Building an Investment Ecosystem: Joy Marcus’s Blueprint for Supporting Women Entrepreneurs

Anthony Codispoti : Welcome to another edition of the Inspire Stories podcast where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from their successes and be inspired by how they’ve overcome adversity. My name is Anthony Codispoti and today’s guest is Joy Marcus, general partner and co-founder at The 98. Founded in 2022, The 98 is an early-stage venture capital firm committed to investing in woman-led technology startups.

Their mission is to turn the dial in venture funding, since women-led companies currently receive only 2% of VC dollars. A Joy is a seasoned venture capitalist, board member and lecturer in entrepreneurship at Princeton University. She’s Magnum Cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Princeton and earned her law degree from New York University. She previously served in leadership roles at Condi Nast and Time Warner, bringing years of experience in scaling tech-enabled businesses. Joy has been recognized in the Hollywood Reporter’s Digital Power 50, listed in Forbes 40 over 40 and honored by Cranes as a woman to watch.

She continues to champion female innovators through her work at The 98, providing both capital and guidance. Now before we get into all that good stuff, today’s episode is brought to you by my company, AdBacc Benefits Agency, where we offer very specific and unique employee benefits that are both great for your team and fiscally optimized for your bottom line. Imagine being able to give your employees free access to doctors, therapists and prescription medications in a way that puts more money in your staff’s pockets and the company’s too. As an example, one recent client with 450 employees boosted net profits over $412,000 a year. Results vary for each company and some organizations may not be eligible.

To find out if your company qualifies, contact us today at adbackbenefits.com. All right, back to our guest today, co-founder and general partner of The 98, Joy Marcus. Thanks for making the time to share your story today. Hi, Anthony. Nice to be with you. Okay, so I’m checking out your LinkedIn profile here, Joy, and you’ve had a lot of really interesting stops along the way. Before we get into talking about how the idea for The 98 came about and the work that you’re doing there, maybe let’s talk a little bit about your time at MTV and the impact that that’s had on you.

Joy Marcus : Yeah, it is notable. I mean, I definitely have had a number of stops along the way. MTV is quite notable to me. It was a decisive moment for me, honestly. I was given the opportunity while there. I entered MTV as a lawyer. I had been trained as a lawyer. I worked at a fancy law firm. I did, you know, stayed up all night on M &A deals and, you know, did that whole drill in like the late 80s. And it was really hard work, but I worked a lot. I decided that I really want to focus on the media and entertainment industry specifically.

Had the opportunity to do so. I was recruited first by a very notable entertainment law firm and out of there by MTV to be the first lawyer for the MTV channel. So there were no lawyers. So MTV was rogue. MTV was just sort of like operating, you know.

Anthony Codispoti : Wait, I see on your profile here that you joined there in 1993. I mean, MTV had been around since what, at least the early to mid 80s. And you were the first attorney in all that time.

Joy Marcus : Well, that was dedicated to the channel. So Viacom had lawyers and MTV networks, which was like Nickelodeon, MTV, blah, blah, blah, you know, other other channels have lawyers. But I was the first lawyer that was like, no, no, no, you are only working on MTV. And it was about time. And one of the first things I did at the channel was, and this is like not a secret, they had no rights to any of the music videos they were showing, they were showing them on a promotional basis. So two things happened.

I got there like day one, they handed me a stack of paper about a mile high. And we’re like, there’s this guy, John Stuart, we really like him. We saw him in some comedy club.

And we want to do a show. And like, he locked him up for Viacom for like the next five years. And so I did, I did that. I won’t talk about how much money was involved in that. It wasn’t very much. And then the next thing they did was like, Oh, the Viacom boards really angry with us, like we’re showing all this content.

And we don’t have any rights to it. Can you like fix that? And I’m like, sure. And I just, and you know, the next thing I knew I was like on the phone, the general counsel of Sony, like my little office at 1550 Broadway screaming my head off at him like, no, no, no, we need to do it. We need to do it. And we need to get rights to the videos, you know, we need to be able to show them we go help, help, help you won’t promote your artists, you don’t do it. So we, we were standing on a good stake because we were very popular and on all seriousness, we were like the main promotional outlet for the content. So for, you know, getting people to like actually buy at the time, I think it was grew up to CDs at that time. So we were important to them.

They were important to us. Eventually when that happens, I find in life, no matter what, usually a deal gets done and the better the deal, the worse everybody feels about it when you sign it. And then, you know, everybody kind of operates under it. And we managed to do that.

And kind of on the back of doing that fairly well. I was offered a couple of opportunities. And I made, and this is why it was so seminal, getting around to that point. We, I was offered the opportunity not to be a lawyer anymore. And it was kind of a big decision because, you know, I had spent a lot of heartache over, you know, law school and staying up all night into the law firm, what people were great there, but the work was really, you know, demanding.

And I’m not scared of work as most people have noted about me, but it was, you know, just really, really crazy. And, but I had an expertise and I was very confident in it. And to make the leap onto the business side where it was going to be all learning was a big deal. And like other points in my career, it was seminal in that I did it, but it also set me up for like, I was wanting to do it again, because it worked out pretty well. So like making that leap from like this very steady, you’re a lawyer, you know, what your job is, you know, how to like get stuff done to, okay, write a business plan for MTV in South Africa, what does that look like?

What does that mean? If you build it, will they come? You know, those kinds of questions, which I had not yet been asked ever professionally. It was, it taught me a great lesson that I could morph. I could, I was, you know, I was able to make those kinds of transitions.

Anthony Codispoti : You weren’t fixed as the person that you once were, you had the ability to grow and to adapt and find new skills.

