community and also gives them a sense that they're giving back and it's great networking and who doesn't love that. But then there are folks that are earlier on in their career and they're just starting to make a name for themselves in a particular function or in a particular domain.
And for those people, for me and for our community manager, it's all about making them a bigger hero in their own story, which is my, like, mantra for life, make people bigger heroes in their own story. And so we'll give them opportunities to host a fireside chat, contribute to our content. Engage with a portfolio company in an advisor capacity, they get to put that on their LinkedIn.
You know, that's an opportunity for them to build their career in a really meaningful way and position themselves as a thought leader.
[00:18:17] Apollo Emeka: That's incredible. What an amazing differentiator and, you know, building and running a fund is not easy, right? And just, I mean, just to execute on the kind of basics and standards of running a fund and, and you all have managed to build this community aspect around that I think could be really, I mean, obviously you're, you're getting results.
So it could be really appealing to founders as well, right?
[00:18:38] Devin Nash: Yeah. Founders tell us time and time again, that this is the reason that they're selecting underscore. I am the person that is generally onboarding our founders. And I'm very intentional about asking, what are the reasons that you selected us, because of course we can make a pick and choose to want to invest in a startup.
But the real name of the game is being selected on the other side of that table. Um, because the best founders have choices of who they are taking capital from. And what I hear time and time again is that number one, it's our people. And number two, it's this opportunity to engage with the core community, both from the advisor perspective, but also from the pool of talent.
that they get access to as a result, both from a networking standpoint and also from a talent recruitment standpoint. I
[00:19:28] Apollo Emeka: love it. Why wouldn't every fund do this, what you're, what you're talking about, or why are they not, I guess?
[00:19:35] Devin Nash: Yeah, it's a really great question. It takes some significant legal gymnastics, and it also requires you to give up a portion of your carry in the fund.
Um, so in some ways that's not appealing to partners, GPs that would rather keep that carry for themselves, but that's just, that's not the underscore way. I would say that it was a no brainer choice for us, but it's not a no brainer choice
[00:20:04] Apollo Emeka: for all. I love it. I love the ways that different funds differentiate.
I want to zoom back out to something that you said in the very beginning. You said, well, maybe this is, maybe I answered the prioritize, leverage, execute aspirationally in a way. Yeah. What, what do you mean by
[00:20:24] Devin Nash: that? Sure. Well, I think I'm young. I've got a lot of career ahead of me. And so in the early days of my career, I would say I indexed incredibly high on execution, which is the natural evolution.
Um, and I feel like I'm starting to hit my stride in my career and I'm spending less time on the execution and more time on outsourcing or getting support from team members. In a small firm, it is always the goal to be spending less time in the nitty gritty and more time on the high level strategy and the things that are truly gonna.
You know, move the needle. Um, so I think in completing the assessment, I answered with what I feel is the right answer for
[00:21:10] Apollo Emeka: my role.
[00:21:11] Devin Nash: Um, but I am just as guilty as, you know, the most junior level employee of like getting in the nitty gritty on occasion, but I try not to.
[00:21:22] Apollo Emeka: I love this. Devin is being incredibly mindful about her own kind of professional evolution.
When you're earlier in your career, execution matters a ton, but as you grow into managerial roles and into executive roles. You have to be able to leverage and then prioritize the higher you go. And this is something that we help leaders navigate all the time at Apollo Strategy Group. And, you know, running a seed stage company is not the same as running a post A or a post B company.
Or, if you've been working in the same company for five, six, seven years, and now you're asked to spin up and start a new line of business or a new division, it's not the same. It's a different ballgame. So how does your mindset, the way that you think about prioritizing, leveraging, and executing need to change in order for you to be successful in that new role?
And that's exactly what Devin is navigating right now. How has that transition been? Like you said, Early in your career, it was all about execution. Well, first of all, what do you think was right? You said it's natural, but what's so natural about being all about execution in the front end?
[00:22:39] Devin Nash: Well, most people start their careers as interns, as I did.
And I think that interns are often inheriting busy work, right? The things that nobody else wanted to do, the dusk research that hopefully Chats GPT is going to do for us in the future, um, the spreadsheets and less of the positioning and the strategy and the deep analysis. It's more of the information collecting.
