Why Are Women Funded Less Than Men?: A Crowdsourced Conversation

Why are Women
Funded Less than

Men?
a crowdsourced conversation
by Pemo Theodore
Media Producer
Acknowledgement
I want to extend my heartfelt thanks to all the fabulous & brilliant
people that I video interviewed during the course of this year long
project. If it wasn’t for your generosity of spirit & willingness to see a
much more equal landscape with more opportunity for female
entrepreneurs this project would never have grown & evolved.
I would also like to thank my family & friends, who are scattered all
over the world, but who have all supported me to pursue & finish this
project. Your love & encouragement has sustained me.
Pemo Theodore
Foreword
Fred Destin, Partner Atlas Venture
“Simply put, every time I work with a woman, be it an entrepreneur or

a VC, I love it. Although you would think that in a world of constant
change, lateral thinking, teamwork and creativity would be well suited
to the female gender, the trouble remains, dear female maverick, that
there are way too few of you around. Pemo Theodore takes the smart
approach: to rise above the platitudes that generally characterize the
gender diversity debate, she goes into the trenches: interview after
interview of many of the thought leaders of our industry, she explores
each facet of what it's like to be a woman building a company. What emerges from these great
vignettes is a fascinating picture not only of why fewer women are getting funded and how that's
changing, but more importantly for me, of what it's like to be a female entrepreneur in all its glory and
complexity. I watched video after video and felt excited and uplifted by the awesome stories being told.
I hope you will too, and feel compelled to join the growing ranks of women entrepreneurs. Oh, and
please come pitch me... Onward ! “
Penny Herscher, CEO First Rain
“While the facts are that only 3-5% of venture capital goes to female
entrepreneurs there is simply no good reason for this to be the case.
Women are as strong and smart as men, and often have the
advantages of better management skills and stronger team building
ability. But today's venture world is dominated by men looking for the
classical male style of leadership and until that changes women need
to adapt to the current rules of the game, get funded and win so they
can change the game. It take confidence, courage and authenticity
and a healthy dose of advice and encouragement. This wonderful collection of advice, shared experience
and often humorous stories will be an inspiration to any female entrepreneur. Pemo interviews across
the spectrum: VCs, entrepreneurs, those who have succeeded, some that have failed, all that have
learned and share their experience with you. It's a terrific resource if you are raising money from venture
capital, plan to do so for your next brilliant idea or are a VC yourself wanting to unlock higher quality
deals by tapping into the female advantage.”
Why are Women Funded Less Than Men? a crowdsourced conversation

Cindy Gallop, Founder & CEO, IfWeRanTheWorld
“Do you want to own the future? Do you want to change the world?
Do you want to back the most innovative, groundbreaking,
transformative ventures? Do you want to make bucketloads of
money? Then you HAVE to read this book. Pemo Theodore's extremely
thorough, thoughtful, insightful, balanced and crowdsourced research
into why women get funded less than men demonstrates why so many
investors are shooting themselves in the foot when, as Ernst & Young
have publicly stated, 'Women entrepreneurs are a failsafe investment.'
Read this book; change your attitude, mindset and behavior; make an active decision to move out of
your comfort zone whether you are an investor in whose world the default setting is always male, or
whether you are a female entrepreneur going after funding in that world; and you could be the one
benefiting from, or becoming one of, the female tech billionaires of the future.”
Sharon Vosmek, CEO Astia
“The importance of women’s role in fueling innovation and economic

growth is proven. Specifically within high-growth entrepreneurship,
the benefits of women's participation are substantial. Research
indicates that if women had the same access to capital as their male
counterparts we would see 6 million new jobs created within five years
– 2 million of them in year one alone. This is our economic recovery we
all seek. What Pemo Theodore has done in her powerful video book is
capture for us all to see, the individual journey of the female
entrepreneur. Through this unscripted lens Pemo has translated the opportunity at hand for the
economy, innovation, and society. Pemo's book is both timely and timeless. Brava!”

The Unequal Landscape
Infographic: http://www.openforum.com/idea-hub/topics/innovation/article/the-rise-of-women-owned-
businesses-infographic-jason-del-rey

This book, as with the video interview project from which it arises is an attempt to bring human faces &
voices to the issue of the lack of female entrepreneurs that are successful raising venture or angel
capital & also the lack of women venture capitalists & angel investors in comparison with men. There
are a few organizations that have done some research & provided data which is the backdrop some of
which I have included below. Unfortunately most investment firms do have data about the percentages
of female founders or females on founding teams who pitch for capital, whether successful or not.
The financial industry was created by men and it has been revealed over the last few years that they
didn't do such a great job with that. Women still are not generally paid as high as men. Despite growth
the average revenues of the majority of women owned businesses were still only 27% of the average of
majority men-owned businesses.
“Even as women-owned firms continue to grow at rates exceeding the national average – they are not
moving along the growth continuum. In terms of both revenue and employment, the share of women-
owned firms at higher levels of business accomplishment (specifically those with 100 or more employees
or $1 million or more in revenues) has remained essentially unchanged over the past 14 years. This
situation is much the same for men-owned firms.
“ http://media.nucleus.naprojects.com/pdf/WomanReport_EcomomicClout.pdf

I recently collaborated with the female founder
of Piktochart to create this infographic about
Investing in Women.

The statistics for women entrepreneurs achieving funding are very low: 3 to 5% get venture funded, less
than 10% even if you expand that to include the entire team & any of the co founders. Data shows that
the percentage of dollars going into women led companies have actually declined by about 30% over the
last 10 years. http://www.illuminate.com/whitepaper/
In 2010 women angels represented 13% of the angel market. Women-owned ventures accounted for
21% of the entrepreneurs that are seeking angel capital and 13% of these women entrepreneurs
received angel investment in 2010. Both the number of women seeking angel capital and the
percentage that receives angel investments are low compared to the overall market. These data indicate
that when women do seek angel capital they lag behind the market yield rate by 5%. Center for Venture
Research (CVR) http://wsbe.unh.edu/cvr
"The venture capital industry is among the last bastions of male dominance in the business world," says
Carl J. Schramm, president and CEO of the Kauffman Foundation, noting that the current picture for
women venture capitalists is similar to that for female attorneys in 1985, when women made up only 13
percent of the legal profession, compared to nearly 30 percent today. "This study underscores the
importance of women entrepreneurs to our nation's economy and is a critical first step in understanding
the reasons for the tremendous capital gap." Study referred
to http://www.scribd.com/doc/13619264/Gatekeepers-of-Venture-Growth-The-Role-and-Participation-
of-Women-in-the-Venture-Capital-Industry
According to the study, having more women venture capitalists would mean:
• increased opportunities for direct network connections between venture capitalists and women
entrepreneurs
• a greater number of proposals brought to the partnership by women entrepreneurs
• less chance that firms would miss out on investing in promising ventures led by women
• more opportunities for women-led ventures to access capital and build wealth
• a more powerful voice for women in the entrepreneurial progress of our country
http://www.kauffman.org/research-and-policy/gatekeepers-of-venture-growth.aspx

My Story
I spent 5 years in London trying to raise funding for my online matchmaking business & in the end had to
admit failure. My story is only one of many. Very early on in that journey I had committed to help
women source venture when I was successful. As it turned out I have been doing just that for the last
year, not because I was successful but because I failed. Possibly if I had been successful I would never
have had the time to accomplish a project like this. I have been video interviewing venture capitalists,
angel investors & women founders on the shortfall in funding for women. My goal has been to listen to
as many people as I could from both sides of the table, so I could hopefully determine where all these
conversations intersected. @pemo
Pemo Theodore
All videos transcribed in this ebook can be viewed in their entirety as video interviews on https://
www.youtube.com/c/SiliconValleyTV2

Is there Overt Discrimination?
“I have an idea that the phrase "weaker sex" was coined by some woman to disarm some man she
was preparing to overwhelm.” Ogden Nash
Catharine Merigold, General Partner Vista Ventures talks about how

differences equals more risk for venture capitalists, not overt discrimination.
“I want to start with the basic precept about human behavior. Humans when
they need to make a decision that is about the future, that has some risk to
it, in general, subconsciously whatever they go to things that are more
known to them. This is why in the beginning it was harder for women to get
promotions for women doctors. When you have to make a decision if there
was something different about the person that seemed a bit unknown to
you, you didn’t know necessarily how they would react in a certain situation.
People go to their comfort zone. This is not necessarily about discrimination.
It’s just an inherent thing that we do. Somehow someone that’s like us, we believe we know how they
may act or it just feels less risky. So I think that’s part of what goes on."
“Again I don't think its overt discrimination, I think that they're trying to make decisions about the future
& there's a risk profile in there.”
"Now when you talk about vcs funding, you’re not only talking about them taking risk but
they’re investing other people’s money & they’re starting a long term relationship & they have a
responsibility. Again I don’t think its overt discrimination, I think that they’re trying to make
decisions about the future & there’s a risk profile in there."
Cydni Tetro, Founder Women Tech Council speaks about being careful
about brand & not speaking about bias issues.
"At the end of the day you’re building this story about your career, your
brand & who you are & you want it all positive. So you’re very, very
careful about how you talk about things, about how you position those. I
think it comes because what you don’t want is any back lash on you from
creating any negative stories, which those are generally perceived as. So
you just play the game of saying in general that hasn’t been my
experience. By & large in general my experience hasn’t been that either. I haven’t ever really felt like my
career has really been limited by being a female. I’ve had point experiences where you say that shouldn’t
have happened or that’s really frustrating but it really doesn’t define my career."

