354: What Investors Say After Founders Leave the Room with Erika Lucas

Erika Lucas spent years inside private equity and venture capital, the rooms that decide who gets funded in America. Then she left to build what goes around them. In this episode, she tells Saadia Khan exactly what investors say about founders once they’ve walked out.Erika was born in Chihuahua, Mexico, and came to rural Oklahoma at 13 with her mother and sister, speaking no English. She went back. She built a career in Mexico, returned to the U.S., ran foreign direct investment for the State of Oklahoma, became a private equity partner—and then walked away to co-found StitchCrew, which has brought capital and networks to hundreds of founders the system overlooks. She also founded VEST, a peer network for women professionals, and VEST Her Ventures, a fund backing women-led companies in the care economy. Her TEDx talk, America's Trillion Dollar Blindspot, argues the money in this country is pointed the wrong way.She and Saadia get into the part most founder conversations skip: not ho...