He was a former Google engineer who had just left to start his own artificial intelligence company.
He had the vision. He had the technical skills. What he did not have was funding.
We met at a coffee shop near Stanford. He pitched me his idea for an AI platform that could predict market trends with unprecedented accuracy.
Most investors had laughed him out of the room, calling it impossible, calling him crazy.
I wrote him a check for five million dollars on the spot.
His hands shook as he held it.
“Why?” he asked. “You do not even know me.”
“I know enough,” I said. “Build something that changes the world. I will handle the rest.”
That was my first investment.
It would not be my last.
Over the next four months, as my belly grew and my body changed, I quietly built a portfolio.
A cybersecurity startup run by two MIT dropouts.
A biotech firm working on revolutionary cancer treatments.
A clean energy company developing next-generation solar panels.
A logistics platform that would eventually disrupt the entire shipping industry.
I did not invest like a traditional venture capitalist, spreading money thin across dozens of companies hoping one would hit.
I invested like a woman who knew what it felt like to be underestimated.
I found the founders no one else would touch. The ones who were too young, too inexperienced, too unconventional.
The ones who reminded me of myself.
And I gave them not just money, but time. Strategy. Connections.
I became the investor every founder dreamed of and no one knew existed.
My pregnancy became impossible to hide by month five.
I was enormous, carrying four babies in a body that was not designed for such a load.
I could barely walk up stairs without getting winded.
But I did not stop.
I attended meetings via video call when I could not travel.
I read pitch decks from hospital beds during monitoring appointments.
I made decisions while hooked up to machines tracking four separate heartbeats.
The doctors were amazed I was still working.
I told them I did not have a choice.
The truth was, the work was what kept me sane.
Every time I felt weak, every time I wanted to call Julian and tell him about the children he would never meet, I looked at my portfolio.
Companies that were growing, succeeding, changing industries.
Proof that I was more than the girl who was not good enough for the Sterling name.