Indu Navar, Founder Serus Corporation speaks about her lack of

awareness of gender when she is pitching her company.
"You know I really don’t see myself as a female or male when I’m
out there pitching my company, my ideas or what I want to do.
Really that thought does not come into my head. So I guess not
thinking about it or not worrying about it is one of the first things
you’ve got to do."
Jason Mendelson , CoFounder Foundry Group speaks about the old boy legacy
network in the venture capital industry & bias towards women & others.
"I do think there is still some ‘old boy’ legacy network in the vc world. You & I
have spoken before about this. On a generous day, I like 50% of the venture
capitalists that I know & that other half, I think what frustrates me is some of
that ‘old boy’ network. I can see situations that I think are ugly. We spoke
about Claire Cain Miller’s article ‘Out of the Loop in Silicon Valley’ about some
horror stories she had found. I completely believe those happened. The old white guy who is assuming
that a woman is going to start a company, raise money & then immediately get pregnant & leave &
not be engaged with the company, I think is total BS. Because there are plenty of stories out there
about women who have had children whilst with company & taken a small amount of time off
obviously but have come back as engaged as they ever were. So I don’t believe that at all, but there is
going to be some perception there. The other thing that I’ve noticed is that it’s not just against
women, it’s against the younger class. I think there is a lot of the old boy network who are
uncomfortable dealing with 20 something entrepreneurs or first time entrepreneurs. It’s not just
women, it could be different races, different classes. To sit around & think you can fund 40 or 50 year
old white guys, I think that’s a stupid business model & you’re doomed to fail as a venture capitalist."

Cindy Padnos, Founder Illuminate Ventures talks about the stats & data on
women achieving angel & venture capital.
"That data exists at the Angel Capital level so the interesting thing is that
today the amount of women sourcing venture is around 16%. That is up
dramatically over the last 5 years. It’s literally tripled from 3 to 4% to
today’s level. The data also shows that they are achieving funding at
literally roughly those levels so roughly 16% of Angel Capital is now going
into women led businesses. Now let’s look at that from the venture perspective. We don’t have the
data, I don’t think it exists simply, as to what percentage of each gender is seeking capital. I think it
would be extremely difficult to gather that data. What we do know is what percentage are achieving
capital. If you look at that percentage it is quite small 3 to 5% are achieving, even if you expand that
to include the entire team & any of the cofounders, I believe that it is still less than 10%. So there is
something happening there, there's a disconnect between those who are achieving Angel Capital &
those who are achieving venture funding. It might be off by as much as 50% according to these
numbers or maybe even higher. So it doesn’t make sense to me that the pool of women entrepreneurs
who are venture ready or what I call venture backable, meaning they have the right education, they
have the right skills & experience & they have the desire. But that pool is very clearly growing
dramatically & yet the data shows that the dollars going into women led companies have actually
declined by about 30% over the last 10 years. I can’t explain it."
Demian Entrekin, Founder Innotas talks about his belief that there is no gender
bias & the issues are about a female entrepreneur's business skills.
"I think that the discrepancy with men versus women is a historical fact that
doesn’t need to be discussed. In some businesses more than others, perhaps in
some sectors more than others. In fact I was reading an article recently about
there was a fair number of women in sort of bio/life science whereas in IT it’s a
pretty small number. So that’s the historical fact but I think that if a woman is going to pitch & raise
money & try & build a business, the issue is really just about their business skills. I think it’s really all that
matters! So if a person knows how to sell, if a person knows how to build a product, if a person knows
how to manage finance, if a person knows how to create a vision, if a person knows how to inspire other
people, if a person knows how to get people to come together & solve really hard problems? Those are
the skills that matter, those are going to come through, if you have them or not. In my experience with
women in business & men in business is that gender really doesn’t seem to be a part of the puzzle. What
matters is can they solve those problems? Can they perform those complicated duties?"

Trae Vassallo, Partner Kleiner Perkins suggests that the reason there are
lower numbers of female entrepreneurs is because we need to increase
the number of women in technology & science from a young age.
"The number of women in the portfolio is low. I would say I don’t think
it’s because women get funded at a lesser rate than men. I think the
problem is the funnel & the funnel starts earlier! We need more women
studying engineering & science who then go work in startup companies,
who then get inspired to go start companies. So again I don’t think its
something structurally about women getting venture. I think it’s just that we don’t have enough
technical women out there who want to go start companies."
Eve Phillips, Co-Founder Empower Interactive Inc says that gender

does matter & it is important for people to recognize their biases
rather than saying they have no bias. The reality is that the
numbers are smaller for female entrepreneurs.
"Gender does matter! Nobody is coming in & saying that it doesn’t

matter & that it doesn’t impact the person that you are. What is
actually much more important is that people kind of recognizing
their biases or recognize that they might have them. So whatever
gender you are, whatever side of the table, by just saying it doesn’t
matter, I think you’re sweeping a problem with which all these numbers say there’s something going
on here, something’s got to exist? So the better thing I think is to say ‘Am I treating this person
differently? Are there things going on in my head as I interact in this conversation that might be
impacting my perception of them? This stuff doesn’t change overnight but that would be the
methodology that has been successful in other areas of life."

Does Bias keep Women Disadvantaged for Investment?
“Being a woman is of special interest only to aspiring male transsexuals. To actual women, it is simply
a good excuse not to play football.” Fran Lebowitz
Cydni Tetro, Founder Women Tech Council speaks about bias for
female entrepreneurs & her experiences of being ignored in
meetings.
"There are those stories out there, there are definitely biases that happen
& it’s a tragedy but it does. Just an interesting point when I was thinking
through this question. One of my friends actually ran a study on a
business plan from a University. He created the exact same business plan
& one of the business plans he put a male name & on the other a female
name. Then he sent it out for funding. The plan that had the name of a man on it got funded 80% more
than the female plan. I’ve been in a number of meetings where you could clearly tell, that even if a
question got answered, that I was the one that asked, that I was the one that was going to answer, that
eye contact didn’t come to me, because I’m the female in the room. I’ve had those experiences. To me it’s
not a big deal but there have definitely been meetings that you sit in & you’re like wait that’s not
supposed to happen? You’re supposed to have the conversation with me!"
Fred Destin, Partner Atlas Venture suggests that women need to

recognize that the industry is not woman friendly. He also mentions the
difference for women in their self awareness & that they deal with
rejection in ways that are different from men.
"I think you have to be realistic, you have to recognize the fact that the
market is not that woman friendly & there are people that are going to
question some of your skills. So one of the things that women are blessed
with more than men & I guess is both a blessing & a curse, is self
awareness. In fact when a guy gets told no after a funding meeting, he’ll probably say ‘Screw you, I’ll go
& demonstrate that I can build it!’ Whereas when a woman is being told no, she’ll probably go home &
say ‘What did I do wrong? What is fundamentally inappropriate about my behavior, who I am or my
idea? And why did this person reject me?’ So there is a tendency to deal with rejection here, that is quite
different, where women tend to internalize it & look within themselves as to what they need to change &
what’s wrong. Whereas guys will tend to almost be energized by rejection & they’ll want to get into a
fight & go prove that they can do it better than you think they can."

Does Bias keep Women Disadvantaged for Investment?
Dr Telle Whitney, CEO Anita Borg Institute speaks about

unconscious bias & how that affects everyone. Because there are so
few women entrepreneurs it makes this bias more unconscious. She
also speaks about the conflict that many successful women face as
they want to be successful on their own merits not because of being
a woman. So they often deny that there are any problems for
women.
"I happen to know that most of us have unconscious bias. That we

have pictures about what is successful. One of the most insightful
findings from our study “Mid Career Technical Women’ is that both men & women saw some of the
women bosses as less technical. And that’s just one example of ways that we all see the people around
us through our own lenses & you better believe that it’s unconscious. So with venture what they are
interested in is success, so if you can paint a picture for them that you will be successful with credible
data, there are certainly many venture people, men & women who will invest in you. But because they
see so few women, it does mean that there are these unconscious biases where they will often be less
open to investing in women. Only because it is less common for them so it doesn’t feel as comfortable."
"If you are ambitious & you really want to be successful, if you are successful you want to believe that
you’ve succeeded on your own merits. So recognizing that there might be biases in the system, most of
us don’t want that to be true. And certainly for me, I have felt that, I want to succeed on my own merits.
As I’ve learned more about the research & understood a little more about the playing field, it’s been an
eye opening experience for me. It’s this interesting dichotomy that we face once again that if you’re an
entrepreneur that this is part of the playing field & that knowledge of this can help you to be successful."
Danae Ringelmann, CoFounder Indiegogo speaks about crowd sourcing,

the democratization of the internet & how a greater percentage of
women raise money on Indiegogo than raise venture capital.
"One thing I’m actually quite proud of is that on Indiegogo, women are 5
times more successful on Indiegogo as they are in the venture world. So
that’s pretty shocking, I think about 8% of venture backed companies are run
or cofounded by women. And on Indiegogo 41% of successful campaigns are
run by women. So I think that just speaks to the democratization of the
internet & of Indiegogo & what platform we’ve created where we literally
give anybody the same tools to succeed. And it’s up to them to work hard & raise money but I think
women are just as competent. Our platform is proving that having great ideas & raising the money from
the people that care the most about those ideas."

Are there Advantages of Diversity?
“I would rather trust a woman's instinct than a man's reason.” Stanley Baldwin
Natalia Oberti Noguera, CEO Pipeline Fund speaks about diversity in

startups, reflecting the potential market! Startups can have their own
focus group then to tap into the trends in the market.
"In terms of the importance of gender diversity or any sort of diversity in a

startup, the same as within a company, the actual team can reflect the
potential market. What is at least for me, super interesting in having a
team that reflects the market is that one can get closer to the potential of
current consumer use of one’s product or one’s service. Because then in some ways it’s an internal focus
group that one can have. One is actually closer to whatever trends or whatever else is happening in the
market."
Fred Destin, Partner Atlas Venture speaks about how successful

businesses thrive with diversity. The only certainty is the lack of certainty!
He is amazed that more companies don't leverage having more women.
"Let’s take Paypal for an example. There’s a good body of evidence that
Paypal became such a fabulous company because it had a lot of diversity.
Diversity in the sense of sometimes complex talent with people coming
from very different walks of life. So Elon Musk who went on to create the
electric car company, Tesla, well the rest of the team had highly varied
background. There’s a recognition that a richness comes from diversity. You really need, especially in the
age we live in, where there’s a lot of lateral thinking that happens between biology, chemistry, IT etc, you
need a lot of lateral thinking, you need different ways of doing things! The only certainty is the lack of
certainty, in other words we live in a world of continuous change! And diversity is the best response you
can have to that! So I would just consider that have female people in your company, having women you
can work along with is a strong factor of diversity. And I’m just amazed that more people don’t leverage
that more!"
Cindy Padnos, Founder Illuminate Ventures speaks about research stats on

diversity in startups.
"The data we’ve seen is very compelling to show that teams that are made
up of diversity & gender outperform. They have more innovation, they have
creative ways of doing things, and they learn from one another & leverage
that. And so we are enthusiastic about that, but we don’t exclude an
opportunity for that reason at all."

