Nell Daly gets REVENGE | The social worker turned venture capitalist

12:48Nell Daly:And there was one group that actually wrote down what their goals were. Yeah. And they were like the 5 % most successful in that cohort. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, because there was some, I'm trying to remember, something like they'd written it down from the start.

13:00Steph Melodia:One group, one wrote it down at the end and one like never did. Yeah, butchering it. But yeah, that was a really powerful study. What do you think the explanation is behind that? Like how do you rationalize manifesting?

13:12Nell Daly:I can't. Except like a, I think there must be some sort, I mean, we could get so woo-woo here and I'm not opposed to doing that. And I can tell you. Yeah, I mean, I think, listen, I think when you, it's a really weird thing to be a psychotherapist because you're sitting in people's souls day in and day out. You're like, it's soul work. And so you kind of have to tap into the spiritual, not kind of, you do. You have to tap into the spiritual side of who people are. You're dealing with grief. You're dealing with loss. You're dealing with transition. you're dealing with people's deeply personal symptoms that they're facing.

13:51Nell Daly:And we can talk about mental health too, in terms of entrepreneurship and what that means for women in business or people who have been traditionally marginalized, because let's face it, like if you don't get to fulfill your dreams, that eats at your soul. And that is really probably at the core of why I'm doing what I'm doing. But I think that I had the unique perspective of, again, watching people manifest or not manifest things in their life. And I think those people who kind of have a clear direction when they write it down. And I haven't always known like the exact vision, but I think if you just write it down, there's some sort of like natural alignment that you're moving towards it in a different way.

14:27Nell Daly:And I also just believe that the more you speak it, the more you believe it, then the more people around you believe it. And then the more that the collective energy sort of supports that work and and it it the the tide rises to you yeah as opposed to you just like

14:41Steph Melodia:swimming wherever it takes you right unsurprisingly what struck me listening to you there is the feminine intelligence and the feminine energy which is just you are clearly such an outlier with what you've achieved and this fund you're operating in this male-dominated space but it's really refreshing you know much needed to hear this more and by feminine energy I don't mean obviously linked purely to being a woman we've all got the masculine and feminine energies but the intuitive side right all of that you talk about soul the intuition and the manifestation piece you know that can go on and by the way you can either go woo woo which is sort of where you're leaning towards I know the neuroscience that backs it up I know the focus kind of it's the same thing right coming up from different angles but just how it focuses the mind so did you have you said going back to the fund you said that you'd written that down you know be careful what you wish for and what you write down yeah what can others take away from what you the steps that you took to achieve what you have done because you are in such a minority you know you had this you know fluke if you like this breakfast still but you also you made it happen you put yourself out there so we touched on like the American energy that journalistic background like if we can try and unpack and break down like what what were the ingredients that helped you get to where you are now, especially in the past year?

16:00Nell Daly:Yeah, I think that there's a few things. I will say that there's always, I don't really believe in, I don't really believe in a work-life balance at all. I believe that if you find something you're passionate about, it doesn't feel like work. And I'm sorry, that sounds so corny, but I am hugely driven by being intellectually stimulated. and I have an insatiable level of curiosity. And not everybody does. And I can't tell you how many times I sat at my desk and go like, die, ambition, die. Because ambition in itself is inconvenient. Yeah. It's easier to not have it, isn't it? Very inconvenient.

16:45Nell Daly:Just be content. Yes. Yes. Am I ever going to be satisfied? And it can be very inconvenient to your personal life,

16:52Steph Melodia:to motherhood, right?

16:54Nell Daly:to the people who don't believe in you. It's like very irritating, right? We want you to like stay in a box and like not evolve as a human being. Yeah, right. You know, and so like if we were to really have a heartfelt conversation, like let's talk about like how women's ambition can like destroy family relationships or, you know, cause a lot of friction in society. I think women breathing is an active protest, to be honest, and especially in certain countries, right? We know that now. so I think that it's having that curiosity I have a lot of drive so I don't I think if you would ask me a year ago or two years ago I'd be like oh I don't know maybe like a more meek answer but the reality is I've like worked my ass off for this but I honestly feel like the cause needs more leaders and I've crossed that age gap where now you can kind of go back into the community as an elder and say like, no, I can do this.

17:47Nell Daly:And I can make sure that we can secure a better future for our children, essentially. So it's working around the clock. It's curiosity. And I think the other piece of this that's so important is the openness to networking. Like if I could give one piece of advice and I think, and I could get crucified for saying this, I don't want to get canceled for saying it. But in the UK, I have found that the women are much more open to networking than men. Just naturally. They share their contacts more openly. They're free with it. They're like, let's meet for coffee. Let's meet for lunch. There's just a, yeah.

18:27Nell Daly:And I think that comes from like, there's a need, right? Like our backs up are against the wall. If like you want to make something happen, you're going to have to like go out there and actually make connections and like see how you can open up a pathway forward where I have found in other circumstances with generally European men and UK men, it's more difficult where in the US, if you go to like the Bitcoin conference in Miami, if you go into any conferences in like California, Silicon Valley, LA, you know, Chicago, San Diego, everyone's exchanging cards. There's just like a level of general enthusiasm that I think, you know, when I meet Brits, generally like, what the fuck?

