Interview with Nicole Ruiz

Venture capitalist to homemaker!

I was honored to interview Nicole Ruiz about her path from venture capital to homemaker. One thing missing from our current education system (in my opinion) is that it often doesn’t prepare people for the fact that you may start out doing one thing and then pivot to another, completely different thing. Too often young people are led to believe that careers and life are a straight line. I was inspired by Nicole’s story about the different paths her life has taken — and how her own education did prepare her for that. The below has been edited from a conversation Nicole and I had. It was the best kind of conversation, since we both had our kids in the background!

Ivana: The first thing I wanted to talk about is your background and what you did before you became a mom.

Nicole: Most recently I was a venture capital investor. I invested in early-stage startups. The firm that I worked at was specifically specialized in very research driven industries: companies and technology that were often newly coming out of academia. Machine learning was a huge focus. Biotechnology was a huge focus. Often harder areas of engineering, a lot of space, or things like trucking. We also did cryptocurrency. 

I helped find startups. I helped write checks into them and I helped support them as companies once we invested in them by finding the correct hires for new positions, and helping them position themselves to raise their next round of funding. That is what I was doing in the VC world for three years. More broadly, I had kind of always been in the tech/data science/machine learning world. But I had lots of unexpected career turns along the way.

Ivana: So tell me what a job like that is like. What demands on your time? How fast-paced is it? Could you paint me a picture of what it is like day-to-day to be doing that job? Not in the sense of the nuts and bolts mechanics, but just what it feels like to do a job like that.

Yeah, it's definitely pretty intense. It's not the most intense, and a lot of people would come from the more intense world of private equity to relax a bit in venture capital, but it's typically 80 hour plus work weeks. There's a lot of intensity just because everybody is racing against time to get to the type of companies you want to invest in.

If you're taking a break, somebody else probably isn't taking a break to convince the same person to take their investment. So it's just high intensity, very social, high energy throughout the whole day. I would say that's the overarching vibe of this job. 

Ivana: And how long did you work in a high-intensity job?

Nicole: Just short of three years. Before that I'd done all sorts of odds and ends, but I joined that firm right at the beginning of COVID – literally right around March 20th. I actually did that job from Northern Virginia for a while, which is where I grew up. I was supposed to move to New York, but because of COVID, that was all postponed. I then moved to Manhattan to do the job and it was intense. It was also really exhilarating because there's just a lot of knowledge acquisition and you get to talk to people who are so fun and interesting. You get to have the best researchers explain their work to you. I don't want to paint too bad a picture of it, but it's also high intensity.

Ivana:Switching tracks a little bit, I know you're a mom. Can you tell me about how you became a mom? What was that transition like for you?

Nicole: It was definitely a really challenging transition and one that I didn't expect to be so challenging. I had planned for a while when we found out that I was pregnant to just keep working. I was so, so, so excited to be a mom, but I also really loved my job.

I wanted to do both at the same time, but around seven months pregnant I just realized that both of these job titles I was looking forward to would mean I was the person on call when problems came up, and those things would inevitably be in tension.

Sometimes I would be on call for Rafael, my newborn, and I would be on call for these portfolio companies if they are having issues or questions. I just realized that I couldn't really envision that. There wasn't really a way that seemed easy to do a part-time version or a less-intense version of my job.

I left my job at seven months pregnant, and transitioned out of the industry. I felt like I was completely afloat. My mom had always worked full time when I was growing up. It was kind of funny because I hadn't really thought about what it would be like to be a full time homemaker.

I didn't really have a plan. I was kind of just floating around. And also in New York, I couldn't find a ton of people who were full time stay-at-home moms.

So I was really looking for mentors and… what it meant to be good at homemaking or what it meant to cultivate excellence or what it meant to cultivate ambition generally, as a mom, so it was definitely difficult. I think finding community when you're in that very vulnerable postpartum state is even harder.

Ivana: We don't usually think of being a homemaker and being a mother as a skill set that needs to be developed, but it sounds like you did kind of have that experience. Is that right? Or would you disagree with that?

