Meet Miriam Altman-Reyes

 

We recently connected with Miriam Altman-Reyes and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Miriam, really happy you were able to join us today and we’re looking forward to sharing your story and insights with our readers. Let’s start with the heart of it all – purpose. How did you find your purpose?

The drive to make a positive impact on the world was always an important family value. My Jewish mother taught us tikkun olam, the concept of repairing the world by advocating for social justice. An attorney, my mother lived tikkun olam by example as she was an advocate for equity of women and people of color in the legal profession. My father, a Minnesota Lutheran, believed in creating inclusive communities where all could thrive. For 35 years, he was the founder and leader of a national nonprofit that has funded nearly $4B to underinvested communities. Growing up, when there was a day off from school, when other kids were playing video games, my sister and I were volunteering at my dad’s office.

By my senior year of college, I knew that I wanted to embark on a career where I could make a positive impact on the world, but I didn’t yet know in which field I would focus. I was recruited to join a program called Teach For America, which places recent college graduates as educators in schools in under-resourced communities. I became a public high school history teacher in New York City, an experience which changed my life by opening my eyes to the deeply ingrained inequities in our educational system.

My front-line experience in the classroom exposed me to the massive problem of student absenteeism, which is the primary predictor of high school dropout, and impacts children’s literacy development as early as kindergarten. On a given day, 30 to 50 percent of my students might have been absent. At the same time I learned at parent-teacher conferences that the communication channel between school and home was broken. This meant that parents often didn’t know that their kids were absent, and therefore failing class, until in some cases it was too late to intervene.

Based on my front-line experience, I started an edtech company in 2013 called Kinvolved. We sought to solve chronic absenteeism by streamlining the access to data among key stakeholders and communication between school and home. Over ten years, from inception through exit, we expanded our reach nationally and proved our impact on reducing absenteeism and increasing parent involvement through several institutional research studies.

In early 2022, we sold the company to PowerSchool, at the time, North America’s largest public K12 SaaS company. After the sale, I began to spend time helping edtech and workforce tech founders who were on the same journey that I had just ended. Based on my unique, front-line experience as a founder, I deeply understood their challenges and could provide useful solutions and advice. So, for a second time, based on my front-line experience, this time as an entrepreneur, I founded my current firm, Brass Ring Ventures.

Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?

Instead of starting another tech company after Kinvolved’s acquisition, I founded Brass Ring Ventures because I wanted to apply the knowledge, skills, experience, and network that I had built over almost 15 years for my first company in support of helping the next generation of entrepreneurs and their ventures. I am excited about our ability to help entrepreneurs collectively make a transformational impact on education and workforce accessibility and outcomes. By taking a portfolio approach, our impact can be exponentially larger than if we were to focus on a single company’s mission. Our uniquely hands-on Studio model is quite unlike a traditional venture capital firm’s approach. It is made possible by our extraordinary team of Operating Partners and Advisors who have had tremendous individual and collective success in relevant startup leadership.

What is next for Brass Ring? In just over a year since our launch, we have worked with more than 20 companies and supported more than 25 entrepreneurs around the world who are leveraging technology to increase access to educational and workforce opportunities and economic mobility. As we look to year two, we’ll be offering a more refined set of programs to our entrepreneurs and their executive teams, which reflect the most common areas where we know founders need support: Path to Profitability, Fundraising, Market Entry, Growth Execution, and Exit Strategy. We’re also looking to increase our capital investments in the companies that we support.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

Three critical areas of skill and knowledge that are nearly universally critical include: sales, financial literacy, and teamwork. My advice is to seek opportunities to gain experience in each of these three areas and to develop the skills that are associated with them. They apply across a wide variety of both professional and personal contexts.

Effective sales requires strategy, discovery, critical thinking, empathy, the abilities to both listen and communicate effectively, to build a persuasive and evidence-based argument, and to negotiate. Sales is not only convincing someone to purchase a product, but also to invest in a company, to accept a job offer, to provide a discount, and more. Many situations that are critical to business success require fundamental sales skills.

Financial literacy is crucial for any leader of a business, a nonprofit, a club, or a household. The abilities to budget, manage financial assets, and make smart investment decisions that align toward a strategic goal are part of financial literacy. As a leader, fiscal responsibility and the ability to make thoughtful financial decisions are necessary to drive toward success.

The ability to be a leader, builder, and a member of a team is imperative. Being a good team member means to produce high quality work, be reliable, trust other team members, be willing to delegate, give credit where due, accept responsibility for mistakes, and prioritize the success of the team over one’s personal success and acclaim. Teamwork shows up in nearly every aspect of life, including in business, academics, sports, activities, personal relationships, and more.

Okay, so before we go we always love to ask if you are looking for folks to partner or collaborate with?

We are looking for three types of collaborators and partners:

First, we seek best-in-class entrepreneurs who are building tech businesses to increase access to global educational and workforce opportunities and economic mobility to apply to our portfolio (application link here: https://yvcarmpawfm.typeform.com/to/Ou8OxEfs?typeform-source=www.brassring.vc).

Second, we seek co-investors and/or limited partners who are interested in helping us capitalize our portfolio companies.

And lastly, we’re looking for exceptionally talented startup operators, preferably who have been through at least one exit with a company in our subject areas of focus, to consider joining our team.

Contact Info:

Image Credits

Panel photo: Miriam Altman-Reyes
Headshot: Robert Grima

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