19:07Nell Daly:Like her light.

19:08Steph Melodia:Like, what is she? I totally get it.

19:09Nell Daly:Is she on something? And sometimes I'll go to a restaurant here and I actually have to tone my.

19:13Steph Melodia:Yeah, I have to tone it down. Right. I mean, there is this. Whenever we go on holiday, especially within Europe, there's there's one loud voice we can hear. In American. It's often in an American accent. Yeah, I hear it too. Yeah. I'm in line at the airport going, oh, my God, really? It's so embarrassing. Yeah. But I do as much as I have such a quintessentially British accent. I always half joke about being spiritually American and the times that I visited the States. I'm like, these are my people making things happen. Yeah. It's just it's hard enough as it is without others adding this other layer of difficulty and retention to it.

19:46Nell Daly:Yeah.

19:47Steph Melodia:You mentioned saying kind of like a couple of years ago, you might have given a bit more of a knee cancer. We touched on just before we started rolling. You having exploded onto the scene seemingly out of nowhere. you went dark for five years. So what happened there?

20:02Nell Daly:Two things happened coincidentally. So I as a someone, so I have a, I have a master's in fine art and creative writing from Columbia. And I only talk about this because they have a very good journalism school. So some of what you do is in the journalism space. And I always toyed with, do I want the MFA so I could teach on the college level. I had to literally pull myself out of academia. I'm very academically minded and love academia. I could study. I could have like a thousand degrees. I could sit in a library all day long. So I decided to get my MFA and then I got a teaching job at NYU. And when I was at NYU teaching, writing, I ended up doing my MSW in social work.

20:45Nell Daly:There was a decision I had to make whether I was going to try to go back to do a post-bac to do medicine and become a doctor or do something that was slightly less intensive. I wanted to start to have a family, so it wasn't really going to work out. So I did my MSW. And I naturally took those two disciplines. And as I knew people in New York, they would say, can you commentate on the networks for us? So it started with like the Tyra show, and then it led to Entertainment Tonight, and then it led to CNN. And then I ended up being on Fox quite a bit. Fox was really interesting for me because I am sort of, I'm much more of, I would say, like a British journalist where I just believe in reporting the facts, not necessarily on commentating like you do in cable news in the States, which, by the way, is illegal here.

21:34Nell Daly:You guys don't have this. We have this whole thing called cable news. And I really liked it because people would naturally think that I'm very progressive. I'm actually an independent. So in Revenge the Fund is a nonpartisan organization. We don't align with either party, whether it's in the UK or in the US or globally. We will take conservative founders and we'll take liberal founders. Like we do not discriminate. That's the whole premise of Revenge, right? It's a non-discriminatory fund. So I started doing a lot of television on Fox, which I thought was cool because you could kind of slip in this different sort of messaging.

22:12Nell Daly:And I wasn't afraid to have nuanced debate. And I really like that about myself. I like the fact that as a psychotherapist, you're incredibly tolerant of people's opinions. You're incredibly tolerant about the way they choose to live their life. You know, in the Times article, I talk about learning to sweat down my back. there's things I had heard in my office for 10 years that were like I didn't even know people could do let's talk about like sex parties or things that you know I started when I was pretty green in New York and you heard all kinds of stories and some that you might actually like have a problem with but you don't show that because you're holding space for someone to experience their own story in front of you and you're there just to listen and to help sort of put the pieces on a table together of their story so they can make sense of it.

23:02Nell Daly:And so I started doing Fox. And with that, no matter what I said, what they do on Fox is on cable news, they have a bunch of younger people in production writing the tickers underneath what you're saying. And it's very effective. So sometimes the tickers don't even match what the host is saying, but they're a bit inflammatory. And it can happen on any network, any cable news show, any actual show in particular. And I ended up starting to get quite a few death threats from doing that.

23:32Steph Melodia:Oh.

23:33Nell Daly:Yeah, yeah.

23:34Steph Melodia:Because of the inflammatory, like, ticker underneath.

23:37Nell Daly:Because that's how you sell, right? That's how you sell. You get the ratings up. It's contentious. It seems contentious even if it's not a contentious conversation. I was sort of there to be the counterpoint generally on most stories, even if there was no counterpoint, even if I was just reporting on sort of legislation that came through about the LGBTQIA community. And yeah, I started getting quite a few death threats. This was when Trump was starting to run for his first presidency. And they were generally around sexual violence. So many times when women are threatened, you know, privately, in these cases, it has to do with, you know, pretty violent crimes.

24:24Nell Daly:And it makes you take a step back. And it's quite effective in silencing someone. Because as a woman, as a single mom, I had three kids. And my mother at the time had been diagnosed with terminal cancer. So I was living with my mother. And I would lie in bed at night going, oh my god, I've just been on Fox. These things are coming through my phone, my feeds, my social feeds, what would I do? And so you can put yourself on the radar of the local police and you can call the authorities that you need to and report it, but ultimately you're incredibly vulnerable as a woman. And so at a certain point when my mom started to get very ill, I said, I'm going to back off TV.