Are there differences between Men & Women?
“Women are wiser than men because they know less and understand more.” James Thurber
Jeff Clavier, Founder SoftTech VC speaks about potential differences

between men & women.
“How can they deal with the issue of spending more time at work,
dealing with families, kids & everything?’ To be honest I am just in
awe & always have deep respect for people like my wife who
essentially deal with their careers & their kids & everything else they
do. You look at that & you go ‘I’m not sure how you do it but I love
you for that!’ And so the issue is how can you spend all those hours
leading the companies & so forth? What I have seen with the
women who are in the portfolio & have kids & everything is that they
have found a way to work smart, very hard but work smart more
than hard. Whereas guys tend to work hard but sometimes not smart. They use brute force & spend a
ton of time, instead of working out how they can optimize. Women by definition will have to optimize if
they want to balance everything.”
Alison Davis, CEO Fifth Era Financial suspects that men’s & women’s
brains are different & that reflects our different attitudes & behavior.
"There’s a lot of research to support that. Women don't like to ask

for increase in salaries. One of the reasons that women are paid less
than men, is that women are reluctant to go ask for it. That's a
common theme. I don’t know whether you’ve read those books The
Female Brain and The Male Brain . They’re excellent books by a
Harvard Medical School Professor who is now at UCSF. They’re
worth reading & provide a bit of perspective on the female brain &
how it has evolved through adulthood. The chemicals that are flooding women’s brains versus men’s
brains. I think for men, the accumulation of power & resources, it's something that comes much more
naturally to them. If you're a man with power, money & resources then you're able to protect your
family & your clan & keep your community safe. Whereas women are just geared very differently & our
brain chemistry is from birth onwards more about community & nurturing & relationships. You do find
that women can go & ask for money if it's not about them. You should go & ask for that bonus & that
increase because it's about fairness & also you have your family to look after. If you get a bigger bonus
you can write a bigger check for the non-profits you care about or help more people with it. I think
women can get their minds around asking for money when they can come to terms with the message
that seems right to them."

Mark Suster, Partner GRP Partners speaks about general differences between
women & men. Women tend to be bridge builders, more organized. Healthy
dose of both is best.
“Men tend to be confrontational, they tend to be bull headed, they tend to want
to fight, and they tend to want to one up each other in terms of knowledge &
contests. And women seem to be more bridge builders & finding common
solutions I think a healthy dose of both is very good.”
Jalak Jobanputra, Managing Partner Future Perfect Ventures, talks about

how women are different from men & can be more conservative in their
business plans. She suggests that if male venture capitalists were more
aware of these differences it would support more females in being funded.
"I think there needs to be a realization that men & women are different.
There has been a lot of press recently & I have to say that my own experience
verifies that women are more conservative a lot of times when putting
together business plans. In my experience they often weigh the risks a lot more & so there’ll be more
downside scenarios in their plans sometimes. Or they don’t want to overcommit and vcs are used to
seeing things through a certain lens in terms plans & doing their standard haircuts of the plans. So I
think there just needs to be more an understanding (& again you don’t want to overgeneralize) but
there is some reality behind these real differences. Recognition of what those differences are so that it
doesn’t negatively impact them when they are out there looking for venture."
Randy Komisar, Partner Kleiner Perkins speaks about general strengths of

women whereas men may treat business as a game. Women can be as
competitive & capable & often think holistically.
“The women I work with in business tend to be more purposeful in the way
they approach business. Where we are here to make some gross generalities, I
think that it is not an uncommon trait amongst men to treat business as a
game, to think about it as buying low & selling high, to think about winning &
losing. Whereas the women entrepreneurs I work with, are as competitive & as capable as any of the
men, but often think much more holistically about what they are doing, why they are doing it & how that
impacts others, not just their customers & employees but their communities. And so I think that women
bring a holistic sensibility to business that business sorely needs. As we’ve just seen in the last big
downturn where corners were cut & gambits were hatched that sunk an entire economy, a global
economy. I don’t think that’s what I’d expect from women leaders in similar roles.”

Dimple Sahni, Fund Principal Hattery speaks about the differences in

men & women who pitch to venture capitalists.
“In terms of preparation I feel like that the women are very well prepared.
It's their delivery which is what set's them back. They're not confident in
speaking. They're aren't looking to play on their strengths or talk about
their successes. They're quite humble in their approach. Men I meet are
oozing with confidence but they often lack preparation. They like to shoot
from the hip & when I ask detailed questions, they stick to their bigger picture answers. Those are the
major differences I see & it's just a question of volume as well. I see 95% of business plans from men,
5% from women.”

Should we Generalize about Gender?
“I'm not offended by all the dumb blonde jokes because I know I'm not dumb ... and I also know that
I'm not blonde.” Dolly Parton
Brad Feld, Managing Director Foundry Group: Brad speaks about

anecdotal generalizations rather than data driven conclusions. If you
build off pure anecdotes then you just reinforce the bad ones. Gender
bias is not a productive thing & women have equal stature & impact
as men do.
"One of the things that I’ve really struggled with, in the context of the
research we’ve done with NCWIT, is that an awful lot of assertions
around women in technology & women in computer science &
entrepreneurial women are anecdotal generalizations rather than
data driven conclusions. I actually think in any socio-economic gender functional dynamic if you’re
building off pure anecdotes you can get into some trouble. I think the anecdotes that you build on top of
other anecdotes just reinforce the bad ones. This is one of those places; I think that most reasonably well
educated, somewhat enlightened humans recognize that gender bias is not a productive thing. That
women, for example in the economy, in business & the world have equal stature & equal impact as men
do. Whether or not there’s an actual understanding of that put into practice of that by the venture
capital community, I have no idea to respond to that as a generalization. I would tell you that people
who are focused on or negatively biased towards a particular gender, specifically in the context of
technology being male gender biased, those people are fools! It’s not helpful, it doesn’t add anything!"
Demian Entrekin, Founder Innotas: Demian notes that it is not

good to generalize about women & men's strengths &
weaknesses. He advises not to go there! But the historical facts
of the small numbers of female entrepreneurs still exist.
"Women do better in collaborative environments? I think once you

open the door by saying that women do better at x, you’re in trouble.
Because it suggests that now maybe there are areas which they don’t
do as well. See now you’ve opened this door for all of these
generalizations. Oh so if women are good at collaborative
environments then men aren’t, well that’s not true. Or if women are good in collaborative environments,
they’re not good in hierarchical environments, well that’s clearly not true. And then it also opens the
question if women are better at this, then men are better at that. So I think that’s a real danger zone & I
guess I would avoid that path completely. But the empirical fact is still in front of us right, 2% of women
in IT, running IT. So what’s that about, why? I really don’t know."

How does the Female Market Impact Investment?
“I hate women because they always know where things are.” Voltaire
Patricia Nakache, General Partner Trinity Ventures likes to invest in

startups target the female market.
"I’ve been spending a lot of time on over the last couple of years is
what I call the Woman’s Web. So leveraging the fact that women now
spend much more time on social networks than men, are spending
more time online. In fact in terms of socio economic activity, the web
is starting to reflect the real world offline."
Shaherose Chairania, CEO Women2.0 believes the only difference

between male & female entrepreneurs is that they target different
markets.
"The only difference that I would make note of is the problems that
women want to solve with their startups. So they tackle markets that
they’re familiar with or that they have a better resonance with."

Chris Dixon, CoFounder Founder’s Collective believes that the

venture industry is slow moving but that half of the market is female.
"I hope, as I mentioned before, it's a legacy of a bygone era &

ironically it's a very, very slow moving industry. It's ironic (I don't know
if it's really ironic) but they are all about changing the world &
investing in change but because of the structures of these funds, it just
takes so long. So what happens is that these partnerships, they'll raise
a fund. If you look at the average returns of the industry as a whole,
they're basically zero for the last decade. Which means that they're
really making all their money on these management fees which basically the disproportionate amount
goes to partner's salaries. So there's a real financial incentive to just hunker down & just not promote
new people to be partners. By the way I think it’s not just some kind of societal import for gender
equality & all these things, I think they would be better investors. Because half the market is women & a
lot of investments are going to target women. Women investors are probably better at understanding a
lot of those things. If I had my own vc firm today & could pick anyone to run it, no doubt I would have a
couple of them being women just for financial reasons."
Cindy Gallop, Founder IfWeRanTheWorld speaks about the potential

of the female market & the positive qualities that women
entrepreneurs bring to the table in business.
"Many, many people are realizing that as Paco Underhill said recently
to Ad Age ‘If you want business success then you have to find mass
acceptance with women.’ More & more people are realizing what
powerful economic force women are as purchasers. Also the things
that women bring to the table in terms of business & different
approaches & perspectives on business are increasingly valuable &
increasingly valued. Because feminine qualities exist on their own, just as masculine qualities exist on
their own & they have a value whether they are found in men or women. So I absolutely believe that the
future will bring much more receptive conditions & much more opportunity for female entrepreneurs."

