Venture Capital Insights: AI, Financing, And Future Trends With Priscilla Guevara, Part 1

 

Watch episode here

 

Listen to the podcast here

Welcome to another episode of The 7 in 7 Show with Zack Ellison, which features full length interviews with the world’s leading investors in innovation.

Episode #11A of Season 2 features Priscilla Guevara, General Partner at Science, where she has evolved the Los Angeles-based fund from a studio into a multi-asset investment firm. By leading partnerships and communications across the institutional investor network, corporate partners and portfolio, she has bridged the gap between investors and partners in innovation.

Science’s startup studio has built household names including Dollar Shave Club, MeUndies, and Liquid Death. With Science as the lead investor, Priscilla was instrumental in Liquid Death’s success in fundraising. The brand’s valuation as of March 2024 is $1.4 billion. Priscilla also leads structuring and capital formation efforts for new investment vehicles, while expanding Science’s investment platform that includes early-stage venture funds, rolling funds, co-invest follow-on as well as late-stage SPVs.

She is the Founder of SWIPE – Senior Women in Private Equity Group – with 3,000+ global members including institutional investors and operators from Blackstone, KKR, and Temasek, among others. SWIPE also has chapters in Asia-Pacific, South and Central America, EMEA, Canada, and the UK.

She’s also chair of the Development Committee of the James Beard Foundation and has served on the board of The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (NYC Chapter). She has also been a speaker for conferences such as Visionary Voices by All Raise, which works to amplify female and non-binary voices at tech events and in the media, as well as SuperReturn International, Private Equity International, and LA Tech Week.

In this episode, Zack Ellison and Priscilla Guevara discuss:

1. Priscilla Guevara’s Journey: From Wall Street to a general partner at Science, showcasing the transition from finance to venture capital.
2. Science’s Role as a Venture Studio: How they help early-stage companies scale, build, and exit successfully.
3. Investment Highlights: Discussion on major investments like Liquid Death, highlighting Science’s knack for picking unique consumer brands.
4. Cultural Shifts in Consumer Behavior: How Science leverages cultural insights to make strategic investments.
5. The Significance of Referrals in Sourcing Deals: Importance of network and reputation in the venture capital industry.
6. The Strategic Use of Consumer Authenticity and Virality: How these elements are crucial in brand building and product success.
7. Educational Backgrounds of Founders: Discussing the influence of academic backgrounds on venture success and the networking benefits it brings.

Venture Capital Insights: AI, Financing, And Future Trends With Priscilla Guevara, Part 1

I have with me Priscilla Guevara, a General Partner at Science based in Los Angeles. Priscilla, thanks for joining.

Thanks for having me, Zack. It’s good to see you.

Likewise. We’ve known each other for a number of years. I’m excited to have you on the show.

I know. me, too.

Journey To Science

Tell us what you’re doing at Science and more importantly, how you got here.

 

 

As you mentioned, I am a general partner at Science. I’ve been with the firm for years. I have a very solid history on Wall Street. I lived in New York for over twenty years. I started my career structuring derivatives. It’s very different from what I’m doing but I do believe there’s a lot of overlap in terms of the capital markets. I spent my time at Sumitomo, I moved over to Neuberger Berman, and then I was at Moore Capital between New York and London.

I launched a company that was sold to a compliance consultancy. That firm was called Strategic Enforcement Advisors and sold to ACA Compliance. Prior to Science, I was at business school and then I was at Anheuser-Busch. I covered their tech portfolio and I met Mike Jones, one of the Founders of Science. I fell in love with the story. Science is well-known as a venture studio based in LA. We work in the consumer space. We work with early-stage founders, helping to scale them, build them, and bring them to exit. That’s where I’m at.

You’ve done some big well-known investments including Liquid Death. I wanted to talk about that because I always thought that was a bit of a counterintuitive investment in the sense that it’s canned water and it’s called Liquid Death. How did Science get involved and how did you get involved?