25:05Nell Daly:I didn't know at that point that I would back off completely from social media because I had spent quite a bit of time sort of building community and believed in it and believed in the profile and the messaging that you could do through social media. When she passed away, I really honed in and said to myself, to accomplish the next set of goals that I have, which is to go into venture capital, I have to just be so laser focused. And so many women, so many people know that social media, as much as it's crucial, is also a massive time suck. And it can cause an enormous financial burden to people, especially fledgling entrepreneurs.

25:47Nell Daly:And so I just cut out the fat. Like anything that I felt like was going to detract me from doing what I needed to do to accomplish this fund, I was just going to let it go. So I got really zoned in on that. And if you ask me one regret, there's probably a bit of regret that I didn't go back to it earlier because I do believe in the power of a personal brand and continuing personal messaging. And I miss the people that I had in the community and I had built some really great things that you sort of let die. But on the other hand, it worked out.

26:17Steph Melodia:It did work out. I mean, I don't have too much regret on that because you have made a splash and the people who were hanging out that like they're still there and you've made this huge comeback. And I think you're more than making up for it now with the press and everything else. Now, what a crazy story. I was not expecting any of that. How gut-wrenching. Just going back to just these death threats. I'm so curious, especially with your psychotherapy background. How did you mentally and emotionally cope with that?

26:45Nell Daly:You know, what was unfortunate about it is that I didn't have, I think if you're a woman in journalism, you probably have other journalists just naturally in your network that you can call and talk to and their support whether it's through the network or through CNN for some reason I really internalized it and I was quiet like I didn't reach out to anybody and say like the producers knew it was happening because they would see my phone blow up the minute I finished you know being on air they would they would see it start to happen but I never reached out I never said why do you think

27:18Steph Melodia:you did that I just don't even think like to not be a burden yeah yeah and I have three kids and

27:22Nell Daly:like you leave the studio and the next thing you know you're in a car and you're heading home and you're making you know hot dogs and hamburgers for your kids and you're answering phone calls for clients and you're working on other things so I I think I just sort of parked it and it would be late at night when you'd sit there looking at the ceiling and I ended up getting a taser flashlight I never got a gun, which we can have in the U.S. I was too afraid to have a gun in the house. And I also did a lot of psychotherapy for people who were part of the Sandy Hook tragedy. So we could have a whole other podcast on guns in America.

28:02Nell Daly:And for the listeners who don't know, Sandy Hook was a tragedy that happened where a middle school boy went into an elementary school in the state of Connecticut where I'm from and lived near and killed quite a few children and teachers. and school administrators about, I can't remember the exact date when it happened, but about a decade ago now. And so I would lie in bed at night going, what am I going to do about this? And as much as you can alarm your car, I mean, sorry, your house, going out to your car, going to the grocery store, it only takes one. And to layer that, I'm a psychotherapist.

28:37Nell Daly:So I know the fragility of someone's mental health deeply, right? It's what I did for a living for over a decade. So I was very conscious that this could be really tragic for people involved if something, if the 1%, you know, decided to act upon their impulse and do something to me. And so I said, I've got to, until I'm better equipped to do something like that, I've got to peace out. And that's what the system does. Right? So like that, that is an exact kind of great case example of how misogyny in our society and chauvinism, yeah, can absolutely win because they took a voice, by the way, that wasn't necessarily a voice that was conservative, which this would mostly happen when I was on Fox, not the other way.

29:29Steph Melodia:And they took it off air. Yeah. Which is a shame. Yeah. Which is a real shame. Such a shame now. oh no it is I yeah I get it kudos to you for bouncing back because I can only imagine I I just empathize with just how scary just as a woman to begin with as a mom on top of that the list goes on and on the psychotherapy experience helps you you've got the head as well as the heart going on as well so it just it sounds so incredibly scary and we need to pick ourselves back up again afterwards right we can only be silenced for so long so coming back to revenge capital how does your psychotherapist background make you a better investor oh that's

30:12Nell Daly:such a good question Bartlett you can sit back down how does that happen I think that I'm so relationship driven and our investment thesis is about investing in people and I know that sounds so cheesy and people say it all the time but I really think that an idea can be you can have a great idea but you can be a terrible operator or a terrible human being or you can be a great person and like not such a great operator as a therapist you have the um I don't want to make anybody feel like who comes in to pitch us an idea that I'm psychoanalyzing them at all because you don't do that like you know and that's like kept me back like no one told me in school like people are going to be kind of afraid of you because they're going to think you're psychoanalyzing them.

30:59Nell Daly:And by the way, like it doesn't work that way. Like when you're in practice, you're like deeply in practice. And when you're out of it, it's like, it's, it's, it's as dramatic as sort of like having a bathing suit on to go swimming and then like having all your clothes on and not by a pool. Right. It's like a totally different scenario. So when people come in, I do think though that I have the ability to develop rapport pretty quickly with people because that's what you do as a psychotherapist. You have to gain their trust and you have to create a space where you're really listening to their story and you're taking it in and you're able to ask questions to really derive the information you need to be able to give a baseline of how somebody's doing.