Guy Kawasaki , Founder Alltop & author Enchantment speaks about

the value of women in the market & encourages focus on women. He
also speaks about his theory about the difference between men &
women.
"I believe that if you get a woman to buy your product, you can always
get a man. A man is much easier. So if you can get a man, it’s no big
deal. It’s not any predictor of your success with women. So what you
should focus on is getting women because women are the harder test.
Because women are smarter! I have another theory, not exactly
perhaps scientifically confirmed. I believe that men have a
predisposition to want to kill things. So men want to kill other people.
They want to kill plants. They want to kill animals. They want to kill.
They just have a predisposition to conquer. Yes that’s in their hunter gatherer DNA, ok? By contrast
women do not have this need to kill things. They’re nurturers. They’re mothers. So if you show a man
anything & you say to the man, this is a way to kill Apple, to kill Microsoft, to kill Virgin America, to kill
whatever, to kill the competition, almost every time the man will say ‘Yes it’s a good idea!’ Because men
like to kill things! You show the same idea to a woman, a woman doesn’t have that predisposition to
want to kill things, you get a much sounder judgment. Therefore, my theory is when you have a product
or service & you want to see if it would be successful, you should always ask women. But not waste your
time asking men! That’s my theory! I am a champion of women! I have a very strong wife & a very
strong daughter."

FOCUS ON WOMEN
Female Entrepreneurs
Lisa Stone, CEO Blogher suggests that many female entrepreneurs
desire to create startups
"I love what Cindy Gallop said. She said ‘Women burn with the same
intense desire to be entrepreneurs as men do!’ I find that’s totally true.
My email’s filled with women who want to do something every week."
Victoria Ransom, CoFounder Widfire App suggests qualities that

female entrepreneurs need to raise venture capital .
"So some of the things I would say that you probably really need to
have are (I probably didn’t need to have in this scenario). But things
like perseverance & having a thick skin, I think are probably really
important for a lot of people who are raising money. If you’re not in a
situation where the vc firms are reaching out to you & you’re trying to
get in front of them then persevering & persevering & persevering.
And not taking it personally when you do get rejected, I’m sure are
very, very important. I think negotiation skills are important. When you get to that point of having a term
sheet & choosing who you’re going to work with, I think it’s pretty important because it can get fairly
intense. Then being really articulate, being a good sales person, telling a story, so you’ve got to be
convincing & be able to get the investors really excited about your vision & about your story, so being
able to articulate that really well."
Emily Olson, CoFounder Foodzie identifies the qualities that are

necessary to be an entrepreneur.
"They like to see that you can build something pretty quickly. That you
have a well rounded team who can do a lot with that little team.
Passion about that idea & I think that passion is a really important
part to be able to get through. There’s a lot of ups & downs & there’s
a lot of times when you sort of uncertain but if you’re passionate
about the why (why you got into it in the first place) you’re able to get
through a lot of those rough times. I think when you’re raising capital,
they know that you’re trying to build a big business & there’s a lot to figure out! So those are just some
of the core things as an entrepreneur."

FOCUS ON WOMEN
Jeff Clavier, Founder SoftTech VC speaks about general strengths that
women founders bring to startups.
"I think they pay attention to the social, the personal side of things a
bit more. They tend to communicate well, essentially everything that
a woman brings to a management team or a founding team so you
find the way they build a culture."
Jane Wurwand, Founder FITE & Dermalogica speaks about what good
credit risks women are. Kiva generally well over 83% of their micro
loans to women & they have a 99.9% payback history. She also
speaks about women in talent pool, 70% Dermalogica Corporate are
women. Women contribute a balanced approach to business.
"It's also a misperception because women actually are very good loan
risks. We pay back loans. Kiva generally lend well over 83% of their
microloans to women & they have a close to 99% repayment rate. So
it's a myth that women are bad credit risks."
"As far as operating & owning a business, the benchmark for me about having women included, why is it
excluded? It doesn’t make sense to exclude about 50% of your talent pool in any business, in any country
or on any planet if you own a company. I’m a company employer of 1,600 people & I would say about
70% of the workforce at Dermalogica Corporate are women. But in any regard it doesn’t make sense to
exclude 50% of the talent pool which is what women are on the planet. And to have women included at a
conversation around the table as well as men, you have a much more balanced approach to business. It’s
critically important."

FOCUS ON WOMEN
Adeo Ressi , Founding Member TheFunded & The Founders Institute,
speaks about the challenges for female entrepreneurs & the
advantages that they have.
"If something’s too hard it becomes impossible whereas if something

is hard enough, it makes you better for going through it. I think female
entrepreneurs definitely face an environment that is on the border of
almost too hard but hard enough that it makes you stronger. There
are some advantages to being a female entrepreneur that haven’t
been discussed. There are many disadvantages for sure, but there are
some advantages. For the most part the females that I’ve dealt with in startups have stronger, innate
management ability. They also have female specific networks that they can tap into, such as GirlsinTech
or Astia & many others that certainly don’t exist for men. The females who are in funding positions are
good targets to talk to about funding opportunities. There are definitely advantages to being a woman in
technology but I would say that it’s quite hard."
Vivek Wadhwa, Senior Research Associate Harvard Law School speaks

about advantages of women & how they can be disadvantages in tech
world.
"Women have a lot of advantages. They're are a lot more sensible

than men are. They are a lot more caring than men often are. They
lack the arrogance. They're down to earth. And those are big
advantages. Now the same advantages in the tech world can be
disadvantages because if you look at the stereotypical person that vcs
& Silicon Valley fund it's a Stanford dropout."

FOCUS ON WOMEN
Beth Seidenberg, Partner Kleiner Perkins Beth speaks about the
benefits of being a woman being more comfortable with feelings.
They can feel situations along with think them. This can be very
powerful for women. Women may not be assertive & ask for what we
want.
"Women have different characteristics that are good & bad in general
right. There’s definitely a lot that’s carried on the xx chromosomes
that’s a good thing, I think. So one of the things that we get with the
xx chromosome is that many women are more comfortable with the
emotional side of things & are able to feel situations as much as they
can think them. Being able to feel situations often times makes you a
really good leader because you have that emotional connection to
your project & to your venture capitalist & to your team, your company. I think that’s an element that
can be really powerful for a woman. You mentioned that sometimes women are not as assertive & they
may not ask for what they want? Men are really comfortable, this is just in general. And I find even in
myself & other women, that we tend to be tentative. We tend to wait for somebody to ask us or we tend
not to be as bold in what we ask for. Be bold, ask for what you want, ask the hard question. If you don’t,
you’re not going to get what you ultimately desire."
Ann Miura-Ko, Partner Floodgate encourages women to become

entrepreneurs if they feel the calling & don't hold off back.
"I think that they just need to play the game! I truly believe that every
woman that believes that they could be an entrepreneur, they can be!
Especially when you’re young, you need to play that game. If you
believe, even for the slightest bit, that you want to be an
entrepreneur, you need to do it! You need to do it in that moment! You
can’t hold off for a better time. You can’t hold off for a moment when
things are more stable or you have a little bit more experience. You
have to do it then!"

FOCUS ON WOMEN
Jason Mendelson, CoFounder Foundry Group speaks about being self
aware both as a venture capitalist & female entrepreneurs. He also
talks about how Foundry Group has a female executive coach to assist
them in dealing with issues.
"It’s being self aware, being honest & transparent about what you’re
doing. If I could make any generalization, I would tell you that the
women entrepreneurs that I have worked with tend to be a little more
self aware than some of the men. If you look at the typical Hollywood
casting couch CEO who’s beating his chest & leading the troops into
battle & all that, a lot of these folks they may be amazing leaders but they’ve got no clue on a self aware
factor of the externalities that are happening due to their behavior. One of the things we do here at
Foundry Group is we work with an Executive Coach twice a year. We get together with her, she’s a
woman, we talk about all the things that are going on with our business & interpersonal stuff & so we
spend a lot of time training ourselves about how to be aware & how to deal with conflict & how to deal
with different personalities. And I think the fact that we chose a woman as the person we look up to to
help guide us, I think that helps us interact."

Raising Capital
“The best judge of whether or not a country is going to develop is how it treats its women. If it's
educating its girls, if women have equal rights, that country is going to move forward. But if women
are oppressed and abused and illiterate, then they're going to fall behind.” Barack Obama, Ladies'
Home Journal, Sep. 2008
Victoria Ransom, CoFounder Wildfire App speaks about how helpful it

is to raise venture after you prove your success.
"A thing that really, really helped us was waiting as long as we could
before we raised money so that we had traction. We had a really good
story, we had proven success, and we had proven that we could scale
a team (even though we were much smaller than we are now in terms
of team). We brought in revenues; we’d proven we had customers so I
think possibly, to the extent that some vcs have concerns about
women entrepreneurs, maybe if you’ve already proven it to them?
Maybe if you said Look I’ve already built this company, I have these revenues, I’ve had success. Maybe
some of these concerns go away?"
Patricia Nakache, General Partner Trinity Ventures speaks about

networking with venture capitalists & entrepreneurs before raising
capital.
"I think that meeting people in a more informal setting allows you to
surface a lot of the objections & understand where an investor might
be coming from in their position & be prepared. Frankly it’s good
feedback, right? If you’re incorporating in your business what metrics
you should be tracking, what investors care about. I think in those
informal settings, you may be more likely to get really frank feedback
than in that moment of the pitch? Maybe? I’m not saying that it’s
always true, but I think that it’s possible that would be the case."

Raising Capital
Penny Herscher, CEO First Rain shares her tips about how to
recognize whether a venture capitalist is really engaged when she
pitches her business or not.
"If I can get them to engage with ME & my ideas with my personality
& my experience set then I have a good shot a second meeting getting
them to at least really to consider my idea. If they don’t engage with
me, if there is no connection, it sort of a distant thing & it’s more of a
judgmental discussion, not in a negative way but just as distance &
judgment, I’m not going to get a second meeting. Because if the
person I’m pitching doesn’t get me, they’re not going to fund me because I’m not the right profile. Are
they really looking at you? Are they laughing at your jokes (that’s a classic trigger for me)? Do they ask
intelligent questions? Do they challenge my assumptions? Do they really engage in a discussion around
substance? Or do they just flip to the spreadsheets & go ‘Well I think your pricing model is wrong.’ or
‘there’s 5 other people doing the same thing, what’s your differentiation? Then it’s a more disconnected
discussion.”
Catharine Merigold, General Partner Vista Ventures speaks about

how to present yourself as a female entrepreneur to a venture capital.
How power is & isn't communicated.
"So when women are pitching to venture capitalists or any kind of

men, there are subtleties about our verbal behavior, what you wear,
how you act. Again venture capitalists are taking a risk, they want
somebody that’s confident & a certain amount of power as a leader.
And there are subtle cues that convey that or not convey that. There’s
some great research. I just went to a seminar last night on Women on
Boards. Professor Deborah Gruenfeld at Stanford University is doing
some great research on the subtleties on how power is & isn’t
communicated. Now how power isn’t communicated is fast
movements & touching your face & higher voice & too much
stipulation versus more of an open stance, low & slow. Now again you
have to be enthusiastic, you have to be yourself but you can choose to be yourself in more powerful
ways. Because that’s going to matter!"

