Anna Fagin

Principal at Town Hall Ventures
B.A. in Economics from Dartmouth College

Background:
Anna Fagin is a Principal on the Town Hall team. In her role, Anna helps drive the firm's sourcing and diligence efforts, and supports Town Hall portfolio companies post investment. Prior to Town Hall, Anna was a Vice President at growth equity firm 3L Capital, where she was responsible for investing in high-growth, technology-enabled consumer and healthcare businesses, and was an investor at Hellman & Friedman working to evaluate private equity buyout opportunities. She started her career at Bain & Company in New York.

Anna graduated magna cum laude from Dartmouth College with a B.A. in Economics and aspires to either own the New York Mets or a local knitting store in the West Village.

Why did you pursue investing as a career, and what helped you decide which stage was right for you?
I was lucky enough to experience venture, growth, and private equity. I started my career at Bain & Company, during which I spent time in their Private Equity practice providing diligence support to deal teams at PE firms. While I couldn’t have told you what PE stood for when I started at Bain, I found during my time working with Bain’s PE clients, they often were asking interesting questions and sparked my intellectual curiosity. I decided I wanted to see what life was like in the investor seat, where I could continue the intellectual pursuit and ask hard questions, but get to be a decision maker rather than an advisor.
 
I joined Hellman & Friedman and where I worked primarily on healthcare deals. I am so grateful for my time at H&F, which provided me with an investor toolkit I still use to this day. One of the core lessons I learned was the fundamentals of what a good business looks and feels like, no matter whether it’s concept stage or a multi-billion dollar enterprise. Things like product stickiness, competitive differentiation, opportunity size - all of these are fundamentals that apply no matter the stage of a business.
 
At H&F, I realized that I was most excited about businesses trying to change the status quo and growth-oriented opportunities, so I moved to a growth equity firm called 3L Capital where I split my time across consumer & healthcare. At 3L, I learned that deal sourcing and building relationships were equally important as quantitative skills to succeed in earlier stage investing. I spent less time staring at my computer and more meeting people and founders, which was so energizing.
 
A couple years into 3L, I took a moment to reflect on my professional growth trajectory, and decided that I wanted to focus on healthcare and develop more subject matter expertise. That is how I found my way to Town Hall. Town Hall’s sweet spot is venture, but we often co-invest at the growth stage as well. This stage flexibility is important in healthcare, where great companies can emerge early, but others may take longer to mature and scale given longer healthcare sales cycles and regulatory hurdles. This flexibility allows me to focus exclusively on finding the best entrepreneurs, no matter whether they are just starting out with a concept or rapidly scaling their growth.

Why did you choose to focus on healthcare?
I love the complexity and intellectual challenge of always learning something new. Healthcare complexity - factors like regulation, payment models, sales cycle, local nuances - can be a significant barrier to entry, and the entrepreneurs who can figure them out and get it right can see differentiated growth.
 
I also quickly realized that if you get healthcare right, you don’t have to choose between making a meaningful difference in people’s lives and intellectual satisfaction of investing. Not having to make a tradeoff between the two but seeing them as enablers of each other is one of the unique privileges of my role today.

What have you found most rewarding about your current role?  
Through providing capital and thought partnership, I can be a small part of helping entrepreneurs to achieve their wildest dreams and ambitions. Town Hall especially is uniquely positioned to do this in healthcare through our strategic platform and unparalleled depth of relationships amongst payor and health systems. When we do our jobs right, we help founders maximize impact for themselves, their teams, and the communities and patients they serve. This gives me purpose in my day to day that can be rare to find in the investing world.

What advice would you give to a junior female investment professional early in her career?
Figure out your personal and professional goals, revisit them on a regular basis, and ensure that how you’re spending your time in a role is aligned with those goals. Time is a precious commodity, and if your goals change, don’t be afraid to proactively explore new learning opportunities, whether at your existing firm or elsewhere. I have always made choices to maximize learning and have never regretted having that as my north star.
 
People also love to be your champions, so always ask for advice and mentorship from those within your firm, former individuals you’ve worked with, and those outside of your direct network. No one has ever told me no and I am only flattered when people ask, especially when I have the opportunity to mentor and support other women!

Favorite book
On the Banks of Plum Creek by Laura Ingalls Wilder 

Thank you for your time, Anna! To learn more about Town Hall Ventures check out https://www.townhallventures.com/