Nell Daly Podcast Transcript
Nell Daly joins host Brian Thomas on The Digital Executive Podcast.
Welcome to Coruzant Technologies, home of The Digital Executive Podcast.
[00:00:12] Brian Thomas: Welcome to the Digital Executive. Today’s guest is Nell Daly. Nell Daly is an international leader in venture capital, consumer brands, content, and global business development. Having worked 20 plus years across a variety of sectors, spanning from wall street to news media, beauty, fashion, beverage, sports, and entertainment.
She has facilitated raising over 200 million in capital for startups, middle market companies, holding groups, and international funds from HNWI, SFOs, and institutions. Currently Nell Daly is the Co-founder of Delete Ventures and London based boutique venture, creative and talent management brand Incubation Agency.
Well, good afternoon, Nell, welcome to the show!
[00:00:55] Nell Daly: Thank you so much for having me, Brian. I appreciate it.
[00:00:58] Brian Thomas: You bet. And I appreciate you making the time. I know actually both of us are a little bit under the weather, but we’ve muscled on through to show up to a podcast, which is my favorite thing in the world, meeting new people behind the mic.
So thank you again. And now. We’re going to jump right into the questions here. You’ve got quite the career as a psychotherapist, media commentator, senior executive, venture capitalist, and now you’re the co-founder of Delete Ventures. Could you share with our audience the secret to your career growth and what inspires you?
[00:01:28] Nell Daly: Oh, this is such a great question. You know, I hate to answer this question in a cliche way. And I thought about it a lot today, knowing you were going to ask it. I think there’s 2 things. I think one is that one secret is I’m incredibly open to opportunities. I’m not afraid to pick up the phone and talk to people.
So, as a former psychotherapist, you coach a lot of people about career paths and what they should do. And a lot of people answer that question, but I probably saying you should follow your passion and I agree with that to a certain extent. But I also think that there’s things I’m passionate about that.
I’m not naturally very good or inclined to doing that also make money. So early on in my career, I received an MFA in creative writing from Columbia, which was super valuable, and I loved it. And it was a passion of mine. And then I went on for a social work degree and was a psychotherapist for a long time.
And I loved those two things. I was very passionate about that, but it’s very difficult to monetize those careers. And so sometimes I think life, especially, I want to say for women or single mothers, put your back up against a corner and sometimes you really have to dig deep and say, even if I like to do some of these things.
Is it really going to help me pay my mortgage? Is it going to allow me to send my kids to college? Is it going to allow me to save for my retirement? And so I think at some point in my career, I said, you know what? I want to see if I can use some of the skills that I’m naturally good at. And maybe that I’m not passionate about to actually start to make real money in order to feel more comfortable supporting my family as a single mother.
I’m no longer single anymore. I’m remarried. But I think that experience gave me insight into a little bit of a different answer to that question, because I don’t think it’s just about following your passions. And I think you also have to look at your personality and the gifts that you’ve been given and say, okay, what am I actually really good at that?
I can make money on. And that doesn’t always mean it’s our passions. It’s a little bit of a different answer, I think, than you probably normally get.
[00:03:40] Brian Thomas: No, that’s great. I appreciate that. Again, everybody has their unique story, unique background, things that they’ve encountered in their life, whether it’s traumatic or not or a challenge opportunity.
Absolutely. And that is, I just really appreciate your unique perspective as well as our audience. So, thank you, Nell. Nell, jumping into the next question, maybe you can elaborate on your current role as co-founder of Delete Ventures and what unique challenges and opportunities you face in the boutique venture and brand incubation space.
[00:04:10] Nell Daly: I think right now in the venture capital world, I mean, you have these conversations all the time, right? Brian money’s dried up. It’s hard to, you know, the capital markets aren’t flowing the way they were. Although I’ve actually never raised capital during a time that it was easy to raise capital. I don’t know if it’s ever easy to raise capital.
You tell me, you. Interviewed, hundreds of people now in business and have these conversations all the time. I started raising capital for projects that I was involved in during the pandemic. And when I started doing that, everyone told me that I was crazy. Everybody told my partners and I, that we were crazy that it was a really difficult time.
Obviously, what was happening in the world? Nobody was giving out money. They were holding money. It was the pandemic. Everyone was nervous that they were going to get very sick. People were dying terrible time. I happen to do it. I think that for us as a group, in my last venture deal.
