Eileen Tanghal, cofounder of the enterprise capital agency Black Opal Ventures, didn’t got down to be a enterprise capitalist. {The electrical} engineer left her job at a semiconductor startup to pursue an MBA so she might higher perceive the enterprise facet of expertise. Throughout a summer time break, she was chosen for an internship with a venture-capital firm that funded high-tech startups. Her engineering background bought her the place. Tanghal went on to work for a number of tech-focused VCs earlier than launching Black Opal in 2021.
“My cofounder, Tara Bishop, and I started as angel buyers, investing our personal cash,” she says. “We invested primarily in early-stage startups, which means they had been nonetheless growing and validating their thought for a product and had raised little or no cash but.”
In 2022, Black Opal, primarily based in New York Metropolis, expanded to managing a fund that invests different folks’s and establishments’ cash, primarily funding startups in well being care and life sciences.
Eileen Tanghal
Employer:
Black Opal Ventures, New York Metropolis
Title:
Cofounder
Schooling:
MIT, London Enterprise College
“We need to enhance well being care accessibility and affordability,” Tanghal says. “To do that, we take a look at firms working with rising applied sciences and in addition these making use of applied sciences which are properly established in a single business however not but leveraged in well being care or life sciences.”
The IEEE member can also be working to rent extra ladies and underrepresented minorities throughout the Black Opal portfolio, together with the advice of particular people for management positions throughout the firms it funds. A various workforce, says Tanghal, produces probably the most inclusive and most worthwhile services.
From engineer to investor
Tanghal earned a bachelor’s diploma in electrical engineering and pc science, with a minor in economics from MIT in 1997. The lessons she took on semiconductors led to her first job, at PDF Options, a startup semiconductor consultancy agency, in Santa Clara, Calif. She specialised in optimizing the method of constructing transistors and bettering manufacturing yields.
“My expertise at PDF included utilizing digital twins—that are digital representations of real-world merchandise and processes—to enhance improvement, testing, and help of our merchandise,” she says. “I additionally did superior knowledge analytics to assist semiconductor producers enhance their fabrication yield.”
After PDF, she spent almost a yr as product supervisor at AllAdvantage, a short-lived Web promoting firm. Tanghal then determined to pursue an MBA from the London Enterprise College.
“I knew I wanted to select up extra expertise with the intention to advance my profession in product administration,” she says. “It turned out I used to be one in every of a handful of scholars with a expertise background and startup expertise. Many classmates got here from investment-banking or consulting firms.”
“There’s sturdy proof that female-managed U.S. funds outperform all-male managed funds. Growing the variety of feminine leaders isn’t simply the correct factor to do but additionally the good factor to do.”
A turning level got here when she utilized for a summer time internship with Amadeus Capital Companions, a London-based agency that invests in European high-tech firms.
One among Amadeus’s cofounders was Hermann Hauser. Earlier in his profession, he had cofounded Acorn Computer systems, which developed one of many first reduced-instruction-set private computer systems and had spun off the chip-design firm Arm. Throughout Tanghal’s interview, Hauser talked a couple of plastic semiconductor firm he had invested in. Drawing on her experiences at PDF, she requested him in regards to the electron mobility in plastic versus silicon, which is a measure of semiconductor conduct.
She later realized her query made her stand out and bought her the internship, one in every of simply seven MBA college students out of round 100 to get a proposal from Amadeus. After receiving her MBA in 2003, the corporate employed her as a junior member of its funding workforce, and Hauser turned one in every of her mentors. She went on to work for different VCs, the place she invested in startups engaged on semiconductors, communications, imaging, and synthetic intelligence.
Most of the applied sciences Tanghal is presently investing in are ones she realized about by her earlier job as managing director at In-Q-Tel, a not-for-profit enterprise capital agency in Menlo Park, Calif., that funds info expertise for U.S. and worldwide protection and intelligence companies.
Tech information with business expertise
Profitable expertise investing requires information of a market’s wants in addition to the applied sciences which are or aren’t but being absolutely embraced, Tanghal says.
“Based mostly on my expertise of being a member of the board of administrators for 40 firms, lots of at this time’s expertise distributors need to get into well being and life sciences, however few have the information of what these industries want,” she says. “And firms already in these fields usually don’t know what expertise is obtainable, or what’s already available on the market.”
For instance, as an investor, she seems at pharmaceutical firms’ initiatives and the way they are often improved upon, comparable to by drug discovery, using new messenger RNA for vaccines, and different therapeutics.
A concentrate on variety, fairness, and inclusion
Tanghal believes it’s the duty of Black Opal and the businesses it really works with to assist enhance the variety of ladies and people from underrepresented teams in high-level funding positions.
“Lower than 6 p.c of VC companies primarily based in the USA are led by ladies,” she notes. “There’s sturdy proof that female-managed U.S. funds outperform all-male managed funds. Growing the variety of feminine leaders isn’t simply the correct factor to do but additionally the good factor to do.”
By way of its Fellows Program, Black Opal hires MBA college students to work half time and teaches them about investing.
Many of the recruiting for this system is finished by Tanghal and cofounder Tara Bishop. The corporate has six staff and an advisory board of seven.
“Within the 20 years I’ve been recruiting associates, this yr is the primary time that just about 70 p.c of the candidates had been ladies,” Tanghal says. She suspects that most of the ladies candidates utilized as a result of “they noticed two ladies heading the agency.”
Another excuse for selling DEI, she says, is to make well being care extra equitable. “If ladies and minorities aren’t correctly represented on the board degree, the corporate’s merchandise might not tackle their well being points and different issues.”
Recommendation for turning into an investor
Traditionally, high-tech venture-capital companies tended to rent individuals who had an MBA. That’s not the case, Tanghal says.
“These days you don’t should have an MBA to turn out to be an investor,” she says, “as a result of now there’s extra alternatives to study investing. I favor candidates who can dig deeper into the target-market sector and perceive the potential applied sciences being developed.”
One other means buyers can enhance their understanding of a potential firm, she says, is to hunt out alternatives to “sit subsequent to the chief technical officer at a gathering and discuss to them about what they’re engaged on.” She additionally recommends doing on-line analysis and making the most of IEEE member sources and its networking occasions. For Tanghal, combining tech savvy with enterprise focus is the right match.
“My ardour—and Black Opal’s focus—is to search out or make new matches between applied sciences and health-care purposes, and to generate income for our buyers whereas bettering well being look after all.
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