A Week in the Life: Allison Baum (Trinity Ventures)
Allison Baum
Principal, Trinity Ventures
What I Do
I am responsible for sourcing, evaluating, executing, and supporting early stage investments in technology companies that are building the future of work, which is my chosen area of focus (you can read more about my investment thesis here.
Monday
5:00 - Rise & Shine!
Like most venture funds on Sand Hill Road, we have our partner meetings bright and early on Monday mornings. Because I live in the city, I leave early in the morning so I can avoid the traffic. Believe it or not, driving down the 280 (totally within the speed limit, I swear…) with no traffic and watching the sun rise is a pretty kickass way to start the day, so I really don’t mind the commute!
Unfortunately, though, commuting + PM means I spend a lot of time sitting down so I have to make an extra effort to not go crazy. So I start Monday mornings with a 15 min yoga class on Glo (15 minutes is better than 0, I tell myself), a quick shower, and then I walk to grab coffee to get some steps in before getting in the car.
8:45am - Partner Meeting & People Updates
In addition to discussing our active pipeline of deals, every month, we run though interesting people we’ve met and how they might add value to our community of portfolio companies. Even though I’m an introvert, my favorite part of being a VC is being able to meet so many amazing, dynamic, and motivated individuals, so this firmwide activity is always a highlight for me.
11am - Company Presentation
In addition to new companies, we have our existing portfolio companies come in on a regular basis to update us on their business. As a relatively new member of the team, this is such a great opportunity to get to know the existing portfolio and fire up the neurons for how I might be able to help.
1pm - 10pm - Commute + Board Meeting
I had to race back to SF for a board meeting for one of our portfolio companies. As the only board member representing our fund, it’s an amazing opportunity to get into the weeds with a portfolio company I truly believe in and care about. It’s really easy to say we are “really care about our portfolio”, that we are “founder friendly”, and “you can count on us through thick and thin”, but I have learned that you build your reputation in the boardroom by showing up on time, coming prepared with thoughtful questions and feedback, and taking initiative on making valuable connections wherever you can.
This means joining the other board members and exec team for dinner after the board meeting, which is not my natural comfort zone, but ultimately makes this job way more fun by allowing you to actually get to know the people you are working with. I also find that having a personal relationship with other board members makes difficult conversations a lot easier when that time comes around, which it inevitably will.
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Tuesday
5:30 am - Wake up + exercise
I am a creature of habit so I do the same thing every morning - I wake up, check e-mails, head straight to the gym, get in a workout, rush home, make breakfast and coffee, and start talking to companies.
9 - 12pm - Pitch meetings
I spend several hours meeting founders every day, either on the phone, Zoom, or in person. We have to meet a lot of companies, but I try hard to be respectful of everyone’s time and it’s often immediately apparent if we are the right fit as investors or not.
12pm - Lunch with a seed investor
Since Trinity focuses on Series A and Series B, I spend a lot of time getting to know seed funds who are within my areas of focus (automation, future of work, training, HR tech). Because I started and ran a seed fund, I can relate very closely to these people and really love spending time with them!
2pm - NVCA Conference call on CFIUS and FIRRMA Regulations
Because I spent six years building businesses in Asia and fostering cross-border partnerships, I am really passionate about how the Trump administration is changing regulation in ways that could harm startup and venture ecosystems in the long run. The NVCA has been on the forefront of educating the government about the long term implications of changing regulation and I’ve done my best to get people to care by writing and speaking about it on TV a few times. This conference call was designed to share the key takeaways of the recent updates in legislation, which you can read more about here.
3-6pm: More company meetings
Self explanatory!
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Wednesday
5:30am - 2pm : Basically the same as yesterday!
2-4pm: Sourcing and Diligence
I set aside several hours every week to look for new companies in the spaces I care about. We do this through a combination of data driven strategies, but my favorite way of finding out about new innovators is simply reading about what is happening in the world.
4pm - Zoom with Eriko Suzuki, Fresco Capital Japan
Eriko and I were friends before we were colleagues, as we bonded in Japan over the challenges of being some of the only women in tech and venture capital in the entire country (seriously, though). I was then lucky enough to hire her into my seed fund at the time, Fresco Capital, where she is now a General Partner. Even after I moved on to join Trinity, Eriko and I remain close and catch up over Zoom to share dealflow, trends, insights, and war stories.
