Welcome to our #244 weekly newsletter.
“For women taking control of their financial future”
-Jana Hlistova
From The Purse
In this week’s newsletter, we highlight an excerpt from the interview with the Christina Teo on The Purse Podcast.
Christina is the chief builder of SHE1K, which is the world's first C-suite executive angel syndicate.
We talk about Chris’ successful corporate career, how she immersed herself in the startup community, launching an angel syndicate, important lessons in investing and how more women can engage with their money.
Listen to the full interview here.
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And you can review the news in brief so you stay on top of global financial, economic and investing trends.
I hope you enjoy this week’s newsletter.
Until next week,
Jana
SHE1K: how to launch the world’s first C-suite executive angel syndicate.
We interviewed Christina Teo, founder of SHE1K on The Purse Podcast.
We interviewed Christina Teo on The Purse Podcast.
Christina Teo is the chief builder of SHE1K, which is the world's first C-suite executive angel syndicate. She has built a community of 170 C-suite and senior executives who have invested $6m+ in 30 startups.
We talk about Christina’s successful corporate career, how she immersed herself in the startup community, launching an angel syndicate, important investing lessons and how more women can engage with their money.
Here is a a short excerpt from the interview.
Jana: “…Now you have an angel network and an angel syndicate. I'm curious to hear how you got it off the ground. And how you continue to grow this and fund startups? What's the investment thesis?”
Christina’s response:
“…But after attending that (Slush) event and speaking to female founders…I started to understand what these startups are looking for. And I realised that I had something to offer.
I was already 53 at that time, so it was still a little bit unnerving. I thought: what am I doing here? And will I be always introducing myself as ex-Yahoo! GM, you know? An ex-person who launched the world's first Windows platform; it just didn't resonate with me that way (anymore).
Therefore I said: I need to create something where I pull people to me, instead of me doing ‘push’; I've been a marketeer almost my entire career, so I should know this. So then I Googled women startups, female founders.
I couldn't find a lot of communities; in fact, none at that time in Singapore. So I said, okay, I'm going to start one, right?
So I wanted to get people to talk to me. And it was actually for my own learning, and to make friends, because I came back to nothing. I never really had to organise events myself in my, in my corporate career.
And in those days, we don't even have networking, right? Networking wasn't a thing. And the word community doesn't come up. I wouldn't say I have a smartphone community or an O2 community.
We didn’t have such concepts at that time.
So this community thing was also new to me, and I had been someone who was not social media friendly. Plus, I really don't like talking that much, you would be surprised! A lot of people say, we don't believe it, right?
And so for me to start a community was not something that was just like that. But I did. And then, my first event, I still remember it was January 17, 2017, and it was like bad timing to even have any events at all, straight after New Year's.
But guess what? More than 150 people registered and I had an 80 percent show, no, 90 percent show up rate.
I don't need a lot of things to encourage me, right? That's a good MVP right there! Visualisation again, you know, I'm onto something. And that was it.
So I actually invested a lot of time in understanding the startup ecosystem and putting myself out there and all the people that I was meeting were half my age.
So it's really not the same. It's not the same as in New York today either. In New York today, actually everybody is so open and so friendly. But thinking back to 2017 in Singapore, it was very different.
It’s not the same kind of culture. So I had to really invest a lot of time and energy. And then I staged a lot of events myself.
That gave me an opportunity to know who's who in the industry, right? VCs and successful founders and so on. So I learned the game and all that.
Then after three and a half, four years, I said, this was getting boring…”
Listen to the full interview here.
News in Brief
Financial news
Betting odds for the Trump presidency rose after photos showed Trump, blood on his face, pumping his fist after an incident at his rally. The incident was triggered by gunshots.
On Thursday, the Russell 2000 has biggest one day gain since November 2023 and the Nasdaq 100 had the biggest drop since October in 2023.
US June CPI (inflation) undershoots headline and core, making the case for a September cut even stronger.
The pound is hovering near a one-year high after stronger-than-expected GDP data, which showed the UK economy returned to growth in May with a 0.4% expansion.
UK stocks, sterling, bond prices rise as business calls for ‘fresh start’ under Labour.
Rachel Reeves to announce economic advisory council to boost UK growth.
UK risks tech ‘talent drain’ to US if pension funds fail to back sector. Nigel Toon, the co-founder and chief executive of Graphcore, said domestic pension funds were giving inadequate support to private businesses in the UK.
Big Tech is eating the world. Apple once again the undisputed number one. Apple gained 2% after bullish Bloomberg report about the upcoming AI-enabled iPhone sales prospects. Now worth almost $3.6tn, Microsoft number two with $3.5tn ahead of Nvidia with $3.3tn.
Crypto: bitcoin, ethereum, DeFi
Bitcoin price climbs and meme coins spike after Trump attacked at rally. Plus prediction market bettors think it's helped his campaign.
Bitcoin ETFs log over $300m in net inflows to reach record level following six-day streak.
German government's bitcoin selloff may have come to end as wallet emptied. (50,000 bitcoins were seized from the now-defunct film piracy website Movie2K).
Donald Trump meme coin TREMP has maintained the largest gains, up 71% over the last 24 hours at a price of $0.66. TRUMP is up 39% on Saturday.
Cypherpunk's new CEO Bets on Blockchain's 'picks and shovels’. This approach, investing in firms like Coinbase, Galaxy Digital, Anchorage, and ConsenSys, could offer a less volatile way to capitalize on the crypto industry's growth.
SEC drops investigation of Bitcoin L2 Stacks and builder Hiro, filing says. This is another win for the crypto industry in its years-long struggle with the regulator.
Biden's veto stands: what it means for crypto's regulatory future. The situation also brings to mind the SEC's lawsuit against Telegram in 2020. Both cases reflect the assertive stance of regulatory bodies in ensuring compliance within the crypto industry.
The Purse Podcast
We cover the following on our conversation:
Chris's successful corporate career
How Chris immersed herself in the startup community
Launching an angel syndicate
The investment thesis
Engaging female angel investors
How to invest
Important investment lessons
And how do we encourage more women to engage with their money?
Please enjoy! Listen on Apple Podcasts and Spotify+
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We’d love to hear from you. Get in touch with Jana via the The Purse website or tweet @jointhepurse and janicka. We do no provide investment advice. Please do your own research or speak to a financial adviser.
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