TheVentureCity Adds Ex-White House Staffer, Facebook Exec As Partner

Great companies are built by the great teams that surround them.

That is according to Francesca de Quesada Covey, TheVentureCity’s newest partner, who caught up with Benzinga to talk about her role in expanding the firm’s seed and Series A investments across the United States.

Context: TheVentureCity is an international, operator-led venture acceleration model designed to make the global entrepreneurial ecosystem more diverse, international and accessible to fair capital.

Laura González-Estéfani founded the company after a long career in growth and business development at firms like Facebook Inc FB, alongside other executives like Chamath Palihapitiya.

Unlike traditional venture models, TheVentureCity looks to become an extension of a startup’s team, providing strategic growth insights and capital.

“Capital flowing to underserved founders is broken,” de Quesada Covey said. “Laura had a vision for how to fix that and she changed the way that traditional venture capital flows.”

Moreover, prior to TheVentureCity, de Quesada Covey began her career in Washington, D.C., at a consulting firm and then at the Obama White House as deputy counselor for strategic engagement.

Thereafter, de Quesada Covey left for Facebook where she was the head of jobs and service partnerships.

“I grew and scaled business development teams on Facebook’s biggest bets,” she said.

“I helped drive cross-company strategy and alignment on some of the trickiest issues that the company faced.”

In a vision to put large companies to work for small businesses, de Quesada Covey joined González-Estéfani, a friend and mentor, to help diverse founders, in underserved startup hubs, grow internationally.

Day-To-Day: “I’m focused on being the first point of contact for companies we want to invest in — in the United States and Canada — and thinking through how TheVentureCity can increase its market size and positioning.”

To put it simply, de Quesada Covey will tap into her experiences in big-tech and government to fine-tune internal coordination and execution.

Alongside the "capital and first ticket, from day one, TheVentureCity is providing product data, engineering, people, marketing, and fundraising that the founder can essentially scale their product through this in-house team of experts,” de Quesada Covey explained.

“We’re dissecting every part of your business and working with you to make it as strong as possible.”

Maximizing Impact: In addition to de Quesada Covey’s arrival, TheVentureCity launched Growth Scanner, a tool that can model out for founders exactly how their company is doing.

“We look at retention, engagement, revenue, and it’s a report that we produce for founders on an ongoing basis,” de Quesada Covey said. “We’re breaking things down and really understanding what it is that we can do.”