We just hit the ground running and didn’t give up. We sat on the phone like 24 hours a day between London and New York and made a million phone calls and just kept going. I think now the challenge doubling down and doing my next venture deal is that the markets are still not great in terms of raising capital and in certain areas where I try to raise capital, let’s say the consumer goods space.
It’s particularly hard for people. Especially in certain sectors, like. The beauty and lifestyle industry, which I think was a bit flooded over the last couple of years. I’ve had an easier time raising capital for food and beverage. I think tech is still really a hot thing to be able to raise capital for.
So, I think the challenges that I face are really the challenges that a lot of founders or people out in the venture world face in general, which is just that, not everybody’s giving away money at this time and. The geopolitical climate is very complicated. Obviously, the crypto industry has fallen apart a little bit as well over the last year or two, and I think we’re going to start to see a rebound in that.
But yeah, I think those are some of the particular challenges that we faced.
[00:06:18] Brian Thomas: Thank you. I appreciate you sharing that and you’re right. In your role trying to raise capital, it doesn’t matter what time or what shape the market’s in. I know it can be challenging, but right now, especially.
And with the new year ringing in I think there’s going to be a lot of challenges ahead of us, but I am very cautiously optimistic that we will rebound and do some great things this year. So, thank you.
Nell you’ve facilitated raising over 200 million in capital, which is again from my vantage point.
Great work there. What key strategies have you employed in securing funding for startups and middle market companies?
[00:06:52] Nell Daly: Oh, my gosh. I think again. There’s a couple of things. I’m just really tenacious and I kind of go back to the old school way of just picking up the phone and calling people. I am a huge believer and just this is going to sound so silly, Brian.
But when I start on a project, I just work with my team and we create massive amounts of Excel spreadsheets, and we just start combing through our networks and we start Googling. Now it’s wonderful because we can use like ChatGPT. Is involved a little bit now, as we’re so lucky to have that.
And I just started combing my networks and doing as much research as I can to try to find out who the right people are to call depending on the project. And then I just don’t stop. I think that’s number 1. I’m so surprised when I work with founders, how nervous they are to pick up the phone and how little they actually use Google or try to find lists of, let’s say, Venture funds that perhaps fund beauty brands.
You can, if you’re lucky enough to have access to something like pitch book, that’s obviously very helpful. But I think that’s the one tactic that I use probably more than others is I just am tenacious and keep really detailed lists and then I also if I reach out to a venture fund and let’s say, they turn us down.
I generally say, hey, this project might not be right for you, but do you mind getting on the phone with me for 15 minutes and tell me what you do look at investing in. And do you have any ideas for us or who we could go to, and we can keep incredibly detailed notes about those conversations and you would be surprised how many people are willing to say, yeah, let’s jump on the phone for 15 minutes because they’re looking for deal flow, right?
They have to draw down on the capital that they’ve raised. And so they know that I’m boots on the ground. I’m working it out there and might have a deal in the future. That would be really interesting for them. Or they might have a colleague at a different firm. Who’s like, wow, this deal would be really right for them.
So, I think just that human to human interaction and saying Hey, can you help? It’s like a huge key to having a lot of success raising capital. I think it’s okay not to know everything. I think founders. Are generally nervous or people who are raising capital and nervous to tell people what they don’t know.
We always hear the phrase fake it till you make it. I’ve certainly done that in different parts of my career throughout my life. But I think in this space in particular, what I generally do is say, listen, there’s certain things I know. And there’s a lot of things like, I really don’t know. I don’t have an MBA.
I haven’t been doing this for 20 years. But here’s what I can tell you about this deal or about this sector or what I’m working on. And then I ask a lot of questions and people are super generous with their time. So I’ve gotten a lot of really good guidance, especially when I went out for something like middle market debt.
A lot of people don’t even know how to source middle market debt or what is middle market debt. Guys who started working at institutions that might not even have anything to do with they were traders, let’s say, at a place like Bank of America or UBS, but they could lead me in the right direction of somebody who might know where to help me source capital. And I think the 3rd factor there is that every time you get on the phone, you need to present your idea kind of like, it’s the 1st time you’ve ever presented it.