I joined Science in 2018 before the Liquid Death joint us. Our thesis is around these shifts in movements and culture. We were founded in 2011. Moving into 2017 with our fund two, we had this thesis around consumer authenticity, the removal of plastic on the Earth, and better-for-you health. When we met Liquid Death, and you probably heard the story already, Mike Cessario and his cofounder, J.R. were going through Snapchat’s accelerator.

Snapchat’s accelerator is known for brand-building. Evan Spiegel introduced the firm to Science. Peter Pham, one of my partners said, “You guys are a CPG company. You need to go to Science.” When we met them, we had one product in the market, which was still water, and they were distributed through a few East Coast distributors. Again, it met our thesis. We met Mike and J.R. Mike Cessario’s background is very similar to Michael Dubin from Dollar Shave Club, another company that we incubated in our offices and sold to Unilever for $1 billion.

When we brought in the team, we made our first investment. We went on Amazon. If you go on Amazon, they started these fan fiction comments. Those were these stories in the comments that gave us the external validation that there’s a growing consumer interest. Going back to that thesis of consumer authenticity and consumer virality, it met that. From the standpoint of having canned water and it is 100% aluminum and infinitely recyclable, so it met that sustainability component.

It has that cool factor. If you are a person who doesn’t drink, let’s say you’re vegan and you want to remove plastic. I can be at the bar or a concert and still look cool. It’s that third lever of consumer virality and consumer authenticity that drew it for us. We’ve been with the brand and building with them in our offices since 2018. They announced their Series F, which was valued at $1.4 billion. I am very excited to be on this journey with them.

That’s fantastic. Tell me more about Dollar Shave Club. A couple of the founders there were graduates of Swarthmore College where I went to undergrad, if I’m not mistaken. They’re based in Venice, California, correct?

They are. I believe Mike Dubin also went to Emory. What’s interesting about their brand is we sold it to Unilever. That was years ago. That was through our fund one. You can read the stories about Michael Dubin came across these razors. It’s that shift in culture. Back in 2011, there was this movement towards purchasing eCommerce or purchasing online. When we brought in Dollar Shave Club, and this was before my time, my team helped to revolutionize this subscription box model.

Having meaningful and impactful support across the ecosystem that can help scale these businesses is really key. Share on X

How are consumers purchasing? Where are they spending their time, money, and values? That happen to be online at the time. They found an easy way. You purchase a razor for $1. It’s on subscription. That was very attractive to its buyer, which is Unilever. That’s where they are. We’re no longer affiliated other than we had that exit but Michael Dubin still remains a close friend to us. We’re excited about the story. Also, at the time, it was LA’s first billion-dollar consumer transaction.

That’s great. Science has been involved in some of the biggest Southern California deals of the last couple of years ever.

It’s been exciting. Science is known as a venture studio. It’s not just a traditional fund. That’s what’s exciting is that we’re seeing these companies at the very earliest stages. For many people to see it on the entire journey with us has been super exciting. We’re seeing big companies and billion-dollar exits. That’s what we’re working towards. We have one other as well that was that movement towards pet ownership. We have a company called DogVacay that was merged with Rover. It had its second exit to Blackstone for $2.4 billion. Another fun one there.

Three unicorns coming out of the venture studio. Not bad at all. It’s funny because a lot of folks haven’t given LA and Southern California the respect that it deserves as a great market for founders but also for VCs. That’s starting to change and you folks are one of the leading reasons for that.

It’s interesting you say that. Having been in New York at the time when I met Mike, at the time, I did not know Science. A mutual friend of ours said, “You’re going to LA. You’re doing diligence on a company,” at the time when I was with ABI. He said, “Meet Mike in Science.” I met Mike and I fell in love with the story. I said, “How have I not heard of Science?”

One of my big missions was, “How do I share a story? How do I share a number of these really profound, impactful stories that we’ve helped founders from the very beginning and let people know?” For me, the fact that we are in the trenches with a lot of these companies and we are truly a third cofounder with the businesses, we know the businesses in and out.

