Beyond the Comfort Zone - Interview with Shila Nieves Burney of Zane Venture Fund

[Music] hi everyone welcome to this edition of beyond the comfort zone today i'm interviewing shyla nieves bernie from zane venture fund excited to hear what she has to say about the venture world and about her leadership welcome shyla hi thanks so much for having me i'm excited to be here great well um let's talk a little bit about zane so our listeners can know a little bit more about who you are and then um can ask some questions and just learn more about your background and leadership um so tell everybody a little bit about zane what you do sure so zane venture fund is at atlanta bay's early stage venture fund whose mission is to invest and dirk uh accelerate the growth of diverse founders and teams who are we're calling the new face of technological change by investing in the connective tissue economy and so our primary focus is to invest in again tech enable uh solutions founded by diverse entrepreneurs primarily here in the southeast but opportunistically across the us awesome and why is it so important to have a diverse team of founding members sure so um it's the data the data shows that the diverse teams outperform their peers by 33 teams with women people of color the lgbtq community all bringing a different lens because of their lived experience and so for us um we just we're just backed by the data that shows that these teams outperform makes perfect sense i mean the more perspectives you have in a room the better any business or any group really is um and having different backgrounds and experiences to share so it just makes good business sense now i also know you have a program called zane access that's out there to help entrepreneurs um can you share a little bit about that programming sure so when i started on this journey of venture capital i had the basically the end in mind uh first and so and that was uh providing resources to diverse entrepreneurs and so zane access supports entrepreneurs in a couple of ways we have an educational arm that provides capital readiness program these are programs that help a program that helps uh entrepreneurs uh gain the technical and soft skills of invest fundraising and then we also have a university program where we're doing sort of the same thing but it's a free capital getting them sort of you know these are companies that are at the ideation stage so really really early but getting them comfortable with the aspect of raising capital in the future and then we introduce them to a network of other resources mentors and and a network of investors so it's great you've got support resources for them kind of at all stages of uh early entrepreneurship absolutely i think you're in the right place too atlanta such a tech mecca right now with so many business ideas sprouting up absolutely and we want to be there when these entrepreneurs need their resources um sort of a go-to for the uh entrepreneur community now being in atlanta and there's so much tech here um i know there's a lot of myths about venture backing and venture funds and how that capital works so i'm curious um what's a common myth that you've heard that uh you'd like to debunk here on the show about how venture works so i'll start with one of them and i think this is such a misconception thanks to tv people assume we sit around on a sofa like shark tank all day and just you know bit deal after deal um and our suits and nice clothes and that is far from the truth um most of us are looking for potential deals meaning we need to come out of our homes and go into the ecosystem um you know and find a great entrepreneurs who are you know sort of already engaged and tapped in um the other myth is that we're sitting on loads of money um you say that you're like for me in my instance i'm raising a 25 million dollar fund all of a sudden people people will you know have this assumption that we're flush with cash that's not how big your capital works and so just really want people to be sort of understanding that this is such a complex um um uh work um it involves so many compliance components to venture capital so it it takes a a very sort of a person who knows how to double down and get in roll up their sleeves um and kind of make sure all of the the bills are running on time because it's so many different aspects to uh running a fund that sounds it's interesting because you're right i think people do have this very shark tank perspective of funds or ideas that investors and venture are billionaires sitting around um so it's but it's exciting right because you have this ability with the skills you have to match people with great ideas to investors who have money um but being in the middle i'm guessing it takes a lot of work to play that matchmaking game absolutely absolutely so shows beyond the comfort zone that's because everybody that i have on it are great leaders who had to step out of their comfort zones to find their way to where they are today i'm curious about some of the influential people in your life who pushed you outside your comfort zone into a place of growth sure so in my in my previous career just so everyone knows i spent about 20 plus years investing in human capital uh through programs and services for large institutions and public school systems and so i've had two managers uh one a male and one and the other one a woman who uh they didn't know that they were challenging me so much and pushing me out of my comfort zone but when they first hired me they considered me to be a partner not an employee but a partner in the work meaning that we would sort of tackle whatever we were doing together and so for some folks that means that you can sit back and you know act as a partner and not could not do the work as well and so there were a few times where i had to be pushed by these folks because i assume you know for me if i delegate the work that folks are gonna do it it's like no you've got to go back to them and ensure they get it done and so i was so challenged by both of them and believe me it was it didn't feel good at the time but when i look back on that and some of the things they taught me about delegating and you