Investing in Communities, Differentiating, and Trusting Your Gut with Erica Brescia

Open||Source||Data

This episode features an interview with Erica Brescia, Managing Director of Redpoint Ventures. At Redpoint, Erica focuses her investing on infrastructure, DevOps, and security.

Erica has over 15 years of experience in the open source community and currently serves on the board of directors of the Linux Foundation. Prior to joining Redpoint, Erica was also an angel investor and advisor to companies such as Netlify, Coda, and Xata.

In this episode, Sam and Erica discuss the evolution of open source data, what’s changed for practitioners, and why you should always listen to your gut.

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“I think there is just so much good motivation to make the world a better place, especially during my time at GitHub. When you can see what kinds of opportunity open source can bring to people in developing countries, that’s really exciting. You see people whose lives and livelihoods have literally been changed because they were able to participate in a global open source project. And then you can see the way that open source projects, even back when we were packaging things at Bitnami, we’d hear from non-profits in Africa that were never able to use open source until we made it easy to consume. When you feel like you’re really making that kind of a difference and you’re doing it in a community of great people, it’s a really great way to spend your time.” – Erica Brescia

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Episode Timestamps:

(03:18): What open source data means to Erica

(11:31): What’s changed in open source data in recent years

(18:01): How the journey has evolved for innovators and practitioners

(24:11): What stands out as a venture capitalist to Erica

(30:03): Don’t discount junior investors

(31:17): Erica’s advice: get quiet and listen to your gut

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Links:

LinkedIn - Connect with Erica

LinkedIn - Connect with Red Point

Twitter - Follow Erica

Twitter - Follow Redpoint

Visit Redpoint

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