How Family Offices Are Redefining Impact: Investing in Women & the Future w/ Evan & Ariel Segal, Segal Ventures

SCS (Intro): 

In an era marked by backlash against DEI. Segal Ventures remains unapologetically committed to funding equity and backing those who build for the long term. Long before it became a headline trend or a culture war casualty, Evan Segal made it his mission to invest in women-led funds and companies.

Today, his family office, further led by his daughter Ariel, backs over 50 venture funds, 94% of which are women led with 180 plus direct investments and a portfolio spending more than 800 startups. The approach isn't just about capital, it's about catalytic value, intellectual, social, and financial, which we will get into in this episode.

And while many are rewriting their playbooks to dilute DEI, the seagulls are doubling down because for them, this was never performative. As Ariel shared on bill and dollar moves, it's not just writing checks, it's a long-term partnership built on value. The kicker. They're not just investing, they're modeling how modern family offices should operate, which is exactly why I wanted them on the show.

From deploying donor advised funds creatively to showing up as strategic partners beyond the wire. Segal Ventures is setting the bar for what next gen, impact driven family offices can and must be. I hope you have your notebooks out because I was taking notes throughout this episode. Enjoy.

Evan Segal: 

So I had the opportunity, as you said, to grow up in Pittsburgh and surrounded by a family that was very supportive. My dad had his business and my grandfather's, and you know, from them starting off as essentially being peddlers, as sellers, as learning how to get people to believe and trust in you.

I graduated from Carnegie Mellon, undergrad and graduate school. I worked for Scott Paper for four years in Philadelphia, which is now a division of Kimberly-Clark.

Most people think it's the Michael Scott Paper Company from the office in Scranton, Pennsylvania, but it's not. But I worked on a lot of interesting projects, both in strategic planning and then in marketing and learned. There A, how to have start to have fun selling a commodity like product. And B, how to differentiate and actually improve margins on a product that like toilet paper that everyone needs but is commoditized.

And yet we fundamentally change the category. By innovating in that category. From there, I then went back to Pittsburgh and took over and worked with my dad at Dormat Manufacturing. And so at 27, I found myself as the CEO of a small manufacturing business in Pittsburgh. And over the next 20 years, we grew it into a global business.

We went from 20 employees to 300, from sales of $2 million to $65 million, and we sold big and small customers all around the world. A phenomenal learning experience about everything in manufacturing, building a new plant, hiring people, all the challenges working with national, global chains –  if you can name a restaurant chain anywhere in the world, they used our products as well as any appliance manufacturer.

Then went through a very successful exit, and one key part of success for me was that the factory stayed in Pittsburgh. And 20 years later after the sale, it's still in Pittsburgh and people for me still work there kind of post Dormant.

The short story was I met Barack Obama. And really realized this sense of leadership, of charisma and began to work on their campaign on the finance side. And you know, it was an incredible journey. And then we had the opportunity to move to Washington, my wife Tracy and I. The president nominated me to be the Chief Financial Officer at the US Department of Agriculture.

And that is the third largest cabinet agency, which has a budget of $150 billion. A hundred thousand employees and really touches every American in every day. After that is when I began this latest chapter of my life, which is a combination of impact investing and mission-driven philanthropy. The joy of this journey is, again, getting to speak.

To someone like yourself working with Ariel and all the incredible people we work with every day. 

SCS: 

And Ariel, I mean, you've seen your father grow his company from strength to strength here, really the family business. What would you say was a takeaway for you looking at his career? 

Ariel Segal: 

He worked really hard when I was growing up and I saw him building something and having that ownership and impact every day and what he was doing, and was really inspired by that entrepreneurial journey and then now inventor to help many startups to grow his journey early on in my life was definitely impactful to what we're doing now in my own career.

SCS: 

Yeah. So tell us a little bit about what brings both of you now to this journey of investing in women. I think that is front and center in everything that Segel Ventures does. Tell us the genesis of building these thesis. 

Evan Segal: 

The first thought that comes to mind is the fact that we have to ask this question is part of the problem. You know that being said, the data and the results prove that women are better leaders. They outperform men in all types of roles, and they typically will under promise and outperform as opposed to the typical bro coach culture that, you know, throws out the world of all the great things they are gonna do and then are off to their next whatever.

Probably 15, 20 years ago I got involved with Kiva, which was a crowdfunding platform that integrates microfinance to support people around the world. And we helped to bring that to the US and funded the first full scale pilot. And through that experience, both globally, but in the US what microfinance has found over the years is that women borrowers pay back at a much higher rate than men.

