Meet our Fellow: Alicia Novoa, Fall ‘21

We developed the Commerce Ventures Access Fellowship in the Fall of 2020 to lower the barriers to entry in the venture capital field for high-achieving students from underrepresented backgrounds. The Fellowship enables students to deep dive into thematic investment research, gain a broader network in the startup and venture ecosystems, and learn the foundations of the venture capital business. Join us in celebrating our Fall ’21 Fellow, Alicia Novoa, by getting to know a little bit more about her, here!

About Alicia

Prior to joining Commerce Ventures, Alicia interned at Legacy Venture and Trail Mix Ventures. Deeply involved in her campus community, Alicia studied green bonds as a research fellow with Georgetown’s McDonough School of Business, is a deputy news editor at The Hoya, and was recently named a Lannan Fellow for writing. She has broad nonprofit experience ranging from grassroots to national organizing. Alicia is passionate about startups, economic development, and Gen Z trends. In her free time, Alicia enjoys food tours and hiking.

What’s Hot…

We asked Alicia about her favorite emerging industry trends and she came back to us with a unique response: hologram meeting technology.

From Facebook’s evolution into Meta to the new Webex hologram service, Alicia believes this category has a broad variety of use cases. Alicia highlights that sectors like fashion, medical, and even distributed teams could take advantage of the growing hologram technology to optimize learning and development.

“I hope this trend picks up, is used in other industries, and is used for social good, from helping doctors around the world study the bone structure of a patient together to allowing students to learn from resources they otherwise would not be able to access,” she said.

… And What’s Not

Alicia shared her skepticism about the future of digital currency. Influenced by a professor who spoke on the potential impact of regulation on popular cryptocurrency, Alicia believes that governments may eventually release their own forms of digital currency, making private digital currencies less obvious products in the future.

Gen Z 101

A Gen Zer herself, Alicia speaks to startups and venture capitalists trying to understand this segment:

“Gen Z is incredibly intuitive, bold, and action-oriented. We understand the social systems we are a part of, have a nearly innate feeling as to what is right and wrong about them, and are not afraid to change them. From the climate crisis to the financial crisis, we’ve had to pick up the slack from past generations to make the future livable and fair; we act with a newfound sense of urgency.”

So, what does that mean for brands and investors trying to empathize with this generation?

“In terms of products, I cannot stress sustainability and ethical labor practices enough. No one wants to back a product that is bad for the planet or could have grounds for being “canceled” on social media,” Alicia added.

Looking Forward

Alicia leverages her background as a writer to tell stories about markets and consumers. Instead of splintered data points, she sees complex, interrelated markets and consumers that work together to demonstrate broader trends. In the future, she looks forward to leveraging these communication skills as an investor.

As Alicia continues the CV Access Fellowship, we’re excited to share more of her investment theme work on digital goods and the metaverse!

Alicia can be reached @aliciamnova on Twitter or alicia@commerce.vc