YOU HAVE TO BET ON THE BUILDERS…

I know you've heard the stats. I know you know the gap exists. I know you've seen the headlines about who gets funded and who doesn't.

… but do you really understand why this is a problem?

I want to be honest with you today.

When I was first raising money for America On Tech, I was scared. Not the kind of scared that you admit out loud in rooms full of investors and founders. The kind of scared that sits quietly in your chest when you walk into a conference and immediately feel like you do not belong there. Like somehow everyone else got a memo that you didn't. Like the language people were speaking was a language you had studied but hadn't yet mastered.

I remember sitting in those rooms and those conversations with funders and investors and genuinely questioning whether I was qualified to be there. Whether what I was building was enough. Whether I was enough.

And then something shifted.

I started paying attention. Really paying attention. And what I noticed stopped me in my tracks. Some of the people in those rooms were coming in with nothing more than an idea. A concept. A deck full of projections and potential.

I was coming in with preparation. With a track record. With receipts.

And yet I was the one who felt like I didn't belong.

That moment changed something in me. Because I realized that so much of what we think of as confidence, as credibility, as "founder energy", has a lot to do with access. Access to the right networks, language, mentors and rooms. And when you don't grow up with that access, when nobody hands it to you, you spend years believing the gap you feel is about your ability when really it is about your access.

And here is what nobody tells you loudly enough about building a startup: capital is the game. Without capital at the right moment in your idea's evolution, your business will not survive.

Period.

The research backs this up. Studies consistently show that cash flow problems and lack of funding are among the leading reasons startups fail. Some estimates put it as high as 38% of startup failures being directly tied to running out of money or failing to raise capital at a critical juncture. And that number does not even account for the businesses that never fully got off the ground because the funding never came in the first place.

And this is not because the ideas are not there. This is not because the work ethic is not there. This is because the access is not there. The networks are not there. The warm introductions, the golf course conversations, the "let me connect you to someone" moments are simply not happening at the same rate for some founders as they do for others.

And what that means in practice is devastating. It means brilliant ideas die in their infancy. It means products that could have changed industries never make it to market. It means communities that could have been served are left waiting. It means we lose, collectively, because we decided as a society that access to capital would not be distributed equitably.

I think about this a lot in the context of my own journey with America On Tech. There were moments where the right injection of capital was the difference between moving forward and standing still. Capital is what allows you to hire the right people. It is what allows you to build the right product. Capital is oxygen.

In December I joined the Board of Directors of Camelback Ventures, an organization committed to level the playing field for founders by giving them the right capital at the right time. Camelback Ventures was my first investor and I know that without that small amount of money to kick-off my operation, I would not have been able to scale as quickly as I did.

My Friend Miki Reynolds Is At The Forefront Of Changing This As Well…

The work that my friend Miki Reynolds is doing matters so deeply to me. And this is why this week's episode is one I needed to make.

I first came across Miki's work through the LA tech ecosystem. If you know, you know. Los Angeles has one of the most vibrant and underrated startup communities in the country, and Miki has been one of its architects for years.

What I love about Miki is that she is not someone who talks about the problem from the outside. She has been in the rooms. She has sat across from hundreds of founders. She has watched people succeed, watched people fall short, and has spent her entire career trying to understand why… and then doing something about it.

Miki is sharp, honest and deeply generous with her knowledge. She talks candidly about her love-hate relationship with venture capital, what she actually looks for in a founder beyond the pitch, and the advice she wishes every first-time founder had before walking into a VC meeting.

As I leave you today, I want you to think about the moment you first felt like you didn't belong in a room. And then I want you to think about what happened when you stayed anyway.

For a lot of us, staying is the bravest thing we ever do. And the work that Miki is doing makes sure that the next generation of founders has a little more to stand on when they walk through that door.

Capital is not just money. It is the difference between an idea that changes the world and an idea that never got the chance to try.

In This Week's Episode…

Miki Reynolds is the Head of Programs and an investor at Slauson & Co, where she develops and leads programs — like their Friends & Family accelerator — that advance their mission of economic inclusion. She brings a fierce passion for supporting an inclusive community of entrepreneurs, having directly advised 350+ early stage companies from idea to seed stage, primarily led by Black, AAPI, Latinx and Women founders who have raised over $120M in capital collectively.

Prior to Slauson & Co, Miki was the CEO & Co-Founder of Grid110, an award winning non-profit providing free entrepreneurship programs to underrepresented founders in partnership with the City of Los Angeles. She has spent the last two decades working in tech, encompassing IT project management, digital marketing, creative services, product management, software development, and e-commerce.

After managing digital projects at global entertainment corporations like MGM Studios and 20th Century Fox, and leading operations and product for a software development company, she launched the Downtown LA location for tech education company General Assembly. She left GA mid-2017 after being appointed to the founding Executive Director position at Grid110.

Miki has accepted commendations from former Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti on behalf of General Assembly and Grid110, has been recognized by LA Biz Journal as a Woman of Influence, was named to Techweek's #Techweek100, and sits on the advisory boards for PledgeLA and Grid110. She has also spoken at Creative Mornings, General Assembly, SXSW, Silicon Beach Fest, All Raise, Nashville's 3686 Festival, Venture Atlanta, LMU, USC and UCLA.

A proud UCLA alum, taco fiend, rescue dog owner times two, and passionate advocate for the LA startup community.