For me, wanting to know how other people are also involved along the journey has been really special. Outside of building brand awareness around Science and having partners in Science and also all of our portfolio companies as investors and commercial partners for the companies, and building out the network and potential M&A partners has been helpful for us.

Working With Founders

If you were to describe the story that got you hooked and how the model may have evolved to what it is, how would you do that?

When I first met Mike Jones, he was very personable, family-oriented, and humble. Again, I didn’t know the story. How it was described to me and what I most fell in love with was we’re working with founders who have these great missions. Oftentimes, you can’t build a business alone. Science was there with the idea to build an entire system around 1 or 2 founders, scale them, and help them along that entire journey. It takes a village to reach the scale and find complementary synergies. Knowing what can break along that journey and making those fixes quickly is super meaningful, especially to an early entrepreneur.

 

What hooked me as well was that at the time, Science had its fund two launched with institutional investors. Where Mike and I also aligned was that I knew some of their institutional investors that were out in the Middle East and were also in the US with the state of Michigan retirement system. For us having strong institutional backing and knowing that we’d have a storied line and path moving forward was attractive.

For me, looking back, it was starting to see how all of these pieces aligned. You have the founder’s journey. We had the four cofounders of Science who were the foundation across building each company, whether it’s from strategic vision, to fundraising, having strategic corporate counsel, and financials. Those are the core four pillars of making sure that a company has a strong foundation. Building on that having joined to build out our partnership network has been key to helping scale it.

For me, what compelled me was working with mission-driven founders and building businesses that are going to be impactful to the broader economy on a large scale. That’s what venture is. It is, “How can we build something that is truly innovative?” We have that opportunity to make those big frontier changes at the earliest stages.

One of the themes that you hit on that’s important is the idea of building a platform as opposed to a fund. That has become a little bit more popular with some of the larger VCs who have gone out there and said they’re doing this. It has always been like that in my view. That makes a big difference because it’s not just about the capital. It’s about all the other things that you can do to help grow the company that you talked about. That’s where the real value add is.

Capital is important but it’s a commodity and you can get it in many places. Sometimes, capital is bad. If you get too much at the wrong valuation, as we saw with this last bubble in 2021 especially. It can ruin your company. You can also get LPs, quite frankly, who aren’t aligned. They can be more pain than they’re worth certainly, both as a fund manager and also as a founder. We both experienced that. What you folks have done is great because you’ve built a powerful platform to help these companies grow very efficiently. Have you found others are trying to emulate what you’ve done?

When you think about the history of studios, one of the earliest was Idealab founded by Bill Gross. It’s a model that we were very close to. There are many that are out there in different forms. We see human venture who’s based out in New York. We’ve seen companies like PSL or High Alpha. We’ve seen Atomic who are building companies internally. Everybody has a very unique flavor. For us, thinking about a venture studio, we’ve been in that second wave right after Idealab. Our platform continues to get stronger and smarter. We have proprietary dashboards that we work on with our companies day in and day out.

That intel only grows as we continue to work with different companies. We’re excited about the studio platform. One of our investors had spun out to create what’s called Volt. They are a fund of funds of studios. What’s interesting about them is they’re having their first summit. To your point, there’s this meaningful and impactful support across the ecosystem. Having different flavors and different types of companies that can help scale these businesses is key.

Venture Capital

One of the things that I’m trying to do in the venture debt space is bring that platform of value-add model to folks that we provide capital to because it’s been lacking. We’ll talk more about venture debt later but certainly, there’s a huge opportunity there for ARI because we’re very differentiated and just like you, my background was in capital markets at large institutions.

I have worked at three different institutions with more than a trillion in assets. I was at Deutsche Bank, Scotiabank, and Sun Life. Collectively, those are three of the largest financial institutions in the world. I learned a lot there, but what I gained was access and relationships with the largest institutional investors on the planet.

