Page 65 - INC Magazine-November 2018

Why did you decide to sell Pathbrite
EXIT INTERVIEW to Cengage Learning?
Cengage had invested in us and was
Seeing Fit using our engineering talent. And
its CTO became chair of my board. I
Heather Hiles, founder learned a good lesson: When you take
money from and have relationships
of Pathbrite, an education with strategic organizations, chances
technology company, are they’ll want to buy you. Take deals
wants to help founders with investors only if you think you
would have a good exit with them.
find the right investors—
and be prepared to sell
to them. By Yasmin GagnŽ This year, you’ve started
a private equity fund,
Imminent Equity. What
have you taken from
your experience at Path-
brite into your new role?
I know how some inves-
tors can end up taking
How did Pathbrite control of the businesses
start, and when they invest in. Some will
did you seek outside say anything to make
funding? a deal go through. With
I worked in education my new fund, I want to
technology and invest- reshape companies so
ing for 25 years, and they are well positioned
I saw how portfolios—a for growth while realizing
digital way to organize it’s important to respect
images and other founders.
types of media—could
be used as a learning
tool. I saw an opportu-
nity for educational
institutions to use
them to help students,
and I wanted to pro-
vide an easy way for
people to archive or
showcase their work.
Stanford was our first
customer. I had used
my own capital to
build a prototype of
my product, but to get
security clearances to
have access to student
data like transcripts,
we needed a new
level of stability that
required us to raise
outside funds.

Pathbrite is in San Francisco, but you found
your investors in New York City. Why did you
decide to raise money on a different coast?
The investor community in Silicon Valley likes
patterns they can recognize. Maybe they think
the best entrepreneurs are dudes of a certain
age who wear hoodies and come out of certain
schools. But I don’t look like Mark Zuckerberg
and I never will, because I am a proud black
gay woman. I thought I could get more respect
and acknowledgment for my experience, so I
went to New York to raise money.

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