Lightspeed Partner Mercedes Bent on Her Journey into Venture, Recommendations for Founders Raising in 2023, and Tips for Investors in the Current Market | Seed To Harvest Ep52 Artwork

Seed to Harvest

🎙️ Seed to Harvest | Stories from Technical Storytellers

Welcome to Seed to Harvest, the podcast by Behind Genius Ventures.

We talk to early-stage founders, operators, and investors—people building with code and conviction. Each episode is a chapter in their story: from the messy beginnings to the quiet pivots, from planting ideas to growing companies that matter.

Expect:
🌱 Honest conversations on the earliest chapters of company-building
🧠 Tactical insights from technical minds with narrative soul
✨ Reflections on resilience, rituals, and reinventing what’s possible

This podcast is for the builders who think in frameworks and metaphors. The ones who whiteboard in wild places. The ones writing their own mythologies—one commit, pitch, or poem at a time.

From spark to story.
From seed to harvest. 🌾

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Seed to Harvest

Lightspeed Partner Mercedes Bent on Her Journey into Venture, Recommendations for Founders Raising in 2023, and Tips for Investors in the Current Market | Seed To Harvest Ep52

February 27, 2023 • Paige Finn Doherty • Episode 52

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Today, I’m joined by Mercedes Bent, an investor on the early stage team at Lightspeed with a focus on consumer fintech/crypto in LATAM and the USA. She is an investor in Forage, Stori, Flink, Outschool, Beek, Magic Eden, Hawku, Fan Controlled Sports, and more. Mercedes co-leads Lightspeed’s LATAM region and the Scout Fund (angel fund). In 2016, she was named a 40 Under 40 for Tech Diversity in Silicon Valley. Previously, she was a Financial Analyst at Goldman Sachs in the Asset Management division on a private wealth team where she managed $1.75 billion in wealth for high net worth and institutional clients.

Seed to Harvest is a podcast focused on stories & tactics from a diverse array of investors, founders, and creators, hosted by Paige Finn Doherty, a founding partner at Behind Genius Ventures and author of Seed to Harvest, an illustrated children's book for adults.

Connect with Paige 🌱💜

Behind Genius Ventures blog | https://www.behindgeniusventures.com/

Personal Blog | https://paigefinndoherty.com/

Twitter | https://twitter.com/paigefinnn

00:00 Welcome to Seed To Harvest: Mercedes Bent
05:03 A change in perspective
10:09 Lessons from Jeremy Liew
15:39 Bringing emotion to work
20:04 Changes in the seed stage
25:20 Taking metrics out of the equation

Show notes:
Mercedes Bent | https://twitter.com/mercebent

Lightspeed | https://lsvp.com/

Goldman Sachs | https://www.goldmansachs.com/

Jeremy Liew | https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeremyliew/

Alex Taussig | https://twitter.com/ataussig?lang=en

Nicole Quinn | https://twitter.com/Nik_Quinn

Beek | https://beek.io/en

Pamela Esteva | https://www.linkedin.com/in/pamelavaldesesteva/?originalSubdomain=mx

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