The aggregation, if you will.
[00:23:11] Apollo Emeka: Got you. And so, as you've been transitioning, what have been the challenges to transitioning from that kind of execute mindset to more of a, a leverage mindset? I
[00:23:21] Devin Nash: dislike when people answer this question with, Budget or resources, .
[00:23:29] Apollo Emeka: Okay. But I,
[00:23:30] Devin Nash: but I naturally, I do work in a resource constrained environment.
the size of your fund is the thing that indicates what your operating capital looks like, right?
[00:23:39] Apollo Emeka: Yeah.
[00:23:39] Devin Nash: Yeah. So we are naturally in a position where we have to be scrappy, but we also have to be creative in order to get things
[00:23:49] Apollo Emeka: done. So that's been the driver of it. Right? And you mentioned getting pulled back down into the weeds.
When do you find that you're most kind of susceptible to getting pulled back down into the weeds? And is it, I mean, it's not necessarily always a bad thing, right? Yeah, no,
[00:24:02] Devin Nash: sometimes it's a great thing. If I feel that I am uniquely... Positioned to work on a initiative that requires some weed pulling, I will do it.
I will absolutely, if I feel like I'm the person that can do it fastest or do it in the most informed way, then I'm the first person to raise my hand.
[00:24:24] Apollo Emeka: Got you. I want to ask you about ESG, especially in this environment. It's clearly something that is really important to you, and there was, after George Floyd's murder, there was obviously this massive impact.
Yes. It was important to everybody, seemingly, right? And there have been reports coming out every year since then that show that investments are declining or that, you know, commitments were never met. What does ESG and DEI, what do these things even mean to you and what's underscores or your commitment to these issues?
[00:24:58] Devin Nash: Yeah. I mean, that's a, that's a big and heady question, but you're absolutely dead on correct. There was. A tsunami of everyone speaking about ESG and diversity, equity, and inclusion. There was a lot of lip service around actions, and then there was a massive fall off, and I'm not sure if you've seen Apollo, but now there is some.
Counteractions to this that are really quite disappointing, specifically the Fearless Fund being sued for their practices. At Underscore VC, we went back to the drawing board and we rewrote our mission statement. We examined our values. We figured out what community looks like, what portfolio looks like, what team looks like, because this affects us across so many different assets of the business.
And it was a wake up call, um, in the biggest, the biggest way. And so we considered, how can we do this with leverage as well? Who can we partner with? How can we increase our deal flow from those that are underrepresented? And so we've partnered with some really awesome venture funds and non profits that are working in this space to make sure that not only are we seeing deals that are representative of our populations.
Um, so we have some really great partners that we work with, for instance, Hack Diversity is one that I'd love to call out. They're doing some really awesome work. At placing diverse tech talent, um, and Visible Hands is a venture firm that I now sit on the board of that is specifically created to back underrepresented founders and to support them at the very, very early stages of company
[00:26:53] Apollo Emeka: formation.
That's awesome. And here again, pops up the leverage, the lever, right? Of partnerships and, and hey, who's, who's doing this work really effectively and how do we contribute and amplify and have them amplify our stuff as well, right? Totally.
[00:27:10] Devin Nash: Also, accountability. One of the things that I pushed our team to do was to publish our metrics every year.
Because I think that that's truly the only way to hold your feet to the fire. Um, and so last year was the first year that we published our portfolio metrics, indicating the diversity level across the entire portfolio. And this year we will do the same and we'll continue to do that for years to come and the numbers to start, honestly, Apollo, not great.
But they're getting better, and they've gotten better over the three years in which we've been tracking them. And so that's something that we're really committed to doing as we continue on.
[00:27:49] Apollo Emeka: Yeah, you know, you talked about the blowback, right? Like, so there's, yeah, there were commitments that just fell off, but then there was this massive blowback.
And I think about, like you said, Fearless Fund, right, is in, is being sued right now for supporting Black women specifically. And Depending on which statistics you look at, it's either of a fraction of a fraction of a percent or a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a percent of VC money that goes to Black women founders, right?
