Operating a startup is a full roller coaster. Investing is the baby version.
Former First Round Capital partner Cristina Cordova learned that backing founders kept her too high level, so she returned to operating.
next play · Cristina Cordova: joining Stripe as employee #27, investing at First Round Capital, to becoming COO at LinearWhen Cristina Cordova left Notion, the office software company where she was an executive, she had been working nonstop at startups for 10 years, often leaving one company on a Friday and joining the next on a Monday. Cordova, who now leads operations at Linear, a software startup, describes herself as a generalist who likes to work on many things at once. She had long known and respected the people at First Round Capital, a firm that funds very young startups, and she joined as a partner thinking that working with many founders would give her that variety.
In Cordova's words, it "didn't turn out to be the right fit." "Being in a startup is like a complete roller coaster," she said. "And as an investor, like it's like you're on like a little baby roller coaster, like you're like little hills."
What Cordova means, she explained, is depth. An operator lives inside one company, with very high highs when things go well and very low lows when they do not. An investor stays higher level and never goes as deep with any single company, so the ride is smaller.
The highs are muted, in her view, because the win belongs to someone else. The founders she backed were doing the work, so their success was not ultimately her accomplishment. The lows are muted for a different reason. A disappointing startup stings less, she said, because there is always the thought that the next investment could be the one that becomes a billion-dollar company.
Cordova still likes angel investing, putting her own money into young startups and following their journeys. But full-time investing, she said, did not give her the feeling she wanted. "Oh, like, we'll get him next time," she said of the investor mindset. She decided she wanted to go back to operating.
Questions people ask
What does a startup investor actually do all day?
Early-stage investors meet founders, decide which startups to fund, and then advise those founders on hiring, customers, and fundraising. They sit on many company updates and board calls, but they do not run daily operations. That distance is why Cordova said the work stays high level.
What is angel investing, and how is it different from her job at First Round?
Angel investing means writing personal checks to very young startups, usually alongside a full-time job. Being a partner at a firm like First Round is a full-time job managing pooled money from others, finding deals, and supporting a portfolio. Cordova kept angel investing after she left, but she did not want investing as her main work.
Where did she go after investing?
She became chief operating officer at Linear, a startup that makes software for tracking software projects and tasks. She reached the role after following the founders for years and completing a week-long work trial. The job put her back inside one company, running operations.