Joy Marcus : To put it in the language I teach my students. So, for instance, I had a gross mind. So, I was willing to do something I didn’t really know how to do and figure it out. And that, I think that willingness has stood me well throughout the rest of my career. And I realized like, okay, you’re a decent quick study, maybe not the quickest study out of anyone in the world, but you’re like a decent quick study.

And you will figure out the next thing. And it also taught me that the secret to that is really surrounding yourself of the absolute best people possible. And I would say I was fortunate at MTV, not so much at people reporting to me, because I still wasn’t even though I’m like a vice president title, vice president, you know, they’re million of them at MTV. I was, you know, fairly junior still. I, my peer group was so strong. And I was able to ask folks in my peer group really hard questions and get really, you know, smart answers back right away.

And it was a very supportive environment for that. It wasn’t particularly like, you know, the channel was doing great. We were like, you have a great idea, you could throw it up against the wall and you know, see what’s stuck. And, you know, people were very, very open minded. So, it wasn’t like this gross kind of competitive environment as a very supportive environment, honestly. And that’s how we got great things done. And it was a moment.

Anthony Codispoti : It was a moment. So say more about what that process looks like for you adopting a new skill set. I mean, you kind of touched on a little bit, like you had a great network around you that you could go to and say, Hey, I’m not experienced in this. Can you help me? Like, how do we start writing a business plan?

Joy Marcus : So me, it’s always been about the surrounding myself with people. There’s little knowledge you need to acquire. So MTV did send me to Columbia. So their executive education program, I did kind of finance courses and things that, you know, about sort of corporate America that you don’t learn in law school, you’ll learn quite a bit like a law degree does give you a good background. So I learned the basics like, you know, basic, you know, financial statements, things that I needed, you know, I can never write a business plan without that, right? So I got that basis and education.

So going back to education is not a terrible idea, particularly at a relatively early part of your career. So that was good. It was good that I did. I also did it when I was very pregnant.

So that was a challenge. But there’s also that there’s that whole aspect of like baby making throughout all of this. But I was very pregnant when I did that. So I was really busy. I was doing a full time job. I was studying at Columbia and I was pregnant with my first child.

So it was like kind of a moment, a trifecta moment for me. So, you know, get some education, like acquire some knowledge, I think is like the takeaway from that. And then it’s about surrounding yourself with the best people and knowing who the best people are to ask the right questions of, you know, don’t waste your time with those who are going to withhold, you know, forget those people, forget literally forget those people, surround yourself with people who are going to be giving and generous and want to impart knowledge and want to share and want to just build something together. And I think we had that going at MTV in a very big way at that moment in time in the mid 90s. Again, we were doing well as a business. It was easy to be that way.

Anthony Codispoti : As we’re recording this in June of 2025, I’m curious, has your process for acquiring new skills evolved at all? We’ve got the internet for many years now. Now we’ve got, you know, the large language models and AI where maybe it’s easier to sort of acquire some of these skills now yourself. Or do you still kind of go to the same sort of tried and true, which is who’s in my network that I can go to and ask for?

Joy Marcus : Honestly, I do both now, but I still rely mostly on network. Of course, I use AI. Of course, I, you know, go out to perplexity and ask a question like, who doesn’t do that now?

You have to do that now. It’s just so efficient. But my true source, my source of truth, if you will, is always great people. And I have really tried to kind of almost curate great people in my life throughout my career. I am still, I did it last night with one of my close friends from MTV. I am still really in touch with those people. I am very close friends with the person who was my office made at my first law firm.

Like they were, if they’re great people, I really try to keep them in my life. I work very hard at that. And, and I’m also willing to give, right? So you’re willing to give people be willing to get back to you. And that’s how you create greatness, I think. You know, that’s just the magic for it.

Anthony Codispoti : I think let’s, let’s spend just a second sort of super mini masterclass here on keeping these wonderful people in your life.

Joy Marcus : So what’s that process kind of look like? It’s tiring. So it involves, you know, a bunch of wine going out when you don’t feel like it. Seriously, I mean, truly, like I am like out every night this week, I am like old and don’t feel like doing that all the time. But like, it’s fabulous people.

And I’m going to be traveling this summer and I want to see them before, you know, I can’t see them. And it’s not just, obviously it’s not just the professional part of them that I enjoy. I don’t think there’s anyone who I’m purely at this point that’s lasted as long as that just, you know, hoping to get professional feedback from their all friends. But it doesn’t hurt, I’m gonna say the worst word, but I don’t know, I’m kidding, it’s PG. It doesn’t hurt that I also like them. And like to spend time with them. And but like when, when, you know, it hits the fan and I have a real problem, they’re, you know, I definitely had those along the way, you know, like tough businesses, businesses, crumbling, needing to be rebuilt, that kind of thing is always, you know, always happens. They’ve been there for me. You know, it’s like, okay, what would you do if, you know, this, what we do this situation and we and I do for them too.

Yeah. And it’s, it’s, it’s just the most valuable thing like to all the young listeners out there or watchers, I don’t know where this is going to be. You know, do not underestimate the value of that. You can’t get everything from your HBS class. Like there are going to be people who just have knowledge from experience that is better going to be very valuable to you.

Anthony Codispoti : And other introductions that they can make, which is something that perplexity can never do either.

Joy Marcus : Absolutely. Absolutely. Perplexity will not replace serious.

Anthony Codispoti : Yeah, I love that. I’m glad we sort of took a little sidebar on that. Yeah. Yeah. Now I’m gonna, Joey, kind of fast forward, because I mean, there’s a lot of interesting stops along the way, you know, Barnes & Noble, Time Warner, Gotham, Condi Nast, oh boy, BBC. But I want to make sure that we spend the bulk of our time talking about the 98. So tell me how the idea to start this firm first came about.

Joy Marcus : Yeah. So Linda and I, so Linda is a big part of this. I just have to like, Clarizio, my partner in the 98. So Linda and I went to college together. She actually brought me some very greedy photographs from a dorm room at Princeton to a meeting the other day. I was like, oh my God, my hair.

