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VC Uncovered's View

Meet Lizzie

Original Responses (Lightly Edited for Clarity and Flow)

Background and Personal Journey

Experiences Shaping My Investment Approach
My first college internship was all about identifying talent; my next job in equity research focused on gaining deeper insight into businesses from often-overlooked stakeholders. When I got into venture capital, my position centered on operations and working with founders to determine how to make their business model work. It taught me that no matter the project, investment, or financial asset, success is ultimately defined by execution, and the people around the table determine the outcome.

That translates well into early-stage venture investing, which we specialize in at TTV Capital. We must be comfortable with a company’s evolution as the founders work out their business plan and find the right product-market fit. We’re looking for capable, driven leaders with the courage to navigate the inevitable pivots and tough decisions. The people aspect of my job excites me the most; I love working with early-stage founders and supporting them on their journey.

Influences on My Worldview
As one of four sisters, I was part of a big family that was always involved with sports. This experience solidified my values. From a young age, I learned that it’s important to take responsibility for my actions, show up consistently, and put the team before the individual.

My parents instilled in me the importance of integrity and follow-through. You must see it through to the end when you commit to something. As an athlete, showing up for every practice was just as important as showing up for the games. For me, that translates to how we show up for our founders, their companies, and each other as colleagues.

A big part of being a good venture capitalist is making a decision and sticking to it, whether right or wrong. My parents taught me the importance of commitment, and I bring that approach to my work as an investor. Once we commit to a founder, we’re all in. I do my best to support our founders however I can while respecting their autonomy and giving them the independence to run their businesses.

Balancing Intuition with Data
The short answer is that it’s definitely an art, not a science. As an early-stage VC, there is only so much data to apply to an investment decision. You can spend hours in the data room, but at the end of the day, sometimes a potential winner doesn’t yield the anticipated results.

It’s important to make a decision informed by data—to prevent fraud and ensure rationality and logic in building the business—but you also need to be comfortable with your intuition and trust that the founding team will execute the vision (or, in some cases, modify the vision).

If you are too focused on being data-driven, I've found that you’ll miss many opportunities because you’re not flexible enough. On the other hand, though, if you lean on your intuition, you could be set up for misinformation. I’ve learned to do the work but trust myself and my instincts, and then I make a decision and stick with it. I’ve also gotten more comfortable being wrong (although there is room for improvement). Everyone will be wrong sometimes; that’s just part of the job, and I’m learning to be OK with it.

Best Advice Received
Get comfortable with being wrong—that’s the advice I got from Mark Johnson, one of our partners here at TTV. Mark always tells me to make a decision, stick with it, and not beat myself up if I’m wrong. It’s the best advice I’ve ever gotten because I think about it every day, and I’ve leaned on it when I come across an opportunity that is outside the box.

Over my career as a venture capitalist, I’ve become more willing to take non-consensus bets; to do that, you need to be OK with getting things wrong sometimes. In our industry, it’s easy to get caught up in groupthink and agree with the majority opinion. Being part of a firm based in Atlanta and not on the coast has helped me look at opportunities differently. I try to identify a founder or business that is slightly unconventional and then work to convince everyone else that their idea is the way it should be. Those types of deals are what will (hopefully) drive outsized return potential.

Philosophy and Insights

Values When Working with Founders
At TTV, we prioritize putting the founder first, which is important for early-stage companies where the founder or founding team is all there is. We’re betting on the person just as much as the idea because they are the ones who will determine what happens next.

Gardiner Garrard, TTV’s co-founder, often says that he appreciates how special it is to walk alongside our founders and witness the courage it takes to turn a business from an idea into a reality. That is the best part of our job. We are here to support our founders in bringing their vision to life, and we want them to achieve greatness—but we aren’t going to put them in a position where they will fail. We want them to model that behavior so they feel empowered to lead their company. If we trust our founders, they will trust their team to execute.

Approach to Risk
I’m not a risk-seeking person—you won’t find me doing extreme sports or summiting the world’s highest mountains—so I’ve had to learn to be comfortable with taking risks as an investor (see also: being comfortable with being wrong). Early-stage investing is an inherently risky asset class because there are fewer data points, and a lot will likely change. I feel incredibly thankful to work at a firm where everyone understands that and supports me in making decisions.

Measuring Success Beyond Returns
We are ultimately measured by returns—that is our promise to our investors, and those are the numbers that determine our success. That said, we all at TTV believe that our competitive edge is how we conduct ourselves and do business. We are committed to treating people well, being transparent, and doing what we say we will do. The results are very important to us, but how we operate ultimately sets us apart.

Trends and Future Vision

Exciting Trends and Technologies
As investors specializing in fintech, we identify the problem first and then wait until the technology advances enough to solve it. We’ve seen the biggest opportunities develop when emerging technology can be applied to a specific use case.

In contrast to generalists who seek out emerging technologies, specialists want to see that the technology can directly address an underlying problem. We also want to know that it has been pressure-tested and is commercially viable.

One example is our investment in Featurespace, which Visa recently acquired. Identifying fraudulent credit card transactions was a longstanding problem in financial services, as the previous industry standard yielded many false positives. Everyone knew it was an issue, but technology hadn’t advanced enough to improve those numbers. In 2015, Featurespace developed a type of machine learning that detected financial fraud with significantly fewer false positives, which was a game changer. We invested in the company after seeing how this application of the technology could solve a major industry challenge.

Improving the VC Ecosystem
Investors see hundreds of opportunities cross their desks, and we provide capital, connections, and advice to founders. But these companies are not ours alone. While we can draw on the knowledge and experiences of a diverse portfolio of companies to help inform decisions, it is not our role to be the sole decision-maker. We need to know our lane and stay in it.

At the end of the day, we invest in founders because they are extraordinary. They have a vision, likely experience the problem firsthand, and a compelling solution. They are going all in on their business and dedicating their lives to it, and they should have the autonomy to make their own decisions.

Challenges for Early-Stage Founders
 In fintech, we always say that the two biggest challenges are time and capital. Many of our portfolio companies sell to banks or other financial institutions with long sales cycles. Startups in fintech need time to develop their product, get it in front of the right people, and cultivate buy-in—all of which is even more difficult when banks are buying less technology and other companies are also trying to sell to the same people. The second challenge is capital, which can be a chicken-and-egg scenario. Fintechs need traction to raise additional capital, but progress can be slow, making fundraising difficult.

As fintech VCs, we understand the nature of the industry and often rely on other metrics to decide whether to invest. It all goes back to the earlier question about intuition vs. data—companies will likely need more capital before generating significant sales or growth. We do our best to use other data points or intuition to make the best decision.