Irene Au (Khosla Ventures): From Leading Design at Yahoo & Google to the Original Design VC

20:32Irene Au:That's actually just level one. I mean, at a much deeper level, if you think about the extent to which the products that we make and the companies that we build are reflections of the leaders who create them, it is really incumbent upon leaders. It's kind of their responsibility to improve themselves because whatever energy they're putting out through their company, through the products that they make, that energy is getting transmitted to everyone else. You think about how like user interfaces, for example, so many interfaces are kind of a reflection of the company's organizational structure.

21:09Irene Au:Or I mean, I have this post that kind of went viral many years ago called UX is a canary in a coal mine. And it's kind of like the culmination of your strategy or lack thereof, or the quality of your talent or lack thereof, or your ability to execute the organization, the vision, like everything gets manifested in the user interface. This is why so many stakeholders might say, oh, we have a terrible design. It's the designer's fault. A lot of times it can be the designer's fault. It can be a lack of talent or whatever. But even more often the case, that interface or that experience is a reflection of what's going on inside the company and the people who are running it.

21:57Irene Au:So the extent to which if leaders can be more clear in their vision, more purposeful and intentional in terms of who they're serving and why and how, and then navigating through the people issues that often get in the way, that's only going to serve the company and the products and ultimately the people that are using those products.

22:19Andy Budd:I mean, I work with a lot of founders and I find that there's often an interesting kind of switch that happens, maybe somewhere between kind of series A, series B, whereby prior to that, all of the problems they see as being external. I can hire my way out of this problem. I can grow my way out of this problem. At some stage, they have let three or four people in a particular role go and nothing's changing. and you know suddenly they start to think oh maybe the the the challenge is not externally maybe it's something that i'm doing maybe it's me and often like once they get into a certain size and scale a company it's really them that they're working on and and the work that they do on themselves can have a massive impact on everyone else around them so it's really fascinating this shift from external to external because you know leading a team of 10 people is very different to leading a team of 100 or 1 ,000 or 5 ,000.

23:13Andy Budd:And at some stage, you have to kind of scale yourself. And that's really difficult unless you do that hard sort of inquiry and personal work. So I'm totally with you there. So we sort of touched on it a little bit. You were working, managing really, really large teams in very well-known companies. I mean, that could have been it. That could have been the end of your career. You could have quite happily stepped away and retired, having charted the path of two massive kind of design organizations. But you've had a kind of a second career after design leadership, which is obviously the VC world. So I'm just curious, like, what drew you into the world of VC, rather than just having another design leadership job?

23:50Andy Budd:And like, why did you go into the particular kind of like fund that you found yourself working in?

23:55Irene Au:Well, towards the end of my time at Google, I was increasingly getting inquiries from entrepreneurs, investors, and executives I had worked with before who had then become entrepreneurs or investors themselves, so many people were coming to me asking me for advice for their companies or their investments. And the questions were quite far ranging, but the sum of all those conversations was just worth so much of my time that I felt like there's a clear opportunity here. And I thought that working inside venture capital would be an interesting way to do that. So I actually met with many VC firms up and down Sand Hill Road, kind of pitching this idea I had.

24:42Irene Au:And coincidentally, around the same time, Vinod Khosla also identified this opportunity. he saw through his portfolio companies that there was an increasing need to invest in design and that that would bring them a competitive advantage. And so he saw the opportunity for an operating partner in his firm to coach and advise and mentor these CEOs as well as the designers being hired into those companies. So it was a nice intersection between what he saw and what I could offer. He actually tried to recruit me around the same time that I had decided to join Trinity Ventures as an entrepreneur in residence.

25:30Irene Au:And around the same time, I also had been chatting a lot with Sebastian Thrun, who had founded Udacity, about working at his startup. I was reluctant to go full-time into a startup, but he was so deft at kind of convincing me. I first started out part-time. And so I was working part-time at Udacity at the same time that I was at Trinity Ventures. And it was really interesting for me to be on both sides of the table. Udacity had just raised at Series A. They had about 20 people with$20 million. I can't remember the exact number, but I think that's maybe the size of the... It might've been 100 million.

26:08Irene Au:I don't know. It was probably closer to 20 or 25 million. At the same time, I was at Trinity Ventures. And I was working with the investing partners to hear pitches and decide whether to invest in them or not. And then I was also working with the founders in their portfolio. And I learned a lot about myself. I often think of that three-month period that I was at Trinity as kind of a way to prototype this vision I had for what it would be like for me to work in venture capital. And I learned a lot of things about myself, namely that I really did not like investing. I am an operator. I like building teams.

