Molly Alter is a multi-faceted docudrama filmmaker working on a project about an alternate reality where mimes are a big business. She’s a Caesar salad expert who documents her reviews of various restaurant attempts on a blog called JULIUS. She’s also Northzone’s newest partner.
Alter’s path to venture capital wasn’t straightforward. Her parents were journalists, and she grew up deeply involved in her creative passions like theater and stand-up comedy. Those interests were the basis for the company Alter founded at Harvard that filmed a cappella concerts and dance performances, and eventually led her to venture capital.
She told TechCrunch that she started the company as a way to make money — it was better than her other job cleaning toilets — but it turned into a real business that grew to 27 employees. Then Insight Partners reached out via a Facebook Messenger message to see if Alter wanted to join their analyst program.
“I joined Insight right out of college,” said Alter, a Harvard graduate. “The reason was that I wasn’t from this world, I didn’t know anything about these different companies and business models. There was a lot to learn about starting companies. I’m going to get a lot of exposure and in two years I’m going to start my next company.”
She didn’t end up starting another company, but has been working in venture capital ever since. After nearly five years at Insight, she moved to Index as a partner from its London office in 2020. She then moved to Northzone and then to New York City in 2023. She has now been promoted to partner at the firm and will continue her focus on vertical software. Northzone is a multi-stage firm currently backing startups in the US and Europe from its €1.1 billion 10th fund.
While Alter assumed she would return to being an entrepreneur, she realized that being a venture capitalist was the best option for her and that the building blocks of the career were always there even if she didn’t notice them. As a child, she said, she was always curious and obsessed with how things were made and where they came from, even the bread she used to bake.
“What you’re essentially doing by investing in innovation is figuring out how things work now and how they can get better,” Alter said.
Alter said she loves that being a venture capitalist requires her to dig deep into a topic and learn every intricate detail about it. She said her investment in GovDash is a great example. While government contract software may not seem exciting on the surface, Alter said she was fascinated by all the intricacies, like how even a government contract for a janitor needs to be vetted for potential corruption.
“It’s a very exciting job,” Alter said. “You learn things that are right in front of you and you learn how these things work today, and if they’re broken, how an entrepreneur can fix them.”
Alter believes her creative background and current interests make her a better investor. A direct example of this is her interest in film, which led her to a Series C investment in Frame.io in 2019 while working at Insight. The company built a cloud-based video collaboration platform that Alter immediately understood the need for based on her previous experiences in film. The company later exited through a $1.3 billion sale to Adobe in 2021 after raising about $90 million.
She added that she thinks it helps in less obvious ways, too. She likes to have other things to talk about with founders to help them relax and not feel like they need to talk about their company 24/7.
“I have a lot of diverse interests, and that helps me build stronger relationships with founders and build that trust to get through thick and thin,” Alter said.
Working in venture capital hasn’t always been the easiest job, Alter said, but she’s ready to double down on investing in this latest role. She wants to cut through the AI noise to find startups with real potential and remains bullish on vertical software and investing outside of New York.
“I think there were times where I had to work up that courage and I felt like I was pushing a boulder up a hill,” Alter said. “It wasn’t easy, but I really felt like this was the right industry for me. My test of that is, am I excited on a Sunday night to start a week of founder meetings or am I experiencing Sunday anxiety? On Sundays at North Zone, I’m very excited.”