Emerging VC Talent: Edition 7, Marina Girgis
Welcome to my monthly interview series on emerging VC talent! We talk everything from gathering insights on emerging industries and tech, venture dynamics, and career-best practices.
In the seventh edition, I interviewed Marina Girgis, Principal at Precursor Ventures. Precursor Ventures is a classic pre-seed and seed stage VC firm investing in supportive long-term relationships with founders.
TL;DR: Key Takeaways
- Hot Take: Pre-seed is less saturated than you might think. While later stages are crowded, investing in true pre-seed (the earliest bets) takes a unique investor.
- Best Practices: Master high-impact questioning, and learn to read between the lines. What’s not being said is often the most important.
- Setting Up for Success: Let excitement drive your investments. If a deal doesn’t make you want to write the check, it’s probably not the right one.
Q: What was your first job?
A: I was a hostess at a restaurant during college. It taught me how to talk to all kinds of people and how to navigate tough conversations while staying composed. In a way, it’s similar to venture — how you speak to founders, LPs, and other investors varies. You’re not getting tips, but you might be getting a deal.
After undergrad, I spent four years in equity research, focusing on semiconductor stocks. I covered some of the biggest blue-chip companies — Intel, AMD, Nvidia — as well as computer hardware stocks like Dell and HP. Eventually, as my research gained traction, I was assigned Apple, the biggest stock in the world. It was a challenging space — semiconductors aren’t intuitive — but I loved the complexity and learned a ton.
I got into venture when I realized I was spending years analyzing companies but never getting to know the people behind them or their origin stories. My opinions were built solely on numbers. I loved researching tech, so I thought, why not shift to something where I could connect with the people driving the ideas? That’s how I went from stocks to pre-seed. It’s the opposite — I’m researching people, not just the tech — and I love it.
Q: What skills did you have to learn in terms of thinking about what makes a good investment?
A: Learning to trust my gut. At the pre-seed stage, there are no numbers or financial models to lean on. You’re asking yourself: Do I trust this person? Do I like how they think about the future? Do they have the right experience? What do I think of the market?
At first, I struggled to figure out who to invest in. It took about a year, maybe 500 conversations with founders, to start distinguishing a good founder from a great one. I had to put in the reps to build that instinct.
There are a lot of parallels between venture and equity research. I think equity research should be on par with banking or consulting as a common entry point into VC. One of the biggest skills I carried over was learning to ask the right questions. In equity research, you might get just one question in a two-hour call with company management, so it has to be a great one, something that unlocks everything you need. That trained me to maximize a 30-minute call with a founder, to be able to form a strong first impression in a short window.
I also learned to read between the lines on earnings calls. If a company keeps talking about one product and not another, there’s probably something worth digging into. That skill translates to venture. I’ve learned to pick up on what a founder isn’t saying, to get the answers I need without directly asking.
As a generalist, I can’t go deep into every industry, so I’m constantly context-switching. Semiconductors, for example, is an extremely niche space — each massive company plays in a different vertical, whether it’s gaming, mobile, or analog tech. If a company makes an acquisition or launches a new product, you have one night to figure out what it is, how it impacts the business, and form a view on it. That ability to move fast has been invaluable in venture, whether it’s ramping up on new industries, identifying key metrics, building financial models, or writing investment memos. In equity research, your edge comes from understanding how your model differs from consensus. In venture, it’s the same idea, your perspective is your advantage.
Q: Can you talk to me about the anatomy of good questioning?
A: First, I try to get the high-level questions out of the way. I don’t necessarily need to ask about the business model or competitors, but I want to see if a founder can talk about them fluidly — without relying on a pitch deck, so I still ask those foundational questions.
Then, I dig into specifics that matter for their space. For enterprise, that might mean sales cycles or integration challenges. For consumer, it’s about marketing strategies and cost management. What I’m really trying to understand is: How well do you know your space? A founder doesn’t need direct industry experience, but have they done their research? How thoughtful have they been in their decision-making?
There’s no single right answer. The founder will always know more about their space than I do, but the way they think about it tells me a lot.
Q: What are some of the qualities you look for in high-performing, pre-seed founders?
A: There’s no set formula when it comes to background. For example, Precursor invests in solo founders and first-time founders. A founder doesn’t necessarily need direct experience in their space, but we do want to understand why they’re passionate about what they’re building.
For me, there are three key questions:
- Why are you building this?
- How intense and urgent is the pain point?
- How big is the long-term vision?
We know the vision can evolve, but I want to believe in what the founder believes. If we’re not aligned, that’s okay, but I need to understand if we see the same future.
Pre-seed investing is more art than science. I’ve built a checklist of what I look for, but I don’t expect every box to be checked. It’s just a framework to help me visualize what a founder brings to the table and what they might still need.
Q: How do you challenge your own viewpoints in investing?
A: I’ve learned to be patient. One of the most important signals for me is: Do I feel obvious excitement about this company or founder? That has to be a yes every time. I might see a clear $100M vision and understand why other investors would be excited, but if I don’t feel that gut instinct, if I’m not dying to write the check, it becomes very obvious.
Sometimes, it’s also about recognizing when I don’t have a strong thesis. One of my most recent investments was a cybersecurity company bordering on deep tech, not my area of expertise. But the energy I felt from the founder on that first call was intense. I left for my wedding the next day, and as soon as I was back, I emailed her to check in on the round. There’s always a chance she’ll pivot, but I believe in her.
I think excitement about deals comes in waves. Sometimes nothing feels compelling, and sometimes everything does. But if I’m not excited, I don’t force it.
Q: What market dynamics do you see in play at pre-seed?
A: I’m very excited about true pre-seed. I don’t think that it’s necessarily that competitive of an industry. You might see multi-stage firms dipping into pre-seed, but they’re rarely comfortable investing at the idea stage.
We will never tell a founder that they’re too early for us. We move a lot faster than others, especially later stage funds. Speed matters, and you can tell how much that resonates with founders.
Many firms market themselves as pre-seed investors but are far less active at this stage, making the competition much lighter than you might expect. And it makes sense, pre-seed is tough. It took me a long time to get comfortable making decisions without numbers.
Q: What’s the first company you fell in love with?
A: The first time I really thought about companies and how they operate was during my time in stock research, and the first company I got really excited about was AMD.
At the time, Intel dominated CPUs, and Nvidia led in GPUs. But AMD was doing both. What drew me in the most was the CEO; she was sharp, specific, forward-thinking, and incredibly thoughtful about the company’s future. Some leaders are storytellers, some are more matter-of-fact. She was both.
AMD started out as the underdog. Intel was the behemoth. But AMD was led by a woman, and she was resilient, reliable, and deeply strategic. You could trust what she said about where the company was headed, and that stuck with me.
Know an emerging VC talent I should feature? Send me a note on Linkedin.
Originally published at https://medium.com on February 28, 2025.
