Episode 20: Courtney Russell McCrea of Recast Capital: Moving Down the Capital Stack and Finding Gold

Fiftyfaces Focus - The Last Frontier: Diverse Founders and VCs

Courtney Russell McCrea is co-founder and Managing Partner at Recast Capital, a platform supporting and investing in emerging managers in venture. She was most recently a Managing Director of Weathergage Capital a boutique fund of funds that provides its clients with access to premier venture capital growth equity and micro VC partnerships, where she also led the co-investing partnership. She is a Kauffman Fellow, class 3, and a member of the NVCA Forward Board of Directors the Alzheimer’s Association Board of Directors in Northern California and Nevada and Chair of the Episcopal Impact Fund Investment Committee.

Our conversation starts with Courtney’s upbringing in Illinois and how she discovered venture capital as a career. We then trace her path to striking out on her own at Recast Capital. Moving then to discussing the world of venture capital today we look first at the value added by programs such as the Kauffman Fellow program, as well as many of the other affinity groups designed to get women to thrive.

We turn then to analyze the challenges facing emerging managers in venture, and what it is that is attractive about this piece of the capital structure. Courtney uses case studies to illustrate the different reception that female and male founders face when looking for capital – whereby female founders are often expected to validate their credentials, while for men these credentials are taken at face value. We examine disparities in funding and visibility and ask what interventions can change these.