So it’s like, looked really different. So we weren’t roommates, but we knew each other quite well in college. And I said that only because I have this very close circle of roommates. So I have to give a shout out to them.

They are not that. Linda was something else. And she and I sort of had kept in touch along the way and really came together again, when I was at what was then AOL, Time Warner, we were actually in the same group, the infamous business development group at AOL, which was cutting all those crazy deals. We were part of it. I had been kind of elevated into the Time Warner corporate area.

Linda was also elevated, running very big division at AOL, but we were very much in touch with each other and started like having lunch in New York and just talking, talking, talking over like the next 10 years remained close. And we were both kind of at this stage of our careers where A, we wanted to kind of own our own thing, I think, both of us felt the need for that, the need for like to build something that was uniquely ours. We still wanted to make a lot of money, absolutely. And because 90 it’s not, we’re not a straight up impact find, we are a more profit endeavor.

And I’ll explain how that works a little bit. But we also saw like a really, we saw both an injustice, but also an over, basically what we thought was an overlooked asset class, which is that women, and just to get the statistics, you got to be a little careful with the stats, 2% of all venture capital dollars, not 2% of deals, all dollars invested, goes into female only founded companies. There’s a higher percentage somewhere in the teams or maybe a teeny drop higher, based on who you’re looking at, Pitch Booker, the data’s not all synced, that go to teams that are founded both by men and women. But I think it’s safe to say that 80% of venture capital dollars, those two all male teams. So, why that seems crazy.

Why? Because the industry is about pattern recognition, or has been. So if you are a 50 year old, I’m sorry, for 20 years, and you are good at it, and you’ve made a lot of money doing it, and you’ve made a lot of money investing in 27 year old white males and hoodies, you’re just going to do that again.

Right? There’s very little incentive for you to break the model. And the only incentive will come is if you see success in breaking the model. And so that’s what we’re after. You need a different pattern. Yeah.

You need to show that a different pattern breeds success. And if, and there were glimmers, so we weren’t just being crazy, right? There were glimmers of hope in the model, right? There were some studies that had been done about diverse teams and in fact all female teams returning capital in a more efficient way to investors. IRRY meaning capital returned sooner at a better rate, essentially. So, first on capital, down a seminal study on that, getting kind of long into that study now is done on the late teams. There’s some stuff coming out of HVS.

There was some stuff coming out of BCG. There were glimmers of kind of hope around, no, women return really well. Maybe we need to break the pattern. But again, if you’re sitting in a big fact firm on a couple hundred million or maybe a couple billion dollars in assets under management and we’ve been investing in men for the last 20 years, it’s working for me.

Anthony Codispoti : Why?

Joy Marcus : It’s not world, why fix it, right? It’s working for me. It’s working for my investors. This data is only a couple of companies. I don’t really trust it. I don’t really know. And I think it really is taking a bunch of people who saw the data believe in it.

They are mostly women to kind of begin to break the mold. And that’s what we’re trying to do. And along the way, because of this data, we believe that our returns will be higher. And I can tell you, we’re sort of a little of a midway through investing our capital and hope to be going out to raise another fund sometime soon. And our companies are doing pretty well.

Anthony Codispoti : And so what do you tell us about them? What kinds of companies have you invested in?

Joy Marcus : Yeah, without getting, they’re all private companies and in sort of a relatively early stage. So I’ll tell you our investment thesis. And then I’ll tell you kind of the companies. So our investment thesis is basically people want to put a woman in the mix at the top and things go better. Better than if it’s, if not, if not that essentially, that this is and that there’s value for money and that it’s just more difficult to raise money if you’re a woman. That’s just true also. We see it in the numbers, right?

So undervalued asset class with high return potential. Who doesn’t love that? Right. So that’s the core core core of our thesis.

And that is proving out pretty pretty damn well so far. We also, given who we were, and we both were women are women who have run fairly significantly sized businesses and know how to scale. And I had done a lot of zero to 62 Linda had done more later stage stuff and I had done sort of early to mid stage businesses, quite a few of those. So we had some complimentary skill sets there. You know, our thesis was don’t be the first check. We’re probably not going to be great at the first check.

Anthony Codispoti : It’s not really the space that you would play well.

Joy Marcus : I mean, you did you did some early stage stuff, but not right at the beginning. Exactly. I never I before the 98 I had never sat down on a blank screen and started writing the plan like completely right. I may have done a little bit of that kind of work at MTV, but I was working with this gigantic brand and this gigantic company behind me. All my other startups and I have run a couple of them and I’ve had some exits. I came in as like a seasoned executive to help move the needle raise capital, you know, get the company to exit.

So I wasn’t ever really the like ignite person. So I felt that we would be more valuable. We’re done both that we’d be more valuable at a slightly later stage.

So we should so where we we invest kind of and it’s a little cliche, but there’s some evidence of product market fit and meaning like someone is using the thing or buying the thing and it’s just starting to scale. Now it’s not completely done. There may still be pivots along the way.

It’s not like, you know, a series B, C and onward where we kind of know what the business model is and you pretty much have the product locked down. It’s just there’s evidence that something is working, right? And that we’re on the right track. The business is on the right track. Again, there may where we invest, there’s still maybe a pivot, there may be changes to the product, you know, the market might even morph a little bit, we might have to move, you know, there’s things will happen.

But it’s not at the like, I’m not really sure what the product is. I have a big idea that I need. And the, you know, which there’s room for that. And there’s room for investors in that, you know, have a talented person come to you and say, I think the world needs X. Here’s my evidence that the world’s needs X. Here’s what I think I want to build. Great. Those are first checks.

