Episode
What Investors Say After Founders Leave the Room with Erika Lucas
- Podcast
- Banterly
- Published
- Aug 25, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 2941
- Processing state
not_requested
Actions
POST https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/banterly-7063015/episodes/what-investors-say-after-founders-leave-the-room-with-erika-lucas/transcription-requests
Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode.GET https://stenobird.com/podcast/banterly-7063015/what-investors-say-after-founders-leave-the-room-with-erika-lucas.md
Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource.
Summary
Erika Lucas spent years inside private equity and venture capital, the rooms that decide who gets funded in America. Then she left to build what goes around them. In this episode, she tells Saadia Khan exactly what investors say about founders once they’ve walked out. Erika was born in Chihuahua, Mexico, and came to rural Oklahoma at 13 with her mother and sister, speaking no English. She went back. She built a career in Mexico, returned to the U.S., ran foreign direct investment for the State of Oklahoma, became a private equity partner—and then walked away to co-found StitchCrew, which has brought capital and networks to hundreds of founders the system overlooks. She also founded VEST, a peer network for women professionals, and VEST Her Ventures, a fund backing women-led companies in the care economy. Her TEDx talk, America's Trillion Dollar Blindspot, argues the money in this country is pointed the wrong way. She and Saadia get into the part most founder conversations skip: not how to pitch better, but who is on the other side of the table and why they keep writing checks to people who look like them. Erika's advice to founders is not what you'd expect from a former VC; she'd rather talk you out of raising venture at all. You can connect with Saadia on IG @itssaadiak Find Erika Lucas on IG at @erika_07 Email:[email protected] Host & Producer: Saadia Khan I Content Writer: Saadia Khan I Editorial review: Shei Yu I Sound Designer & Editor: Lou Raskin I Immigrantly Theme Music: Simon Hutchinson | Other Music: Epidemic Sound Immigrantly Podcast is an Immigrantly Media Production. For advertising inquiries, contact us at [email protected]…