Lizzy Hazeltine

I sat cross-legged on the floor with a dozen 3rd-graders last week to answer questions about the businesses they were building for an upcoming school startup fair. These kids didn’t have any reason to be gentle with my ego, and they asked some of the hardest-hitting questions I’ve heard.    After we problem-solved about how to get their kindergarten-aged potential customers to wait in line (entertain them!) and how to calculate your costs (they totally get fixed and variable costs!) one of them dropped a bomb.    “How do we keep our business from falling apart?”    She reached...

Lizzy Hazeltine blogs regularly about her adventures as a first-time venture capitalist, and a woman in the male-dominated field. How do you know if you’re talking too much?    Laugh if you like, but it’s a question that I ask myself often enough. It’s not because I’m neurotic, but because I am essentially in the business of talking and more importantly, listening, for a living. And if you’re in entrepreneurship, you probably are, too.    Whether that’s at ExitEvent’s socials, over coffee at the Green Bean, at AngelSummit, a boot camp pitch day or anywhere else I find myself,...

The drag race till the holidays starts now, at least in terms of fundraising.    The 11 work weeks after Labor Day and before Thanksgiving are a few shy of the 14-week average time to seed-round closing that CB Insights says is the new normal. Odds-on, if there’s no term sheet signed before then, the check books are sealed until after the new year.    Doing the math, that puts us in the thick of crunch time right now. I’ll offer a glimmer of optimism: VCs, angels and other early-stage investors will be hunting for deals that come standard...

Since we at The Startup Factory announced that we’re taking this party statewide, I’ve been on the road more than usual. While that means more quality time with I-40 singing along to 70s rock with Chris and Dave (pictured above), it also means more time at events and new people. A packed house at Iron Clad Brewery in Wilmington, an early morning at 1 Million Cups in Asheville, or a busy afternoon in the Triad is exactly where I want to be as we take stock of entrepreneurial communities around North Carolina.    The thing about a crowded room is, it can be hard to...

BoomBoxFM co-founders Dave Marcello, back left, and Mike Hoy, right, are pictured above with Hoy’s young daughter at The Startup Factory.  The 7th class of TSF companies was different that its predecessors for many reasons. It included TSF’s first-ever healthcare IT investment, and for the first time, the class was all guys. That’s unusual for us: more than one-third of our portfolio companies are founded and led by gals.  It was even odder for me since I’m more accustomed to thinking about balancing the rigors of creating a business and family from that maternal angle. (Full disclosure: not a mom...

Sure, squeezing 30 minutes out of a day isn’t a logistical hat trick. Suggest a time, send an invitation, and presto, there’s a slot set aside on the calendar.    Then what?    That’s when making the meeting really starts. I’m talking about “making” in the way someone “makes” a play that changes the outcome of a game. The ingredients of time and interest can be made all the better for a few added ingredients.    For me, these ingredients can mean the difference between a warmer connection with an out-of-town VC and an unsubscribe from my next newsletter....

“People ask me if I’m crazy.”  Two different women uttered this phrase to me in the space of a few hours as we talked about their early-stage companies. They reported that they answer this question multiple times a day. Sometimes they are the ones asking themselves.    I’m sure their male peers get asked this question, too. There is an undeniable element of risk-taking in this venture world, the kind of risk that doesn’t stop short of pride or reputation (I wrote about this previously in “Going Visible“). Exposure at that level warrants a good, hard look in the...

While the jury deliberates, much has already been made of the watershed potential for the Ellen Pao v. Kleiner Perkins case in juris prudence and in the entrepreneurial community.  Pao was required to prove actual malice in the processes that led to her eventual firing from the flagship West Coast firm. “Actual malice” is legalese for the intention to harm, in this case, denying Pao professional headway based on her gender.    Even without a verdict, there are damages already exacted.    The whole mess of now-disclosed stuff and the realtime coverage seems like a dogpile—the vicious, bite-anything-that-moves kind...

Since my last column, life intervened to remind me that role models don’t have to be in your field, they just need to teach you something important.    I’ve been spending more than a little time being grateful to one of my first role models, Ruth Cox Cusick, or Grammy, to me.  She was the first scientist I met, and my first babysitter. She lived a mile away from my childhood home and helped raise me while my parents built their business. Re-reading her life as summarized in her obituary, I was reminded what an extraordinary life she made for herself....