know my communication styles when i'm sending things out how to you know double check and triple check your work and that sort of stuff and so it was them these two folks they were very challenging but i so respect them now um and for what and really grateful for um you know the opportunity they gave me they gave me they pushed me in meetings you know that typically they would have been in and you know these were meetings where we were talking about geo analysis and and i don't have a an epidemiologist's background and my boss did but she was like you're going to go learn and you're going to figure it out and i did and so i just love that that part of those two helping me get out of my comfort zone of being very shy sit sit back and understand that i do have a voice at the table and i that i needed to use it that's excellent it's great to have people who push and challenge us um it's also good because i think a lot of people like you and i were self-starters as well after we start learning how to get out of our comfort zone then it kind of comes more naturally to us so i'm curious what's the biggest leap you've taken yourself outside of your comfort zone and how did you grow from it venture capital if this isn't the biggest leap that i've ever i've never imagined myself first of all in a financial space um my background again has been you know investing in human capital like working directly in communities uh the folks that we were looking to impact and so now to be able to be in a space where i can generate wealth uh for a community that that's been tradition um this is my this is the biggest leap i've ever taken i you know and it's all i'm betting on me right i'm not betting on going to work for a boss that i truly respect and i'm gonna help them build and grow i'm betting on the fact that i've been giving this opportunity um i have i'm coming out of my comfort zone i did an interview the other day on bloomberg tv i never imagined that but i had to bet on me and go do that interview right so i wake up every day getting staying and educated staying informed around venture capital so that i'm always you know i know what's happening in the space i know who the new entrepreneurs are um who are coming in and innovating around a sector that i'm interested in and so that is the biggest leap i've made and i'm really grateful that i did because at the end of the day again i had to bet on myself and i'm proud that i did what inspired you to take the jump so i had been working with an entrepreneur again i had spent uh 15 20 plus years pivoted to full-time entrepreneurship in 2018 um had asked to uh had been offered the opportunity to source investors for a startup uh that was basic based in africa and they were looking to scale um i didn't know what venture capital meant right in terms of you know you know the terminology but what it meant in a day-to-day sort of working with entrepreneurs but it seemed so exciting to me and i decided to while also building my own business help out this entrepreneur and i was able to get him to a seven five million dollar load of intent with the possibility of up to 100 million dollars and so i saw firsthand what it was like to to go out and fundraise um get into a network of investors i didn't have that network first i found someone here in atlanta sigmosi who was a able to help make introductions for me and so at the end of that the investor dropped out of the deal we have this very unfortunate incident here in atlanta where my daughter was impacted by gun violence and all of the cult the those two things pushed me to go into venture capital um and raise this fund because i felt like there was a huge opportunity in the market and there were diverse entrepreneurs who were deserving of having folks pay attention to them as a building skilled technology companies wow sheer determination from seeing a gap that needed to be filled absolutely you mentioned your daughter i'm curious you know if you could go back and give one piece of advice to your 18 year old self or to your daughter um what would that advice be to stay focused right i think some of us very early on have an idea of what we want to be but somewhere along the way we get sort of sidetracked whether it's you know just personal themes um life in general um but if i could just tell myself to stay focused and the same thing for my daughter like let's not agonize over some of these small things that we think are so big um and then five to ten or even two doesn't matter um and so just staying focused on whatever the big picture um that that i would have like i felt i had back then but just with life you're thinking it's never gonna happen um but just but but i knew to continue working hard and and it just if i could have been a bit more focused stayed a little bit more focused that's what i would have had to share with myself so more focus would have led to where you wanted to go faster more than likely my path was not straight i took a lot of different paths to get here um and so but i'm here um that's the thing so i find that that's pretty common though um great leaders there's a lot of uh paths and zigzags along the way absolutely absolutely you meet a lot of great people from different backgrounds when you're doing that now you know we talked a lot about this venture fund you didn't get into this intentionally you or it was intentional when you chose to but it wasn't your long-term plan make sure i'm saying that correctly um so it's relatively new to you what's something that your venture fund has done now or in this process that you didn't expect that you're really surprised by that's something we've done now that we were um so i think what so one okay one thing that i had to do me like so not so much to venture but we have to trust our gut right um where you get a lot of different opportunities coming your way and you really like the entrepreneur but you have to have and tell them at the end of the day this is not the kind of company that you know we are we're willing to back right now and it could be for different factors and sometimes you may be you know hurting um someone um but i always try to follow that up with let me um introduce