You have to have a ton of energy. And I was so impressed with my partners that I’ve done this with before and some of the founders that I work with, because every time they get on a phone call, they do it. Like, they’ve never done it before. They do it with a ton of energy. It always seems fresh and it reminds me a lot of if you go to a Broadway play in New York, you watch those actors deliver that performance and, you know, that they’ve already done it maybe twice that day or it’s their 7th show of the week.
So, I think keeping the energy up when you’re talking about deals is also really, really helpful.
[00:10:47] Brian Thomas: Thank you. And I appreciate you sharing some of your strategies. And I think the key one that I like to highlight is the fact that you are having that human-to-human interaction. People trust people, they don’t trust names or brands necessarily.
And I like your approach. So, thank you. Nell, the last question of the evening here, we ask everybody if you’re leveraging any of that new or emerging tech in your business, and if not, maybe there’s a cool tool or app you found useful, you might share with us.
[00:11:16] Nell Daly: Yeah, I have not used a ton of tech in sort of the businesses that I’ve been involved with, or they haven’t been tech heavy. My last venture fund, what we did was we rolled up creative agencies and we did look at some technology there. And I think that we’re still exploring that that can help basically on the influencer side of things where you can do a lot of data in terms of looking at an influencer.
And let’s say how many times they post what their audience looks like, who they actually follow, who the tastemakers are. So, I’ve seen some really interesting
we are involved and I will be launching inside my newest portfolio and venture a tech company. And this is my 1st time being a founder of a tech company. We have already been funded. We built the software and it’s in the climate space specifically in the carbon credit market. So that’s been really interesting and it’s been interesting to develop that technology and decide whether or not we’re going to put it on the blockchain, how you tokenize carbon credits and so, yeah I’ve just started to kind of get involved in this space and I’m excited about it because most of the time when I’m raising capital for, let’s say, consumer brands, everybody I’m talking to is don’t you have any tech? So I’ll finally be able to put out some tech of my own with some partners over 2024, which we’re excited about.
So, yeah. You’re going to laugh at me. Brian, when you ask about an app that has become quite popular that I’m watching a lot of people use. Have you heard of by any chance?
[00:12:55] Brian Thomas: Yes, it’s been mentioned here on the podcast. I have not personally used it, but yes.
[00:12:59] Nell Daly: Yeah, so I think I have a business partner and one of my colleagues and one of the people on my team, they’ve all signed up and gotten into Raya and they’re using it for networking purposes.
I’ve always encouraged people to use Bumble in terms of professional networking, not only if they were dating, but they should do it, for friend to friend if they’re in, especially if they’re traveling and they’re in different countries or they’re moving to different cities. I think it’s really important.
I think raising capital is a lot like dating. Like it’s a numbers game. You have to make a lot of phone calls before; you get a winner. Sometimes you have to kiss a lot of frogs before you find somebody that you fall in love with. So, it’s interesting when I saw that question pop up that you wanted to ask.
Raya is coming up in conversations internally, and one of my business partners in particular in London has had some real success driving business just through being on the app. So, to be determined, but that is one app that I think I’ll start to explore a little bit in
[00:13:55] Brian Thomas: 2024. I love it. I think we’ve get at least one app, one plug for a company or an app on the podcast on every single podcast, if not two or three which is awesome. And again, you’re, I think you’re the second person that Raya recently on a podcast. And I appreciate that because someone will take that and run with it.
And I hope it’s successful for whoever uses it. So, thank you again.
[00:14:19] Nell Daly: Yeah. And I would say there that. A lot of people say it’s impossible to get on that. You have to be a celebrity. I don’t know one of my colleagues got on it very quickly and, she’s 24 years old. My other colleague was seconded by a few people that he was surprised was even on the app and he was able to get in.
So, I don’t think people should be discouraged because they just simply hear that it’s for celebrities who want to date or A -listers. I think people should try to get on it and it reminds me a lot of Clubhouse, back in the day where it felt like it was exclusive, but eventually you could get on it, during the pandemic. So, yeah, I think its worth people trying it out.
[00:14:55] Brian Thomas: Absolutely. Thank you again. And Nell it was certainly a pleasure having you on today and I look forward to speaking with you real soon.
[00:15:03] Nell Daly: Yes. Thank you so much for having me, Brian. I appreciate it.
[00:15:06] Brian Thomas: Bye for now.
Nell Daly Podcast Transcript. Listen to the audio on the guest’s podcast page.
