How Filming A Capella Concerts and Dance Recitals Led Northzone’s Newest Partner, Molly Alter, to a VC Career

Molly Alter wears many hats. She’s a mockumentary filmmaker working on an alternate reality project where puns are big business. She’s a Caesar salad connoisseur who documents her restaurant ratings on a blog called JULIUS. She’s also Northzone’s newest partner.

Alter’s path to venture capital wasn’t obvious. Her parents were journalists, and she grew up deeply involved in creative passions like theater and improv comedy. Those interests were the foundation of a company Alter founded at Harvard that filmed a capella concerts and dance recitals, and eventually led her to VC.

She told TechCrunch that she started the company just to make money—it was better than her other job, cleaning toilets—but that it grew into a real business that grew to 27 employees, and then Insight Partners knocked on the door via Facebook Messenger to ask if Alter wanted to join their analyst program.

“I went to Insight right out of undergrad,” said Alter, who graduated from Harvard. “My rationale was that I was out of this world, I didn’t know anything about these different companies and business models. There were a lot of things I needed to learn about starting companies. I would get a lot of experience, and then in a few years I would start another company.”

She ultimately didn’t start another business and has been in venture capital ever since. After nearly five years at Insight, she joined Index as a partner in 2020 from their London office. In 2023, she moved to Northzone and New York. She has now been promoted to partner at the firm and will continue to focus on vertical software. Northzone is a multi-stage firm that is currently backing startups in the US and Europe with €1.1 billion from its 10th fund.

While Alter assumed she would go back to being an entrepreneur, she realized that being a VC was a better fit for her and that the foundations of this career were always there, even if she didn’t see them. She said that as a child, she was always skeptical and fascinated by how things were made and where they came from, down to the bread she used to make toast.

“Essentially, when we invest in innovation, we’re trying to find out how things work now and how they can be improved,” Alter said.

Alter said she likes that being a VC requires her to dig deep and learn all the ins and outs. She said her investment in GovDash is a great example. While government contracting software might seem uninteresting at first glance, Alter said she was fascinated by all the intricacies, such as the fact that even a government contract for a janitor must be vetted for potential corruption.

“It’s such an exciting job,” Alter said. “You learn about things that are right under your nose and you learn how those things work today and, if they’re broken, how an entrepreneur could fix it.”

Alter credits her creative background and current pursuits for making her a better investor. A direct example is that her interest in film led her to raise a Series C investment in Frame.io in 2019 while she was at Insight. The company built a cloud-based video collaboration platform that Alter immediately understood the need for based on her previous experience in film. The company later exited its $1.3 billion sale to Adobe in 2021 after raising about $90 million.

She added that she thinks it helps in less tangible ways, too. She likes having other topics to talk about with founders to help them relax and not feel like they have to talk about their business 24/7.

“I have a lot of diverse interests, which helps me build stronger relationships with founders and build trust to get through good times and bad,” Alter said.

Being a VC hasn’t always been the easiest job, Alter said, but she’s ready to double down on her investment in this newest role. She wants to cut through the AI ​​noise to find startups with real potential, and she remains bullish on the software vertical and investing outside of New York.

“I think there were times when I had to be determined and feel like I was pushing a rock up a hill,” Alter said. “It wasn’t easy, but I really felt like this was the right industry for me. My test is, on Sunday night, am I excited to start a week of meetings with founders, or am I feeling Sunday dread? I can’t wait for Sundays at Northzone.”