you to someone else and so i've made four investments so far um in the beginning that first one took a year before i made an investment into her company um because again like the company love the entrepreneur but it just wasn't right for us at that moment but trusting my gut and helping her and mentoring her and advising her led me to have help her get her first term she and then i came in at the end of the deal so i trusted my gut to be able to say yes she's worth spending time with and that sort of stuff let's help her get where she needs to be and then when she's ready let's make an introduction to another fun um and you know uh get her invested in and then i came in and helped get more investors in so that's what you don't expect sometimes you don't expect the length of time it's going to take to get something done but if you trust your gut in my opinion along the way it just means it gives you in this business it gives it a whole new meaning and you have a whole new awareness about what you're doing that you do yeah what's one lesson your careers taught you that you think everybody should learn at some point in their life um last one lesson so i think for me one you know i'm learning that i um say yes too quickly right and i want folks to kind of understand that you again distrusting of your gut sometimes you could trust your gut and and it gets you to that answer pretty quickly but you know um there is this thing that you know reagan said years ago trust but verify um and so i'm having to trust but i need to be able to verify that um the person that i'm bringing in to do a certain thing can actually has the ability to do that um and so that's one thing that i'm learning and i would hope that other folks would learn that you know bringing people in too soon when you're still building a foundation and you don't really know what your vision is you're still formulating that um you may bring people in too early and it could hurt um you me in this case um because i hadn't done enough verify um to know that folks would help me build this sort of foundation and that i needed to build a foundation first and then bring people in and then we could always tweak what we need to tweak and so is that trusting and verifying um that that i've had to learn um and it has been painful um because you spent a lot of time and then you have to look back and so it started to start readjusting along the way because you're down a path that you didn't expect to go on what's you know one of your bigger failures that you've had to learn from and what did you get out of it uh it goes it ties back to that um it's talent um you know again hiring talent or bringing talent on um and that's on me it's not on the individual we're talking about very smartly capable folks but venture capital is a different sort of beast um and there's this assumption that it's easy and it's it's not and it's expensive um to do right it costs a lot of money to stand up with fun and so i think that's one of the biggest thing is not informing people who want to come into venture capital like some of the the challenges that i am going to deal with for the life of the fun it's just the nature of the work um and so i think that that is i don't want to call it a failure because it's a learning experience um but i at the time it felt like a failure right i continue to do this and you know i don't want to hurt other folks in in their career um but now i know like just to take the slow road when it comes to bringing talent on um you got to understand you know people have to understand that this is a roll up your sleeve sort of roll we're not sitting on cash no one's singing on a bit of cash right we're raising money we're making investments the the the um the rewards will come later is is what i'm saying so goes back to that assumption that it's not easy there's a lot of hard work behind it absolutely absolutely yes with all that hard work i know you probably have some tools up your sleeves that help you just in a day-to-day working environment what are some underrated tools that are indispensable for your job so for me um i you know i i am a super connector network and i know that may not be a tool for some folks but it's a tool for me um because what i how i leverage that particular tool is that i find great opportunities you know in terms of investments i i find ways to go out and connect with entrepreneurs i find ways to get into rooms with potential investors and so that's a tool in my arsenal that i've had like probably all of my career um to get out and know different people get caught up you know catch up with different people um in terms of for the jobs sake of course there's tech right we we want to and this is something that i would advise for our everyone including those who have venture funds how to automate your work um because and you're constantly you know having meetings and then there's nodes and then there's like follow-up and having you know different tools to kind of help you with that we use air to cable we use uh we're using asana at one point for deal flow you know we have all these different things that make our day work um and so it's a matter of they're all collaboration tools that kind of help us move quicker um and and be more lean at the same time it's great to know it's funny i use air table but i don't know many people who know about it so in this business you may want to know have a really good crm that's pretty funny um to hear that one um what about productivity hacks um using technology terms right um what are some things that help you be more efficient in your job that maybe could help somebody else who's watching this so what i've tried to do is when i'm meeting i you know one thing is time time is you know finite um and so i try to schedule meetings with entrepreneurs if i'm not if it's just you want me to hear your your your about your company 15 minutes um we'll schedule that time so i have more time you know right now it is the it's the investor relationships it's my own portfolio company relationships and so scheduling those meetings right i typically have friday where i don't have any meetings or even monday i try to start my day you