Bottom line is they're trusted more on platforms because of performance. And not surprisingly, women control a significant portion of consumer purchases every day that go on in the world. And so I started on this journey with that mindset, and what I found is that women fund managers and founders and CEOs in general, I would say are farmers.

That is they sow the seeds to grow and nurture and support ecosystems and each other, and people. In contrast, the high pressured bro culture tends to be miners. They extract. It's a zero sum mindset. And what I've found is in this growth mindset, there's also a reciprocity mindset. So we would meet a fund manager and she would say, well, if you like me, let me introduce you to a friend of mine who's got a fund.

And this just this circle of virtuosity continues to grow. And so we fast forward today where we just have this incredible honor. And I, I really believe it's an honor to be invested in so many incredibly well run funds with thoughtful leaders who are making a difference in the world. 

SCS: 

Yeah. And Ariel, you were a recent addition, right?

So Dad started on this journey early on. As the daughter of someone who believes so deeply in this, how has that shaped your thinking? How are you building the portfolio and being smart about it, right? 

Ariel Segal: 

Yeah. So for me it was exciting because I first got a taste of venture about 10 years ago, working part-time at a fund during business school.

Loved the venture space, but I was sort of offput by some of the things going on in the culture in the meantime over the past 10 years to see my dad building this incredibly successful female led family office. It was really exciting to be able to be part of the venture world, but to have this more collaborative type of approach without the sharp elbows.

So when I had the opportunity to come on board last year, it was just perfect timing and really exciting for me to play a role in that. For me, it's been really exciting to meet all the incredibly smart women that we've built within our network and really sort of operationalize that network that we have to help the women within our portfolio to succeed. 

SCS: 

So Evan, you talk about this and I wanna be a devil's advocate here. Of course, you know, I am on your side and it's remarkable that we still have to be justifying the fact that this is a business case, right? 

But even more so today, I mean, you've been in government, there is different signs today, to say the least, on where women stand, Anti-DEI sentiment is hitting our business in many different ways.

How are you reframing or thinking about this today and supporting the work that you do? 

Evan Segal: 

So I think changing labels, scrubbing websites, playing of political football doesn't change facts on the ground. And so, as an example in the AgTech space, you can take away the word sustainable farming. You can take away climate change.

Farmers, ranchers, people that are doing the work, they're dealing with this every day. They may call it soil health. They may call it weather, but they're dealing with the impacts of what's going on in our world. Businesses, banks, financial institutions, insurance companies have built climate change into their risk modeling and into their business and their products. 

So a political football game doesn't change the reality, and so that's how we believe strongly in what we're doing. From time to time, we will use different languages to create opportunities that are still targeted. And we do that for the partners we work with more than anything because what we don't want to do is create hurdles, artificial hurdles, by the way that others have put in the way, to take away from the work. 

And so we still continue to believe strongly in how we access and kind of find equity that's out there in terms of funding, it could be for-profit equity, it could be philanthropic and DAF dollars going into a fund that invests in companies, it could be microfinance or giving circles.

There's lots of ways to fund change. And when you meet passionate change makers, people that care about the future of the world, it makes a huge difference. 

Let me just give you one quick example. Two incredible women in Pittsburgh. One is a pharmacist, and she asked a simple why question, which often is, you know, some of the best questions and we often hear it from young people around the world, but why do we still have plastic prescription bottles for medicines?

And what happens to them when they're done and when you realize the amount of plastic that's going into landfills from prescription bottles, that why question becomes really important. So she initially created a fully compostable bottle, but she realized she had to work in a system that used automated packaging for pharmacy benefit managers.

And so she created something now that's 80% compostable, but is compatible with those machines. I'm hopeful it changes the way we all get prescription medicines, and once we all know that there's an alternative, that every time we get a prescription from a pharmacy or whoever else might be even for our pets that we demand, it's in a compostable bottle.

That's just one micro example and one really narrow targeted of two young women who said, we can change the world one bottle at a time. 

SCS: 

And what's the total addressable market for that? I mean, let's talk about the business case. Obviously that is a huge opportunity and I'm sure you're reaping the returns from it.

Let's talk a little bit about both the profit and the purpose here. 

Evan Segal: 

You know, what they found is once they can get volume, and we, again, that's often the, I'm used to this 'cause I dealt with manufacturing career. You have to get enough volume to, you can be cost competitive equal or less than the plastic bottles they're using.