31:39Nell Daly:And so I think I can apply all that strategy to a founder that I'm working with and I can teach my team how to do the same thing. So I think that that's probably the most helpful part of it. And I think also just having like a very strong passion about helping the underdog, about being a fund for the people. And that's not bullshit, right? Like I've lived and breathed and eaten this for my entire career. When you go into social work, you work in populations that have gotten the short end of the stick. You work with, I started my career early in HIV AIDS. I started working in, you know, housing projects in Red Hook, Brooklyn.

32:26Nell Daly:You start working with the poor, the disenfranchised, the traditionally marginalized. People have gone through a lot because of just how they were born and the circumstances to which they find themselves that were totally out of their own control. And so to help those people, you really, like it's in the fiber of your being to hear someone's story to say like, ah, there's a moment here where we could really affect change with what this person is bringing to the table. And it doesn't mean that every person that we invest in has this like idea that's going to solve climate change or we're not sort of a direct impact fund in that way.

33:00Nell Daly:It's just for me, I always say that there's the plan and the secret plan. The secret plan is to be able to make those people money so they can reinvest it back into their communities, you hope, or be able to stroke, you know, strike a check to somebody who they care about to be a policymaker if they don't end up running for politics themselves.

33:21Steph Melodia:Love that. That completely resonates. But there's research to back up again, the case for female founders in particular, right? Women more leaders. Yeah, the more millionaire women, the more economically empowered women, the better it is for the planet. The research has shown that we invest back into our communities into charitable projects. So I totally get that and not the mission.

33:42Nell Daly:And I think that, you know, in the case of women, one of the things that pisses me off, there's a lot. One of the big things that pisses me off is that I cannot stand to see people in general, but women in particular, and especially women with children in vulnerable positions because they're in toxic relationships with either men or bosses and they can't get out of them because they don't have financial independence. And that full stop is probably at really the heart of my mission. And then that translates into anybody who's felt like they've had to kind of like take it because they didn't have the money to say, I want to walk away from this.

34:18Nell Daly:This is not serving me anymore. Yeah, money is actually very unhealthy for me.

34:22Steph Melodia:Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Money is a tool. It gives you that optionality to walk away from situations you need to get out of. And I think that the way that we have been socially conditioned and how money is still a taboo. I love talking about all this as well because it's all a farce. it's all a construct to keep out the others the marginalized so i'm fully behind your mission i

34:43Nell Daly:love it absolutely support it yeah and we can play this game right now where what happens as a female founder or marginalized founder but again let's talk about gender because it's just an easy case example in but how many times as a woman and you've been in business before you go into a meeting and you say i really need x y and z in terms of money and the person you're talking to whether they're male or female is conditioned to say, I think I have a cousin in Silicon Valley who has an aunt who invests in women. Just let's flip the script. Just a man going to a meeting and has somebody across the table saying to them, I think I know a guy who lives in Tennessee who might invest in a man.

35:30Yeah.

35:30Steph Melodia:It's so reductive. this is what I this is the bee in my bonnet as well is how reductive this demographic like it it's you know and as a marketeer formally as well I've already got a bee in my bonnet around like demographics versus psychographics and it's like you know set up a marketing campaign for like ABC one demographic for like eight you know 18 to 35 it's just it's so reductive to your point there it's like I've been in situations where positively I've either won business pitches with my last agency or made it to the final rounds and the client response on more than one occasion has been along the lines of yeah we wanted more kind of female voices more kind of women involved even as an agency owner like we wanted women involved and and and it didn't sit right with me and it was an immediate sort of repellent reaction to that and it and I think after processing it for a bit that's when I realized I had that light bulb moment where I was like you're reducing me down to something so honestly uninteresting and irrelevant about me the fact like my genitalia is like one percent of what makes up who I am and everything I can give to the world so totally get your point but I think it's just a sad reflection of the current situation you are quoted for saying every entrepreneur has a revenge story do you have a revenge story yes I have a revenge story every

36:52Nell Daly:day. I was saying, you know, I say all the time, like, give me the hour, give me the day. Like, there's something happening in my head where I'm like, oh, that person's scoring me. I'm going to show them. And I think, listen, I mean, we could pick a million out of a hat, but I think that what's more interesting, and at some point, like I could share a revenge story, but what's more interesting is like what do you do with adversity yeah what do you do with it right like do you just do because I think the most dangerous thing and I think if you ask me sort of like what's the one tragedy that you experienced in your life that changed things and one was my mother dying um and I can tell you because I had a moment there when she died like most of us do when someone we desperately loved eyes.

37:41Nell Daly:But I think that, you know, you can, you can decide if you're going to believe the bullshit people tell you about yourself. That's a tragedy is to not be strong enough as a woman or as a human being to say that doesn't sit right with me. There's something wrong about that. Or I feel that in my stomach, but the tragedy in my life has been when I believe the bullshit. And then I made decisions on the bullshit as opposed to saying, you know what? Thank you. And sometimes it's not even solicited, right? Their advice or their opinion is not even solicited. Thank you for saying that. And then you make your own decision and you follow your own gut and you double down on yourself and you make decisions based on what feels right for you.

