Paige Finn Doherty on early-stage conviction investing and why she wired into Nox Metals this morning

trying to warn you. Thank you so much for coming on the stream. How you got you brought your own metal? I lifted one. How are you doing? Okay, so we both lifted the metal cubes. We did. We did. Are you Are you in Knox? You did Knox, right? Yes. We invest in Yes. Introduce yourself for the stream. Hello everyone.

My name is Paige Fendori. I'm the founding partner behind Genius Ventures. We invest in technical storytellers at their earliest chapters. Very cool. And you wrote a children's book on venture capital. You're introducing introducing venture capital to the children. Are you getting paid out by anthropic in the lawsuit?

Did you see this? Oh no. I haven't got check. You got to go check my mail. You might have a few thousand bucks waiting for you. You can you can roll that into the fund. Wait, that would be I got to check my email. Maybe uh what uh yeah, what's your reaction to to demo day? Oh my gosh, it's too low, right?

The most Yeah, most people have been saying, "I don't feel comfortable investing. The prices are just too low. " Suspiciously low. Suspiciously low. When you go on when you go on T-Mo when you go on Teemo and there's like $12 couch and you're like, how can a couch be $12?

You're like, how can this how can this clearly billion dollar company be worth $60 million? Let me tell you, the energy is electric today. Um, it's been so fun bumping into friends. Uh, my friend, shout out Casey Caruso, she brought me bone broth to pregame the day. No way. I drove over in the Whimo.

This is the SF locket right here. Do you remember when I explained uh uh uh bone broth to you for the first time? Uh, no. I think I said something like protein tea or something like that. It really is. Yeah. It's like bone broth. You mean like protein shake? Yeah. Yeah. It's like protein. Yeah. Yeah. Cuz you warm it up.

We we warmed it up and we drank half a gallon on the stream one day. You guys are going to do a a mukbang of all the bone the bone broths. Well, we are we are completely aligned with Kettle Fire. We're aligned with Kettle and Fire cuz we're buddies with Justin Mayer.

So we So we cannot be we we cannot be impartial when it comes to So what what's the strategy going into demo day for you? You had already invested deployment. Yeah. We looked at a a bunch of companies, but actually the story on Knox was pretty unique.

Zayn and I met um probably four years ago uh when I was fundraising for my first fund. And at the time he was working at a firm and they were like buying and selling machine shops. Uh and then we just stayed in touch over that time. Um and I would send him like some of our manufacturing investments.

Like we have a company in Man. And I would send that to him for his thoughts on manufacturing. And then I saw on LinkedIn he was posting he got into YC and I was like dude like this is amazing. Uh and then we hopped on a call. I was really excited by what they're building.

Uh really fits into the reindustrialization of America, the whole American dynamism. Yeah. Um and I actually was on my friend's roof last night. We were talking and she was just like, you know, if you just like love company, you just like got to go in.

And I remember being like, "Okay, I got to call Zayn and be like, yo, like like please, like I really want to be a part uh of this journey. " And he was like, "Yeah, we would love to have you be a part of it. " So I um sent the wire this morning. Fantastic. There you go. There you go.

You did not don't want to wait until the end of the day. You know, we've been doing a lightning round with everyone. Um who is your favorite entrepreneur of all time? Who is the genius behind Genius Ventures? But that's so hard.

Um, the first name that popped into my head was uh Jerry Lopez, who's a surfer, Zen master, philosopher. I feel like very much not in like the tech world of his movement. Yeah.

And what I love about him is he uh he's just has this incredible sense of grace riding super aggressive waves and then took that same jury's language. Yeah. Yeah. Took that same sense of grace into building companies. He gets barreled a lot more. Oh, he gets barreled. Oh, yeah. I know all about getting barreled.

I've learned in this shore break. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. John, I I teach John about surf. Every time we see the ocean, I explain this is a beach break. That would be a point break. That's great. Second question of our lightning round. How did you make your first dollar online or in business?

Did you do anything crazy as a kid or early on? Um, yeah. I tutored. Okay. Well, okay. I'm trying to I'm trying to think of like the the first dollar. Oh, you know what it is? Okay. So, my mom is an impressionist artist, Kim Dy Art.

Uh my brothers and I when we were camping, we would go and sell her art cards in the campground when we were like five. Captive audience. We were It was like seven, five, and a three-year-old going around being like, "Can you buy our art cards? " And like I've became an amazing salesperson through that experience. Yeah.

Now you're selling money. Yeah. Uh where are you on fund two now? What what's uh what's the update on the fund? Yep. We're uh wrapping up our last couple investments in fund two. So, we have two more to go. Very exciting. More to come soon. Big announcements. Big announcements soon. Yeah. Show. We'll ring the gong.

We'll ring the gong. We don't have our gong with us, but uh do we have sound effects today or no? Uh barely. No, we don't. We don't. Fortunately, no. Ben is the claps. Okay. The the the gong we will save for a proper announcement. Okay. I like that. Uh, make sure to send us any founders you like and have fun.

Let them know for business. Thank you. It was a pleasure seeing both of you. It was a pleasure. We will see you soon.