Issue link: https://tmcpulse.uberflip.com/i/532968
t m c » p u l s e | j u ly 2 0 1 5 27 my next thing. And I don't know what it is, so I am going to go get an MBA.' The only thing I knew was that it had to be very international oriented. The most international MBA I found was in the London Business School. So that's where I went and tried to figure out what I wanted to do. Very early on, I started gravitating towards the entrepreneurship major, and actually I did an exchange program during my second year and I went to Berkeley. I went around Silicon Valley and I totally loved it. Right after that, I was very lucky that I got hired to run an incubator in the South of France. In the French Riviera, they have a very big techno park there called Sophia Antipolis, and so I was hired for that. I got in touch with their Angel Network, and one year after being in the French Riviera, I got to run that, too. Which was really cool because in my time there, we did amazing things. First of all, we invested very internationally. Most of my members were not actually French. They were people from all over the world who decided to retire in the French Riviera. So we got deals from all over the world. We were one of the first investors in e-Trade—we invested in Turkey, Ireland, the U.K. and China. Q | Your husband works for Shell, right? A | Yes. I met my husband in Singapore. We were friends of friends. Each one had our significant other at the time. He was working for a pipeline company, Tenaris. He had to move out of Singapore, and for two years he was working all over Nigeria and France, and I was still working in Singapore. And totally coinciden- tally, we met again at the London Business School. So I finished one year before him because I was in the 2005 MBA, and he was in the 2006. I got my job in the French Riviera, and he got his job in The Hague for Shell. We were doing the long distance relationship and in 2010, I got offered this job to run the European Business Angel Network from Brussels. But I had to turn down the offer because my husband was offered a great job in Houston. Q | When you arrived in Houston, what was your perception of the city? A | I was coming from the French Riviera, and it is really beautiful. It's one of the best places in the world. You have the Alps coming into the sea. You have these amazing Italian villas. So I remember coming in with my huge belly and getting into the car with my hus- band, and I remember being so scared of these high- ways. Maybe it was because I was pregnant too, but I thought there was no way I could drive here. This was way too much. And then I would see all of these malls and buildings all looked the same. And I thought, 'This is a really ugly place I'm getting into.' So that was my first perception. But I found that people were extremely nice, compared to the French who are not, particularly if you are a foreigner. And not only that, they don't have anything that is kid friendly. And here everyone was so nice that at first I thought that they were trying to play a joke on me. So I thought that was amazing, and everything was kid oriented. That totally sold me. I was lucky enough that one of the companies we invested with, Success Europe, was actually a French company that needed the money to establish them- selves here in Houston. So my past chairman told me, 'You need to contact them. I'm sure they will need your help in Houston, so whenever you are ready, just go for it.' And when my son was about seven months old, I approached them and they said, 'Yeah, we would love your help.' Actually, they were doing great here in Houston, and they were doing so good that they wanted to expand and maybe try the American route, too. It was a software provider for the big oil and gas companies, energy services companies and environmental companies. So this company, Amalto Technologies, needed a second round, and their European investors were ready to invest. But they wanted some local investors because they said, 'We are servicing the oil and gas companies, and we want to have these kind of people on board who can open those doors for us. So we need smart money.' And they told me, 'You are the perfect person to start reaching out and trying some fundraising.' So that's how I approached the Houston Angel Network (HAN). I had met Kala Marathi—HAN's past MD previously. She invited me to a breakfast, and I told her I had a few deals that could be interesting. We were doing pretty well and we had already invested in them, and we wanted to co-invest with HAN. Kala was not replying to my emails, so I went to the HAN website to get her number and give her a call. And on the web- site, suddenly there was a huge announcement that they needed a new managing director. I called David Steakley, who was in charge of the whole selection process, and I said, 'Is this still open?' And he said, 'Tomorrow is our last day of interviews.' I got the job and started working for HAN in January 2013. So this is my third year. Q | What was the size of HAN at that time? A | I think we started at around 60 members renewing, and we got up to 90. When the board took place, they made a few strategic changes that they wanted me to implement. One of them was getting rid of the fees for entrepreneurs, and the second part of that deal would be raising the fees for investors. For 10 years, investors were charged a yearly fee of $1,500. Because we were getting rid of the fees for entrepreneurs, we wanted to compensate for that somehow, and we decided to raise to $1,750. We knew that for the least active members who were doing that more for social reasons, it would kind of be a make or break. So that was a pretty big bet for the new board. Q | How would you describe the Houston Angel Network? A | HAN has changed a lot over the years, and I think that's an interesting part. We have totally changed the perception that entrepreneurs had of HAN. Because, of course, I was getting a lot of feedback from entrepre- neurs for what HAN meant to them. And HAN meant a pretty elite class of people who would meet every month at the Houstonian, and would only approach entrepreneurs that had a very clear model, and most of them were revenue-generating deals. So if you were before that, it was very difficult to get there. The only route was basically applying. And if you were getting a pitch slot, then you would get access to them. But if not, there was no feedback, there was no, 'What can we do?' if you are not selected. So things have changed a lot. First of all, we decided to get rid of the entrepreneur fees. We decided to get more engaged investors. Another thing that we also did was try to be more open to entrepreneurs. When we got rid of the fees, we got better deal flow, because more deals could apply to us. And we decided that we wanted to see deals that not only had revenue, but also some of the deals that maybe were not on revenue yet but we thought could be interesting. Another thing we decided to do was if you are not making the cut for pitch, we are going to give you some feedback. We are going to point you in the right direction, and we want you to reach out to us again whenever you feel you are ready. So in many cases, we were giving more advice than before, and we kept in close contact with them. That's also helped out a lot. And we have invested in companies that the first time they came to us was two years ago, and now we have finally invested in them. Because we keep that door open.