38:28Nell Daly:I think that is one of the biggest human tragedies that any human being faces. And that's universal we all do it but it can really take you down a path um that isn't the right path for you

38:38Steph Melodia:yeah absolutely preaching to the choir on that front I a thousand percent agree I think yes there is you can be victimized but if you want to assume victimhood I think there's that reminder that there is that choice and again it's what's that narrative that you're that you're buying into and how is that serving you I think let's do something really fun and British right now let's refer back to Shakespeare

39:00Nell Daly:So I studied a lot of Shakespeare. I was an English major in college. I love Shakespeare. And this is very, you know, appropriate for being right here in London talking about you today. But so there's this moment in Othello, right? The one of the villainous character. I believe I'm getting this right. And forgive me because I'm speaking to a British audience. I could be like crucifying myself here. But we know about British history world and the rest of us. Don't worry about it. But there's Iago. And he's always whispering things in Othello's ear. and then Othello goes on to kill Desdemona, who he actually loves because he believes Iago.

39:31Nell Daly:And I think that the best thing anybody can do for themselves, especially as they're trying to pursue a dream, because again, it is so important to say over and over again, I don't think we talk about this enough, to be underemployed or underutilized in life is soul crushing. And we always talk about when people come in and they are depressed and anxious. So often psychotherapists aren't trained to be like, it's just like your general dream not being met. Like what do you really feel like you were meant to do and you're not doing and how does that eat away at you every single day? And so I think that learning how to identify who are the Yagos in your life and get the fuck away from them is like a huge life lesson.

40:12Nell Daly:Just like cut them out, you know. And sometimes that's so hard because sometimes it's actually family members who don't believe in you. and in my own case I can tell you that there were people who have been very close to me in my own life who at times legitimately thought like what are you doing I don't get it I don't understand why can't you live like a more simple life like why can't you do x why can't you do y and at some point you have to decide how much time and energy am I going to spend trying to convince people of who I am or am I just going to say again thank you for your opinion and then make your own decision work at it and let the results speak for themselves when you make your comeback five years later and maybe you don't like i think that's also another thing that americans are really good at is we're really good at failing like we're really good at failing and being like oh shit learning lesson right we like we don't lose our sense of humor generally about failing the way other cultures do i mean some cultures it's like a big deal to fail i mean like you know they become yeah yeah historically they could commit suicide because they failed at something It's tragic where I think Americans just have this like natural resilience and like, okay, that didn't work out, but like this can or, you know, that kind of constant optimism is also really hopeful and nice to be around.

41:29Nell Daly:And, you know, if I can do anything to influence the companies that we end up investing in or the people around me, it's to keep them optimistic and hopeful because there is so much to be hopeful for. And I think the tides are changing. if I can do this oh my god if I can do this that's just like a testament to itself that other people

41:49Steph Melodia:can do this amazing now so amazing to have you here on the show you beat me to the final traditional closing question which was around one tragedy and actually prefer to leave it on a high note anyway how can people get in touch give us a bit more detail like who should who do you want

42:05Nell Daly:to hear from yeah well we want to hear from anybody who has an idea absolutely and even if you don't think that you fit into the cohort of who we're investing in. Again, this is an inclusive fund. So again, I always say the example, like if two bros come to us with an idea, we will look at it. We'll look at everything that crosses our table. At least we're trying to. So we can, you know, be reached at revenge.capital, which is our website, and you go into type form and you fill it out and you put in your pitch there. And we'll start doing a lot more activations around the QK as well to meet people and to get out of the London bubble, as they say.

42:43Nell Daly:Yeah, fantastic.

42:44Steph Melodia:And hit other parts of the country. I want to look at Wales. I want to look at Scotland. I want to look at Ireland as well. Very Labour of you.

42:51Nell Daly:Well, it's so funny you say that because I just think that's like natural. I actually know a guy in the U.S. who his entire investment thesis, and he's an incredible record, and he won't look at any deals that are West Coast, East Coast. So he stays away from New York and he stays away from L.A., San Francisco, Silicon Valley, and invest entirely in what's considered central U.S. And he's done very, very well because he's hitting people who don't, again, traditionally get easy access to funding and he's making those ideas happen. So contrarian. So as fantastic as it is that you look at everything,

43:23Steph Melodia:what's the decision-making process, at least to get through the next sort of rounds? How are you going to filter through?

43:30Nell Daly:We have different criteria that we're starting to set out for that, right? So it has to feel – I think it has to feel, as I say to Charlotte, I was talking to her today, one of my coworkers, it has to feel like there's some sort of sexiness about it. Like is there some sort of disruption? Like what's the – like do you want to ask it out again? Is there a there there across the table whether like the founder just like amazes you or their idea or what they've accomplished really like gets you going? and you'd be really proud to say like, this is a company that I'm investing in. So I think it's a gut thing to begin with.

