Spotlight: Morgan Beller - General Partner @ NFX
In honor of IWD, we spoke with a female VC GP. Breaking into space tech, backing 'the next SpaceX', why deep tech outshines software in the post-DeepSeek era, and how female VCs are outperforming.
Issue 117. Subscribers 46,830.
We invite you to join the first professional investment community on AngelList focused exclusively on space tech investments: Beyond Earth Technologies
Summary
Average check size: $1-5 million
Stage: Pre Seed & Seed
Geography: Global
Sectors: Bio, Gaming, Generative AI, PropTech, Marketplaces, and FinTech + Crypto, Space Tech
Fund size: Currently investing out of Fund III, $450 million
About NFX VC
NFX stands for network effects. Network effects are mechanisms in a product and business where every new user makes the product/service/experience more valuable to every other user. NFX Network Effects Manual describes the 16 different types of network effects. Network effects are the #1 way to create defensibility in the digital world, and companies with the strongest types of NFX built into their core business model tend to win, and win big. The NFX team has studied network effects for over 20 years and now share insights and have published their own masterclass. They currently invest in 8 focus areas: Bio, Gaming, Generative AI, PropTech, Marketplaces, and FinTech + Crypto. But they recently started investing in SpaceTech and closed two deals: Stoke and Starfish.
Morgan’s Journey to VC
Morgan co-founded Libra and was Head of Strategy for Novi, Facebook’s digital wallet for the Libra payment system. She originally joined Facebook as part of the Corporate Development team in 2017 where she worked on defining Facebook’s strategy around blockchain, cryptocurrencies, and decentralized technology.
She began her career on the Deal Team at Andreessen Horowitz. Before Facebook, she ran Corporate Development at Medium where she led the Embedly acquisition and played a key role in developing Medium’s subscription strategy.
In 2020, she joined NFX to invest in early stage companies. She loves working with technical Founders who are creating new markets.
The Path to Space Tech
She led the investments in Stoke, which is developing fully reusable mid-sized rockets, and Starfish, a satellite servicing company. Ultimately, they were drawn to the exceptional teams, which was the key factor for them. Both companies are building products that will be essential for the future of space infrastructure.
Stoke recently completed its Series C and often dubbed as the ‘second SpaceX‘, and they’re thrilled with their progress—they could reach orbit as early as 2025. Founder Andy Lapsa, an Blue Origin engineer, has the vision and capability to scale Stoke into a multi-billion-dollar company.
Starfish announced a $29M funding round in November 2024, led by Shield Capital, and they’re making significant strides as well.
Interestingly, several of my VC friends have mentioned that after the DeepSeek era, they view deep tech as a safer investment. These two companies Morgan invested into are great examples of that shift. No matter what the next iteration of DeepSeek brings, it’s unlikely that AI alone will be able to build rockets or handle satellite servicing—a stark contrast to software and speculative crypto projects. Morgan referenced her colleague, Daniel Museles, Principal at NFX, who puts it perfectly: "Space tech carries execution risk, but not existential risk."
How Gender Diversity is Driving Superior VC Returns
I’m incredibly grateful to have people like Morgan in my VC circle. We've also had the spotlight on amazing investors like Noemi from Starburst and Celeste from Stellar Ventures.
With International Women’s Day (IWD) this week, I wanted to share some compelling research and stats on gender diversity in VC—because the data speaks for itself.
A landmark study by Paul Gompers from Harvard and colleagues, analyzing 14,000 VC investments across 42,000 startups from 1990 to 2016, found that VC firms that increased their share of female partner hires by just 10% saw a 1.5% annual increase in fund returns and 9.7% more profitable exits. To put that in perspective, funds with female partners delivered returns of 16–17%, compared to the median VC fund return of 14–15%.
More recent data from European Women in VC reinforces this trend. Their study found that VC firms with female-majority management teams outperformed all-male teams by 9.3 percentage points. Additionally, for every 10 percentage point increase in women’s representation at the senior management level, fund IRR rose by 1.3 percentage points.
These are not small gains—they represent the difference between good and great performance in an industry where LPs are chasing every marginal edge. In a market where differentiation is key, embracing diversity isn't just the right thing to do—it’s a smart investment strategy.
If the data is so compelling, why hasn’t the industry shifted faster? Institutional inertia, unconscious bias, and outdated playbooks continue to dominate decision-making. But the funds that break the mold and integrate gender diversity at the partner level aren’t just leading on inclusion—they’re leading on returns.
It’s time for LPs and VCs to take a hard look at the numbers. The next frontier of venture capital’s outperformance may not come from AI, crypto, or deep tech—it may come from who’s sitting at the investment table.
 | A guest post by
|