And while the number may seem like a big number in the total market size, it's not all it would take would be one or two big players to get on board and they're in conversations with and in pilots with some of those companies. For us, making an impact in the world is the key driver. 

I don't measure success by the financial return alone. You know, I think that the impact not only in the world and downstream, but also these two young women and how, you know, they're changing the world, and if we can be a part of that journey and help them, and help them inspire other people, then those effects, that legacy becomes so much greater than just simply an investment.

SCS: 

Yeah, of course. And Ariel, you are coming in at a time for portfolio growth, portfolio management, as I understand the fund is not making new investments at this point in time. 

Can you speak a little bit to, I guess, the work that you are doing now and if someone were to be just starting out their family office, looking at what your dad has done and perhaps, you know, some of the lessons learned, what would they be?

How would we be best equipped to build strong family offices for both profit and purpose? 

Ariel Segal: 

In terms of what I'm doing, my background is really in go to market in tech startups, specifically in marketing. And I'm really passionate about storytelling, and messaging and positioning. And so I like to come in and work with both our funds and our fund managers on how they are telling their story and presenting themselves to the various different audiences that they need to address.

And so that can mean, you know, for a company thinking about how they're structuring and hiring on their marketing team. To set themselves up for success within a fund. It can be like, how are they supporting their portfolio companies, but also how are they fundraising? How are they positioning themselves as unique in the market?

And so we're helping with everything from talent to fundraising to things like how do you run a great AGM? How do you set up your email newsletter? Sort of thinking about all the different things that these small funds need to do outside of investing, and how can we make that easier for them in terms of.

Lessons learned and how to set yourselves up for success. I think ultimately it's a partnership and it's a really long standing partnership, and so you're gonna be working with these people for a long time, so you need to make sure that there's a really strong fit in terms of personalities and values and then making it a mutually beneficial relationship.

We'll make introductions on behalf of our fund managers all the time, but then as Evan mentioned earlier, they'll say, hey, here's another fund manager that you should meet, and so it becomes a really synergistic relationship together where we're both adding value to one another. 

SCS: 

If I may, here you are at 50 funds, more than 50 funds, 94% of which are women-led, and then a whole lot of underlying portfolio companies. Is it at about 800 right now? 

Ariel Segal: 

Yeah, there's about 180 direct investments, and then the broader portfolio through our funds is over 800. What we really tried to do right, is to write checks into a large number of funds to really make a statement about the importance of investing in women in this space.

The numbers that we've seen were just really shocking that three quarters of US VC firms don't have a single female investing partner. And so when we find these funds that are entirely female led or there's a female founding partner, we really wanna support them and increase that representation in the space.

And so we made the conscious decision to sort of write smaller checks to a larger number of funds. 

SCS: 

What I'm getting here is strategy, right? In terms of portfolio allocation, of course, we all wanna make broad swaths of impact, but for most families as well, there is a pressure of, you know, not just impact, but looking at it from a returns perspective, which is increasingly important as this conversation of merit emotion comes to play, right?

Evan Segal: 

There's two couple points there. One is we're thinking about value add where can our experiences be value add. If we're just viewed as kind of an ATM writing a check, we're probably not a great partner. 

But if we're with a fund manager who values our input, our ideas, and thinks we can add value to their proposition, then it starts to be a healthy partnership that the willingness to ask for help.

Can you make an introduction? Would you talk to some of our founders? Would you speak at an AGM? Those types of being part of their ecosystem. It's part of it. And again, different experiences. So Ariel is very modest about her background, but she is brilliant in B2B marketing and through all of her experiences in geolocation data and creating insights for all types of companies.

It has really been incredibly helpful and valuable to these fund managers and my own experience, whether it's in manufacturing, in agriculture, but all through so many other experiences, we find ways to add value to those funds. The fund managers also, there's an iteration that goes on, so they get smarter as they continue on their own journey, their network grows, their ability to identify and find and foster winners becomes amazing.

I'm sure if you think about, you know, you today versus you in 2018, you are a smarter, more talented investor, because there's this idea. Mike Marriner from Roadtrip Nation talked about living a beta life and living a beta life is, every day is a beta test that you learn. And the you of today is smarter than the you from yesterday.