26:45Irene Au:I like thinking about product. I don't like listening to pitches all day and then coming home every day thinking like, okay, we said no to 99 % of the companies. And of course, the really good ones are very easy to identify. The really bad ones are easy to identify. It's the squishy middle that is so painful. But I felt like I wasn't really creating or working with teams in the way that fed me. So I increasingly spent more time at Udacity. And that was a really interesting journey as well, because we were reinventing higher education. Udacity started with Sebastian putting his computer science course online.

27:26Irene Au:He was inspired by Saul Kahn from Kahn Academy. And we saw an explosion of users practically overnight without a really clear vision for what kind of business or what kind of product we were creating. And that was such an interesting, formative, pivotal time because as much as I had worked at major companies like Netscape, Yahoo, and Google in the early days, Udacity was even more raw, which was so fun. And it was also a really great, I mean, it wasn't that intentional. It wasn't like I masterminded, like I'm going to go work at a startup before I work in venture capital. But it was just this happy journey that I took because actually working in such an early stage startup really helped build the skills and the empathy within me and better equipped me to work with startups as I moved into venture capital.

28:22Irene Au:So long story short, once we identified product market fit at Udacity and started to craft out what the user experience would be, the challenges that laid ahead were very similar to the challenges that I had already kind of dealt with at Yahoo and Google, which was to build out the product, build out the team, scale it, et cetera. And so that's when I felt like, well, I'm just going to take a step back here and take some time off because I was ready for a new and different kind of challenge. and interestingly like two or three weeks after I left Udacity, Vinod called me out of the blue and was like, now are you ready to join me?

28:59Irene Au:And so it's just really interesting how, you know, timing can be so magical sometimes that you kind of wonder like this must be meant to be. So that's when I joined Coastal Adventures full-time. He had tried to recruit me as I was leaving Google, but I had already committed to Trinity and Udacity at the time. But so So we had kept in touch and that's how that evolved.

29:26Andy Budd:Amazing. I mean, you mentioned a few things that really resonated with me there. I mean, I think also, you know, I was a designer that's moved into the VC world. I was having lots of people reaching out for my input and help. And it was actually much easier to be able to help lots of people in a small way, you know, through maybe coaching, advisory work and investing. But at the same time, I also started as an entrepreneur in residence. A lot of people do. That's how they break into VC. You do a little three month kind of stint and then you get a feel for it. People see, you know, what you can bring to the table and then you end up, you know, journeying as a more senior, sort of serious kind of partner.

30:04Andy Budd:And so you went through that process. You talked to a lot of other design designers that transformed into VCs. In fact, you wrote a book with O 'Reilly about it. Like, how did the book come about and what did you learn through the process of writing a book about designing VC?

30:19Irene Au:Oh, well, O 'Reilly approached me. They thought, oh, this looks like it's starting to become a thing because there are a few more designers who are moving into venture capital. Give us a peek behind the curtain and tell us what that is like. So I kind of created a list of like most frequently asked questions and also like just whatever I was curious about and use that opportunity to connect with my colleagues at other VC firms to compare notes. I didn't think that I could just write about my own experience without acknowledging or recognizing what was happening inside other firms. Because these VC firms, a lot of them act as small businesses in some way.

31:03Irene Au:I mean, some of them are more corporate, like Andreessen Horowitz, but they all have their own quirks and personalities and values and priorities and different ways of operating. So that in turn means that the designers at those VC firms were operating in different ways. And I mean, you know, a decade later, I think there's actually more similarities and there are differences. And I'm happy to talk about that, too. But it was interesting to kind of compare notes and document it.

31:35Andy Budd:I mean, I think when you did your book, there are probably only about 30 or 40 people who had made that transition. And I think you've probably spoken to most of them.

31:44Irene Au:Even less. It might have been 10. 10 at most. Yeah. Maybe five.

31:52Andy Budd:Yeah. Wow. Okay. I mean, it feels like there's a few more now, but maybe it's not that much bigger. Maybe it's doubled or tripled. But it definitely feels like more people. I mean, again, I think you were an inspiration for me to move from design to VC. I think it's really important having people that have gone down their route before. People like you, people like Jeff Veen. it kind of suddenly makes something real and tangible. And so I think your book and having chats with you has been really, really helpful to me. So thank you very much for that.

