Hayley Barna, Partner at First Round Capital

Hayley Barna is a Partner at First Round Capital based in New York. Prior to joining First Round she co-founded and scaled Birchbox, the leading beauty and grooming retailer seed-funded by First Round in 2010. Since joining First Round in 2016, Hayley has led investments across many industries and business models including healthcare (Alma, Thirty Madison), consumer (Clare, Studs), tech-enabled hardware (Mirror, Caper), and marketplaces (Anvyl, Crowd Justice) among others.

Hayley is passionate about increasing the diversity of the venture ecosystem. She is a member of the executive committee of All Raise, an organization committed to accelerating the success of female founders and funders.

Before launching Birchbox in 2010, Hayley received her MBA from Harvard Business School. She started her career as a strategy consultant at Bain & Company in New York. She also spent time at two very different ends of the retail spectrum through her roles in strategy at the auction house Christie’s in Hong Kong and product management at Amazon in Seattle.

Hayley has been recognized as Fast Company Most Creative People in Business, Fortune 40 Under 40, and Ad Age Women to Watch among other honors. Hayley is a board member at Collective Retreats, RAB Lighting, and Madison Reed as well as the non-profit Society for Science and the Public.

Hayley will share her insights on trends and investment opportunities in visual technologies in a fireside chat with Abigail Hunter-Syed, Partner at LDV Capital, at our 7th Annual LDV Vision Summit.

In the lead-up to the summit, Abby asked Hayley some questions about her experience investing in visual tech. (Note: After five years with LDV Capital, Abby decided to leave LDV to take a corporate role with fewer responsibilities that will allow her to have more time to focus on her young kids during these crazy times.)

Abby: Prior to joining First Round, you were Co-CEO at Birchbox, where you grew the company from launch to over a million monthly subscribers, and raised $70M in venture capital. Before that, you went to Harvard Business School and worked at Bain & Company. Which aspects of your expertise do you believe help you empower entrepreneurs to succeed and why?

Hayley: Having been a founder, I hope that my firsthand perspective can serve as a bridge to entrepreneurs to the VC world. In particular, I’ve found my background as a founder makes me more empathetic to the founder's journey and especially the potential frustrations of the fundraising process. Post-investment, I have been able to lean on my experience to coach founders as a peer. I share my lessons learned and sometimes simply commiserate. I believe that creating an open and authentic dialogue can be most empowering to founders.

Abby: First Round Capital has invested in many visual technology businesses. Could you give an example of visual tech companies you have invested in and how they are uniquely creating and/or analyzing visual data?

Hayley: During my time at First Round I’ve seen visual tech as a component of many of our portfolio companies across a wide range of industries. Almost to the point where it’s become an expected part of the modern tech stack!

Caper’s co-founder and CEO Lindon Gao gave a keynote speech at our agtech event, where we gave a sneak peek of our 2020 LDV Capital Insights report that is now available to download. — **Caper’s co-founder and CEO Lindon Gao gave a keynote speech at our** **agtech event, where we gave a sneak peek of our** **2020 LDV Capital Insights report** **that is now available to download.**

To mention one company in particular, where visual tech is at the forefront, I’m very excited about the products developed by Caper. The Caper smart shopping cart and counter are powered by machine learning and computer vision to automate item recognition and checkout for grocery and convenience store retailers. Shoppers can simply drop items into their cart, and built-in sensors identify the items and calculate purchase details.

What makes Caper’s approach unique is how easy it is to implement. Compared to full-store retrofits with cameras along every shelf, Caper’s technology is self-contained. This enables retailers to get started with cashierless without much upfront cost.

It was exciting to see Amazon change course from their full store retrofits for their Amazon Go stores to follow in Caper’s footsteps and adopt a similar cart form factor, validating Caper’s approach and motivating many traditional grocers to speed up their response. The specter of the Amazon and Whole Foods alliance, as well as the need for low contact shopping due to the pandemic, has spurred the adoption of new technology in offline retail settings and motivated a large industry to move quickly to adopt new technology. Caper is accessible to wide shop owners, ranging from major retailers to local convenience stores. Their approach is able to improve the shopping experience for consumers in a way that delivers ROI to the retailer.

Abby: What is your one-sentence advice to help entrepreneurs improve their odds for success?

Hayley: Starting a business is a crazy thing to do. Remember your “why”, and let this guide every decision along the way.

Abby: What are you most looking forward to at our 7th annual LDV Vision Summit?

Hayley: LDV Capital has been at the forefront of identifying how visual tech will impact our future, and I am looking forward to invigorating conversations at the Summit that discuss these trends and their influence on different industries.

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