Camp Hustle

Cyan Banister is addicted to early-stage investing. She started angel investing early in her career, choosing to invest her earnings from her first exit check into high-growth startups rather than real estate or the stock market. And it turns out… she’s got an eye for finding unique early-stage companies.

She later joined Founders Fund as a partner, where she led the firm’s pre-seed and seed-stage investments. Now Cyan is a GP at Long Journey Ventures, where she gets to spend a lot of time dreaming about what the future could look like and investing in people who are creating it.

When you Google “Cyan Banister”, you’ll see a lot about her portfolio. It’s prolific and impressive, with names like Uber, SpaceX, Postmates, Thumbtack, Opendoor, Affirm, Carta, and Niantic. But during my recent 30-minute-turned-90-minute call with Cyan, what I loved most about her was her unique approach to learning.

Cyan is fiercely protective of her calendar. She doesn’t stack her day with meetings. She prefers to spend her time meditating and diving deep down the rabbit hole of seemingly random industries. She goes to events like toilet paper conferences and heavy machinery conferences specifically to learn what people in those verticals are thinking about, and what problems their industry faces. This approach to life — among all the other ways Cyan is unique — is part of her investing strategy. It’s allowed her to branch out into verticals beyond B2B Saas, and to recognize a problem set that many other investors ignore.

Natalie Gordon started Babylist as a side project in 2011 when she was pregnant with her son. The site launched 2 weeks before she gave birth. Throughout the 12 years since then, Natalie has grown the brand into a leader in the $88B baby market. Over 9M people use BabyList to make their baby registries each year. In 2022, the brand drove over $900M in gross merchandise value (GMV) and earned over $290M in revenue.

But perhaps the most impressive thing about Natalie Gordon is her resiliency. She could have created a baby registry platform and stopped there. Maybe pursued an acquisition, or maintained the site as a lifestyle business. But she didn’t.

Instead, Natalie continues to push the business into new territory and developing new revenue channels to ensure Babylist continues to thrive. She’s expanded into a media business, opened a brick-and-mortar location, and pursued strategic acquisitions to serve her users in the most intentional way possible.

Babylist’s latest raise in 2021 put the company’s valuation at $400m. They have raised a total of $50m in outside capital.

Rahul Vohra brings to Camp Hustle a unique perspective as both a 2x founder – with one exit under his belt – and a venture capitalist. His first company, Rapportive, sold to LinkedIn in 2012 for a reported $15M. Rahul had raised only $1M in outside funding at the time. He also co-founded Angel Fund, which has invested in roughly 100 companies, including AngelList, Circle, Clearbit, Descript, and Mercury.

These days Rahul is focused on building Superhuman - the email client that’s competing with free giants like Gmail and Yahoo! And he’s killing it. Superhuman’s latest round of funding in 2021 valued the company at $825m.

The thing I love most about the Superhuman story is how Rahul Vohra is building the business. He doesn’t blindly take advice. Not even from experts, and not even when it’s arguably good advice. For example, Rahul ignored advice to scale quickly in favor of manually onboarding every single customer. The result? Sky-high retention engagement and retention rates.

Rahul’s talk at Camp Hustle will span topics from his unique fundraising approach, to his methodical customer acquisition strategy, to the brand’s focus on and implementation of AI.

Brian Nichols is a 2x founder, and worked at Lyft, Zoox, and On Deck, among others. He founded the Lyft Alumni Syndicate and has grown it to 3500+ members, and later co-founded Angel Squad at Hustle Fund. Angel Squad is a program and community run by Hustle Fund that teaches new angels how to invest in startups, and gives them access to invest alongside our fund.

Brian will be leading a bonfire session on Running an Angel Syndicate on Wednesday, May 15.

Charles Hudson is the Managing Partner of Precursor Ventures, an early­ stage VC firm. Under his leadership, Precursor has raised four funds and has $175+ million under management. He has invested in more than 375 companies and has supported more than 400 founders, including the teams behind Clearco, Juniper Square, The Athletic, Incredible Health, Carrot, and Pair Eyewear.

Charles’ bonfire session at Camp Hustle will be a “walk and talk” with Virginie Raphael (FullCircle) and Elizabeth Yin (Hustle Fund) on Tuesday, May 14th. The two will discuss strategies, pitfalls, and tactics around fundraising as emerging fund managers.

Courtney is the Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Recast Capital, a platform supporting and investing in emerging managers in venture. The Recast team believes that emerging managers, particularly those with diverse partnerships, represent both an underserved market and overlooked business opportunity, and is taking a new approach to meeting the need. Courtney is also a Kauffman Fellow, class 3.

Courtney is extremely hands-on in helping emerging fund managers get started. Her Bonfire Session at Camp Hustle will focus on raising Fund I.

Elizabeth Yin is a co-founder and General Partner at Hustle Fund, a pre-seed fund for software entrepreneurs. Previously, Elizabeth was a partner at 500 Startups where she invested in seed stage companies and ran the Mountain View accelerator. In a prior life, Elizabeth co-founded and ran an adtech company called LaunchBit (acq 2014). Elizabeth has a BSEE from Stanford and an MBA from MIT Sloan.