Anthony Codispoti : That’s not you. Right. You understood your lane. You wanted to be just a little bit further along.

Joy Marcus : Further along. And so as a consequence, you know, we’re willing to take a slightly higher valuation, obviously, and perhaps a little bit less than we might, if we invested earlier. You know, I always say to my Princeton students, 100% of zero is zero. Like I’d rather get in on, you know, the famous.

Anthony Codispoti : Something that’s got a little bit of traction. Yep.

Joy Marcus : Yeah. Yeah. If not, you know, better words of Eric Schmidt to Cheryl Sandberg, the rocket ship, right? I’d rather get that seat, even if it’s like a little one on something that’s going to clearly take off. And again, not so clear, right? We’re still taking risks. We’re investing in a stage where, you know, it may be an unproven CEO, an unproven founding team. There’s something about them, you know, that we’ve identified that we like and that we feel is uniquely suited to the business they’re creating, the problem they’re solving. You know, that’s a big part of it.

Anthony Codispoti : And so is what you’re providing just the check or is there operational assistance that goes along with this?

Joy Marcus : Yeah, yeah. Not at all just the check. So our thesis is, you know, women undervalued as a class, some evidence of product market fit, some uniqueness of founder and founding team to, you know, solve this problem, create this product in a way that maybe no one else in the world could or at least as good or better than anyone else in the world, right? Like those are some of the criteria.

The next part is, can we uniquely provide value? And, you know, and when you look at our resumes, for me, you think, it’s not that check digital media. Yeah, I morphed from TV to digital. Thank goodness, you know, pretty early in my career, state current, you know, state relevant.

But, you know, that’s been my lane, essentially. What you might not be as obvious as I’ve run large tech teams, I’ve had large tech teams reported to me, I’ve had to solve problems for big companies using technology of others. So I’ve been a SaaS buyer at many points in my career.

So I know a little bit about what it takes to, for example, sell a technology product to a big company. So therefore, I thought, okay, we can and Linda also, right? So we thought we could, in theory, be excellent SaaS investors, software as a service investors. And that’s a lane we both feel very comfortable pursuing. So we have a lot of SaaS in our portfolio as a result.

Anthony Codispoti : Is it mostly SaaS? Are we talking like all software? Is there some like hardware tech in here?

Joy Marcus : There’s a teeny bit of hardware. We generally don’t invest in hardware. We have one company that uses a sensor. It’s actually a, it uses a sensor to detect ethylene. I love this company. So I have to talk about ethylene emissions from fruit and flowers.

Anthony Codispoti : What’s the use case? Like detect rotting?

Joy Marcus : How fast is right, the name? How fast it’s going to rot when retailers, I mean, is without again going too many names, too much detail, private company, as deals with like major, major retailers for, you know, multitudes of money.

Anthony Codispoti : And so what like the, like a grocery store would put this in place. And so it has an idea if the fruit that’s on display is getting close to turning or

Joy Marcus : no, no, it actually tells them which fruit to put out when. So they’re like getting fruit from Packers. They know how to sequence their fruit. They know if the fruit’s not ripening fast enough to turn up the heat, there’s a lot of, there’s probably, there’s three or four products that the company offers to both retailers and Packers. So that is at this point, the only company that has even any bit of hardware.

Anthony Codispoti : Can we give them a shout out?

Joy Marcus : What’s the name of this company? The name of the company is Strella. It’s an amazing company. And they have a teeny piece of hardware. We have nowhere the hardware in our portfolio right now. So we try to stay away from hardware. We’re really kind of pure, you know, pretty pure sass.

Anthony Codispoti : Are all of them pretty pure sass? Or all the rest of them strictly sass? Everything now is sort of layering in AI, but I’m wondering if there anything, is there anything in your portfolio that’s like straight up AI?

Joy Marcus : Yeah. I mean, we’re a company named Private AI that is, you know, really grounded in AI as it’s differentiator. And again, without talking too specifically, what they do is they take lots of unstructured data and make it useful for companies with, and by eliminating the private, privacy protected element of the data, so companies can use it. That’s like very broad.

Anthony Codispoti : I’m intrigued. Are you allowed to say more? Or is this still kind of like under wraps?

Joy Marcus : It’s, I mean, they’re all out there, you know, working in the world. I just, you know, don’t want to give too, too, too much detail on them quite yet, because they’re all at the stage that they’re at and evolving quite frankly. And, you know, are going to grow to be something else by the time someone listens to this podcast potentially and grow in ways that perhaps we’re not even foreseeing right now. And this podcast will last a long time. And that’s my only hesitancy, honestly, that this is updated very, get dated very quickly. Yeah. Because they are young companies.

Anthony Codispoti : Yeah. Let’s talk more about the operational support that your portfolio companies get when working with you.

Joy Marcus : Oh, yeah. So we do soup to nuts, kind of everything for them. We help them, certainly in fundraising and accessing other VCs, you know, sort of syndicating rounds, we do that at scale for sure. We are extremely good at corporate introductions for SaaS companies. So, you know, Linda and I, between the two of us have, you know, what we say, like 70 years of operating experience in like kind of corporate America, we just know a lot of people. And, you know, because we’ve been doing it for a while, the folks we know are pretty senior.

So we can get them intros at kind of some of the, you know, senior levels at, you know, in the case of Strella, very senior levels at some of the major food retailers, as an example, since we’ve talked about Strella. So that’s, I think, been super helpful. Those introductions have been super helpful, both on the raising money front and also on the, you know, just operational deal front. Both Linda and I have also, in addition to having run tech teams, have run sales teams. So we have companies, obviously, who are selling and have to structure things like commissions and incentive programs and all kinds of good stuff for burgeoning sales teams. And I think both of us have been very helpful to our portfolio companies in trying to, you know, helping them figure out how to hire the right salespeople, how to incent them properly, you know, identify perhaps when it’s not a good fit, those kind of, kind of like, nitty-gritty kind of operational issues we do get in the weeds for their companies. So once we invest we do like extremely regular meetings without being pains in the neck, extremely regular meetings with the CEOs and frankly if it’s like we’ve got nothing to offer that day we get off the phone pretty quickly because both of us have run businesses and none of us want to waste anybody’s time.

