Mercedes Bent

  • Meet Stori: Mexico’s Credit Card for the Masses

    Mexico is the fastest growing e-commerce market in the world. Mexico earned the #1 spot ahead of India, China, Philippines, and Malaysia. This increase in online purchases means that Mexicans are increasingly looking for more ways to digitally pay. In China, home grown digital payments companies like Alipay and WeChat Pay have the dominant share of e-commerce.…

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  • Meet Forage: The Future of Job Search

    Forage was my first announced investment at Lightspeed. Find the original post here on Medium (also re-posted below). The team’s fundraising news was also announced in Techcrunch and The Sydney Morning Herald. ————— Does everyone want to become an investment banker or consultant? My junior year of college, the answer felt like yes. At 19,…

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  • Investing and Empowering: What I’m Focusing on at Lightspeed.

    Originally posted Nov 2019   I recently joined Lightspeed on the early-stage consumer investment team. It’s unlike any other team I’ve seen in venture. I’m the fifth woman to join our consumer team, which also includes two men. The last time I joined an investment team, nearly a decade ago, I mostly saw men when I looked around…

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  • Getting up to Speed in VC and What I’ve Learned

    If you are considering VC and have the opportunity to work at a fund, here is my TL;DR advice about how to design your first few months: 1) identify what parts of the role you want to test / explore and be very transparent / intentional about these areas 2) keep a journal of your…

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  • Internal Ventures…..What’s That?

    “You run new ventures….so what does that mean??” This is a question I receive almost every time I tell anyone what I do. I stepped into a role at General Assembly as Head of New Ventures 5 months ago and have quickly realized the role is not just rare, but that many have no idea what…

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  • Validating Your Startup Idea: Sell Reduced Risk, Solve a Real Need

    I was reading Amy Hoy’s Unicorn Free newsletter the other day and was struck by a point she highlighted: every successful business is in the business of selling reduced risk to their clients. If you’re not doing that, you’re not selling the right product. 37 Signals commented on how this thought relates to people working at startups back in…

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