Raising Capital
Janice Roberts, Managing Director Mayfield Fund speaks about

empowering yourself in choosing the right venture capitalist.
"First of all I think it’s really important that an entrepreneur really has
enough confidence in themselves to believe that they can select the
venture capitalist as well, you know. And so I would encourage them
to do a lot of research in terms of looking at the type of firm & the
type of partner that they believe would be a good match for them. So
it might be that you are looking at prior investments in terms of stage
or sector. Or indeed people that you’ve been referred to from other
entrepreneurs."
Jason Mendelson, CoFounder Foundry Group gives female

entrepreneurs tips for pitching to venture capitalists, remain
confident! He also encourages women to become engineers &
technical which helps entrepreneurs raise funding.
"The first thing I would say is that don’t get discouraged by all the
noise that is out there. There is a ton of noise, whether it’s from the
New York Times, whether it’s from Techcrunch & the whole stuff that’s
been going on with Arrington. Don’t believe that everybody is bad &
evil & you need a chip on your shoulder because you have less of a
chance. You’ve really got a great chance, so go out there be confident, do what you do best! I think the
second thing is that we need more women engineers. I think one of the advantages that some men have
is that when somebody is walking into a pitch & we only invest in technology & that founder is a
technical person, you are by definition going to have a little more confidence that that technical person is
going to deliver on what they say they can. It’s a little more tenuous if I’ve got 2 non technical
cofounders saying ‘Hey we’re going to build this!’ Obviously it’s too late for a lot of people but if you’re
watching this & you’re trying to decide what you want to do when you grow up, I think an Engineering
Degree is a huge advantage."

Female Venture Capitalists
“Whatever women do they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good. Luckily, this is
not difficult.” Charlotte Whitton
Nancy Pfund, Managing Partner DBL Investors speaks about the

qualities necessary for a female venture capitalist. Make sure you
don't drink the Kool Aid!
"Patience, curiosity, a thick skin, ability to navigate through very

changing often difficult circumstances & keep level headed & keep a
team together & be responsive. A lot of times you start off in a
business & you have to change because the world changes around you
or your original thesis needed a lot of tweaking. So it’s important to be
optimistic & use your intuition but also being really, really dedicated to
testing & retesting & database query & making sure that you’re not
drinking the kool-aid!"
Jalak Jobanputra, Managing Partner FuturePerfect Venture speaks

about how few women are on boards & venture capitalists. She often
has to fight harder to get across a female perspective.
"I think it’s always interesting to be the only one of anything in a room
and there are times when I notice it & times I don’t. But I am most
often the only woman on a board and I do think I bring a different
perspective, that’s being a woman & being a minority and there’s a
whole set of experiences that I bring to the table & everybody brings
their own. But there’s not enough of me out there in terms of
perspectives. And often having to argue more for that perspective or recognize that I am going to have
to sometimes work harder to get others to see that perspective."

Rachel Sheinbein, Principal CMEA speaks about the dearth of female

venture capitalists & the skills & talents that are required which are
not gender biased.
"Why is there a dearth of women? Because a lot of what we do is

stereotypically a women field such as we’re hiring the CEOs &
sometimes dealing with firing which is associated with HR. This is
often where women are in a company but for some reason we’re not.
And facilitating relationships, that’s a lot of what we do once we
invest. Relationships to get into deals. They’re not skills that should be
gender biased per se. But what I’ve noticed is especially in Energy Materials, most of the investors in the
space have a technical background & technical degree. We know the stats on that, they’re low & as you
know I’m on the Board of Expanding your Horizons, a non profit that encourages girls in science,
technology, engineering & math. So we are losing girls up front. That program targets 6th & 9th grade &
we’re all over the country; about 25,000 girls go a year. But what we’ve seen, for instance Biology PhDs
60% are now being awarded to women is about the numbers that I saw last. Unfortunately Computer
Science which goes into the IT field we’ve been coming down. We’re now in the teens again. Electrical
Engineering & Chemical Engineering the numbers are even more abysmal. So that starts with this
pipeline problem. Then I would say it’s a little bit about the network: people pull from who they know &
they pull often former entrepreneurs. Who are those entrepreneurs? They’re men! I’ve seen
entrepreneurs who are successful; all of a sudden get 2 or 3 recruiting calls from vcs. If there aren’t
women to pull from & to run these companies? Often on our boards we’re pulling former CEOs for
independent seats. That’s a pull of men as well. In some degree it’s a matter of awareness & maybe a
little bit wanting to seek out that diverse opinion. I think some boards & some leaders are seeing the
importance."

Cindy Padnos, Founder Illuminate Ventures speaks about the small

percentage of female venture capitalists & the advantages of that.
"So in an interesting way, because there are not that many of us in

venture, roughly 5%, of the partners in high tech venture capital today
are women, it creates an interesting camaraderie, it creates an
interesting opportunity to reach out to other women in the sector, we
aren’t hard to find. I think that's a positive. I don’t have any doubt
that there are some things we miss out on, not being on the basketball
court together, not going to other activities, and not going to poker.
It’s not that I’m not invited; it’s just that poker isn’t my favorite thing to do or cigar smoking. I have no
doubt there are some things along the way that we’re not connected in but we are in other ways. I also
believe most of the investors I work with & sit on boards with see a value add to having someone with a
slightly different perspective on the board with them. The data we collected on this topic a year ago is
very interesting because it literally showed that smaller, newer firms, those with under $250million under
management had twice the percentage of women partners as those that were the largest firms. Now
that sounds really exciting until you look hard at that & see that those firms only have 2 to 5 partners
versus the firms that may have 5 to 15 team partners so while it’s great that that is happening it’s a slow
process of building the sheer numbers, building the actual ratio. Because one partner suddenly means
you are at 50%."

Advantages of Being a Female Entrepreneur
“Some women choose to follow men, and some women choose to follow their dreams. If you’re
wondering which way to go, remember that your career will never wake up and tell you that it doesn’t
love you anymore.” Lady Gaga
Jeff Bussgang, Partner Flybridge Capital Partners speaks about how

women entrepreneurs stand out & their advantages.
"I’m not sure that today women startups aren’t actually advantaged
frankly. Because I think they stand out & I think there’s a lean forward
on the part of many vcs to effect change, to be more helpful, to give
on the margin more time to women entrepreneurs. I think that a small
proportion of vcs that are women are leaning forward trying to be
more helpful to women entrepreneurs. So I think in many ways there
are opportunities for more women entrepreneurs that may not have
been available 10 or 20 years ago where they can find champions
more readily."
Julia Hu, CoFounder Lark speaks about the advantages of being a

female entrepreneur. Leverage the hell out of your womanhood!
"Sometimes I do feel that it’s very obvious that I’m a woman & it
almost helps me stand out in certain ways! So sometimes it’s a
positive. Yeah being a woman. I think women bring a lot of different
skill sets. I think while most of the venture partners that I talk to are
men, you can express your core assets as a woman. I just have to say I
remember back in the day before I started raising venture I had this
fabulous woman advisor, Mara Fitzgerald who was a PR firm founder.
She would just say ‘Julia you’ve just got to leverage the hell out of your womanhood!’ It was so funny. I
was kind of in shock. Not to say that we have to do anything out of the ordinary. Just recognize your own
strengths. Recognize that you are given this opportunity to stand out & that you have a very different
core set of assets & to use that not in any demeaning type of way. Just be confident!"

What do Female Entrepreneurs have Going for Them?
“The people I'm furious with are the women's liberationists. They keep getting up on soapboxes and
proclaiming women are brighter than men. That's true, but it should be kept quiet or it ruins the
whole racket.” Anita Loos, New York Times, 10 February 1974
Julia Hu, CoFounder Lark speaks about being a CEO & offering stability
to the team.
"You really need to be disciplined & even keeled in your internal

perspective as well. I feel like entrepreneurship is a ton of fun. It's
also a ton of work & a ton of troubles. t’s very intense. It’s an
emotional roller coaster more than anything else. I would say as a
female, to be able to smooth that roller coaster out & to create a
stability that will be core for you to continue forward. And for your
team to feel that stability. I think it’s the CEO’s responsibility to create
an atmosphere of extreme, continual stability for the team & protection from the outside world that is
the roller coaster."
Jeff Bussgang, Partner Flybridge Capital Partners speaks about the

positive qualities of women entrepreneurs & their leadership abilities.
"I would say that in general women entrepreneurs tend to be more

team oriented, less egotistical….they have low ego & therefore open
to bringing in new leadership at the right time."

Margit Wennmachers, Partner Andreessen Horowitz talks about the

gender gap & the positive qualities that women entrepreneurs have &
how they support each other.
"Well, the gender gap…I think if women are given a shot, they tend to
work hard. They tend to be very team focused. They tend to be pretty
good communicators. They tend to be very team oriented. They tend
to have a lot of collective female burden on their shoulders. So I think
once they’re given a shot, they tend to do really, really well. I think as
a group, we do really well & then we support each other. We’re going
to make within a generation or 2 generations we’re probably going to
make a lot of changes."
Janice Roberts, Managing Director Mayfield Fund speaks about the

opportunities for female entrepreneurs & venture capitalists.
Consumer internet is a strong area where successful women are
appearing. She encourages women to build strong team around
them.
"But we should see more women in this industry & I do think that the
opportunities are there. Certainly nobody is saying we don’t want
women to start companies, we don’t want women as venture
capitalists. I think it’s really getting women to feel the confidence that
they can go out & build companies. In certain sectors we’ve seen that, we’ve seen very successful women
in the internet sector. But maybe women feel more comfortable with that? So really applying what they
know to the internet world. I think that’s a really interesting sector where we see more women. I think
we see less women in certain sectors, semi conductors for instance, maybe it’s not an area of interest?
But I certainly think we are seeing more women. Women are really grasping what the internet can do &
opening up new opportunities, whether its ecommerce, gaming, entertainment, those sorts of sectors.
And I would just encourage women to really go out & build a strong team around them because I do
think women like to work as part of a team. So I think if you can be part of a great team, you’ll see more
women entrepreneurs coming forward."