There are so many different ways that people can bring capital to a company or add strategic value. There's no one-size-fits-all. Share on X

As ARI starts to scale, you’re going to see massive scaling over the next 6 to 9 months, which is very exciting. People have been waiting and they’re about to see the success take hold. One of the things that we bring to the folks that we work with is access to this different pool of capital. VCs are important but in the grand scheme of things, the amount of money that VCs have is small compared to large pensions, sovereign wealth funds, and big asset managers.

Look at the peak market in VC in 2021. It was roughly a little under $350 billion of capital deployed in a market that was booming like it had never boomed before. That’s a third of the money that Sun Life manages. It’s not even close. They could fund the entire VC ecosystem with a third of their balance sheet. A lot of founders don’t realize that there are these other pockets of money and also potential partners that can help them in various ways, whether it’s banking, accounting, legal, or technology that they might not have access to.

Especially on the capital side, most of the founders aren’t going to know who to call at these large institutions. Being able to provide them with that access is invaluable like the access that you’re providing to your portfolio companies has been invaluable. Part of the reason why Liquid Death was so successful in my view is because they partnered with Science and you were able to help them raise a bunch of capital along the way and build their brand along with them.

Thank you. You bring up a good point. There are so many different ways that people can bring capital to a company or add strategic value. There’s no one-size-fits-all. At the end of the day, that’s the key right there. Since there is no one-size-fits-all, we’re still underwriting great companies but maybe they’re not fit to go out on their own or maybe they’re not fit to go with somebody else.

It’s similar to you. You’re backing businesses that are fundamentally really great and have strong underwriting processes but at the same time, maybe they’re getting overlooked from other banks. You’re providing that and filling that gap for people. It’s meaningful because, at the end of the day, how can we make a meaningful impact on this world if we don’t help everyone? There has to be a give and take. For you folks to fill that is wonderful.

What’s great about gaps is that if you can identify them, not only can you be very helpful because you’re doing something that other people aren’t doing because there’s this gap, but you can also generate outperformance because there’s a lot less competition in that space, whatever that space might be. In terms of the VC ecosystem and venture debt in particular, there are a lot of gaps. I always talk about the idea of gaps within the gap.

Venture debt, for instance, is underserved in my view. There’s less capital available than there is current demand for that capital. Within the ecosystem, most of the capital, and this is true for equity investors and debt investors, is going to the same types of founders, sectors, and regions. Think about SaaS companies in the Bay Area led by White men or Asian men who maybe went to Stanford or Berkeley. They’re getting a disproportionate amount of capital.

You’ve got FinTech companies coming out of New York. You’ve got life sciences in Boston. You’ve got some of the CPG stuff coming out of LA. There are these pockets that are attracting most of the capital, but what about the rest of the country? What about the sectors that aren’t hot that don’t have AI in the title? What about founders who are women, people of color, or Military veterans who don’t have that same level of easy access that founders in the Bay Area might have?

What about sectors that are underappreciated at the moment where you can get great opportunities, be an early equity investor, and get great value or you can be a debt investor and also get great value because you’re not competing against that many other term sheets, if any, because there’s nobody looking at these deals? Long story short, I’ve always said that if you can find the gaps, that’s where you can also find the alpha. The alpha is buried in the gaps.

 

I agree. We’ve thought about this. How do you look around the corner? You don’t know what’s around there but it’s having that foresight into how we can think about what’s going to make that difference. I love that idea.

The State Of The VC Ecosystem

Let’s take a step back. In the big picture, what is the state of the VC ecosystem from your point of view in terms of challenges, opportunities, and trends that you’re seeing?

We talk a lot about fundraising. You mentioned we raised quite a bit for Liquid Death and announced a big valuation. At the end of the day, we are underwriting good businesses, and we’re not alone in that. Everybody is being a lot more scrutinized around what’s in the market and being careful in how they’re deploying their capital. I don’t think we’re necessarily immune to that. It’s across asset classes where we want to find the best deals and we’re not seeing everyone so quick to deploy. That’s great.