32:17Irene Au:Oh, that's wonderful.

32:20Andy Budd:I know you said that you started doing, involved in the pitching, but you've moved more to like, I guess, a post-investment support. But do you still involve yourself in much pitching? And I, cause I guess I was wondering like, how has your design background influenced the way you assess a startup's kind of potential for success or indeed a founder's potential for success?

32:43Irene Au:Well, I just want to take a step back and clarify that there are many different ways that designers can be involved in venture capital. There's kind of a range. I mean, there's one category, which is designer turned investor. So I would put you in that category. I would put Jeff Veen in that category. There is another role, which is like designer as operating partner. And that would be like me or Jake Knapp, James Buckhouse, people who work inside venture capital firms whose role it is to work with the portfolio companies once an investment has been made. So they're not directly responsible for investing decisions, but they're operators.

33:27Irene Au:And because they're operators, they work with the companies to help them be successful. And then the third category would be designer inside a venture studio. So this might be like an incubator or some venture capital firms have like a studio inside where they kind of incubate new companies. Sutter Hill is an example of that. Luke Robleski is there running a venture studio. and they are really kind of working as part of a cross-functional team to conceive and build new and interesting companies. So Sutter Hill Incubated Snowflake, for example, they have proven track record of incubating successful companies inside their studio.

34:07Irene Au:I think that was before Luke joined. But in any case, those people are builders. So it's important to keep in mind the different ways in which designers can be working in this ecosystem. And I think once you understand that difference, then, you know, then I can answer the question a little bit of a different way. So I don't personally invest on behalf of Coastal Ventures. My husband and I do do a lot of angel investing. I would say he and I have different kinds of criteria that we look at. But ultimately, we're we're investing in the CEO, the idea, the pitch is only part of it. But we also recognize that for early stage startups, there can be pivots.

34:46Irene Au:So the idea can change. But what's really enduring is the CEO, they have to be the kind of person that everybody wants to work with, and they have to be able to build and lead a strong performing team. They also have to have the self awareness, and be able to set the ego aside to kind of navigate the challenging people issues, as well as being realistic about like, is this working or not. So not being too attached, not being too tied to to something like we're looking for people who are not stuck. We're looking for people who can think very flexibly and be very open-minded, but also very smart, can get things done, can lead other people.

35:27Irene Au:I would say that at Coastal Ventures, I have a lot of discretion in terms of deciding who I spend a lot of time with. So there's some things that I do that benefit the whole portfolio. Maybe it's like infrastructure that benefits the whole portfolio. But then there are other times where I spend a lion's share of my work on a few companies where I feel like I can make a meaningful difference. And a lot of that depends on the openness of the CEO, how interested and open and willing and curious are they in having my involvement and the degree to which I can help and be effective. So that's really all I'm looking for is I'm gauging the energy of the CEO.

36:03Irene Au:And, you know, I'll talk to anybody who wants to talk to me, but, you know, it really depends on what the what the issue is and what's getting in the way of their success that I feel like I can be the most helpful when I assess that.

36:14Andy Budd:I mean, I think you've mentioned a bunch of really important things. I think the first thing is a lot of founders think that VCs are just assessing the idea. But you're absolutely right. The idea is likely to change, you know, either it's likely to morph and change organically, or it might be a complete pivot. And when that happens, like you want someone that has that kind of flexibility, you talked about that has that kind of curiosity, that has a growth mindset. And so I think, you know, when people are sharing their pitch decks or their ideas, actually it is important to share yourself with it and not be too focused on this being the best idea that's ever come about.

36:51Andy Budd:So I think you're absolutely right there. I think you're also right that like design in VC, it can be as an investment partner, it can be as an operator. I tend to be actually probably 70, 80 % of my time is post-investment like you, when I'm actually kind of helping those founders who we have invested in, you know solve some of the problems and the challenges that you're facing I'm sure we'll get on to but I do also get to sit in in pitches and and sort of discuss you know whether we think that this is a really interesting idea or not and I found my kind of design thinking and particularly my kind of my understanding kind of user behavior really really useful because I think I I have an ability to look at things from a beginner's mind I have an ability to empathize not just you know I think a lot of people, when they're judging something, they might judge it from a financial perspective or a technological perspective.