Importance of Being Yourself
“I'm not going to vacuum 'til Sears makes one you can ride on.” Roseanne Barr
Guy Kawasaki, Founder Alltop & author Enchantment speaks about

scaling a business & being authentic in how you present yourself to a
venture capitalist.
"At the moment you’re raising venture capital you have to present a
picture that without too much hallucination you could be hundreds of
millions of dollars. That’s Plan A. Plan B is you start small, you worry
about cash flow & lo & behold one day you wake up & hallelujah,
you’re the next IBM, Microsoft, Apple or whatever. But it’s not
because you got that initial funding. It’s because you got on a rocket &
by god it took off! I’ve had women pitch me. I’ll give some advice. First
of all don’t think you need to play the role! Some people come & say I
have to be a hard ass bitch because men are hard ass. Hard asses
succeed so I need to be a hard ass. It doesn’t work! People don’t like hard ass men too! If a hard ass man
got funded it’s because he showed the path to make money. So he would have probably succeeded
anyway if he wasn’t a hard ass. So it’s very tempting to confuse correlation with causation. So don’t
believe that you need to play this bitch role. On the other hand don’t think you need to play the ditsy role
either, the hot woman babe whatever. That also is like…..So basically be what you are. I would tell this to
a man too & the book says this too, dress as an equal. Don’t dress under, don’t dress over, whatever. I
would not play the bitch card. I would not play the ditsy card. I would not play the hot babe card. Play
the card that you have a great fricking product! Simple as that!"
Jane Wurwand, Founder FITE & Dermalogica says that women should
be themselves, not act like a man. Be Fierce with your own Reality!
"One of the biggest myths (& I think it’s changing now with younger
women now coming into industry) but one of the greatest myths is
that in order for a woman to be successful a woman had to behave
more like a man. It’s a complete mistake because in order to be
successful you have to be at your most, what I call ‘fierce with your
own reality’. You have to be completely authentic to who you are! The
minute we start thinking I can be successful if I’m more like this person; you’re already second best
because you’re never going to be that person. Oscar Wilde had an expression: ‘Be yourself, because
everybody else is taken.’ Your authenticity as a woman is that you are a woman. Make no apologies for
it. Take no prisoners for it. Don’t try & behave in a way that is more obviously going to make you
successful. Be yourself!"

Fred Destin, Partner Atlas Venture speaks about how the venture
world favors a style that is highly directional. It's not natural for
women entrepreneurs to do well in that environment because there
are unwritten rules of the game. He says ignorance is the starting
point which helps people to be more open. The women he has seen
do best are the ones that are authentic & themselves.
"The venture world probably favors a style of leadership that is highly

directional. It depends on how well your Board listens but a bunch of
the Boards I’ve been involved with are basically an environment where
influence matters a lot. And where people expect you to show extremely strong direction. A lot of times
you are basically faced with 4 or 5 white males from Stanford or Harvard, whatever they may be,
expecting a lot of direction. So it’s not a natural environment where you if you don’t belong to that
world, whether you’re a female or whether you’re Russian or both, where it’s particularly easy to express
yourself. Because there are almost unwritten rules of the game as to how you manage these
environments. Now I think the good news is that we’re moving towards a world where - look at the work
that Brad Feld has done; we’re moving towards a world where there is a lot more acceptance of our own
ignorance. And I always posit ignorance as a starting point, in other words I’m not sure it’s going to work
but I’m for sure going to measure it. But I don’t know at the outset what the recipe is for success because
I don’t think there is one. I think there is a lot more open mindedness that should help. You know female
leadership style has more to do with building consensus, with being a leader who’s accepted by skills &
ability to take input etc. So maybe this leadership style may be more efficient but not one that people are
used to in the venture environment. Of course people fund within their zones of comfort. Because the
venture game is so much about long term trust relationships & whether you fall in love with a project,
the people running it & whether you know you have the feeling that you’re going to be able to count on
them. So anything that is a strong affiliation, whether it’s ‘I recognize myself as younger’; ‘We come from
the same university’; whatever it may be, it helps people get over these hurdles. A challenge that the
venture industry has to embrace is, which is hey you know there are actually a lot of ideas that are way
outside your normal comfort zone that may deliver outsize returns that don’t come from this typical
profile. And you know maybe women fit that mold too?? I’ll tell you what I would say, generally
speaking, I think when you’re going into entrepreneurship & you’re going to meet entrepreneurs, the
women that I’ve seen that do best are women who are absolutely willing to embrace who they are. So
there is absolutely no attempt at being tougher than the boys or whatever it may be? In fact you use
humility frankly & female characteristics to their full. You’re just not ashamed to be a woman! You’re
absolutely are who you are! You’ll dress the way you feel like dressing! That gives you inner confidence to
be more yourself in these environments & ultimately if you can’t be yourself & you can’t make it without
faking who you are, you’ll never make it! So I think we’ve moved very far away from an environment
where it was recommended that women try & fit into a certain mold. I think in the world of
entrepreneurship, a Caterina Fake or a Gina Ash or whoever it may be, are very complete personalities.
They are very awesome personalities & every instance of successful women entrepreneurs I can think of
are people who embraced who they are."

Potential Challenges
“Do I have an option? when asked by the press if she was ‘running as a woman.’ “Patricia Schroeder,
former US Representative
Julia Hu, CoFounder Lark speaks about her receptivity with others &
how that may come across to males in business.
"I think because by my nature as a woman, maybe, I am not as

aggressive. Sometimes not that I’m unconfident, but that I like to
listen to people’s other alternatives & recognize the validity of those.
Sometimes it comes across as if I am not completely sure of one
particular direction."
Jeff Bussgang, Partner Flybridge Capital Partners speaks about the

need to be aggressive & other qualities that are necessary for
entrepreneurs.
"What I’ve seen in my work as a venture capitalist here on the east

coast in Boston & New York City & I teach part time at Harvard
Business School. I have observed again that because they are in the
minority, women can be many times more effective at networking. But
it takes a certain personality. You have to be aggressive. There are
attributes that cut across genders. Aggressive, compelling, credible,
knowledgeable, authoritative, passionate. And if you have those
qualities as a woman entrepreneur I think you can do a terrific job."
Beth Seidenberg, Partner Kleiner Perkins speaks about selecting

friendly environment. Women may tolerate people who are not as
friendly to them or who they are. She says it’s ok to select.
"A lot of the time, you have to select the environment that is friendly &
it may be based on gender friendly but it also maybe based on
personality or skill set. But a lot of women, I think as much as we
talked about the emotional connection, when it comes to themselves
& figuring out who they want to be around, they’re more tolerant of
being around people who are not as friendly to them or who they are.
It’s ok to select."

Patricia Nakache, General Partner Trinity Ventures speaks about the

style challenge for a female venture capitalist.
"I think some of the challenges are similar to what women face in any
profession. There’s a style challenge: how do you be assertive without
being perceived as a bitch? How can you be warm without appearing
soft hearted? Finding that stylistic sweet spot that everybody is
comfortable with & you can appear assertive in a board setting & not
have negative repercussions. Then also how do you show warmth
without being perceived as too feminine. So I think that that’s true in
other professions as well. It’s not unique to venture capital. The other
thing, given that networking is super important both for entrepreneurs
& venture capitalists, one of the challenges is that some networking venues are more or less comfortable
for women. Finding ways to network effectively that are comfortable for you as a woman venture
capitalist, I think are important."
Leila Chirayath Janah, CEO Samasource speaks about the need for
aggressiveness in selling vision & the need for really big vision for
entrepreneurs. She also speaks about often not being recognized as
CEO for her business because she is a woman. Need to be able to play
in a man's world.
"I think a big part of it is first of all, women are less aggressive about
pitching than men. I think when they do pitch they sell a much smaller
vision. VCs want to know that they’re going to make a lot of money
out of your enterprise in a short period of time. So a lot of the pitches
I’ve seen that my male friends do are extremely aggressive – over the top! I wouldn’t feel comfortable
giving them & I think I’m a pretty aggressive person. So I think it really requires that because there’s a
discount factor that the vc is going to apply to your model anyway. So I think if you don’t have an
incredibly large vision, if you don’t have your sights set on a huge market & really disrupting that market,
it’s going to be incredibly hard to interest a venture capital firm. For whatever reason I think that women
are by nature more conservative."
"It may be uncomfortable sometimes. Occasionally I’ll be at a tech conference & people will ask me to
meet the CEO of the company & assume that I’m some hired woman who’s there to hand out brochures.
As demeaning as that initially feels, ultimately that’s great. I can get all sorts of information out of
somebody who stops by the booth & doesn’t think that I’m the CEO. Is it bad for my business? No! That
the people don’t think that I’m the CEO? Not at all! We have to get over some of that as women. We also
have to understand that if we’re playing in a man’s world, there are lots of things we can do to play
better than men in that world that aren’t about imitating men or acting like them but are about being
ourselves & being confident."

