December: Natalie's Monthly Memo
Starting a podcast, submitting an energy policy report and more!
Welcome!
If we haven’t met before, hi! 👋 My name is Natalie, and I’m a sophomore at Stanford, passionate about venture capital, startups, investing, and social impact. This newsletter documents my journey through college and building passion projects. If you’re receiving this, you may be a friend, family member, mentor, a professor whose class inspired me, an acquaintance or someone I admire. If this is the first time you’re getting this email, it would mean so much to me if you took one minute to read it - I promise it won’t take too much of your time : )
🐘 The elephant in the room: November?
For the very few of you who noticed - shoutout to mom and dad- I didn't publish a newsletter last month. November was a month of baby steps:
Talking to people about my energy development report
Finding intro music for a podcast
Spending time with my family during American Thanksgiving
The occasional all-nighter doing economics homework
Although those baby steps led me to what I can share with you all this month, there was no impressive culmination of work at the end of November. As a result, I chose not to send out a newsletter. In reflecting on that, that was a mistake. There's value in showing the journey, and I mistakenly did not share that. Therefore, consider this my promise (New Year's resolution!) to spam your emails more often with my results and the steps along the way.
🎙️ Guess who started a podcast!!
For everyone new, I've been passionate about women in the venture and startup space since about January, when an essay for a mandatory class turned into a deep dive into why women receive less venture funding than men. In writing my paper, I only scratched the surface and was inspired to start a podcast talking to women who've built successful companies about their efforts to get venture funding, the challenges they faced while building their company and their overall journey in the startup space.
I'm excited to announce that my first episode featuring Monisha Perkash is out.
Monisha built her company, Lumo Body Tech, with her two co-founders from 2011 to 2018, raising 26M.
Some highlights of our discussion include:
How to get a lead for your round when every investor wants to be first to be second
How things have changed for women looking to raise money now compared to 10 years ago
Challenges raising money for a hardware company in a market that's so software-driven
To learn more, listen at this link.
Spotify:
Apple podcasts:
PS. My biggest goal for the rest of the year is to get at least one new episode out a month. If you know of any female founders who've managed to raise successful funding, I would love a warm intro : )
⚡ Clean energy infrastructure and development is really really cool
Last month, through my class Technology Innovation and Great Power competition, I and 5 group members did a deep dive into the significant issues in the US energy grid. 35+ interviews later, we settled on three main problem areas:
Lack of commercialization funding for long-duration energy storage batteries in the 1- n stage
The interconnection cue needs to be shorter, caused by a lack of transparency in the application process.
Utility company incentives are almost exclusively based on volume payments, causing a lack of initiative to maintain the grid and invest in renewable energy alternatives.
This was the most rewarding class I've taken at Stanford so far. If you're curious, here's the link to our detailed report:
❄️ What’s up for January?
I love January. As a Canadian who now lives in California, you can guarantee I will be spending as much time outside as possible. However, beyond my newfound outdoorsiness, I have some goals for the next few weeks.
Publishing my second episode of She Ventures Forward
Starting the recruiting process for finance internships for the summer of 2025
Doing research at the Graduate School of Business!
Thanks so much for reading - it means a lot to me.
P.S. If somehow you’ve received this from someone else and weren’t subscribed, put your email down! It would mean a lot.