Elizabeth's bonfire session at Camp Hustle will be a “walk and talk” with Charles Hudson (Precursor VC) and Virginie Raphael (FullCircle) on Tuesday, May 14th. They will discuss strategies, pitfalls, and tactics around fundraising as emerging fund managers.

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Eric Bahn is a Co-Founder and General Partner at Hustle Fund, an early-stage venture capital firm ($130M+ under management) based in San Francisco. Hustle Fund invests in software startups at the pre-seed and seed stages, backing founders who exhibit great execution and high velocity (we call it ‘hustle’). Hustle Fund has invested in over 500 startups, and raised over $100m from our incredible LPs.

Eric is a master storyteller and fundraiser. His Bonfire Session at Camp Hustle will dive into differentiation tactics for fund managers looking to raise their first, second, or third funds.

Jamie Melzer is the Managing Partner and GP at HF Scale Partners, the growth and late-stage opportunistic investment platform affiliated with early-stage venture capital firm Hustle Fund. HF Scale invests in Series B through Pre-IPO venture-backed companies through both primary rounds and secondary transactions out of its fund and co-investment vehicles.

She will be co-leading a bonfire session on Investing in Secondary Markets with Ryan Logue (LTSE).

Jiquan Ngiam is the CEO and co-founder of Lutra AI. Lutra automates workflows by transforming your English instructions into code, orchestrating apps to efficiently complete tasks for you. Prior to Lutra AI, he was an engineering lead at Google Brain and on the founding team at Coursera. While pursuing his Ph.D. in Machine Learning at Stanford (advised by Andrew Ng), he co-created the first online courses on Machine Learning. He is inspired by how technology can help improve lives.

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Lisa Muccio cofounded The Pitch in 2016 with her husband (and show host) Josh Muccio after selling their first startup. The show was acquired by Gimlet Media and grew to reach an audience in the tens of millions. Then in 2022 Lisa and Josh took their show independent, joined Vox Media and launched The Pitch Fund. An innovative seed stage fund backed entirely by listeners of the show.

Lisa will be co-leading a bonfire session on How to Find the Best Founders in a Sea of Pitch Decks with Peter Liu.

Peter’s professional life has meandered through education and tech. Born and raised in San Francisco, he spent a decade in Shanghai first teaching in the classroom then operating as the third hire at a venture-backed startup that built the Duolingo of China. Peter is now a scout for The Pitch (think Shark Tank/Dragon’s Den without the reality show drama) and a venture fellow at Hustle Fund.

Peter will be co-leading a bonfire session on How to Find the Best Founders in a Sea of Pitch Decks with Lisa Muccio.

Ryan Logue has been leading transactions in the secondary space for over a decade. His experience brought him from SecondMarket to Nasdaq to Morgan Stanley to (most recently) LTSE, where he’s the head of Private Market Solutions. In his current role, Ryan is focused on connecting later-stage companies with long-term oriented investors (think pensions, family offices) with the goal of long-term profit maximization. He's one of the most knowledgeable humans on the planet when it comes to the secondary market.

Ryan will be co-leading a Bonfire session at Camp Hustle with Jamie Melzer (Hustle Fund Scale) on secondaries.

Shawn is a Partner at Lowercarbon Capital, and aims to be the first believer in audacious founders who are building bold solutions to the climate crisis. Shawn has built an accomplished track record as an investor at the early stage. Prior to Lowercarbon, Shawn was a Partner at On Deck’s venture fund and accelerator, where he backed companies in 20+ countries and earned a founder NPS of 100. Before this, he was on the investing teams at Floodgate and First Round Capital’s Dorm Room Fund, and was ranked in the Forbes 30 Under 30 for Venture Capital. Shawn has personally partnered with ~50 companies to date and brings with him a wealth of knowledge on helping founders go zero to one, from ideation to product-market fit.

Shawn's expertise in investing in the climate tech space is unparalleled. His Bonfire Session at Camp Hustle will dive into his investment thesis within the climate tech vertical.

Todd Johnson is a Director of Product at SoFi. He's also a Vertical Lead at Angel Squad, where he specializes in finding and supporting startups founded by under-represented founders across verticals. Todd is an experienced startup advisor and mentor - he actively works with a16z TxO, Sand Hill Angels, and the First Round Angel Track community to support founders through knowledge, network, and capital.

Todd's experience investing in consumer-facing is extensive. His Bonfire Session at Camp Hustle will focus on investing in heavily regulated consumer verticals.

Virginie Raphael is the Founder and Managing Partner of FullCircle, a NY-based pre-seed fund investing in a more equitable workforce by broadening access to opportunity and solving labor shortages. To date, FullCircle has made 18 investments to drive its desired outcome across HR tech, the care economy and independent workers.

Virginie's bonfire session at Camp Hustle will be a “walk and talk” with Charles Hudson (Precursor VC) and Elizabeth Yin (Hustle Fund) on Tuesday, May 14th. They will discuss strategies, pitfalls, and tactics around fundraising as emerging fund managers.