And so we've seen some fund managers continue to expand their notion of what they do. One fund is absolutely focused on sustainability. And they initially started in the fashion and apparel space, and they're brilliant in that space, but they realized that sustainability goes beyond that. And so their second fund, they've widened the aperture.

Another fund manager was always interested in tech and robotics, but she created a new fund that is a much broader portfolio that really takes into account advanced materials, telecommunications. What people talk about is deep tech, but those technologies that are gonna change the future, including obviously artificial intelligence, which by the way, we happen to see in every deck now it's machine learning is the buzzword in every deck.

You have to be smart enough to kind of dissect that and understand what they mean. So this portfolio strategy has been evolving. It's been, you know, cultivating over time, and then we throw in there from time to time just finding a founder, someone who's doing something totally innovative and creative, and I just wanna meet them. I'm gonna call them up and say, who are you? Tell me about what, I love what you're doing. 

A couple companies that are working on putting menstruation products in every public restroom for free. Now, if you ask women that question, it's an obvious, like, what? What? Why are we even asking this question? And men don't even understand it. And I often say, and again, this comes from Scott Paper working in restrooms, but maybe we should take the toilet paper in men's restroom, take it out of the stalls and put it on the wall in a machine, and then they have to have quarters to access it so they know what it's like in terms of that accessibility and so big and small. 

We're trying to continue to evolve and curate our portfolio that not only delivers those type of outsized market returns, but more importantly has this synergistic impact and it's not, you know, a reactive response to return. You can be an engaged investor, which means if you choose to add value to the investment process, to your companies that you know and funds that you work with, you are part of the return. 

And so that interactive and engaged process I think is really important. It's not just sitting back in in a family office and saying, hump pump hump, let's review the quarterly returns. But we’re saying no, what can we do to help support and be part of that? 

SCS: 

Yeah. So Ariel, you're close to the founders and the funders in the portfolio and beyond. Of course, I know you all take a very broad network approach. It's a plus plus game instead of a zero sum game. What are you seeing in terms of the market sentiment today?

I mean, it feels a little bit tough. You know, we've had a bit of a rough fundraising winter. Is this still the case? What are you seeing on the ground now with regards to how your fund managers and founders, maybe two different questions.

Ariel Segal: 

They are performing, certainly it's a difficult time for fundraising, but we're hopeful.

I think it's challenging because we invested in a lot of funds and then sort of 2021, 2020 sort of boom. And now they're going out to raise their second fund, but we haven't necessarily started to see returns from their first fund. And in some cases, it's definitely difficult and you're still really betting on the person more so than on the traction and the numbers.

And so that's an art of storytelling, right? And to be able to show the wins that they have. But they don't necessarily have the proof quite yet. So we're hopeful. I mean, I think that obviously with the administration there's a lot of turmoil and uncertainty still, but I think that hopefully we'll start to see things turn around.

SCS: 

On the fund specifically because I think this is very real, right? The fact that there's no distributions, the DPIs are about due, they're out of dry powder. What strategies are working for fund managers now as they're out to build their next fundraise? 

What have you seen work from a storytelling perspective? Is it a wait and see market story, or they're actively out there with secondaries? Like what has worked here? 

Ariel Segal: 

It's important to be able to show the wins where you have them. And so even if that overall fund number isn't necessarily successful, we think it's really compelling to tell really specific, tangible stories about an investment, how that investment came to be, how you added value to the investment, why they wanted you as a fund manager on their cap table.

What introductions have you been able to make for them? We like to think about it in terms of both financial capital, but as well as intellectual capital and social capital on our end and how we add value. But then sort of telling that story as a fund manager is really key. So even if like the overarching fund numbers aren't helpful, they can have that sort of micro case study I think can be really compelling.

SCS: 

Yeah. And how about for the founders? What are we feeling on the ground here? From the broad verticals that you all have invested in? 

Ariel Segal: 

They're still growing, right? I think that they're still investing in talent and just having to be a little bit more thoughtful and strategic about where they're placing their bets and where those investments are being placed.

So is it in AI and platform, and in their engineering team, or is it in fueling marketing dollars and sort of having to be a little bit more cautious in their approach rather than sort of throwing money at everything at once. But it really depends on the company. And again, we're invested across a wide range of sectors.

Everything from sustainability to women's health, to robotics. And so it really varies quite a bit based on the company as you can imagine. 

SCS: 

So you've got the benefit of, I guess, the bigger picture of where different industries are moving together and what is the through line that affects them all.