Cindy Gallop, Founder IfWeRanTheWorld talks about how difficult it is

for women to find a winning attitude. She advises women to take the
hard nose bitch role as a better option.
"So a study of women in the workplace identified several years back

unsurprisingly that women who play the game according to how it
comes naturally to them are seen as pathetic, weak, feminine &
ineffectual. Whereas women who play the game by men’s rules are
seen as aggressive, domineering bitches. The research study summed
it up & it was called ‘Damned if you do, Doomed if you don’t’ and
the New York Times article covering the survey said literally women can’t win. In that scenario what I say
to all women whom I advise is ‘Go for the domineering bitch option, it’s the lesser of the two evils. You
will at least be heard, you will at least be seen & you will make more happen than if you didn’t take that
approach.’ On the venture front, its critically important that the venture capital industry opens itself up
to women. And its critically important for both women & vcs. The reason it’s important for women is
because you are not taken seriously in this world, until you are taken seriously financially. I was just
looking today at Vanity Fair’s new establishment list the top 100 of what they call the new
establishment. The top three slots occupied by Mark Zuckerberg of facebook at number 1; Steve Jobs of
Apple at number 2 and Sergey Brin & Larry Page of Google at number 3. The first woman appears on
that list at number 23 (Lady Gaga)."
Randy Komisar, Partner Kleiner Perkins speaks about how women

entrepreneurs may not be as bold or far reaching as males. Caution is
not a good thing when it comes to venture capital. He advises that
women should not hold back & should be as bold & aspirational & the
venture industry needs to be more embracing.
"My sense is that, I hear this concern from women who I have a lot of
confidence in, in this business all the time who tell me that they think
that women entrepreneurs aren’t as bold, aren’t as inspirational
aren’t as far reaching as their male counterparts. And I don’t think
that caution is a good thing when it comes to venture capital. Venture
capitalists like bold ideas, they like people who they think are going to
have high aspirations & are going to reach for large, disruptive inflexion points in the marketplace. So I
think that women should not hold back, they should be as bold & as aspirational as they feel in
approaching their businesses. And the venture capital community needs to be more welcoming of
differences & heterogeneity."

Natalie Wood, CEO TheThoughtNet speaks about how important it is

for female entrepreneurs need to be able to be calm in the face of
problems as that is what investors are looking for.
"I would say that part of the process of getting venture funded is that
you really have to understand & learn a new language. Because you
have to go out & present financials & an idea & with most venture
companies they call it the ‘aspirin syndrome’ they want you to provide
an aspirin to a pain point. And if there isn’t a market that already
exists (it’s good to have competition) you have to show what’s
happening how is that market going to accept your solution & how are you going to grow that over
time? The biggest thing is that you can’t be defensive or you can’t just shut down. That’s important
because anyone who’s going to invest in you, they want to see that you can comport yourself in a
manner that’s going to be calm & rational.”

Importance of Confidence
People call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that distinguish me from a doormat. Rebecca
West, 1913
Ann Miura-Ko, CoFounder Floodgate speaks about the challenges that

women have developing their confidence & dealing with doubt.
"If I look at myself versus my husband is a really good example. In

college he told me that he never left an exam having thought he’d
done anything but ace it! I actually remember every single exam being
one where I thought oh problem number 4 maybe I didn’t do it quite
perfectly, there’s another approach to that proof that I could’ve taken
which was much more elegant. I would agonize over every single
detail. It’s not that my husband actually aced every single test but he
believed it. I think that’s prevalent with a lot of women. Even after you
get out of school you’ve finished all your exams but actually you’ve got
a lot of data points that prove out that your fundamental instincts
aren’t right about how you’ve performed, yet still you have that nagging doubt. I think that is part of the
problem. A lot of female entrepreneurs, a lot of female professionals will always feel that nagging doubt.
You have to push through that. Whereas a lot of male entrepreneurs & male professionals will just
believe. I think that’s the part that becomes very difficult in entrepreneurship is that there are so many
people around you that are telling you no, this isn’t possible; these are the reasons why it’s going to be
so hard. If you give yourself even the slightest bit of opening to even listen or hear those comments, then
there’s a higher probability that you’re going to give up. So you have to see those barriers or those walls
as minor speed bumps. That optimism is really, really important to develop. I think with women you
really have to develop it internally."
Emily Olson, CoFounder Foodzie speaks about the need for

confidence in a female entrepreneur.
"I do think that you have to have confidence & you have to be able to
be bold to say what you believe & to stand behind it & to have
opinions & be confident that you’re no inferior for any reason."

Robin Wolaner, author Naked in the Boardroom speaks about the

challenges of emotional insecurity & need to suspend disbelief. 'Men
are better at denial than Women!'
"In a way it's bad to be in tune with your emotions when your
emotions are making you feel insecure. women need whatever it takes
to make them feel invulnerable. Basically if you’re going into vcs as a
founder, you have to suspend disbelief or you wouldn’t be a founder.
The odds are overwhelmingly against you. Most things fail. So you’ve
got to suspend any disbelief about your ability to get it done. I don’t
know if most founders see the possible problems. I’ve worked with male founders. I’ve worked with
female founders. I’ve been a founder several times. I don’t know any of them who fit the image of ‘never
doubt, the complete Silicon Valley asshole theory. I’ve met those assholes later in their lives & I don’t
think Larry Ellison would ever admit to a moment of self doubt. But the founders that I meet generally
‘Oh my God can I actually get everything to happen?’ & you just have to suspend that. I think in some
ways men are better at denial than women. But have a friend, have somebody who’s going to give you
the tough feedback."
Gina Raimondo, CoFounder Point Judith Capital speaks about the

need for confidence in entrepreneurs & to portray that showing
confidence in your ability to face the unknown. Women may be more
reluctant to do this.
"When you are a CEO of a startup you need to portray confidence even
though you don’t have all the answers. Every startup there is a lot
which is unknown. But you need to portray that you are going to
figure out the answers, that you are not going to let anything stop
you. You are going to climb over mountains, break through walls to
get that done. And you have to exude that confidence and whether you want to call that egotistical or
not? I think women are reluctant to do that & therefore I think it hurts them. I think you need to sit down
with a venture capitalist & say this is my plan, my team, this is my product and we’re going to get it done
& nothing is going to stop us. That extreme confidence can be very helpful in securing venture capital.
Again I don’t want to over generalize but women may be inclined to say ‘This is our plan & we think it’s
going to work.’ Or ‘This is our plan & these are all the things wrong with it’, kind of leading with their
chin. I think some of the bravado that guys bring to the table helps them to secure venture capital
particularly because 9 times out of 10 the person on the other side with the check book is a man & will
relate to that."

Natalia Oberti Noguera, CEO Pipeline Fund speaks about risk &
women owning their own expertise which facilitates self promotion &
pitching. She also speaks about supporting female entrepreneurs who
are innovators & their stories. This provides role models for other
women & for women entrepreneurs to own their expertise.
"First of all as women we need to get more comfortable with risk

taking. And the other one is that we need to become comfortable
being experts, owning our expertise, our thought leadership. When we
feel more comfortable with risk taking & when we feel more
comfortable being thought leaders & knowing that we have an expertise then the 2 main things that we
hear so much especially in the blogosphere, then self promoting becomes easier & pitching becomes
easier."
"The other 2 initiatives that I would love to share with you: One of them I actually created called
#womaninnovator which is a media campaign to increase the visibility of women change makers &
mainstream their stories. This came out of my frustration from seeing all the lists from all the top media
being top 40 top 25. And the issue is no longer that there are no examples, the examples are there. It’s
just they’re not connecting the sources to people who are doing the stories. They’re probably going to
their traditional sources & those sources are saying ‘Well Mike, Jeff is doing something really great!’ It’s
very much about helping get these stories out. What’s interesting about that is what we do is create a
video series. We ask women, first of all they tell us what they’re up to & to define what woman innovator
means to them. Then the 3rd question has actually become very transformative individually is ‘How are
you a woman innovator?’ That is a moment, a space in time where we are providing in a way the
opportunity for women to own their expertise."
Cindy Gallop, Founder IfWeRanTheWorld talks about women's

struggle with being nice.
"As women from the moment we are born everything around us

conspires to make us feel insecure absolutely everything to do with
ourselves: the way we look, the way we dress, the way we talk,
whether people like us or not. And we are taught that nice girls don't
put themselves forward, nice girls are always nice to other people."

Dr Telle Whitney, CEO Anita Borg Institute speaks about how many
women entrepreneurs struggle with confidence & the ability to assure
investors that they will make a good return on investment.
"The hardest part with closing venture capital is understanding what

they’re after is making money. So you need to go in front of them &
convince them that you will be able to give them a good return on
investment. Since I often see that confidence is an area that women
struggle with a bit more than men, going in & telling someone ‘I will
make you money!’ can be challenging."
Jason Mendelson, CoFounder Foundry Group speaks about quiet

confidence that is necessary when pitching to a venture capitalist.
"Yes whether it’s gravitas or moxy or quiet confidence or whatever it

is! When I’m interviewing an entrepreneur, this is for everybody; you
want to imagine what the worse thing is going to happen. Which by
the way in startups, the worse thing usually does happen at some
point. How is this person going to be under fire & under pressure? It’s
a ton of pressure to come & meet with a vc & if you come off as
relaxed and you’re basically riding your bike in Central Park, that’s
very impressive regardless if you’re a male or a female.”
Natalie Wood, CEO TheThoughtNet speaks about how important it is

for a female CEO to be able to listen to advice but at the end of the
day to make decisions for herself, trusting in her own judgment.
"As you go through building your business one of the most important
things you have to realize is that you need to trust your own
experience & your own gut. Having been through this, I now think and
operate differently. I collect feedback, kind of like how Obama
manages his administration, trust in my knowledge and then make my
decision. But what I’m going to do is make the decision based on my
own experience!"