But if there are problems to address or frankly opportunities to bring to them, we’re happy to do that. Another like little magic about the 98 is that we have a lot of LPs and our LPs are for the most part high-net-worth individuals, all of whom have really a lot of great operating experience in a variety of sectors. So pretty much any company even when we’re at the evaluation stage we have one or two LPs who will bring in to the assessment and say like for example if it’s healthcare which you know both of us it’s not kind of endemic to what we kind of grew up professionally doing but we have some really senior healthcare analysts, executives in our LP group, we always bring anything we see in healthcare we bring to them. And when I talk healthcare I’m talking mostly the tech side of healthcare and not devices. So anything that automates some aspect of healthcare that doesn’t involve kind of a device is kind of a sweet spot of what we’re looking at and we always bring in our experts always. And then we bring them in again once we invest and if they have they might have specific expertise, have seen a pattern before we hadn’t seen in the domain, they might know people, we don’t know who they can bring to the portfolio. I mean we just had our semi-annual LP meeting and I’m still dealing with the emails coming through from our LP basing.

I have someone I can introduce to so and so, I have someone I can introduce to so and so. So we really activate our LP base. The idea really is, I mean our first thought around this was not just a VC but an ecosystem and I think what we’ve created with our LP base is like de facto an ecosystem that we bring to bear for the benefit of our portfolio companies. Can we increase on that ecosystem by adding other things, a bootcamp, training programs. We do do breakfast where we bring in experts to talk about how to hire a sales chain, how to handle X problem. We have like specific kinds of events around that for the portfolio but perhaps something more formal in the future that really helps the portfolio companies in a way even beyond what I’ve just described is kind of what we’re thinking about right now. Like a strong ecosystem is really what we’re aiming to create and the 98 first fund is kind of like the beginning of that.

Anthony Codispoti : That sounds super valuable. Let’s back up a bit Joy to kind of when you’re in the stages of considering a company to invest in. Thinking beyond kind of the typical metrics, what sort of signals are you looking for? Maybe things that reveal a founder’s capacity to pivot or to persist through challenging times.

Joy Marcus : Yeah, yeah. So we’re looking a lot at the founder. I mean because we invest post product we are also looking at how are people using the product, how are they paying for it? We have those data points but everyone has those data points.

Everyone has like this magic number of a million dollars in ARR. We don’t stick to that by the way. We want to see evidence of fit defined in each industry maybe a little bit differently and evidence of growth and retention basically. So those are like data points kind of everyone looks at. I think most people look at what we like look at founders as well. We’re looking for a lot of grit.

We’re looking for someone who may have stumbled before and got back up. We are looking deeply at how they think. Not so much what they produced but how they’ve gone about producing it. So people always ask like even at the stage where we invest when you look at a five-year model it’s like that’s crazy like anything could happen.

That’s why I’m loathe to like talk about these companies with more specificity because so much can happen in the next six months to any of these companies. You know hopefully most mostly positive. So we know that but we still ask for it and you know it’s to regard the stage we go in which is kind of late seed early A to have that anyway but mostly what we’re looking for is how do they think. What are they like analytical abilities touch points depth of thinking. What’s their intellectual integrity around putting something like a business model together. Is there something in the model that shows that they haven’t thought it’s through for example. They’ve just missed like a synapse you know like some connection that should have been made with somebody. Those to me are always very telling are they like absolutely I won’t invest thing is something in the model for sure not for sure like that’s it’s just like a data point. It’s like they’re being intellectually lazy.

Maybe there’s a little bit of lack of integrity that’s a huge red flag and forget it forget it but maybe just like maybe a little intellectual laziness can we overcome that. I don’t know. So that’s what we’re looking for looking for their like thought process. How do they think is individuals. How do they think through problems and get through problems.

Anthony Codispoti : Is there one or two maybe specific questions that you really like to ask that kind of get to the heart of what you’re looking for. I always describing sounds more like a process like going through the entire business model and you’re sort of they missed this.

Joy Marcus : But are there sort of like questions where like the answers like particularly revealing to you. I always like them to know a heck of a lot more about their market than I do.

So and I get this is not you know rocket science. I think almost every investor thinks this like if they don’t have a very strong set sense of the competitive environment and the market dynamics and the market size and then really thought all of that through again that to me is like intellectual laziness that it’s just like they’re not going to win. They’ve got to have they got to know more. They’ve got to know something I don’t know just from Googling you know around before the call. You know they have to have some kind of insight that would not have been obvious to me.

And that comes through that always comes through in a first 15 call. Like what is your insight because they’ve already been operating in the market. What is the insight you’re taking away from the market.

And that’s me super telling. It’s like it’s all condensed in that answer because it’s like it’s their intellectual wherewithal their willingness to like push themselves to think things through all of that comes in that answer. I think so for one thing I always inquire about you know kind of the overall where you fit in the market. How you know how the external factors would be affecting this product or about spend and marketer who had put into market.

Anthony Codispoti : I’m kind of curious to hear you know from your experience as a lecturer Princeton. What do you think are the recurring challenges or misconceptions that you see among either young entrepreneurs or aspiring entrepreneurs that you can kind of help steer them in a different direction kind of put them back on track.

Joy Marcus : You mean about venture capital or like overall.

Anthony Codispoti : Let’s stick specifically to venture capital. OK.