And I think one of those things is, other than AI, where it seems like there's a lot of capital being put towards that “rebranding”, right? We've had AI for a while, but you know, now that it's all AI, everybody's putting money behind it. But otherwise, you know, from a corporate standpoint and beyond, budget cuts are real.

People are getting very, very cautious with their spend. Is there a case study you can share with us in terms of like how a founder was really smart in allocating resources or strategies that perhaps a founder who's listening in on the rough can take away from this? 

Evan Segal: 

Again, there's so many opportunities. We were trying to sell our products to Home Depot. And our largest competitor who was part of a $12 billion company, owned the plumbing aisle 30 feet. And were they gonna carve out a two or three foot section for our product? We could make the greatest product in the world, but they owned the plumbing aisle.

And because they owned so many other companies in so many other aisles and paid such huge rebates to Home Depot, it was gonna be really difficult to get in there. So sometimes you have to take a step back and say, okay, how can we get our product in there? And we realized, and the plumbing aisle was for replacement parts, but our products were also used to install new appliances.

And the large appliance retailer in Home Depot, it was General Electric. And we said, gee, every time you buy a new appliance, a gas appliance, you need to buy a gas connector to install it with. It's required by code to have a new one. Why don't we try to sell that in the new appliance area? And so we private labeled for General Electric who was bigger in terms of sales with Home Depot than our competitor.

So it was like $12 billion versus $150 billion dollars in. And so we got in and I'd like to say the backdoor, but we found an innovative of way to get into that type of customer, which actually ended up being much easier for us. Instead of shipping directly to 6 or 7 or 800 stores, we shipped to GEs Appliance manufacturing location in Kentucky, and then they did all the distribution.

So you see that type of thing going on. One interesting example of, you know, a startup that's doing interesting work. There's a company of Pittsburgh called Honeycomb Credit. They provide sub hundred thousand dollars loans for businesses that are crowdfunded. So because of the structure of how they access the money, they can provide marked lending rates lower than commercial banks.

And truthfully, commercial banks don't want to lend to small businesses. It's just a pain in the rear for them. So not only have they found ways to access new markets, one of the inner ways we've worked with them is to set up a fund at the Pittsburgh Foundation that the Hillman Foundation in Pittsburgh joined us.

And those DAF dollars are being used by. Honeycomb credit to lend to businesses in the Pittsburgh market. And so in this case, what we're doing is using 501C3 DAF dollars that are used to help support and grow businesses. A local coffee shop owner, a nail salon, someone you might know who wants to expand or bring on more people or open up a second location, you know, that is mainstream.

And if we can provide capital cost effectively through a company, a portfolio company who said, we want to continue to grow, but we need to find innovative ways to, in effect, introduce new products in the marketplace. And in this case, they were able to do it in collaboration with the nonprofit world to help support that.

And again, I love these challenges to solve these kind of problems. 

SCS: 

You know, we work with the wealthy women that are now coming into their wealth and using their wealth for impact. So this conversation is especially important today. You are using donor advised funds and not many people know that there is a way to actually invest in full profit work as well.

Can you speak a little bit, I mean, it sounds like you figured it out between the family office, 412 Ventures, and the foundation. Talk to us a little bit about, you know, some of the creative ways exactly like that. How do donor-advised funds work and how have you leveraged that for impact or other creative structures?

Evan Segal: 

It's an incredible opportunity of donor-advised funds, essentially larger foundations. Create an opportunity where the money is donated to them and in effect set aside where the word donor advises me. You as the donor, you don't control the money, you can't claw it back, but you essentially can tell the larger foundation, we would like you to make a donation on our behalf from the fund that we've set up to the following qualified company, and it can be either a grant.

That is given to the assets, instead of investing in the market, those assets can be invested in startups or early stage companies. There's something called the Catalytic Impact Foundation. It's in New York, and they take these 501C3. And again, they have an investment committee, and oftentimes people that are wealthy think, well, if I give them money to nonprofits, they're not well run, and we're just one and done. 

So we invite them, hey, be part of an investment committee, like a venture capital fund has, and invest in companies. They happen to invest in women's health, among other things, the aging economy and also what are called orphan drugs. The kind of drugs that are needed but are not well funded by large pharma because they don't have the type of return.

All these cases, you need patient capital. It's not gonna deliver the kind of returns in a three to five to seven year timeframe that venture is looking for. And yet the world needs them and they deserve to be funded. And the neat thing about this is when there are exits or returns. The dollars go back into the fund to be reinvested.