44:08Nell Daly:And then you do the due diligence because a lot of people can sell you a story and a lot of people will sell you a story, especially when they need money. And many of the things that we're seeing, like we'll look across all stages, not necessarily like really late stage, although we can find the financing for really late stage deals, which take like they're much more capital intensive. We're talking about like 50 million, 100 million plus. We do have money for follow on capital. So we'll look at anything from the beginning of an idea to, I would say, our sweet spot would be around Series A, where you're writing out checks for, like, let's say,$2 to$5 to$10 million.

44:39Nell Daly:Perfect.

44:40Steph Melodia:Can we translate any of those gut instinct heuristics to practical tips that founders can be like, yeah, I've got it. I'm going to send through my pitch deck. Or maybe that's not quite for me.

44:50Nell Daly:Yeah, I think one of the things I would say to founders when they're sending their material through is just be really concise and really clear. like this is how much my company, don't try to hide anything because we're going to find it. We're very sophisticated investors. We have a big team behind us who are looking at the due diligence and that's not to scare anyone away. It's just like eventually we're going to ask the question that you're already trying to dodge. And I'll probably get to it a lot quicker than other people

45:19Steph Melodia:because I'm kind of like, no bullshit. Extranet. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

45:22Nell Daly:So I think just being really honest, just coming and saying like, this is how much I've made. This is how much I've spent trying to get the idea off the ground. This is where I think the company is going to go. Here's my P &L. Here are the actual numbers. And this is how much I'm looking to raise. And this is my valuation. I think that valuation is really interesting because they always kind of say it. And we generally don't hear very realistic valuations. And that's been a little bit disappointing as I've become a more seasoned investor. And by the way, I say that having also been on the other side of the table having to negotiate these things with I'm the one saying here's our valuation hoping investors going to invest in so it's about being kind of really thorough in your research as to how you got to the valuation you got to not just I want to stick a big number on it because I don't want to give a lot of my company away yeah all right so fantastic

46:19Steph Melodia:great practical tips and now are there any final words of wisdom you'd like to leave this episode on oh my god just keep going resilience grit yeah just please please like whatever double down on

46:34Nell Daly:yourself and keep going love that all the time yeah a hundred percent what it sounds so cheesy but I really do believe that like every single person here is born to do something and so many people suffered in my office with not knowing what that was and part of life's journey is to just like Like really like pull it through and then get out of whatever your belief system is, get out of God's way.

47:00Steph Melodia:So many of us, you're laughing because everyone's in their own way. Yes.

47:03Nell Daly:All the time. Yeah. Just get out of your own fucking way.

47:06Steph Melodia:Yeah. And get on with things. Yeah. Do what you were meant to do here with conviction. You only live once.

47:13Nell Daly:Oh, and that when we go back to sort of the big tragedy. When my mother passed away, I was in a room alone with her and she died in my arms. and she was an oncology nurse and she died on the oncology floor where she was a nurse and helped other people die for over 30 years so it's this really like full circle moment for her and the minute she died and the moment she died in her last breath this is actually kind of funny I said oh shit because it was like the gone gone like you can envision and my mom was an oncology nurse I was a psychotherapist so we talked a lot about death she was sick for over two years so we had a a lot of time and we lived together.

47:49Nell Daly:So we were like joking about death. Her gravestone was up before she even died. Like we really, I wish someone had done a documentary on us because it would have been fascinating to watch that go down. And I think we could have really helped people sort of grieve before the actual grief process starts post-death. But when she actually died, I went, oh shit. Cause there was this like realization in me that like, oh, she's like never really going to talk to me again, which is like hard to actually imagine when you're so close to somebody. But the second thought was, oh shit, I better live. And I think if you've ever been that close to death, then there's like, your foot is on the gas pedal every single day.

48:29Nell Daly:Because again, it sounds so lame, but I think the older you get, the more you realize. And as I approach 50, you start to do the thing that all the older people do, which is like, how many more Christmases do I have? Like it's so messed up. But you actually start to think about that. And then you're like, again like if I can show people that if you're open to it and you and you manifest and you keep at it every day they're like you only live once like YOLO is so true just like get it done and

49:00Steph Melodia:go for it as much as you possibly can now such powerful words this really resonates as well I think I've spoken on other episodes about those life-changing moments a friend of mine had a similar experience where again his mum passed away in his arms and it was that switch and it was that light switch moment and he completely changed his life and selfishly I would love to have that same as much as we know when you live once YOLO etc etc there are those like you said your oh shit moment that like how can you shortcut that until it actually happens like I'm almost like I want to bypass right you know I want to bypass that pain I don't want to have to feel even just listening to you i feel like i'm on the like verge of tears just listening to your story so it's like but i also want that like deep realization yeah like deep visceral time's running out yeah but it's like is there a way to like really get that like in there without

49:55Nell Daly:without the pain without the without the suffering um listen suffering is the gateway to to the phoenix process right suffering is like when we sit in the ashes and we burn ourselves up with grief and pain that's when the phoenix can rise so i get what you're saying if you haven't actually had that moment i'm gonna do a little psychotherapy on you right love it bring it on yeah i'd love to thank you i would say that you have had that moment maybe it's been a slightly watered down version of that moment but i think if you sat down at a cafe later on this afternoon and you wrote down sort of the top five or ten moments in your life that were really pivotal and you really remembered them, then you've already had that moment.