Joy Marcus : Look I don’t think when I talk to my Princeton students they have no idea what venture capital is. OK. I mean they’re 18 years old some of them. So I don’t have that many freshmen and my guys teach a large class.

Anthony Codispoti : Let’s twist the question and have it be more about business in general then. Yeah.

Joy Marcus : I mean I think there is the biggest challenge is opening their aperture for my students certainly. So their world think about it. They had you know high school. Right. Some of them you know I’ve taught kids out of COVID you know we did high school during COVID. So their worlds were super small and and yet you know they’re a place like Princeton. They’ve obviously achieved something great like you know they are many of my students.

I have to say that like every single one of them is you know done something like unbelievably world class by the time they get there. And that’s just the truth. That’s kind of what it takes now.

Not when I was there but it’s what it takes now. So they’re kind of superhuman is already a little bit. But they are their world are very small. You know and one of my challenges as a professor I think is to open their aperture a little bit. So I’ll tell you about the evolution of my class because I think it really shows shows this. So initially I taught a class and I gave that about starting anything starting an enterprise. Right. And I was like come up with a great idea. We’re going to get you through it over the course of the semester. There’s a lot of reading a lot of Harvard Business School cases like that out there.

Whatever. And I got things like you know literally you know like toilet seats that automatically go down you know at a frat house you know alcoholic chewing gum. I mean I got crazy like and by the way it was pretty interesting. So the toilet seat guy came in with a prototype. So the class he had built the thing. He was an engineer and it was like amazing. But I didn’t think the world needed that.

Anthony Codispoti : What wasn’t really a problem worth solving.

Joy Marcus : Right. And I exactly. And I didn’t think and they just weren’t opening up their aperture. So I changed the class about five years ago. I’m teaching about seven years. I’ve changed the class about five years ago for them to address the UN sustainable development goals which are like super ridiculously big like poverty, hunger, you know gender inequality, climate change. You know they’re just like ginormous big ass problems.

And now and say it’s kind of the same class but they have to come up with a solution to those. Wow. And now that’s asking a lot.

Yeah. But I don’t ask them to like solve the whole thing. Their goal is to solve like one little aspect.

Like how do I get like simple solutions. I had someone come up and not necessarily technical like a student who was like you know the Ballagio D’Orne of her high school class in a rural town in the state of Washington. My student. It’s like not a typical profile of one of my students. And she was like my high school had no resources. I was very lucky. My parents cared a lot. You know we were buying books on Amazon.

They were able to purchase those you know but like we had no resources. She came up with and one of the things was like equality in education and she like devised this whole system for like learning vans to go around to these rural schools and she’s like building it now. And it’s so damn simple but it’s so genius.

Right. It’s like exactly what the students need. They need someone to show up and like for free give them some more motivation to learn. So it’s stuff like that that like really jazzed with me but it also opened their aperture like they’re still like her drawing from personal experiences. But they’re taking their personal experiences and kind of broadening them into solving bigger problems like equality and education and you know abscissure. There’s others that have done like access to food and things like that.

Anthony Codispoti : Do you like where the class sits now or are you already envisioning sort of the next evolution of it.

Joy Marcus : You know it’s funny. You ask because I am going to working on a little bit this summer. I may change some things but this thing this thing where they try to solve a really big problem.

I’m not changing. I’m going to write a book about it. It’s amazing. I love it. I get like you know really really smart 18 to 22 year olds thinking about the world’s biggest problems. It’s fantastic.

Anthony Codispoti : Like that’s what we need. Fresh perspectives. Exactly. And like some of them they build it. You know like who knows. Some of them may build one.

Joy Marcus : So you know it’s still early. It’s like I’m only five years into teaching. So you know 10 years out maybe one of these ideas will get built and change things.

Anthony Codispoti : What is it that you think then that founders get wrong or misunderstand about venture capital.

Joy Marcus : I do think that a lot of founders view venture as a check and that’s it. And they kind of you know prefer you to go away. None of the ones we have because we kind of get for that. Like that’s not our model. But you know and they’re look they’re different motivations.

Let’s just call it right. Like VCs are motivated to you know have an exit relatively you know the best exit possible but in a relatively you know reasonable time frame.

Anthony Codispoti : You have to get your investors their return. That’s that’s sort of how the whole model is built. Yeah.

Joy Marcus : Absolutely. So founders may have a longer time frame and that’s actually something we vet for. How are they thinking even initially before we write the first check. How are they thinking about exiting.

Is this going to become a lifestyle business for this person once it gets profitable. Like how are they thinking about it. Do they really want you know a big exit. When I hear a founder talking about you know I think this can be an X whatever size company. And it’s that’s a big number. I’m pretty happy about that. At least they’re aspiring to that reality may change things. The world may change things. Oops. I did lose one of my things excuse me for a second. I’m going to go get it.

Anthony Codispoti : At the start of the interview Joy expressed concern that that might happen. But we asked that she use the headphones because the audio works out better.

Joy Marcus : So I I have that on this. That’s all right. I have them on the smallest thing I really little ears. They always fall out and you play with them the whole time but you do hear me well. So so there’s like a tension you know between founders and venture capitalists and I I think that’s healthy in some ways because there’s always this like trade off between you know profitability and growth and you know all this kind of all those kinds of trade offs you’re making kind of at every stage when you’re dealing with young companies as we are. And we like to get beyond that tension if we can.

And you know we’re not like your best friend. We’re here to offer critique guidance sage advice hopefully and capital right. But I think some founders just view it as like I don’t trust these people. They’re just money you know and we don’t invest in those people. I would say all of our founders are not that all of our founders welcome our feedback welcome our introductions. They love our cash of course but like it’s well beyond that. And I would say that there’s there’s a human element to it too. I mean I say this to my class and I say to the founders I talk to it’s a marriage.

