There’s No Handbook To Being CEO with Allie Burns

On this episode, Bryce talks with Allie Burns, CEO of Village Capital, about the accessibility of entrepreneurship. How do we encourage innovation when there are funding gaps and potential failure is real, scary, and expensive? Allie talks about how thinking through these questions has informed how she thinks about the entrepreneurial ecosystem. She walks us through her experience becoming CEO of an already established venture capital firm, Village Capital, what that transition was like for her and for the organization, as well as the lessons learned through the process personally and professionally.

Allie Burns does not have your typical CEO story. In fact, in her current role, she was initially hired to oversee operations and before that, had spent time in tech and communications with groups like AOL, Case Foundation, Startup America, and Rise of the Rest. She actually began her time in college thinking she wanted to be in journalism before settling on corporate communications. It wasn’t until later in her life that she began to pursue a deeper alignment of her values with her work.

Today, she is the CEO a global non-profit that has an unbelievable reputation around the world in creatively supporting the needs of entrepreneurs. Village Capital truly is at the front edge of the movement to change the system in ways that makes it more inclusive and empowers a wider range of entrepreneurs.

Bryce Butler serves on her board and as such, they had a fun discussion around not just what drives her, where she came from,  and what inspires her, but also some profound and critical lessons for founders going through a transition. These types of transitions can be tough, and yet, inevitably at some point, it is going to happen and there is much to be learned from Allie and her story.

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