And so, Fearless Fund is out there trying to provide opportunity to these women who absolutely deserve it and are being sued now. I think about... Right.
[00:28:27] Devin Nash: As if it's not hard enough just to run and create a fund. Oh, yeah. Now we have this new crazy
[00:28:33] Apollo Emeka: hurdle. Absolutely, exactly, but it's, it's wild because it's not just the fearless fund, which was started by, I think, two black women, right?
If you look at even the massive trillion dollar asset managers like BlackRock, right? Having beef with Texas, BlackRock, right? So what do you foresee? How do you see the landscape shifting? And like you said, the numbers aren't great. And how do you see Underscore being able to push those numbers in the direction that you want to see them go?
In this kind of climate and environment, what are going to be the keys? One
[00:29:09] Devin Nash: of the really critical legal pieces of this whole debacle is that what I'm most concerned about is that this will give limited partners, the folks who invest in VC funds, a legal basis to Choose not to invest in a fund that is backing specifically with a mandate to back diverse founders.
That's the concern. The thing that gives me hope is that the folks that work in platform roles, so non investing roles, but rather portfolio support roles at venture capital firms, are 70 percent women. And increasingly, very diverse racially, and these are the folks that are the boots on the ground that are doing the work to build the cultures and build the programs and source the investments that are ultimately getting this VC funding.
And I think because we have appropriate And are increasingly appropriate representation in these platform roles. I think that the work is not going to take a backseat for those individuals. Um, and generally, I work alongside so many people that fill these roles because it's something that I've dedicated myself to and I used to sit on the board of the VC Platform Global Community.
This is a good group of people. They're going to do right by founders and do right by the startup ecosystem and we all know that. Diversity increases innovation and creates outsized results for companies. So I think, despite the loud legal action that's happening on one side of this fight, there is a whole groundswell of people that are working on the other side as well.
[00:31:07] Apollo Emeka: I love that perspective. And it's clear to see where the prioritized piece comes in for you, because that's a really global outlook. I love how you were able to say the thing that scares me is this. And the thing that gives me hope is this. Where do you see yourself? You're young in your career and you've got a lot of time left.
Like where, what are you going to do with that time? Where do you, where do you want to go?
[00:31:33] Devin Nash: I love, love, love. Startup world. I love the venture ecosystem. It has proven to me how one person can create really outsized value. Uh, and I felt like when I entered into this space, it was like somebody had given me a key to a secret garden.
Like, I just didn't even know it existed in my backyard of Boston. Uh, I was working with big blue chip tech companies, this wasn't my arena, and now that I've stepped into this arena, I don't know how I would ever step out of it, but I think that my future, while it will remain in venture capital, certainly, and probably, frankly, on the Underscore VC team, because it's such a spectacular culture, and I love, love, love all of my colleagues, I could see myself in the future leaning more towards Impact investing, um, and firms that specifically do have a mandate to make investments that are going to better our future.
[00:32:36] Apollo Emeka: That's awesome. What's between here and there? You know, what's, what bridge do you have to build in order to get there?
[00:32:43] Devin Nash: I think it's reps and maybe a little bit of grit and continuing to push myself to do things that make me uncomfortable, like coming on this podcast with you, Apollo. Hey! I would say that 2023 was my year of not being the person that sits behind the computer and makes things happen, but rather being the person that does that, but also is willing to step out front and be a little bit more visible.
And I think that that is also a piece of the puzzle.
[00:33:16] Apollo Emeka: Yep. Getting those reps in. Just like Drew Glover in our previous episode said, getting comfortable being uncomfortable. That's a challenging thing to do as the nature of your work grows and expands. When you're just getting into your career, getting reps in is easy.
You're kind of doing a lot of the same stuff over and over again, and you can measure your progress on a almost daily basis. But the more senior you get in your career, getting a rep in might take two months. It might take a year. But I think that her focus on getting those reps in, getting comfortable, being uncomfortable, is what is going to make her successful in the long.
It's a way of executing at the prioritized level. I can see, I can see the excitement and you're already doing such great work from where you are. I'm curious how, you know, if you're staying with Underscore, Underscore is only going to continue to grow, right? And There's this, this kind of flat architecture where I imagine that your partners are a lot like you that they have a lot of prioritize and that they can keep a global, they have a strong GPS of like what's going on, where, where you all want to go, um, probably also would trend pretty high on the leverage side as well, right?