And so what you're doing is creating an evergreening type investment fund. Another way of phrasing this is regenerative philanthropy, but it's essentially using and tapping into another source of dollars that are out there. So when there's money sitting on the sideline in the for-profit world, which by the way, there's a ton of money that is not being invested 'cause people have been laying back.

So I don't wanna minimize that. You're always trying to find other ways to tap into capital. And so when we hear whether it's fund managers, uh, founders that, you know, Ariel talked about earlier in a challenging funding environment, what we don't do is sit back and say, woe was me. 

We say, how do we figure this out? How do we solve this problem? There's a cartoon character named Alma is Alma's Way, which is developed by Fred Rogers Productions, which is from Pittsburgh, and Alma has the capacity to think through problems. 

So what you realize is the answer is in you. Even when you come to these challenges, what we want to be able to do then is find creative answers to get around what seemed like difficult or impossible hurdles.

SCS: 

Yeah. And Ariel, do you have anything to add to that? What is a fun problem that you're working on today? 

Ariel Segal: 

I was recently working with a founder who was sort of delaying her next fundraise until they could launch a new product. And so thinking about how she can make the most of the capital that she has right now and, you know, identified needs both in a marketing capacity and also in sort of an account management capacity.

And so had to think through how to prioritize those different hires. And so what we've been able to do is think about, on the marketing side, getting fractional support, working with an agency to support them in the meantime before they could bring on a full-time marketing hire and prioritizing that client service hire.

But I think it's really interesting right now how the future of work. How that has shifted and the plethora of amazing fractional talent out there creates new opportunities for startups to get the help that they need, and be careful with their funds. And so helping these founders think through their talent and their org structure has been something fun and exciting and I'm working on at the moment.

SCS: 

Yeah, and it would be remiss for me not to ask this question because you're the B2B expert here. From a marketing perspective, this podcast is sponsored by HubSpot and they do organize one of the largest inbound conferences called Inbound.

But you know, one of the things that the CEO said last year in front of Ryan Reynolds and Serena Williams is that, look, attention is getting very, very expensive.

Everybody is struggling to convert and to create that level of marketing. What have you seen work in, what would be your advice to the founders that are tuning in from your lens of expertise? 

Ariel Segal: 

Yeah, I mean, my guiding pillars when it comes to B2B marketing is really about. Meeting them where they are for different types of audience personas that can be in different places.

And so for software engineers and developers that could be on Discord or hosting hackathons and for marketers that could be different industries, associations like the ANA and the MMA, meeting them where they are and then speaking their language, right? And so having those authentic voices that can connect with them and, and tell stories in a way that adds value to them, rather than just looking to extract value is really key.

And so, whether that's identifying different subject matter experts and thought leaders within your organization or who you partner with who can tell those stories, and again, add value rather than just extracting it, I think is key to that authentic connection. 

SCS: 

Yeah, and Evan, it sounds like through the family, you are all talking in terms in the language of being additive versus extractive. I absolutely love this, but before we wrap up here, I guess, you know, it's always helpful for us to learn from those who've done it and you have built a strong portfolio being true and authentic to your mission.

Meeting women where they are for the last couple of years. What were some of your, I guess, setbacks through this journey that people should look out for? One or two key takeaways. If there's someone who's building their family office and looking to create the same impact that both of you have, what would that be?

Evan Segal: 

So I would say in terms of setbacks part of it is just, you know, as an example, this realization. So when I was chairing this co-chairing this leadership program at NYU and continue to still do that, when we would have one-on-one conversations that were, you know, private and staying private, the theme that came back again and again and again is that when you ask women, have you been sexually harassed in the marketplace?

The answer is yes, and I don't even get a yes. I get a nod like, yes, and we deal with it. And the pervasiveness of that and its continuance today, call the Me Too Movement. What women have learned is you find a way around it, you smile, you get keep out of those situations, but it continues to go on and it persists.

And in fact, we funded a nonprofit film with an amazing filmmaker called Nevertheless, that talks about this in seven different stories, including a woman in the venture space. So the biggest challenge has been, no in fact, it's the culture that still exists. And so when we talk about a through line, I often talk about smashing the patriarchy.

That's what we need to do to take down misogyny, and that's the challenge is how do we continue to do that to not only create an equal and a fair platform. For women to operate in this space, but to not have to deal with that underlying power imbalance that goes on, that makes it even that much more difficult.