It also weeds out some of those businesses that maybe a couple of years ago there was this idea of FOMO. There were these FOMO deals and valuations were crazy. We’ve pulled back. That’s healthy for the ecosystem and for VCs. There are stronger underwriting processes. Finding ways to pull in strategic capital has helped with that as well as finding ways to ensure how we can utilize our resources internally to help propel companies.

For us, a lot of the strategic capital is coming from corporate partners. For example, we had Live Nation which was invested in Liquid Death. That’s great because they act as not only an investment partner but also a marketing distribution partner as we launch into international waters across the UK and select countries in Europe. For us, it’s across many other venture firms, how can we provide that strategic value add to our companies and our portfolio.

The strategic value-add is so critical. People are getting more creative around it. Everybody says they’re a value-add partner, but most people aren’t or aren’t to a very large degree. They’re all running the same playbook. It’s being able to think creatively and say, “Who are the partners that could move the needle?” If you’re creative about that as an investor and you can introduce that concept and then introduce the actual relationship, that’s a huge value-add.

Agreed. Also, be efficient about it. At the end of the day, a lot of it is time and scale, so how can we penetrate these moats? How can we get to distribution much more quickly? At the end of the day, that’s what it is. That probably relates back to venture debt. How can we get these founders to focus on what they do best? Maybe it’s sometimes like, “Let’s not focus on the fundraising.” To your point of creative financial ways, how can we lift these company’s focus on the business, get to scale, and exit while building great businesses with good metrics?

Building Good Business

There’s been a swing from exuberance to risk aversion. It’s how I’d frame it. What would you say founders should do in this market where it’s very difficult to raise capital and the bar is much higher than it used to be?

Continue to focus on building a good business. At the end of the day, it all comes down to underwriting. How can you make your capital go a long way? What that means is, how can you deploy your team more efficiently? Are you hiring the right people? Are you finding the right partners in terms of distribution? Are you being efficient with your time? We have 24 hours in a day. Truly, how are you spending that? I think that comes down to work ethic or your personal drive.

Keep focusing on building a good business. At the end of the day, it all comes down to underwriting, how you can make your capital go a long way. Share on X

At the end of the day, we have our own personal development that we’re working through. How can you make sure that that translates into the work that we’re doing on a day-to-day basis? At the core, it’s how you build a great business, stay true to your values, and continue to make sure that you’re doing what you say.

When it comes down to financing and running through the business models, there are a few different things that pop out to me, what is your purpose, why are you truly running this business, and what does that mean to you. We always think about, “What is that founder’s journey? What is their story? What drives them?” Ultimately, what it comes down to is, who are their end customers, why is that customer journey also important, and what does that mean to the business.

That then flows into how we think about monetization in all of our models. That monetization, we think about it in its current state. What does that scale look like? How are we projected to get to exit? What are those small milestones along the way that we can get to very quickly? Having an understanding as to what that next milestone will be and having that view into it can help guide what are the next steps in place that I need to do to build my business, to focus, and make sure that I’m meeting those.

Are there any attributes that you look for in founders that are most important?

One is how true is that founder aligned to their current mission? Oftentimes, it relates back to a personal story. If you think back to Liquid Death and the reason why we wanted to remove plastic, I think back to one of our fund three companies called Mindset Care, which is helping to tackle homelessness and recidivism through turbo taxing an efficient way to apply for social security and disability benefits.

If you look at the story of Darren, the founder, he has a personal connection to it. It was something that he knew the process in and out. He understands what those challenges were. If you’re so deeply affected by something, you want to see that change and start to see that drive in it, it’s special and magical. Having worked with one of my partners, Peter, on these raises, when we start with the businesses and we think about what their pitch is, what it starts out as, and what we end up going into the market. It’s beautiful as we start to unfold why these founders are running their business and who they want around the table with them.