50:40Nell Daly:And I think the second thing I would say is that's why storytelling is so critical, right? It's the stories we hear that can really change the trajectory of our lives. I've had brief conversations in my life. I remember walking through a park in the West Village right after I had kids and I was going to give up working to be a stay-at-home mom. and I was with another woman who hadn't. And she looked at me and she was tall. She had a big, like kind of a stature around her, right? And she said, that's fine. You can do that or you can stay in the game. And she went, your call. And there was something about the way she said it that I was like, fuck you, I'm not stopping.

51:19Nell Daly:It was like this reverse psychology moment. And it was so small, but it was so pivotal. all. And I think those moments when somebody could even be a stranger says something to you and you're like, damn, or the people who took a risk for you before, don't forget the people who did open that door, the people who did believe in you, because as much as there's going to be, listen, in life, there's going to be so many more people who don't believe in you than the people who do. Isn't that ironic? At least that's my experience. At least that's the experience of most people I know that there's a lot of hangers on and that are dragging you down that don't believe in your dream and there's only a couple people that do you only need one so maybe if you haven't had that tragic moment find that one person who every day is like keep going I believe it you're gonna do it and pursue those relationships and let go of the ones that are more you know negative in your life so love that now you are so spot on the money because literally

52:19Steph Melodia:my plan after this was to go and sit in a cafe.

52:21Nell Daly:Really? Oh my god, will you keep it? Yeah, I'm going to sign up for my homework. So we're going to do this, you're going to do your homework and then in a year from now we're going to sit down and we're going to meet and you're going to go, holy shit. We visited. Oh my god. And you're going to be like blown away by what actually happened.

52:37Steph Melodia:I think I already know what I would write down. I think immediately as I was listening to you there I think I know what would come up and you're right.

52:42Nell Daly:Is there anything you've been too scared to say out loud?

52:44Steph Melodia:I don't think so. Because people ask me

52:49Nell Daly:saying it because I'm like almost embarrassed to say what they are as in dreams or tragedies a dream well there's tragedies but like anything that you write down a piece of paper that you want to manifest is there are there things that you've never said out loud that you actually really want

53:01Steph Melodia:to do but you'd be too embarrassed to say them I like how we're turning the tables here you're interviewing me I'm just curious I don't think so I don't think so that's great I don't know yeah I think I am like you to a much lesser degree being the outlier and I do see myself very much with all the different roles and hats that we wear in life being a big sister is the one that I think I do the best and the one where I feel the most natural and at ease and zone of genius or you know whatever and I think part of that is being a big sister to so many other women as well even older younger or whatever but that it for me the fire and the indignation around gender inequality is isn't so much my own you know I don't assume victimhood it's more what I do see happening to the other women and yeah I don't know I think I've I also grew up in a with psycho yeah I grew up in a very strong like matriarchal family unit yeah and I just you know some of us just you know where do you get your confidence from or whatever and I think just growing up I was such a confident child and I would just and I think it's a it's an upward like yeah upward spiral so like last night I was talking to a friend about like healthy habits and how she's eating better and sleeping better and it just kind of makes you do even better once you kind of start getting into that and it's kind of the same with confidence and dreams and back to your question around like saying these things out loud because my deepest burning desire for as long as I can remember was to be do you want to guess then actually seeing as you've already figured me out do you want to guess what it could be my childhood ambition to own a whole network oh

54:47Nell Daly:you should be running one that's what just saying if you have a little business man

54:53Steph Melodia:i mean i'm really admiring alex cooper at the moment i'm like oh wow no i mean that definitely didn't didn't cross five-year-old steph's mind yeah have another you're not you're not a million miles away you're in the right ballpark like a classic childhood childhood dream oh I'm putting

55:09Nell Daly:you on the spot aren't I yeah tell me to win an award for like ours would be like I guess an Emmy

55:15Steph Melodia:or something like that to be an actress oh to be an actress so I think that that was already I knew I and I said that to everyone you know you're saying about writing who's down saying that I would go up to adults genuinely as a five six seven year old and I'd just start chatting to people and we'd go on holiday very often and my ruby kept being bars and and i would just go and talk to people and it's that pure confidence of a child you know there's no just like hey you know it's like super extrovert as kids you're like hey now i'm stef do you want to be my friend kind of thing yeah and and i would just tell them and you do get asked that classic question as well right like what do you want to be when you grow up and i and the arrogance of saying to them i will tell you not what i'm what i want to be but what i'm going to be like do you want me to sign here and you would say that I would be like I'm gonna be an act like my name's gonna be in lights like you want my autograph now or later basically yeah and um laughing off camera there that's amazing and I think that I think that just like those early years and how much they shape you and having such an inspirational mother and again that very like strong matriarchal family unit as well being the firstborn I think there's headwinds and tailwinds in life and so I think when we look at the tip of the social hierarchy i'm i'm one pet down from the top of the food chain right like i'm white i'm english is my first language i'm able-bodied yeah it's actually so like i've just run away from being a man basically yeah and so i'm aware of those privileges as well and and so i think that's that's kind of like the start of that upward cycle and then the funnier thing without being so show-offy just because i was telling a friend this last night as well the funny part of this and this is like a really unexpected like this is a really unexpected confidence building strategy oh yeah people need to hear this i like how this is turning into the now show now i'm your guest i'd much rather have conversation great fantastic much more interesting um i'll tell you this really quickly so i was a really clumsy child and again linking back to my deep burning ambition of wanting to be an actress there was this open casting call for this tv ad and i was besides myself i mean if you think that i'm high energy and but now like seven year old staff is like a ball of a ball of energy yeah so excitable i was absolutely beside myself oh my god this opportunity and where this company was hosting this open audition was in this foyer of this not even a foyer but like a bar in this hotel and it was lower down it was kind of like lower level but it was all kind of open and had this humongous