37:39Andy Budd:But whether the product actually is going to hit home, whether it's going to resonate with people, whether you could imagine people actually using this new tool that people are developing. I think having that kind of beginner's mind that a designer can bring, not exclusively designers, but designers are really good at that, I think can be can be really beneficial.

37:58Irene Au:Absolutely. I think Coastal Ventures tends to prefer companies that are solving hard problems with hard tech. So while we do have some portion of our investments are consumer facing, quite a few are B2B and then even more are just like really hard tech like Rocket Lab or Lanza Tech or, you know, there's a company that's building like a Mach 9 airplane that's going to get you to, you know, London from New York in 90 minutes or things like that. So yes, you can use your understanding of users to assess companies and the opportunities that they see. And sometimes you can't. And so like a lot of times what I see is the chance to teach the companies how to build those muscles within themselves so that they can kind of get to the right idea faster.

38:53Andy Budd:Another thing you said, which I think is really interesting that maybe a lot of people that never raised funding or had a VC would imagine. I think a lot of people think that VCs can be dictatorial and like you sign up and you work with a fund and they almost like tell you what to do but you've kind of indicated it's more of a service like you're there like if your companies that Cozla have invested in are curious around design they can kind of reach out to you and ask for help and you can scale that up as much as you want but you're not running around kind of sort of telling people how to behave or how to grow their company or how to treat design, you really are just there as a value add, arguably, for the people who are interested.

39:34Andy Budd:I know that's how I operate. I have some people who are reaching out to me all the time because they find what I do really valuable. And other founders who are just wound up and go. And I might speak to them once a month on a monthly update just because there's a little check-in to see how things are going. So I think we're in sort of very similar situations. I guess I'm curious, for the people that come to you looking for help, what are the kind of the common patterns that you see emerging? What are the things they want to learn about design? What are the common mistakes or misunderstandings they have about design?

40:07Andy Budd:And where do you find yourself being able to add the most value?

40:10Irene Au:I just try to meet people where they're at. And I would say 80 to 85 to 90 % of the time, the first conversation is very tactical. It's usually like, do you know anyone I can hire? Or how do I build design capabilities? Or can you tell me what's wrong with my product? Or we have an opportunity to launch next week because our founder is going to be on some show and we're going to be driving a lot of traffic to our site next week. So how should we think about this? It's very immediate and tactical. and so I just try to meet them where they're at and build a relationship and once that's established then there's the opportunity to get deeper and I think it's very important to not be too you know dictatorial.

40:58Irene Au:First of all that's not my style but I also find that that never works neither as a large organization leader, neither as a parent, neither as a yoga teacher and certainly not as an operating partner inside a venture capital firm. It never really works to kind of be too prescriptive about how one should behave oneself. So, you know, it's like I'm meeting people where they're at and I'm coaching. I'm helping them be the best versions of themselves, whether it's at a personal level or at a company level. So, you know, with DoorDash, for example, once I installed leadership and kind of worked through some of the early operational issues.

41:38Irene Au:When that person left, then they had a big hole in the organization, and I installed the next person. And then that focus was about scaling, but they kept asking me questions about, like, you know, can you tell us what other companies have done in the way of, it was like, you know, creating a culture of customer obsession or something like that. And my feeling is that it's always better for the organization or for the individuals to discover that within themselves than for an outsider to come in and tell them, you should be doing X, Y, and Z. I mean, certainly there are times when I will do that.

42:10Irene Au:And so, you know, it depends on the context. But in the case of something like company culture or vision or things like that, the answer lies within themselves. So then instead of coming in and giving a talk about how other companies are doing it, I will facilitate a process by which they unearth, like as a cross-functional team, what are the things that are getting in the way of customer obsession and what can we do about it? So what's unique about DoorDash, for example, is that they're a three-sided marketplace. You have the customer, you have the dasher, and you have the restaurant. And so it turns out that that three-sided marketplace made it incredibly difficult to be customer obsessed because everybody's pointing the finger at everybody else.

42:49Irene Au:And there were definitely issues around empowerment and organizational accountability and just the way they operated that they had to work through as a team to get talking about it and then figure out, well, what should be the better protocol? And then nothing more powerful than having an engineer say, you know, maybe we should slow down our launches to make sure that we have quality right would help a lot. I mean, that is just gold because like if I told them you need to slow down your launches in order to get quality right. First of all, I don't have any visibility into that. But second of all, like, you know, if I say it, it's one thing.

