Jessica Ewing has an infectious energy and unstoppable determination to create a business at the intersection of literature and consumer software. She and Katie overlapped in their early careers at Google and when we heard she was starting a company, Literati, Katie and Jess jumped at the chance to be early investors.

Katie sits down with Jessica in Austin (vaccines FTW!) and Jess joins remotely to talk about her path to founding Literati, a Series B stage company. Jessica’s raised $50M+ in venture capital from Felicis, 01 Advisors, Founders Fund, and others but candidly shares the early fundraising process was hard and most VCs didn’t get the pitch. We talk about the dynamic art and tech scene in Austin, where Jessica is based, operating the company through Covid, and Literati’s expansion from kids book clubs to adult book clubs.

Lastly, we like to wrap up with shoutouts to people who have helped us along the way. Jessica highlights Bret Taylor: “When I was first starting out, he took my meeting and he was running Quip at the time. He just put an injection of courage in my arm. And he made so many intros and he was like, I love it. Let's do it. Let's build it.”

The #ANGELS Pod brings you conversations about the latest tech trends with the people inventing and shaping them in Silicon Valley and beyond. Hosted by the co-founders of #ANGELS, an investment collective: Jessica Verrilli, April Underwood, Jana Messerschmidt, Chloe Sladden, Katie Stanton, and Vijaya Gadde. We cover personal stories about breaking into tech and scaling up, and inside looks at the most interesting startups, from the people building them.

This podcast is just getting started and we’d love your feedback. You can reach us on Twitter @HashtagAngels and thanks in advance for listening!

The #ANGELS Podcast is a production of Haitch Industries. Our theme music is by Tobey Forsman of Whipsong Music. The episode was produced and edited by Matt Herrero.