They’ve chosen Science as a partner for a reason. It’s our fiduciary duty to make sure that we bring additional strategic players around the table with them. The openness of founders to know what they know, have that purpose and the openness to want to bring on the best of the best to surround themselves with to scale their business is wonderful. I get excited every time we work with these founders and I can see it. I’m so grateful to be in the room with them.

Investment Principles

When you’re evaluating companies outside of the founders and perhaps their leadership team, what are the other investment principles that you’re thinking about and applying in your investment process?

It’s a pretty rigorous investment process. We have our studio team, which is a portfolio operator. If you think about a KKR Capstone or Cerberus, they’ve purchased an asset and they’re deploying their portfolio operations to ensure that they’re capitalizing on efficiency or a number of other areas. We do that on the earlier end to de-risk our investment.

How do we work with the founder, especially in the early stage? We want to know the businesses in and out and what are some of the breaks that we would see. We operate in very distinct models of CPG, Consumer Packaged Goods, mobile media, and marketplaces. What that means is we have very distinct metrics that we’re meeting under each of those business models. If we’re not meeting certain metrics, we know it’s not going to run. If we’re not meeting it, what are some of these small changes to make to get us to those milestones?

From thinking about a business model then the underlying metrics that we would need to meet, and the founder’s work ethic to get to those, the external validation of the partners that we’re bringing on is super key because the partnerships are what help us develop that moat to create that scale and efficiency. For us, it’s metrics, partnerships, the team, and certainly the finances. The finances are key and critical because we want to make sure that a business stays on track and has the ability to scale appropriately.

There’s a lot more into our investment process but at a high level, it’s a rigorous process that runs through the studio. It is reviewed by our investment committee at the fund level and we make our investments. At times, we will tranche our investment. We’re not making those investments in full on day one because we want to be able to maximize the efficiency across our capital and also ensure that the companies are making those movements.

 

There are a couple of things I wanted to dig into that I agree with. One is on the liquidity side. In general, having the cap structure or capital table optimized from the beginning is very important. I’ve talked about this before in the sense that you can sell too much equity early on and therefore there’s not enough left to give to later investors. You can also, sometimes with later-stage companies, over-lever yourself. You don’t want too much debt. You want an optimal amount of debt. There’s a lot to be thought about early.

If you begin with the end in mind and work backward by starting early at the stage of the companies that you’re dealing with, that’s helpful. A lot of companies have great ideas and even have good leadership teams but they don’t necessarily have the right capital structure. It’s so hard to unwind that. If you’ve given too much equity to the wrong investor early on, it’s very hard to recover from that.

The other thing I wanted to mention about liquidity is that sometimes, it’s not the best company that wins. It’s the company that lasts the longest. That’s something I talk about a lot, is thinking hard about one’s liquidity and having more than you need because things will always take longer than you think as a startup. They’re never going to come out as you planned. Usually, you’re going to have to pivot multiple times, and oftentimes, that’s not positive. Sometimes, you’re pivoting because things aren’t going well. Having a lot of liquidity is important. Having enough equity in the tank to use later is important. Not only for external investors but also for your employees.

I wrote an article called How to Avoid the Startup Death Spiral. When startups valuations have cratered as they have in the last few years sometimes through no fault of the company but because the macro environment has changed as it has in the last couple of years. When you’re down anywhere from 50% to 90% like a lot of the companies from the 2021 vintage, what does that mean? It means the equity that you gave employees the stock options are worth zero. They’re almost never going to be worth anything that’s material to the employees.

A lot of the better employees are going to be incentivized to leave. It also means when you go to raise more capital, you’re raising at a much lower valuation and you also have less credibility because in your last round, you’re raising at a much higher valuation. Not only do you have less equity to sell, but you also have less credibility in the market. This quickly becomes truly a death spiral because good employees leave, your operating metrics start to suffer, and your revenue growth slows. That impacts your valuation further. Before you know it, you’re dead. I think you have a good point to make.