Nicole: Totally. I think I had a perception of it as a skill set. I don't know if I really believed it. Even now, I would love to have a lot more kids, and I'm sure in the future I'll be, like, okay, looking back at myself then… I had no idea.

So I think it definitely has been this big experience of: wow, all these skills that are subsets of homemaking are incredible. I do feel like homemaking underlies society. I know plenty of 20-year old men who would also benefit from cultivating the skills of homemaking. It's the inventory management of buying groceries and keeping all of these physical belongings that you own in a good state… all of these different categories that I hadn't really thought of as a skill set before.

In some ways it was scary to realize that all these things were skills that could be cultivated, that I maybe ignored a bit, but also a little bit exhilarating to realize, “Okay, I can practice these and find good resources to learn about them and cultivate them.” I slowly found podcasts (like Homemaker Chic) and YouTube videos (Rajiv Surendra) and Books (Home Comforts and Sidetracked Home Executives) that talked about it as such, and that was also very exciting. It made it more encouraging to be like, “Okay, this is a process that I'm growing at.” 

Ivana: Have you been successful in finding community where you live? Or do you still feel a bit isolated in New York City in your chosen profession of homemaking?

Nicole: I think one of the things I like about New York is that people don't feel isolated. Yes, there's a certain status of certain job titles, but even when I moved here, I would always say it's so different from DC or Virginia in that there's always somebody who thinks what you do is really cool, and there's always somebody who thinks that what you do is really lame.

I like that balance —, there's no one thing you can say that people love. There's no one thing you can say that people hate. And so in some ways, people are sort of reflexively like, “Oh, cool. Good for you.” I haven't made the same life choices, but there's sort of a chillness to it.

But there are few people who are full-time stay at home moms, which can make it hard to find other people to raise Rafa with. On the other hand, I found a lot of people who are willing to move around their current schedules, or are freelancing, or are kind of figuring out their corporate work, so that we can raise children and do homemaking together, which has been very, very lovely.

It's an interesting balance. I feel like it's a bit isolating in the sense that there are few people who are in the same literal situation as I am. But I’m able to be flexible and creative with how to meet people who have hours during the day to do similar things that I'm looking to do, like cook big meals together or work on cleaning each other's homes and other necessary things like that.

Ivana: Is there an example of a good connection that would be something that most people would not think of, but that has been working for you and your friends?

Yes - I'll give maybe two or three examples. There's a thing people talk a lot about with newborns, which is just that you have like no time, but also a lot of time. But it's because it's a very specific type of time. Certain parts of you are super occupied, but other parts of you are not as occupied.

Some people say it's not your intellectual mind that’s occupied. I don’t know if I totally agree with that. I do agree that often you end up having this sort of weird type of flexible time where it's like, okay, maybe I don't want to take on corporate work, but I realized over time, like, okay, a lot of volunteer opportunities don't care if I have my toddler with me.

I ended up volunteering at a church that was at the end of our street. They had a Monday through Wednesday social services table. And they do all sorts of helping people with government programs, getting them set up. Basically, people just come into this table, they ask us a question, we do our best to help them figure it out.

I just started going there super regularly with Rafa. It's great because he gets a ton of space to run around. I feel like they're super lovely people at the church who are also moms, often like a little bit older than me or have grandchildren, and can sort of mentor me and talk to Rafa and give me advice, but we're also doing this very invigorating work at the same time.

In fact, they feel a lot of joy that Rafa is with me, and I can sort of sit and apprentice under other people as long as they're flexible with the fact that occasionally I have to go nurse my toddler or chase him around or occasionally other people who I work with chase him around. 

So that was one really lovely way and it's right in the middle of my community. Like, it's right at the end of my street. I end up just getting to know a lot of people who live in my literal neighborhood, I see them walking around anytime I’m out and about and we just catch up, and that's been awesome. I feel like that's a vision of the church that didn't feel possible to me for a long time.

So it's been very cool to be like, this is literally the people I love around me. I'm getting to know them by serving them, and they're also serving me in a lot of ways. So that's one example. 