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Thursday
5:30 - Wake up and exercise
8am - Prep call with Angela Lee, Professor at Columbia Business School and Founder of 37 Angels
I’ve given a few guest lectures in Angela’s Foundations of Venture Capital course at Columbia Business School and I’m heading back in a few weeks to give two more one on “The Changing Nature of VC” and another on “Building an Investment Thesis”. I sent her drafts of my talks in advance, and we connected this morning to discuss feedback. She reminded me that my lecture might be little bit too detailed, and most people don’t know all of the jargon I’m using. It’s a good reminder that we live in a VC bubble that is not at all intuitive to the rest of the world!
9am - Walk to our SF office
I’ve been really trying hard to get more steps in so when the weather is nice, I carve out 1 hour to walk the 3 miles from my apartment to our office. It has done nothing for my waistline, unfortunately, but it’s a great time to do some very necessary meditation, reflection, and strategic thinking.
10am - Marketing team sync on recent contribution piece
We have a kickass marketing team at Trinity and I love writing so I spend a lot of time with them iterating on content and figuring out where is the best place to put it. My latest piece is on the rise of extra-small businesses and was just published in Quartz, so now our goal is finding the best way to leverage the content to create good conversations that will lead to refinement of my investment thesis, create communities around our portfolio companies, and spark new connections that could lead to good investment opportunities in the future.
11am - 2pm - Company meetings
You know the drill…. Always meeting new people!
3-6pm - Remote Team Workshop
At our last CEO Summit, I hosted a discussion on distributed teams and almost every CEO in our portfolio was there. Given how expensive and challenging recruiting can be in the Bay Area, nearly every company I meet has at least one remote hire (often begrudgingly). We teamed up with Terminal, which builds and runs remote engineering teams as a service, to create a more structured conversation around how to successfully manage a happy, productive team when they’re not in your line of sight.
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Friday
5:00am - Rise & Shine, Drive to Menlo Park
7:30am - Call with a UK-based branding agency referral company called “Ask Us For Information”
In an increasingly competitive market, brand matters more than ever. A lot of our consumer companies are looking for the right partner to help them build a world-changing brand, so I’m always on the look out for good connectors that can help them speed up the process.
8:30 am - AllRaise Breakfast & Cohort Meeting!
I am lucky enough to be co-leader of an amazing group of “Rising GPs” for AllRaise, so we host our group of 10 or so women at the Trinity offices for our regular cohort meeting, facilitated by an executive coach. We talk about everything from internal politics, to dealflow, to how to be a great board member. It’s a highlight of my month every time.
11 am - Weekly Deal Review with our Data Scientist
We are using some data science strategies to automatically flag, source, and assess potential founders and companies that are within our areas of interest. We set up time on a weekly basis to review the pipeline to assess what is actionable and what isn’t, hopefully creating a repeatable mechanism for continually refining our model.
12-2pm - Focus Time for Sourcing and Company Reachout
If I don’t block this off on my calendar, it doesn’t happen!
3pm - Head Back to the City
Traffic on Fridays is the worst so I am sure to adjust my schedule so that I can get in early and leave early!
4pm - 6pm - E-mail Time
I hate going into the weekend with unanswered e-mail so I always try to set aside time to get caught up before unplugging … even though, who am I kidding, I am always working on the weekends :)
To close out the week, leave your audience with a tidbit or some wise words about why you do what you do and why sharing your story as a woman in VC through All Raise is so important!
Venture capital is filled with contradictions - every day I feel important yet useless, insightful yet clueless, social yet lonely, intellectually stimulated yet endlessly curious, confident yet confused. In a world where we are rewarded for constantly pretending to be “crushing it”, it’s way too easy to feel like we are being left behind (especially if we’re women or minorities). Through this community of amazing women, I have learned it’s not only normal, but actually very valuable to be asking ourselves, “Are we doing this VC thing right?”
There is no one right answer for “how to succeed in venture” because that looks different for everyone. However, it is important to surround ourselves with others who are along for the ride and are committed to authentically supporting each other along the way.
