Going from tech reporter to VC

Brian Rinker of the San Francisco Business Times writes about Christina Farr, who left CNBC where she was covering health technology to join a venture capital firm.

Here’s an excerpt of their conversation:

It seems like a heavy decision to leave journalism. How challenging of a process was it for you to decide? It was a hard decision. We just went through Covid, and every time there’s a serious crisis, whether it’s a financial crash or something like this, when you’re a journalist you kind of look around and say, “Oh, my God, who’s going to be left here at the end of this?” You end up losing colleagues, and that’s just the reality of media today. On top of that, I was entering into a new phase of my life where I was in my mid 30s and pregnant. I know that people will be reading that will say, “Oh, my God, that’s so young.” But it’s not young in journalism. Young in journalism is like 21 and filled with hustle. I was wondering, with kids at home, if I was going to be the journalist that I was before, where I was out all night networking, constantly working all hours. Was I going to be able to sustain that pace? I was also reporting on Covid and getting a boatload of hate mail as a result from people who didn’t believe it was real. So those are some of the factors that kind of left me feeling like maybe something else was a good goal.

How do your skills as a journalist translate into investing? The skill set is actually very similar. If you’ve been in journalism for any period of time, you’ve learned how to ask questions, you’ve learned critical thinking and reasoning skills, and you have a huge network because you’ve been essentially paid to go out and meet people and tell stories. All of that is so essential to investing.

Read more here.