I found another friend through the internet who is a professional writer. She ends up doing a lot of her work very early in the morning. Often we assign a given day of the week where one of us is going to go to the other person and then we just spend the day with our boys hanging out together (they're around the same age) and we cook or clean or work out together or chat about life, whatever it is we need to do.

Because of the nature of her work, and the type of work she's doing on top of homemaking, she has a lot of flexibility in how she actually executes that, so that's been a very lovely, flexible option. I have a lot of friends who just do freelancing work, and I've found the ones that live within a 10 to 15 minute walk, and so if my son and I walk to the park and we're coming back, I'll just shoot them a text and say, “Hey, we're around, can we come over and hang out at your house,” or “Do you want to come over and hang out at our house, we'll make you coffee,” things like that. There’s an older woman who lives next door to me as well, who’s a grandmother, and a sculptor, and her work is very flexible - so sometimes I text her to come over for an espresso, or she has us over for tea and to play with her cat, or she comes with us to the playground. 

Ivana: Our generation has been rethinking work and home and family a lot. And it sounds like you are living that… you are taking new and creative ways to envision what it means to work, how to have a family and how to be ambitious about those things.

Nicole: I'm definitely trying to. I admire this sort of tech or startup-ish mentality of… some people would describe it as “agile thinking.” I think it's just startup mentality as a whole, which is: ‘Okay, I have this problem. Maybe I'm not an expert at the formal areas of expertise that would help me solve it, but who are the people I can reach out to who might have wisdom?

What can I watch? What can I read about? What is an untraditional solution or what ways can I run at the problem that helps solve it that might not be the normal one?’ I feel like there's so much flexibility in New York that it is a fun place to push the limits.

I also have mom business cards, which I’ve found is helpful because I'm always trying to get to know people in our neighborhood. I see part of my job as a homemaker to literally create the community that we want to raise our children in and be a family in. That's made getting to know our neighbors and getting to know all sorts of people that live within a few blocks of us a lot easier. 

Ivana: So what are your ambitions as a homemaker? We've talked about creating community. Are there other things that you would add? What goals do you have for yourself in the work you do?

Nicole: Part of it is creating a physical environment for our home that is neat, but also comfortable and welcoming and warm; that meets our immediate physical needs of rest or sustenance or a place to be emotionally vulnerable and emotionally cared for. 

We run a dinner that we started right before Rafa was born. It’s once every two weeks or so. We really wanted that to be a place that's a moment for emotional vulnerability and regular community and a place for people to just drop in.

I think that that's a big part of it. I think part of it is meeting the needs of our own family in our own household efficiently. So, groceries and food and laundry and clothing, and doing that economically. I feel like in New York, that's something that's often overlooked because people often have a lot of expendable income.

With people who are my age, it actually hasn't been a big point of focus yet: the economics of doing something efficiently. So that's a good part of it for me, just thinking about how to do everything cost effectively. 

But, I also just feel like being able to be the hands and feet of the church is another ambition! Having the flexibility as a mom of one kid who's relatively calm at the moment to go take people meals when they need it, or go sit with them, or rejoice with people or grieve with people, I think has been a really unexpected blessing that I didn't see going into this, but now I'm like, yes, this is what life is about. 

I feel like God gave me a moment to be able to do this with my life that's a lot more focused than I had been able to do it before. 

What else? I feel like those are the biggest things. Caring for people. Meeting people's needs physically and spiritually. 

Ivana: When people think about homemakers, they don't usually think about ambition. I was a lawyer for 10 years and I feel like when I dropped out of the workforce to be home with my kids, a bunch of people saw that as a step back or a step down. I was wondering what your view on that would be. Is it possible to combine ambition with homemaking?

I think it's so possible. I feel like it's arguably the most important area to cultivate ambition. Homemaking is so much about social networks and caring for people. Thinking about ways to show people you love them and care for them at the lowest points in their life and care for their immediate and real needs - it's really, really important.