I agree, which is why I’m so grateful to Tom Dare and Rob, who’s our CFO, to understanding these. Exactly to your point, if you don’t have those outlined from the very beginning and continue to monitor those finances, that could truly kill your business. I think having an understanding as well about the different financial products and the different ways that these businesses operate, not every company is made the same and needs the same amount of capital, so I 100% agree with everything that you’re saying.

 

Important Links

• Zack Ellison on LinkedIn
• Applied Real Intelligence (A.R.I.)
• 7 in 7 Show with Zack Ellison on Apple
• 7 in 7 Show with Zack Ellison on Spotify
• 7 in 7 Show with Zack Ellison on YouTube
• 7 in 7 Show with Zack Ellison on Amazon Music
• Priscilla Guevara on LinkedIn
• Science
• Sumitomo Corporation
• Neuberger Berman
• Moore Capital Management
• Anheuser-Busch
• Liquid Death
• Dollar Shave Club
• Unilever
• Rover
• Blackstone
• Idealab
• Live Nation
• Mindset Care
• How to Avoid the Startup Death Spiral
• Mike Jones on LinkedIn
• Mike Cessario on LinkedIn
• Jon-Ryan Riggins on LinkedIn
• Evan Spiegel on X
• Peter Pham on LinkedIn
• Darren Webb on LinkedIn
• Tom Dare on X
• Robert Carter on LinkedIn
• 7 in 7 Show Disclaimer

 

About Priscilla Guevara

Over 20 years of domestic and international financial experience, complemented by a deep operational and regulatory foundation. Served in highly visible, integral capacities with a focus on business strategy, development and investments. Columbia MBA grad with a keen ability to drive recommendations and create value through a data-driven, strategic and charismatic approach. Proven and successful entrepreneur with a strong, valued network.

Priscilla Guevara is a Partner at Science, a Los Angeles-based multi-asset investment firm partnering with and investing in disruptive consumer companies. She leads the structuring and capital formation efforts for investment vehicles and co-invest follow-on, manages partnerships & communications, and is an investor on behalf of Science Ventures.

Prior to Science, Priscilla served as an investor at ZX Ventures (Anheuser-Busch’s CVC arm) and an investor in sustainable assets on behalf of family offices. Further, her early international experience and expertise across Wall Street, from Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation to Neuberger Berman and JCAM (Moore Capital), resulted in growth of $10B+ AUM.

She is the Founder of Senior Women in Private Equity (SWIPE), on the Development Committee of the James Beard Foundation, and a Member of Alternative Investment Management Association (AIMA), All Raise, BeyondBoard, 100 Women in Finance, Women in Institutional Investing Network (WIIIN), and PR Net. She previously served on the board of The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (NYC Chapter). In her formative years, Priscilla held the title of Miss Junior Teen San Diego.

Personal Interests …
Transcendental Meditation, Hot Athletic Yoga, Tennis USTA Ranking 3.0, Pianist, Abstract Acrylic Artist, Level I Certified Master Sommelier, Travel, Reading, Intellectual Curiosity

SKILLS
*Mergers & Acquisitions (M&A)
*Investment Diligence
*Valuation Modeling
*Capital Formation
*Investor Relations
*Marketing
*Partnerships
*Communications
*Brand Building
*Event Planning
*Risk Management
*Strategy
*Advisory

Financial:
Alternative Assets, Private Equity, Venture Capital, Hedge Funds, Credit

Sustainability:
Health & Wellness, Renewable Energy, Women’s Empowerment, Financial Inclusion, Plastic-free Packaging, Plant-based

Blockchain/Crypto:
Blockchain for Social Impact, Liquid Structured Vehicles, Quant Algorithms, DeFi, Web3

Consumer/CPG (Disruptive Innovation):
Supply Chain/Logistics, Marketing/AdTech, Food & Beverage, Fem Health

Hospitality:
Global Luxury Hotels, Restaurants & Bars, Franchises, Michelin-star, James Beard Foundation