43:28Irene Au:But for an engineer inside the company to say it, that means that they are actually going to implement those changes.

43:33Andy Budd:I've seen plenty of incidents where the CTO has actually said, like, I've got headcount for hiring new engineers, but I actually want to redirect that to design because the bottleneck is all the stuff that design does. And it's not necessarily an engineering problem. So the other thing I was going to say was, I think you've just, you know, when you were saying like how people come to you, I mean, again, that's my experience as well. Normally people reach out to me initially because they're hiring a designer or a product leader or some other kind of role. and they want me to kind of look over their job description or their, you know, a list of resumes or maybe step in and kind of do some interviewing for them.

44:10Andy Budd:And once they build up confidence with me, then they might start asking me smaller questions. And then if I add value, then they ask me deeper and deeper questions. And so usually it's just a slow kind of warming up until, you know, if you're delivering so much value, then people will start kind of asking you questions that kind of are all over the place. And so these days, like I start from a design perspective, but a lot of the stuff I end up helping people with is like you said around kind of company culture and you know business development and kind of like you know obviously you know a whole bunch of stuff in product I'm curious a big part of what I do as well and I don't know if it's something that you touch on I think that design has a big part to play in finding product market fit and finding new customers you know a lot of the problem early stage companies have with things with churn, onboarding, discovery, getting people, getting value quick enough from the product, having people kind of like bake behaviors into their daily workload.

45:07Andy Budd:So they kind of choose this tool over kind of like going back to the old way of solving things. So is growth a part of like what people consult you about?

45:16Irene Au:They can, and it has happened. And, you know, one example is like a portfolio company, rubric, they found that they were sitting on a lot of data that meant, you know, because of the business that they were in, but because they were collecting all of this data from their customers, there was an opportunity to create an entirely different kind of product based on the data that was being collected. But they needed some help with like just conceiving it, just having an early prototype to test against it and show to their customers, like, would this be an interesting add-on product for the service that you're already getting from us?

45:59Irene Au:And so that was an opportunity to kind of teach them how to run a design sprint and come up with like different conceptual ideas, how to prototype it quickly, how to test it in front of their customers to gauge the interest. And ultimately, it turned into a real product that is being sold now. So yeah, that was a lot of fun.

46:20Andy Budd:One of the things I really love about being a VC, well, two things, actually. First of all, I get to learn about a whole bunch of new industries that I've never kind of experienced. Like you're constantly discovering new ideas, new pockets of the world that you haven't kind of experienced before. You have to get a, you know, become an expert at really quickly. I think the other thing is often you're at the cutting edge of what's coming down the line. So you're seeing products, ideas, technology, which aren't mainstream today, but might be mainstream in five or 10 years time. I'm just curious, what's exciting you about the world of technology and startups over the next five years?

46:55Andy Budd:And also what, if anything, is concerning you?

46:57Irene Au:I think there's a lot of interesting activity going on in the health care and health tech kind of space. A lot of new, interesting companies that are putting the opportunity in the hands of consumers to scan their bodies or test their blood or assess the biological clock of their organs or whatever, you know, X, Y, and Z, so that people can understand what's going on in their bodies and take personal responsibility for their health. And there is an incredible opportunity here, not only because these services have never been provided before, but also because there's an epidemic of chronic illness, at least in the United States.

47:43Irene Au:And people are finding that Western allopathic medicine only tells part of the story and is incredibly helpful for acute problems, like if you need antibiotics for something or if you have a broken bone or whatever. But for more complex chronic issues, it's not necessarily a direct linear path to wellness. So I think there are a lot of interesting and exciting developments in this space. In terms of what concerns me, I think that, I mean, there's so many things. Like I talked to one startup that was like, we're building this tech that's going to put a lot of people out of jobs and we're going to make a lot of money.

48:25Irene Au:And, you know, that to me is not necessarily the most inspiring or motivating vision for me personally to work on. Similarly, you know, a company that aims to solve the problem of human loneliness by offering a chatbot that people can talk to, I also don't think is really addressing the root cause and may only serve to further alienate lonely people from society. So those are cases in which I personally would take a different approach and would prefer to see solutions that are entirely different. But, you know, I think it reflects a larger societal. I mean, it reflects several larger societal issues at play.