Because you're all used to, it sounds like leveraging each other and then can dive in very tactically. and get things done when they need to get done. How do you think that that might change at scale? Like as your, as, as not only your role evolves and your own career track evolves, is underscore VC in a sweet spot right now?
Or is this a cultural thing that is going to be able to, to persist and perpetuate?
[00:35:08] Devin Nash: That is a great question. I would say across the board, we're all T shaped leaders. We can kind of see across the spectrum, but each of us can go really deep on the specific thing that is our niche. For instance, one of our investors, really, really, really strong in fintech, former fintech founder, sold his company to PayPal, but he knows enough to be dangerous across.
All domains. Um, I think as we scale, we'll probably always be a, a, a smaller and a scrappier team on the, on the investment side of the business. Maybe bringing on partners that can specialize in a specific domain that we're excited about, that maybe aren't as T shaped as the rest of us, but more specific to a vertical.
I think from the portfolio support side. We have opportunity to continue with this flywheel of our core community model, but also bring on support that could help founders in unique ways, um, whether it be HR or go to
[00:36:14] Apollo Emeka: market. Yeah. It sounds like you all have a really unique kind of, I'd call it a competitive advantage and in terms of how you think about partnerships and holding back that, that 10 percent for the folks who are going to help advise and source deals.
And it sounds like you also have a really great culture there that's built around partnerships. If you were going to advise another firm as to how do you build that culture? What, what would you say are the, are the kind of key bullet points to doing that?
[00:36:46] Devin Nash: Oh man, if I were advising somebody who's starting a firm fresh right now, I would tell them to go back to the drawing board and cross out every single thing that's already been done and give themselves the challenge of coming up with something that is truly new and differentiated.
I think that is the only way to go about it at this point, given the volume of funds that have been created over the past few years. I think at this point, what this industry needs most is to forget some of its history and really lean into reinvention. Woo!
[00:37:22] Apollo Emeka: Oh, wow. That is awesome. I, I love it. I love it.
You're speaking my language. That's right. Let's create something new. Oh, man. Well, thank you. Thank you so much, Devin, for coming on the show. And thanks for the insights. It was awesome. I love the conversation.
[00:37:41] Devin Nash: As did I. Thank you for having me.
[00:37:44] Apollo Emeka: Thank you so much, Devin. Isn't she just the nicest? Oh, my goodness.
All right. Well, Now, it's time for the takeaways. BAM BAM BAM BAM! From a prioritized perspective, Devin made it really clear that it's important to stand for something. So, she brought up these diversity metrics, and she says, Hey, they are not great where they are, but we are being transparent with where they are, and we're striving to make them better.
And she made it really clear that it's important that you know what matters to you. And she chose this career path because she sees VC as a place where a single person can have outsized results on business and the world. From a leverage perspective, one of the things I think she's done really well is that she chose an organization that aligns with Who she is as a person and aligns with her kind of strengths and weaknesses and interests.
For instance, they have this partner program that she truly recognizes the value of and can articulate that value to grow the community that's going to support the company and its portfolio of companies. She also recognizes the power of making other people the heroes of their own stories. And again, if you can find that community where when someone is the hero of their own story, everybody wins, that's just the most ultimate leverage that you could possibly hope to get.
From an execute perspective, She says that it's really important to get in those reps and that the way to get to the next level of your business or your career is doing really well where you are, but also doing some of the stuff at the next level that scares you and getting comfortable doing those things before your job or your business Well, thank you so much again, Devin, and thank you all for listening.
I'll see you on the mound. Remember, you can find out what your Achievement Index is by going to www. theachievementindex. com. Take the assessment. It takes about 15 20 minutes. Make sure you're in a nice, calm state of mind in a quiet place, and you can find out your own Achievement Index and figure out how you match up.
against our guests. I'm Dr. Apollo Omeka. If you like the podcast, please rate us on whatever platform you're listening and remember to share it with your friends. Thanks. See you next time.