Ever wondered where venture capital money comes from? Ellie Cachette is the money behind the money. She is the founder of Cachette Capital Management, her own fund of funds with $1B set for investing into venture capital funds. She’s the gal VCs stand in line to talk to!

I sat down with Ellie to learn about her story and was blown away by how rough of a start she had and how inspiring her journey is.

H: Tell me about the early days, where did you grow up and what did your childhood look like?

E: I was raised in the Bay Area and we ended up there because my father had a blood disorder called Hemophilia, the Bay Area was at the time cutting edge for medical. So we moved to get access to doctors and hospitals for his health, for the best chance of life. Later though his Hemophiliac medicine became infected with HIV, it was horrible. The company (in his case) was Bayer Pharmaceutical and they knew there was HIV in their products yet still delivered it to patients because it was cheaper to offload the product than recall an expensive and lengthy product to make. My father and many other Hemophiliac patients (about 20,000 in the US, 100,000 globally) were infected with HIV. There were several class action lawsuitsof which many people died before winning, my father got his payout a couple years before he passed away. The Bay Area became also an epicenter for HIV and AIDS treatments so we stayed.

Soon after the news came (of my father’s HIV) in the late 1980’s my mom left us and my dad (newly HIV positive) was forced to raise me by himself. By the time I was nine years old the tables started to turn, and I was taking care of him because he was sick either from the HIV or his HIV medications or both.

About my father: he was a self-educated entrepreneur, he had his own consumer biotech startup that he had launched in the Bay Area during the mid 1990’s, it was actually quite innovative for its time delivering medicines to people’s homes. I learned important lessons from my dad as he taught me how to have no fear, to live life and that I was just as equal as any man. He would often say even early on that I was bound to do great things, that I was a “fighter” and people would “read about her in the headlines someday.” It was probably wishful thinking or perhaps an observation.

When my father passed in 2002 I was a Junior in high-school and became a legal orphan because I did not have …