Since she was a child, Sydney Thomas, the founding general partner of Symphonic Capital, had an innate curiosity about what her legacy will be.
The San Diego native became obsessed with building a legacy. But to find it, she had to leave home.
Then, 20 years later, she found her way back to start Symphonic, which invests in companies closing the access gaps in overlooked communities.
Sydney’s career choices connect back to her experiences with her family. Her father was the first Black chief of staff of Scripps Mercy Hospital in San Diego and is now a retired nephrologist. So she ended up spending much of her childhood walking the halls of dialysis clinics, wondering why there were so many people of color attached to these machines.
In contrast, her mother was raised in West Virginia with very few resources. Sydney never understood why her family had such poor access to the same opportunities she had in California.
“[From a really young age,] wealth inequality was a question. Why does it exist? What are some of the root causes?”
Big questions with seemingly impossible answers. But for Sydney, that’s how it should be.
“Somebody wrote an amazing quote: ‘If you’re working on a project that can be finished within your lifetime, you’re missing the point,’” she explains. “The point is to be obsessed with problems so big that they will take multiple lifetimes to fix.”
“[Then] you have had this huge impact and legacy that you can now point to.”
Company
Symphonic Capital invests in early-stage startups with a mission to close health access and wealth inequality gaps for overlooked communities. They focus on companies that are post-product launch and have secured their first customer. Their team has supported hundreds of Pre-Seed+ founders and assists companies raising $1-3 million rounds with valuations under $10 million.
Advice
- Stay True to Your Vision: I believe founders need to be really stubborn about the impact they want to make on the community they are looking to serve. If you’re not, you can get pulled in so many different directions. You have to be stubborn about your vision and impact, even if it’s not exactly how everybody else thinks you should be running your company.
- Get Your House in Order: I talk a lot about how important administrative support is to launch a company. I think a lot of people don’t pay enough attention to the mundane, little things required to launch a startup. If you don’t have your administrative housing order, you’re not going to be able to do anything.
- Life Experiences are a Valuable Skill: Underdog founders have so many valuable skills. They’ve been equipped with unique tools from their family and community. And that’s something I think about a lot – how we talk about our communities. Instead of a deficit mindset, it should be a strength based mindset. Founders need to stay grounded in the fact that they already have a lot of things that other people don’t have.
About the Author: Tess Danielson is a journalist and writer focusing on the intersection of technology and society.