And it's one of the most practiced things in all of history, I would argue. There are a lot of technologies for doing these things, for homemaking, for caring for people, for feeding people, for meeting all of their needs. People may say you can arrive at excellence in other industries. I think there's always room to grow in homemaking.

You really can get better at each of the disciplines. My son is only almost two years old, so I'm sure I have so, so, so much to learn. But I feel a lot of the skills I used in my more corporate career are things that have served me very well in being a homemaker and pursuing ambition in this field as well.

Like, I joke that I retain my CRM, my relations management software, which is: taking notes when I see people and what's going on in their life and what they're interested in and what needs they might have and how I can pray for them or whether they're looking for a job in this industry or if they're looking for a husband…

And I also think that my husband and I have talked a lot about being intellectually satisfied after leaving my career. My corporate career employed a lot of my intellectual interest before. But both of us were brought up with a classical education background. Classical education talks a lot about the life of the mind and the broader intellectual involvement in the good, the beautiful, and the true. 

Aspiring to support a home & community that is economically efficient, stewards our resources well, & cares for people's immediate needs while ALSO pulling people into a rich artistic & intellectual environment that pursues the good, the beautiful, and the true is what ambitious homemaking is to me. 

Ivana: When I left paid work I felt like people did not treat me the same. A lot of the social status markers or even the willingness of people I didn't know to have a conversation with me changed when I introduced myself as a homemaker or as a stay at home mom versus when I introduced myself as an attorney.

I was wondering if you had experienced that, I hope not, but I wonder whether you think the outside world treats homemaking and mothering in the same way that it treats other ambitious vocations.

Nicole: No, I don't think they do. It’s definitely not high status to be a mother or be a homemaker, or at least it's not high status in a very general sense.

I've had a few funny interactions at parties where people are like, they kind of pause and they're like, Most important job in the world! And they walk away. I don't know, it's interesting. A lot of people I talk to in New York aren't married, maybe aren't dating seriously.It's a phase of life that's very different from the one I’m currently in.

They also just don't know what to ask at all. They don't necessarily see the comparisons, like we were talking about, to what ambition looks like if you’re not in a paid professional position, etc. So sometimes I try to make some of those parallels.

Ivana: I did want to close by asking: what parts of your education and past career prepared you for the life you're leading now and what you felt was missing from your formation as you transitioned to becoming a mom and a homemaker.

I do feel like there are just so many traditional homemaking disciplines, even just stain removal from laundry, which is really just a lot of chemistry, that I think is super interesting and totally learnable.

That sort of thing was totally absent from my childhood and being raised. And so I've been learning so much about that recently. And I'm like, this is so cool. This is just science again with like these weird mental borders people have where it's like, so doing laundry was domestic. And so it's not interesting. I'm like, no, it's just another part of science.

I think that's one very tiny thing that I've been thinking about. But yeah, I feel like a lot of practical household management, I just didn't learn very deeply. Laundry has been a big one. Mending has been another one. I've been down this big rabbit hole of learning mending. Also, just hosting.

I feel like people used to be much more practiced in social graces around hosting and inviting people to your home and following up with them and ways to make that experience pleasant for everyone - such as offering to bring food and bringing food for everyone. Generally showing awareness of the work that goes into all sorts of different social social investments and the practice of reciprocating it in your own way and time. 

I feel like we used to have a lot of pretty ingrained processes for doing that. Like, okay, I asked for somebody's number and then we call and then that relationship becomes deeper over time. But in the world we're in now, all of those paths are just much less clear. I do really appreciate, like I mentioned earlier, the classical education that both my husband and I were brought up in. Dorothy Sayers, who's one of the modern minds of classical education, talks a lot about this idea of learning how to learn and that being a primary focus of classical education.

And so I think coming out of K-12 school, I really felt like I was taught how to learn rather than I was taught to memorize certain things. And so every time I've entered a new industry or a new job title, I felt very invigorated by the challenge of learning new things, whether it's homemaking disciplines or in the face of huge job changes with ChatGPT. Classical education is just as much the answer as it has always been — I really appreciate its benefits to both my corporate career and journey as a mom.