49:05Irene Au:People are increasingly isolated from each other. AI is taking over jobs. So what are people going to do? I see this firsthand in the next generation, in the Gen Z folks. I have two daughters who are Generation Z and all my friends' kids are Gen Z. And so many of them are having trouble finding employment, for example. And then similarly, I also see like the rage that so many people exhibit, the inability to connect with other people. Like, you know, it used to be that, you know, just interacting with people in person to person businesses would require you to make small talk and have it would force you to reconnect with your sense of humanity.

49:51Irene Au:And now it's like you can go the whole day without talking to anybody. You know, you go to the grocery store. It's like self-checkout. You need to deal with the bank or an airline. You are dealing with like interactive voice response or, you know, chatbot or whatever. So people don't know how to make small talk anymore. And I think that's actually to the detriment of humanity. And so they're just like micro interactions like that, that we've taken for granted, that have these enormous ripple effects on how we relate to each other as human beings that I think are incredibly distressing and harmful.

50:23Andy Budd:It's a challenge, isn't it? If you're in that space as a VC, you're dealing with a whole range of different companies. If you are a partner that's investing, you're making decisions all the time. some of them around ethics, some around the shape of the future of the world that you're helping to manifest or not. And so it can be quite a sort of a challenging space to work in. I mean, I agree with everything you've said, both in terms of the opportunities with health, but also the sense of disconnection. And particularly, I think a lot of people are arguably, understandably, correctly worried about the effect that some of the technologies we're seeing now are going to have on the workplace.

51:02Andy Budd:both the volume of jobs available and the quality of jobs. And so I think we are moving to a really interesting, challenging, turbulent time. And so, yeah, everything you said sort of resonated with me there. I'm curious, is there something that really surprised you about the world of venture coming from the world of design? And what have you really loved about the world of venture and what would you change, if anything?

51:25Irene Au:Well, what I have really enjoyed about working in venture capital is all that I used to do It's like all the things I loved about working at Google and Yahoo and Udacity and Netscape without any of the things that I didn't enjoy. So, for instance, I get to work with really creative, smart, interesting people who are aiming to take on some hard problems. That is super fun because there's flexible thinking. There's a growth mindset. There's a curiosity that's fueling all these people that I have the privilege of working with. And alongside that, I don't get to take home any of the operating stress, which is great.

52:03Irene Au:So being in the liminal space is really wonderful because I can actually see things more clearly because I'm not personally invested in the emotional dramas that take place in the workplace that so often happens. I don't have to write like, you know, 100 performance reviews like I used to when I was at Google. So those are all really wonderful things.

52:26Andy Budd:I mean just jumping in there I mean I'm absolutely in exactly the same space as you before I got into VC I worked in the agency space and so I had lots of clients to deal with I had lots of customers and lots of staff members to deal with and all of that stuff kind of like had a real direct impact on on me my happiness my livelihood you know the livelihood of the team and so it kind of weighs down and I really like the ability to to talk to lots of amazing founders to get inspired by you know really young sharp creative people but I don't have to take any of that kind of burden home that actually and because I don't have to take any of that burden home like I can actually assess things in a slightly more sort of measured way not through a stress response not out of fear but just out of kind of like a external observer looking at the problem so the fact that you said that.

53:16Andy Budd:I really love that because that's exactly where I sit as well. Anything you've been sort of surprised about or kind of not so keen about the world of VC? Because I guess VC gets a bit of a hard time at times.

53:28Irene Au:There hasn't been anything I don't like about working in venture capital. I think that's why I've been there for about a dozen years now. I will say that it's not for everyone. It's not the kind of move that builds your resume or builds a career. I think it's very hard to go back into an operating role after you have a time in venture capital, because unless you're directly making and building and contributing to your portfolio, it's just hard to go anywhere else. I mean, I give this advice to people all the time when they think about, oh, how do I, you know, work in venture capital? It's like, well, if you're kind of post-career or near the end of your career, this is a great last step before you ride off into the sunset.

54:18Irene Au:But if you're if you still have some, you know, juice in you, like make hay while the sun is shining, like go do, you know, go be an operator, go work inside a company or an agency or freelancer, you know, be hands on for as long as you can, because, you know, you don't know, like, I think for every move that you make in your career, you should always be asking yourself, like, what can I learn from this next step that's going to make me a different or better person coming out on the other side? side and what kind of opportunities will that open up for me? And if you can't answer that, you know, post your stint in VC, then or any stint that you take on, then you should give another thought as to whether it's really the right move.