You’re once you’re on a cap table it’s like really hard to get a divorce. Right. And so you’re there. And you know there’s I know there’s a secondary market and we want to talk you know details about the industry. There is a secondary market and stuff but like you know you don’t really want to go there.

You want an exit out of you know your investment. And so it’s it’s truly a marriage. So we’re cautious and I hope the founders are cautious about us. They should do it and stuff like crazy. We do them and we expect that they do the same about us. And then once you’re kind of in the marriage then you kind of know what you’ve got.

Anthony Codispoti : Joy what’s the best decision that you’ve made for your business so far.

Joy Marcus : Linda is my partner for sure. That’s like the number one best decision.

Anthony Codispoti : Say more about Linda and how this partnership works so well.

Joy Marcus : We’re really different. I mean when you look at us we’re both we’re both like scholarship kids at Princeton like we have very similar immigrant parents scholarship kids at Princeton like very similar like you would like you know looking at us both lawyers like looking at us you’d be like oh yeah but we’re quite really quite different. And I think we really compliment each other. You know when does like super brilliant. That’s good.

That’s always good. But I think the biggest the biggest thing is mutual respect for each other’s capacities and intellectual capabilities but also like judgment which is a really big deal. And we know where you know one might be weaker on some aspects of judgment one might be stronger and some aspects of judgment and we really compliment each other. And you know like we fight about that all the time and it’s like kind of great.

I think it’s super super healthy. And so I think that by far like and that can be broadened out as a learning moment I think for the audience which is your team is like your most important asset. It goes back to my networking thing with friends and colleagues that become your greatest source of inspiration and of knowledge. Certainly those you work with together as a team.

This is like you know it’s just we have analysts at Columbia Business School work with us but like it’s mostly her and I running this fund right now and it’s you know every day. And if we didn’t have that kind of mutual respect I think it would be pretty tough. So I think that was like by far the best decision. I think we took money from really great people and we pursued them. Doggedly is that a word I never said that word and only read that word. So we pursued them pretty carefully like we wanted to have like look it was no picnic fundraising but in the end we did have some choice and we wanted to have people who we knew could add a lot of value in addition to writing a check. And for the most part that is the case of all of our LPs. And there is not a single LP pretty much in our entire sort of ecosystem that I wouldn’t that I would hesitate to call and you know ask a question ask a favor ask for an introduction sort of like diversifying and being really careful about who’s in that mix I think was also like to the extent it was a decision which it was to a certain extent was also really good.

And there are other like sort of nitty gritty little good and bad decisions you know we made along the way but for the most part good for the most part good.

Anthony Codispoti : So obviously you value your partnership a great deal it’s a big part of the reason why you think you’re having the success that you’re having as you’re looking to invest in different opportunities. Does it matter to you if it’s a solo founder versus you know co-founders.

Joy Marcus : Yeah that’s an interesting question. Yeah so I think being a solo founder is really tough. And I mean frankly this is when I really can’t talk about we’re about to make an investment in a solo founder and it’s one of our key and we got through it but it’s one of our key kind of risk factors in the deal frankly. I think everyone in business needs really a true thought partner. I can’t imagine running a business without a true thought partner and whether that’s a co-founder or number two or number three or number four whatever it is. Team is really I mean I just come back to this in my team no one can do this alone.

Team is super important. So if it is a solo founder who can attract the right team we’re super comfortable and if there’s evidence of that we’re fine. You know not everyone has you know gets lucky to find you know finding a great co-founder is lightning in a bottle. It’s like such a lucky thing to have happened but a really good founder can always you know in our view always find the right team around them.

So they’ve built a solid team and chose some traction with that team. That sort of alleviates some of that but my view is no one can do this alone. I teach that in my class too. I’m like you know the difference between like an inventor and an innovator is team.

Like you can invent in your basement something but to like get it out in the world and have other people use it and iterate it so that the market likes it like you just need a team. You need other people.

Anthony Codispoti : Yeah you can pick each other up when you know when one’s up the other one it’s alright to be down because you’re sort of on the teeter-totter ride with each other. And that kind of leads into my next question you know you hit these bumps in the road you know whether in personal life or in business. I’d be curious to hear about a serious challenge Joy that you have overcome how you got through it and what you’ve learned through the process.

Joy Marcus : So we talked about this a little bit before so what I will reveal about the truly serious challenges I’ve had have had to do with kind of being the only woman in the room. And that has been very serious at times I would say. I mean I guess the podcast if you can see me I’m blonde I’m also short little person and there are assumptions about me when I walk into him and I know that I’ve had that my whole career.

I’m well aware of it. Some you know groups are accept that more easily and I built to get beyond that more easily than others I have found at the time. So I’ve fought against that is over prepared you know the typical things you do you’re like crazily more prepared than anybody else in the room like that’s like you have to be that like that just goes without saying but sometimes you just can’t fight it and I think you have to realize when that’s the case and get out because some people really are just not going to give you a chance and they’re not going to change and I think that’s okay.