58:03Nell Daly:sweeping staircase going round to this area where they were doing the casting and because I'm so

58:09Steph Melodia:besides myself I you can see where this is going yeah and um I think the memory stuck so much because of how hard it how much it hurt falling down these stairs pumbling my way down in front of everyone in front of the directors and everyone else at this audition and everything else and um it's funny because it's like you know once you've embarrassed yourself a few times you're like okay get used to it and I think bringing it back now to today and as an adult and entrepreneurs and confidence and female founders and all the rest of it is we need to we need to in order to exercise our resilience muscle and and risk tolerance it's like exercising any other muscle and we need to come out of that comfort zone retreat go out a bit further again retreat go out a bit further and that's how you go like i'm in my weight lifting here at the moment it's like you go a bit heavier you recover go a bit heavier recover and every time you do it and you see no one died nothing happened and again it's like just embarrassing like I think also I talk a lot about the spotlight effects in psychology because you saying before about how people get in their own way no one is paying as much attention to you as you think that they are a hundred percent no one's going to remember yeah so you may as well just go for it yeah so are you going for the acting I'm reliving my childhood ambition through the public speaking oh that's so sweet but yeah i mean if sylvan schoolberg wants to get in touch i mean be open to having a little chinwag but isn't it funny though because that is the actual process of involvement which is how you get back to your childhood self it's a real thing for me at the moment it's a real revisit for the first time this is why i'm talking because i forgot about it yeah and I'm just reading that joy tapping I think tapping into that joy because joy is not

1:00:05Nell Daly:like you have to work for joy I think about that every day like if because people always say to me like god you seem so positive you seem so happy you do wake up this way and I'm like in my head I'm like can be really fucking mad and angry but I like present differently yes and I have to reach for joy yeah it's not easy and I think again like in my field I was shocked and also in my own life how difficult it is to achieve happiness. Right? I don't think we should even strive for happiness. And that's a whole other conversation. Like, we should strive to be moved. Like, right? That's what we really want as human beings.

1:00:40Nell Daly:But, I mean, some happiness is nice. Yeah, of course. And it's not. It's like hard won. Happiness can be a really hard won. Yeah. So that's cool that you're, like, going back to that little girl self and playing.

1:00:52Steph Melodia:And I completely forgot because there was this one specific moment that I remember so perfectly, which was on the playground of my school when I was 14 years old and my self-confidence took an absolute nosedive it was this white it was an overcast cloudy morning and it was almost like a switch went off in my mind where I was just like what genuine was like what have I been working and nobody said no one said to you anything no because I just kind of went off in a different course and since then it now turns out there's this study that's come out that's showing that actually um pubescent pre-pubescent yeah go through this like yeah this tumble this clear is almost off a cliff okay that checks out so so it is since then i've had this time to now remember that and have this renaissance yeah anyway now that's more than enough about me

1:01:41Nell Daly:this is supposed to be your interview so refreshing i have to talk about myself to be honest no i love

1:01:46Steph Melodia:But huge congratulations. So incredibly exciting. I'm so glad that you've bounced back, that you've exploded back onto the scene. I would love to get involved. I'm so happy that I've given you a platform as well to get this out to more founders.

1:02:02Nell Daly:Yeah, lovely the work you're doing. Likewise.

1:02:04Steph Melodia:And I think what I'm going to do is I'm going to email you after this.

1:02:07Nell Daly:I'm going to come up with another goal.

1:02:09Steph Melodia:And we're going to sit here in a year and go, which one did you do? I'm up for that. Yeah, I'm up for that. Amazing. That's about I'll hold you to that. Like completely crazy.

1:02:16Nell Daly:like we're just gonna go for it love that i'm getting me excited just thinking about it it's gonna be like i'm gonna be at the like the 500 million mark nice yeah stick another zero why not let's just keep going love that love that let's revisit that next year for sure thank you

1:02:30Steph Melodia:so much now and thank you so much for tuning in really hope that you've enjoyed this episode if you haven't already you know what to do please hit that subscribe button it doesn't cost a thing it takes two seconds really appreciate it and i'll see you next time

1:02:49Thank you.