55:02Andy Budd:I mean, I think being a VC can be a bit of a career cul-de-sac if you've been an operator, because I think, like you say, it's quite hard to come back after three, four, five, six years, and then, you know, go into another a large tech company and kind of feel like you've still got your finger on the pulse. And I think skills atrophy is real. I think a lot of the time, you know, I know that my skills have definitely atrified a little bit and I think my network has atrified a little bit. And so also I'm probably exactly that kind of person that you described, which is kind of my career isn't quite at the end yet, but I'm kind of like in a sort of a transitionary space where I can use all the stuff that I've learned over the last 20, 30 years and pay it forward to that kind of next generation.

55:41Andy Budd:I get a huge amount of satisfaction being able to help 20 or 30 founders rather than just sort of, you know, one company or four or five clients. I think the one thing that a lot of people don't appreciate, actually, which can be tough. And like you say, because you're more of an operating person than an investor. I think it can be really hard kind of like turning people down constantly. You know, your job as an investor is saying no 90 percent of the time. I actually spend a lot of my time when people reach out to me asking for investment advice, you know, telling them or trying to convince them not to take VC money.

56:12Andy Budd:Because often, you know, if you want to build a lovely 5 million, 10 million, 20 million a year business, like, like, that's great. But VC is going to kill that business because they're looking for 100 million billion dollar kind of outcomes. And so a lot of my time is spent trying to talk people off the ledge. or sadly like seeing people who you know if I had tons of money would love to support them because they're doing something really good you know good and worthwhile but it just doesn't sort of fit the kind of the venture model of these kind of like 100x you know thousand extra turns and so yeah seeing people that you love the idea and you wish it would exist it just doesn't make sense as a business can be can be kind of tough um we're sort of coming to the end of our time I've really enjoyed still chatting with you.

56:55Andy Budd:I'm just curious, where are things now and what's next for you?

56:59Irene Au:Well, it's funny you should ask. I've actually been plotting my wind down from venture capital, at least at Coastal Ventures. I often joke that as the world turns to artificial intelligence, I'm turning more and more towards natural intelligence, which kind of encompasses a whole array of interesting things that I find fascinating. I don't think of this as retirement. Somebody coined a term for me last week that they called it preferment. It's like you're doing the things that you prefer to do. And, you know, I also think along with that come the ability to engage in like beauty and art, which I think are so incredibly healing music.

57:46Irene Au:So I've always had a keen interest in that, but never really had the freedom or the permission or the means to explore that and engage in that. So that will also be part of my future, I hope.

57:59Andy Budd:Wow. Well, I mean, this has been amazing. I've loved chatting to you. You've had two really fantastic, interesting, different careers so far, one in design leadership and then one in VC. And it sounds like you're going to be exploring a whole interesting new world of kind of wellness and health and and yeah that sounds really exciting so thank you so much for sharing it's been really really fun I was going to ask kind of like what's bringing you joy at the moment but it sounds like that is tied in with what you've just said kind of nature and and mindfulness and and kind of being on your health journey so anything else kind of really bringing you joy at the moment

58:34Irene Au:or well I'm just wrapping up construction on my third construction project so this is super exciting and I'm looking forward to spending more time in nature once it's done um so yeah yeah lots of things to be excited about but that's that's just one of many

58:54Andy Budd:amazing well look thank you so much for joining us Irene it's been a pleasure chatting to you if people want to sort of like follow you are you on social media is that a thing that you um you're interested in or is your kind of your next phase going to be cutting yourself off from that world.

59:08Irene Au:Yeah. You know, I think in this day and age, privacy is a luxury item. And I'm pleased to say I think I have the luxury of being a little private. I've been off social media for quite some time off of Facebook, off of Instagram, I still have an account, but I'm not really looking at it. I am on LinkedIn, but we'll probably be looking at it less and less. I did just push out a redesign of my own personal website. So it's Irene Al.com. And that's where I I will probably be sharing things that I find interesting to the extent that I want to share. But that's also an ability. You know, there's also a place where people can, you know, book a meeting with me or send me messages to.

59:50Irene Au:So if they want to connect directly, they can go there.

59:53Andy Budd:Brilliant. Well, thank you so much, Irene. It's been a pleasure. And thanks to all of you who've been listening to The Design VC. if you enjoyed this episode please do share it with any founders or founding designers or other people in the kind of VC world you think might be you know find it interesting and until next time I'm Andy Budd and this has been the Design VC