Anthony Codispoti : Have you seen the landscape shifting at all or do you feel like this is still the case for you sometimes

Joy Marcus : for me not anymore because I’m so damn old and experienced at this point you know when I was certainly when I was younger was much much more of a challenge at this point certainly you know with investors for the fun the fact that we were two women for sure you know get people pause for sure for sure I mean it may find reason we knew it though we knew going into this why we were raising the phone we were we’re not there to do something easy we’re doubt to do something very very very hard and we knew it and that was okay and that’s why rejection was like almost like we would laugh well that would terribly onto the next call you know it was like that was really bad can you believe they said that you know like and we would just go on to the next call and that’s having a great partner you know we could just like literally laugh it off because we expect

Anthony Codispoti : your humor becomes your armor

Joy Marcus : yeah and just like we were senior enough and seasoned enough and frankly financially secure enough to be like okay they just said that move on you know like whatever so I’m not finding it as much other than when it’s just like laughably obvious and I walk out you know like whatever I don’t really know the answer you know I am in tune with my students with my daughter I get the sense that things are a bit better you know obviously we’ve had sort of macro movements that have affected it and there’s like waves of things going back and forth around that right we had me to now sort of a backlash against me to and you know no no comment on that politically at all just to say that that’s the macro and so you know maybe people who were you know reacting to me to are reacting differently now I don’t know I mean I really don’t know I am hoping that this becomes less of an issue but to say that it has not affected my career would be crazy it absolutely has I talked to my husband about it all the time because you know he’s part of like the old boy thing I mean we have been married for 32 years so we have to everything’s great that’s truly truly I don’t just say that lightly I’m

Anthony Codispoti : very very very fortunate when you kind of run into this now joy yeah you can kind of laugh it off but in the early years yes when you were less experienced and okay

Joy Marcus : how do you get right in the bathroom cried in the bathroom like cried yeah like if you want to talk like vulnerable literally tears in the bathroom composing myself splashing water on my face like I cannot believe that just happened and it did and how am I gonna go back out there into that meeting again but I think I was sort of like it felt really unfair and like I was mad about it I think they were tear the frustration but also a little bit sad like you know there had been a lot of movement in the right direction but yet it but yet it persists right I think that was a lot of like when Linda and I got to talking about this fund and starting this fund it was the yet it persists thing that we saw it in the data and that for sure we had both experienced throughout our careers that we were like we were just mad about it too you know we were just like really like we’re just gonna prove this wrong we’re gonna do everything we can to prove this wrong and the only way to do that is to be really successful and that’s what we’re trying to be and that’s like that’s like being the most prepared being you know working harder staying up the extra hour waking up the extra hour earlier so whole other life strategy I have get up early everybody out there get up early

Anthony Codispoti : get up early why is that

Joy Marcus : I mean everyone is different by rhythm I’m super clear in the morning in a way that I am definitely not later in the day and so you know for me moving my alarm from seven to six about 15 or so years ago was like life-changing and I’m trying to do I know when as Paltrow talks about this I think she’s a 530% but I don’t fives are not good for me but maybe maybe I’ll get there but like six is fine and six became really fine so and I just like you know when my kids were home that was a time when the house was quiet too which is always helpful before like the craziness of like get them up get them out which by the way I I know I mentioned my husband before could not have done without him was absolutely a partner in all of that which is my other advice if you want to do the family thing and the queer thing no matter what gender you are figure out to do with the right person whoever that person may be because really it’s really hard without it really I mean for me it would have been really hard without let’s put it that way I think for most people really hard without it so life hack get up early but the the the sort of channeling the frustration and almost like sort of disappointment and that you know things haven’t really changed that much into something productive like the 98 is sort of like a big challenge in my life right now and like a really fun one and I feel super lucky to be doing that

Anthony Codispoti : it is interesting you know as you talk about sort of the macro environment kind of shifting back and forth and it’s a little bit harder to maybe put a finger on and measure how does that macro shift you know affect things at the micro level you know and and you’re a little bit of insight into that it doesn’t affect you as much now you’ve got more experience and so that kind of comes with them yeah I don’t know an extra set of resilience or you become a little bit more impervious to some of those exterior criticisms but it hasn’t gone away because you know we look at the numbers in terms of you know how much venture capital gets invested in firms that you know have women at the top and it’s there’s certainly a disparity there so there’s a lot a lot of work left for you to do

Joy Marcus : right and again I think the only the only way to do this is to win is to be good at it and to prove the opportunity for success in investing in women it’s the only thing we can do so I just got

Anthony Codispoti : truly yeah sorry go ahead finish that thought

Joy Marcus : no no I mean I truly like the only I mean the world is run by guys crunching numbers right now right I mean that’s kind of the truth and so what we need to do is show them the numbers and say you’re a fool not to invest in women you’re just a fool and we’re gonna prove that

Anthony Codispoti : yeah and that’s what you know that data that you talked about early on yeah that shows that when you’ve got women at the top of a company they’re doing a better job returning investment to their investors more quickly and you know at higher valuations I think that’s pretty compelling data and so the more use cases the more case studies that you can get to sort of continue to compound that data I think is it’s gonna go a long way to helping the cause yeah yeah but what one last question for you but before I ask it joy I want to let people know the best way to get in touch with you or follow your story what would that be

Joy Marcus : well the 98 is on LinkedIn is a good way we post sort of we’re not great at it honestly we’re so heads down focused on investing in the business right now we’ve been like not so great a communication something we need to work on so they but they can just email me joy at the 98 super simple joy the 98.com

Anthony Codispoti : will include a link to the LinkedIn profile and joy’s email in the show notes but last question for you joy we’ve had a great conversation here today hope you and I stay in touch and you know you’re from now we sit down and you’re celebrating something you’re super excited yeah what’s that one

Joy Marcus : thing business thing right so a lot of things to celebrate in life but yeah no so from a business perspective certainly closing a second fund would be like something to truly celebrate we just want to warm or capital into these opportunities so hopefully that will happen that’s our goal so myself out there saying that we’ll see if we can do it hopefully we can absolutely would love to see maybe one of the companies and an exit might be too early in here from now they’re in it’s still pretty young companies but like an appropriate exit at the appropriate time would be great you know lots of other things in life but for sure those two things would be amazing

Anthony Codispoti : well joy I want to be the first one to thank you for sharing both your time and your story with us today I really appreciate it

Joy Marcus : oh it’s been lovely talking to you thank you so much for the opportunity really

Anthony Codispoti : and folks that’s a wrap on another episode of the inspired stories podcast thanks for learning with us today