Sydney Thomas founded Symphonic Capital because she knew there was a better way to support early-stage companies. The venture capital veteran launched her firm in 2022 and uses an intense diligence process to identify early-stage entrepreneurs with empathy, concrete solutions, and a belief in a better future for the 99%. Early investments include Starlight, which helps families navigate government benefits and Flourish Care, a company that provides doulas, wellness programs, and community care for pregnant women.
Thomas, who sits on Acumen America’s Investment Committee, has infectious conviction and clear vision about what VC can be. She shared her thoughts about Symphonic’s investment thesis, using the tools of capital to drive systems change, identifying mission-driven founders, and more.
Amon Anderson: How can we use the tools of capital to drive systems change through innovation and also create partnerships with the public sector to accelerate scale?
Sydney Thomas: One of the things that we think a lot about is how old some of the plumbing is. Not actual bathroom plumbing, but the infrastructure that enables systems to work together. Another thing we talk about a lot is what we refer to as “hidden buckets of money.” That sounds much more nefarious than it actually is. What I mean is, the government has many line items that don't get spent because they don't have the right people in place, they weren't able to pull together a program, or they weren't connected to the right organization. So how do we find founders who recognize these opportunities, see where they can plug in, and how they can make our existing systems work more efficiently together?
How do you go about identifying these early-stage companies that can help fill that need?
It's a long process. We have a pretty intense diligence process that starts with filling out a form that helps us analyze how much insight and empathy each person has for the 99% and for the problem they're solving. That's a core piece of what we're looking to understand.
Another core piece is how much of a builder are they? That's something that can often be overlooked in venture. Some folks really like people with shiny ideas and don't care as much about whether or not they can actually make those shiny ideas a reality. We care a lot about the combination of the two.
This reminds me of a conversation you and I had about some of our shared work: how do you support entrepreneurs in publicly exposed markets that have a slow adoption curve? How do you set them up for success?
That's one of the really cool things about having Shruti Shah on the team. She's a YC-backed founder who grew her company to more than 300 people and raised $25 million in venture capital. She's able to cut to the chase with founders around like, “okay, it's cool that you're thinking about all these things, but we need to get really clear on these three or four things.” Once we are firm on what matters, we can better support founders by building out expectations, a timeline, and process to help them actually achieve those things. It's really fun to work with and learn from someone who's been in the trenches before.
One of the things that strikes me about both you and Shruti is this empathy and really holding space for founders, seeing them, meeting them where they are, and supporting them. Is that the water that you swim in being the humans that you are or is that part of the Symphonic strategy?
When we launched Symphonic there were so many things I realized I was doing almost instinctively. These are things that weren’t always clear to the outside world but that I picked up along the way—through the information I gathered, my life experience, and who I choose to work with. Another one of those things was—and this was really early days before we did our first close—we did not take pitches with founders without having committed capital. I would keep getting asked by LPs, “who’s on your prospect list? How are your conversations with the founders?” I feel that founders are under a certain level of constraints and having them talk to me, when I don’t have any money, actually isn't doing them any good. I thought:this is just bad practice all around.
But I didn't know how to explain that, or notice that it was novel, because everyone else in VC just does it. That’s what you're supposed to do when you're launching a fund, you're just supposed to immediately start taking calls from founders and selling them on this dream. I thought that just felt kind of gross. I don't want to do that. There's a whole bunch of stuff I put in that category of things that we do because it's just who we are.
How do you think about pre-seed investing, which you’re so focused on, relative to investing in later stages?
The cool thing about investing in early stage companies is that we get really clear about the risks we're willing to take and the risks we're not willing to take. There’s so many different ways you can do pre-seed. The industry has gotten, frankly, kind of lazy about assuming that there's really only one way, which is that you just have to take a lot of bets and hope for the best.
But there’s so many other ways to do this. We like working deeply with people. We like being able to give them a certain amount of emotional energy, which is that patience, that support—and that requires us to have a smaller portfolio and be really thoughtful about who we take a risk on.
I've tried investing in idea-stage founders, and it is completely exhausting for me. I can't keep up. Having someone who has a lot of conviction about the business model: This is what we're building, this is why, and I have this clear vision of these 10 things that I need to do in order to get to the next level. Those are the people I love to work with.
Symphonic and Acumen America share some of the same DNA in the way that we partner with and support our portfolio companies. How does Symphonic support the portfolio companies at the early stage? And how do you think it differs from the way that other VC companies operate?
There's this prevailing notion that the best founders don't need help. And I think that’s just full stop, not true. There’s this really weird groupthink around what we expect the best founders to do. We don’t subscribe to that. What we're doing is very radically different from almost every other early-stage venture capital fund.
How so?
So if the expectation is that the best founders don't need any help, when a founder actually needs help, investors start clocking it, thinking “You asked me for help on this. Hmmm, you don't seem to have it together. Maybe there's something wrong here. Maybe this founder shouldn’t get to the top of the list for follow-on investments.” Those who operate this way start using the amount of asks for help as a negative signal. We're the opposite. The more you talk to us, the more you ask for help, the more we’re able to help you. And we'd really like to help you!
Trust and support drives success. But like you say, that's anomalous and doesn't happen at this stage. Do you find the founders are receptive to that support and partnership?
One of the hardest parts of not being the first check for founders is that they've already been socialized in this really unhealthy way. Because of that, Shruti and I decided we needed to meet every single founder in person. There's something intangible about meeting in person. For starters, we're both ridiculously bubbly people, which can be disarming and allow founders to let their guard down. In the instances when we haven't met IRL, it's taken us a lot longer to build trust with the founder.
I’ve been thinking a lot about that, too. We lean so heavily on Zoom. But there is something very different from a trust perspective of sitting down with someone.
We don’t need to co-work with them for a day. We need to meet face-to-face, sit down, share a meal, and then we can go from there.
Flash forward 10 years from now, you snap a picture: what do you see for Symphonic?
I really like the work that we're doing right now. Shruti and I are just jamming, moving, and shaking. We have a strong team to support us and we've gotten a significant amount of exits under our belt. We just need to continue growing this way of thinking as we continue to build.
Amon co-leads Acumen America.