know in the middle of the day my with my team in the middle of the day versus first thing in the morning um and so use leveraging things like cal only for for scheduling you know of course we use zoom for meetings and that sort of stuff but it's you know we use a lot of the tools that everyone else is using but trying to automate the process of your work is what we're getting better at um we we use notion that we have a big event that we're planning um instead of killing each other in email right we just everything goes in notion and so we know where everything is um while we're planning this event and so just as much as you can automate your work you know i think is is critically important when people uh submit to our website right we have a forum where you can apply um uh to for us to look at your company and then you know you get a sort of automated email response it goes automatically into mailchimp it goes into asana or someone takes it to asana so that we can look at what the actual deal is and so that cuts out a lot of time um you know from getting the email uploading it to a database and all that other stuff we just have an automated system to make it easier yeah it definitely sounds like it would save a lot of time automation can be a great thing absolutely absolutely um curious what's one question that you wish i'd asked you so i think we may have already said it you know i was thinking you know where did the name zane come from um i that's a question i get asked a lot um especially when people find out what people hear and they have a kid named zayn or a you know spouse named zane and so zane of course came from my daughter and my daughter who encouraged me to after she had a again was impacted by violent seriously and it was actually convalescing at home and i was trying to figure out if i wanted to continue doing this work or not um sure i had met incredible entrepreneurs i had gotten this great opportunity for this um potential founder for this founder um and then i had uh was impacted by a community sort of event i felt like it was like the community hurting us or community hurting my daughter and then i had to like sort of rethink that and like it's not the community that hurt me it's like people in this particular area i call it venture redline like people are there left to you know have their own fight investors professors own it to their own vices fester right so whatever drug community whatever and they were shooting at each other we just happened to get caught up in a crossfire and so she's the one that suggested that i continue doing this work and i was trying to find a strong woman that i could name the fun after and i'm going oprah and michelle obama and i look at my daughter who's at the table encouraging me to do this and so i named the fun after her and so that's how it became zane it's a family name it's my husband's middle name we named my daughter after you know giving him her name uh his giving him you understand and and so that's where the name comes from it's very near and dear so every time i say zayn to anyone i i have my daughter close at heart and thinking about how in her moment of uh convalescence and she had the strength to tell me to move forward in this work that is so inspirational it sounds like you have a very strong daughter um to be going through such horrible things and how to turn that into such a positive light to say go do something good in the world absolutely absolutely very proud of her that's that's really amazing and uh i'm so hard heartbroken she went through so much because that's kind of been terrifying but her strength is inspirational absolutely absolutely yes and she's now out helping other people in the community um she's been working part of the cobra really for a large organization here so um that's just been what she's been doing for her career so really proud of her wow that's awesome um um yes just to stick that in um what is you know going back to this concept of getting outside your comfort zone which it sounds like you have done so much in life and your daughter has done as well um what's something you still would like to try that's outside of your comfort zone that you just haven't yet so my i am what i call a black latina so my my mom's black my dad's puerto rican and you know i i did my sort of 23andme a few years ago and my my lineage was traced back to spain and to west africa and so i am so determined to go to both of those countries at some point um uh in west africa it's nigeria and um some ghana and then it's spain it's more like in portugal and so i just want to trace my roots back and see you know sort of the beginning of um you know where my my sort of family comes from and so that's just been something it's out of my comfort zone um i you know i love traveling my family and i do a lot of traveling um but i want to go to some of the remote areas where you know where my where my sort of genealogy has been traced back to so we'll see what happens um that's just that's something i would really like to do and it's going to take me out of my comfort zone i have no doubt that you will do that at some point in time and i look forward to hearing about it when you do thank you um thank you so much for sharing everything about zayn today what you guys are doing it's really exciting i want to make sure my viewers have a chance to know how to find you if they're interested in learning more about zayn or the fund itself so how can people get in touch with you sure so of course our website is zayn.vc um and then the zane access website is accessing.org and then we're on twitter linkedin instagram and facebook if you do facebook um and so you can find all of our channels i'm just saying venture fundraising access we're on all those platforms um and of course i'm out there too as shyla nieves bernie awesome everyone look zayn up see if you can connect and help zayn out um as far as helping to grow the fun to doing more or connecting different entrepreneurs to zayn who maybe zane can help as well so thank you so much for your time today um thank you and look forward to hearing more from you down the road thank you so much i really appreciate being here you