So I think that would be certainly the biggest challenge in terms of those people's successes that have inspired us. And what I would say to other family offices I found is that philanthropy is what speaks to people often, and developing a relationship through philanthropy then creates business opportunities.

It's again, when we talk about creative ways. I went to the Nobel Peace Center in Oslo, an incredible place. And the stories and the lessons were amazing, and yet most people didn't know them. So in our Sherpa fashion that I like to use, where me being a listener if someone's invited me to the guide. I talked to the director, a woman who's amazing, named Kirsty, and said, what's your dream? What's your vision? 

And she said, we'd like to reach kids, but we'd like to reach them around the world. And we think gaming is the way to do it. And so as Ariel mentioned, we need to meet kids where they are. So in this case, we developed a collaborative partnership that we funded initially that's on the Minecraft education platform, something called Peace Builders that teaches young people and educators about conflict resolution and peaceful dialogue.

Learning from the Nobel Prize Laureate, what an incredible way to reach young people to make a difference. But as Ariel said, we're meeting them where they are. On that platform, we're speaking their language and we're letting the people that know the space and developers be the ones that continue to build it.

What we tend to do then is how do we amplify, how are we ambassadors for those brands, for those products, for those people. And I think that's, you know, whether you call it a superpower or the value add that we bring is using these experiences. From a plethora of, you know, whether it's philanthropy, whether it's government, whether it's academia, whether it's venture big business, we use that range of experiences in support of these amazing people in our network.

SCS: 

This begs an important question, and I think you're such an important voice to this. Do you listen to Prof G at all? Professor Galloway? 

Evan Segal: 

Yep. 

SCS: 

He talks about how toxic masculinity the failure of young men is part of the issue, right? And as we're trying to quote unquote smash the patriarchy, you know, I've always taken an inclusive approach that we must bring everyone together and we are stronger together in a diverse fashion.

What are you seeing, you know, are you worried about the young men in America today, Evan?

Evan Segal: 

First of all, Scott was a colleague of mine at NYU. 

SCS: 

Okay, we need to get him on the show to address this topic fully. 

Evan Segal: 

And one of his other colleagues, Jonathan Het, is also an incredible speaker on this topic.

When you talk about young men and mental health, I couldn't agree with you more, but we're not just gonna sit back and bemoan it. What we're doing is trying to take the lessons learned, and we're trying to work right now with the Deepak Chopra Foundation and others to create a game on the largest gaming platforms.

And by the way, Ariel mentioned some of the companies, but senior people at companies like Discord and Twitch. Understand the importance of what they need to do, as well as large companies like electronic arts, et cetera, that young men and mental health is important. What we're trying to do is not only engage them in a digital world, but then how do we create that extrinsic motivation that gets them from behind the screen?

Out into the real world and create those rewards, opportunities, motivations that initially get you points in the digital world. So almost like Pokemon Go for Teen Mental Health, but the idea of when you get the nurturing in the real world and you get the points, you may go there initially for the digital reward then becomes intrinsic motivation and the joy of being with other people and working on collaborative projects for good.

And I think it's through that, through, you know, not being isolated, I. In that environment. But actually, whether it's working at a food bank or delivering meals to a senior center and working with people or reading to young children is how we start to reintegrate young men into a healthier society. 

SCS: 

And Ariel, what would you leave as your parting words here as family offices built for impact for the long run? 

Ariel Segal: 

I think that it's critical to identify what your North Star is and what the cause that you care about is, and then find ways to support that across asset classes. And so that can be in venture, but it can also be in philanthropy or in other, um, vehicles.

And so I think for us, that's of course been supporting women and other underrepresented individuals. And then thinking about how you can also diversify your portfolio again, across asset classes, but it can also be thinking about things like geography and not just investing in the coast, but looking at the in between, diversifying in terms of vintage and, and not over allocating in any different year.

So really thinking about what is your north star, and then how do you support that in a thoughtful way. 

SCS: 

Yeah, I love that. So being clear on your north star, being additive, diversifying across asset classes and looking in between, I love that sort of the rise of the rest story, right? Like the rest of America exists between the coast as well, so you've all really proven how you can align profit and purpose.

Evan and Ariel, thank you so much for the work that you're doing for spending the time with us here, and we're so excited to continue conversations and continue collaborating for the future that we all want to see. Thank you.

Evan Segal: 

Thank you, Sarah.

Ariel Segal:  

Thank you.