From Top Secret Group at Apple to $4 Billion Consumer Venture Capital Fund

Welcome to the Brydge Club podcast! I'm your host, Ruffin, and today I'm joined by Amy Moussavi, angel investor and advisor at Malo Partners. Amy took an unconventional path into venture. After studying cognitive neuroscience, with no background in finance, she was early at Snapchat, spent years inside a top-secret product group at Apple, and became an investor at a multi-billion-dollar VC fund before building her own portfolio of nearly 20 personal angel investments. In this episode, Amy breaks down how she wrote her very first angel check (and the one category Apple would let her invest in), how she developed a thesis around "building for humanity of the future," and how she evaluates founders from pre-seed to Series A. She shares why she passed on Liquid Death, the speed and precision she looks for in breakout founders, how she works backwards from exit math on market sizing, and the categories she's most excited about now: women's health, longevity, AI hardware, live shopping, and Gen Alpha. Amy also gets candid about why fundraising can feel like "asking for charity" for women founders, the gotchas of stacked SPVs in today's AI-hyped market, and the advice she ignored for a decade: that in venture, relationships are everything. I hope you enjoy! This episode is brought to you by Vanta. Vanta's Agentic Trust Platform takes the manual work out of your security and compliance process and replaces it with continuous automation, whether you’re pursuing your first framework or managing a complex program. Go to http://vanta.com/ruffin for $1,000 off Vanta today!! More on Amy Moussavi: LinkedIn:   / amy-moussavi   Pitch her: amy@malopartners.com More on Host Ruffin Mitchener: https://beacons.ai/ruffin About Brydge Club: Brydge Club, hosted by Ruffin Mitchener, aims to bridge the $1.7 trillion financing gap for female founders. Every Wednesday, the show features in-depth interviews with industry leaders and innovators, educating and empowering women in venture capital and entrepreneurship. Through insightful discussions, Brydge Club seeks to inspire listeners to break barriers and achieve success in the business world.