Soraya Darabi (TMV) - The Care Economy, Where Change Needs to Start In VC, and How to Approach Market Sizing

Our guest today is Soraya Darabi, General Partner at Trail Mix Ventures where she focuses on the future of living well. Previously, she worked at the New York Times, co-founded Foodspotting (acq. by OpenTable) and Zady. Some of her investments include Classtag, The Wing, and Alleyoop. Lots of insights on this episode as Soraya shares her amazing experiences both as a founder and investor, so without further ado, here's Soraya.

And there you have it. It was really great chatting with Soraya, I highly recommend following her on Twitter @sorayadarabi. You can also follow your host, Mike, on Twitter @mikegelb. You can also follow for episode announcements @consumervc.

Some of the questions that I ask Soraya -

1. What attracted you first to media and then becoming an entrepreneur?
2. Why the switch to VC and how did TMV come together?
3. Diligence process for founders?
4. What’s your check size? How do you think about the different fundraising stages and the overall early stage investing ecosystem?
5. I heard in a previous interview that you invest in the “care economy”. What is the care economy if you could break that down for us?
6. Since you invest in both enterprise and consumer, is your diligence process and milestones different for each type of business?
7. How do you approach market sizing?
8. Wanted to talk about COVID -
9. Is it harder finding conviction in founders when meeting virtually rather than in person?
10. Are you seeing more or less new companies during COVID?
11. Has working from home been more difficult?
12. What is one thing that you would change when it came to venture capital?
13. What’s one company you had the opportunity to invest in, didn’t, and in retrospect wish you did?