Risk & Failure
“Someone asked me why women don't gamble as much as men do, and I gave the commonsensical
reply that we don't have as much money. That was a true and incomplete answer. In fact, women's
total instinct for gambling is satisfied by marriage.” Gloria Steinhem
Gina Raimondo, CoFounder Point Judith Capital speaks about dealing

with risk for female entrepreneurs & the difference between men &
women's presentation of risk.
"If I were to make a general comment it relates to confidence. So I

think what you will see often in any startup is there’s a lot of
unanswered questions. Startup companies are by their nature filled
with risk & unknowns. How will the product sell? How will the market
receive it? How will the product perform? And I would say that
female entrepreneurs on average would be more open about the
potential risks & deficiencies. And also less inclined to portray that everything is known & that
everything is confident & everything is going to work. When in fact in won’t. When in fact sometimes
you see male entrepreneurs come in overconfident or oversell. Again I would say if I generalized a little, I
think male entrepreneurs are a little bit inclined to oversell & diminish the risk & be overly confident
whereas female entrepreneurs are less likely to do that."
Demian Entrekin, Founder Innotas speaks about how it is difficult to

raise venture for anyone & surmises that possibly women may not be
encouraged. Also he adds that investors are looking for low risk & high
reward.
"Raising venture is hard for anybody. There’s a really small number

that gets funded. I haven’t looked recently but I wanted to say 2% get
funded & probably 10% of those have some kind of successful outcome
(rough numbers). So it’s hard anyway & it could just be that they’re
not being encouraged. I haven’t done the research. I’ve been so busy
building companies that I haven’t focused on the sort of statistics or seen the numbers. That game is
about low risk, high reward. If they say high risk, low reward, they’re not telling you the truth. Investors
are looking for low risk high reward."

Risk & Failure
Susan Coelius Keplinger, CoFounder Triggit speaks about how to

handle risk by becoming used to asking for money & having investors
say no. It’s important to become comfortable with failure.
"Starting at a very, very young age taking risks & realizing that when
you take a risk it will probably just work itself out. Having that gut
instinct is I think what’s core to an entrepreneur. Then when it comes
to sourcing venture, the risk is asking for money & having them say no
but at the end of the day, having them say no is the worst thing that
can happen! Having that understanding & being comfortable with
that understanding is important. You can start it at a young age, by getting comfortable with risk &
getting comfortable with failure knowing that there will be more opportunities, there will be more
places. But its hard, even for someone that is comfortable with it, it’s still hard!"
Eve Phillips, Co-Founder Empower Interactive Inc speaks about risk &
how men & women promote & handle that differently. Ignoring risk is
not necessarily what an investor wants but that is probably why
young white male geeks get funded easier. She also speaks about the
difference for girls & boys as regards sports & that girls may just have
less experience with failing & winning. She also adds that women need
not to take things personally.
"Going back to evolutionary biology, men are generally more willing to

take risks? Now is that something that you actually want as an
investor looking at an entrepreneur? I don’t know? I think you want
someone who knows how to calculate risk really well. So I don’t think that having someone who’s a big
risk taker as an entrepreneur is really necessarily what you want. But if you look at who’s starting
companies from ages 20 to 25, it’s mostly men. Because I think they’re less afraid of what they don’t
know. And so suddenly you’ve got a lot of people who are willing to just jump on."
"If you go back & look at how boys & girls grow up. Boys are more likely to play sports, do things where
you have to keep going out & failing but trying again. I don’t think women are any less good at that, but
we may have had less experience doing it. So just recognizing that it takes a lot of ‘nos’ till you get a ‘yes’
in almost any sales cycle so once you get lucky things happen quickly. But that you going to have to keep
taking this feedback & figuring out if it’s relevant. Sometimes it’s good feedback & sometimes it’s not &
incorporating that into your thinking & your process. Whether it’s specifically to your pitch or more
broadly into the way that you’re running your business. Take this whole thing as a learning experience &
in a lot of cases don’t take things too personally!"

Risk & Failure
Lisa Stone, CEO Blogher speaks about failure & managing fear. 'You
need to have a great deodorant! This is hard!'
"You absolutely need people who are going to be honest champions of

what you’re doing. But also you need a great deodorant! This is not
easy! I’m sorry but you’ve got to be willing to fail. What could be so
bad? 5 out of 6 American businesses have a tough time sustaining
profitability. 9 out of 10 startups never see a profitable quarter. What
could be so bad? You fail? Wouldn’t that be better than never trying
what no-one else has tried? It has to be!"
Natalie Wood, CEO TheThoughtNet speaks about risk & how younger
women who do not have dependents & mortgages may be more open
to risk as they don't have as much to lose if a startup fails.
"There are women who are younger than I am & they’ve come up in a
different paradigm than I have. For them taking that risk if they’re in
their 20′s is not as frightening because they haven’t had any failures to
speak of. And they also may not have as much invested, maybe they’re
not married, they don’t have children, they don’t have a mortgage
payment? So when you start adding years & other effects, it’s not only
yourself that you have other people who will suffer if the risk doesn’t turn out, it makes you think! And
that goes for men & women."
Marissa Mayer, CEO Yahoo gives advice to female entrepreneurs on

failure: fail fast!
“Well failure is a fact of life. The most important thing of course is to

learn from failure. I also think the other thing that people don't realize
about failure is it's totally fine as long as you do it fast. If you fail fast
& then you're onto the next thing, that's actually successful you're
much better off. So you've got to be constantly monitoring your
effort, figuring out are you on a trajectory for success or are you on a
trajectory for failure. If you're on a trajectory for failure, decide to fail
fast, give it up & move onto the next thing that will be successful.”

Think Big – Scale your Business
“Women really do rule the world. They just haven't figured it out yet. When they do, and they will,
we're all in big big trouble.” ‘Doctor Leon,’ drleons.com
Leila Chirayath Janah, CEO Samasource speaks about the stamina

required to pitch their startups & need for more aggressiveness in
female entrepreneurs. Women may be far too conservative in selling
their vision & this may hold them back as founders.
"I heard every objection you can imagine. I think the biggest, boldest
ideas are those that require a lot of stamina to get going & rely on a
lot of persistence on the part of the entrepreneur. That’s the first
lesson I learned. I’d say secondly, I hate to make generalizations, but
the women that I know confirm this & the studies I’ve read confirm
this, women are less aggressive than men in raising money & in pitching an idea. If you’re trying to get
legitimacy for an idea that hasn’t yet materialized as a company you have to be aggressive. You have to
sell the vision 5 years out. You can’t be selling what you currently have, which is you, your friend’s futon
& your laptop. I think that women are far too conservative in business settings particularly when it comes
to raising money & selling a vision for whatever reason. I find that that conservatism can be really good
for the business. I have a COO who is much more conservative than I am & much more risk averse &
that’s wonderful because she makes contingency plans & ensures that our books are done correctly. But
in terms of the founder, you need to have somebody who is going to aggressively sell the vision &
aggressively make people buy into this idea. Otherwise it will never get launched."

Don’t be Afraid to Ask for Money
“Some leaders are born women.” Unknown
Tereza Nemessanyi, CoFounder HonestlyNow speaks about how

having a team made her more assertive & confident about raising
capital for their needs.
"I believed in my own idea from the beginning & I was confident in my
skills & my experience. But there was a change when I started to have
people committing to me & committing to that vision. Whereas
earlier, it was a little bit scary for me to go to someone & ask for
money just for me, suddenly when I was standing for a group of
people who believed in me the equation & the chemistry there was
completely different. So going & asking on behalf of my team who are dedicated to this was a completely
empowering moment & I'd liken to the lioness with cubs. I'm a mother, once your children or your
people need something, they need tools to get done what they need to get done, you don't hesitate for
one minute not only to make the ask, but to turn every single stone that you can to do right by them. It
becomes not only a rational question but a totally emotional one in the most positive way. You just will
not take no for an answer! I think that's a great strength that women have, that we just want to see
more & more of."
Susan Coelius Keplinger , CoFounder Triggit speaks about the need to

have a willingness to ask for money & be willing to have someone say
no & go back again later.
"Perseverance & a willingness to ask for money & that holds for the
majority of entrepreneurs, both men & women. I think that the reason
that Zac is so good & what I’ve learnt from watching Zac raise money,
is that you have to be willing to ask for money! And you have to be
willing to have someone say no & you have to be willing to go back &
ask for money again later & not be afraid. Nancy Pelosi, the most
prolific fund raiser currently in politics, is a woman & she just asks for money. She then of course
leverages it correctly so it’s useful. I think asking!"

Alison Davis, CEO Fifth Era Financial speaks about how may not like to
ask for money. She also speaks about the difference in male & female
brains that attempt to identify why men & women think differently.
"If you look at the number of small businesses in the country, small
business creation that is driving our economy, a much higher
percentage of small businesses are started & run by women. It's much
closer to 50/50. think what happens is that when women are starting
a business, they’re thinking how do I get to $100k, $150k, $200k cause
then I can put my kids in school, I can buy the groceries, I can be
comfortable, I can have a car. They’re not sitting there thinking how can I make $100m & be the CEO of
facebook. So women start businesses because they have a passion they want to pursue. I don’t think
they’re shooting for the big payout. They’re tend to be less focused on being an entrepreneur for the big
money. Self sufficiency is important because then they can look after their families & then pursuing a
passion & doing something they love. I think that’s why you see the percentages go down. But I have a
lot of female networks, and there are plenty of women looking for venture capital who say they just
don’t get funded."
Beth Seidenberg, Partner Kleiner Perkins speaks about the benefits of

being a woman being more comfortable with feelings. They can feel
situations along with think them. This can be very powerful for
women. Women may not be assertive & ask for what we want.
"Women have different characteristics that are good & bad in general
right. There’s definitely a lot that’s carried on the xx chromosomes
that’s a good thing, I think. So one of the things that we get with the
xx chromosome is that many women are more comfortable with the
emotional side of things & are able to feel situations as much as they
can think them. Being able to feel situations often times makes you a
really good leader because you have that emotional connection to
your project & to your venture capitalist & to your team, your
company. I think that’s an element that can be really powerful for a woman. You mentioned that
sometimes women are not as assertive & they may not ask for what they want? Men are really
comfortable, this is just in general. And I find even in myself & other women, that we tend to be
tentative. We tend to wait for somebody to ask us or we tend not to be as bold in what we ask for. Be
bold, ask for what you want, ask the hard question. If you don’t, you’re not going to get what you
ultimately desire."

Possible Hindrances
“Remember, Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, but she did it backwards and in high
heels.” Faith Whittlesey
Jessica Jackley, CoFounder Kiva response to a venture capitalists

concern that she would let her business down by getting pregnant &
issues about work/life balance.
I know that Paige Craig said: “A pregnant founder / CEO is going to fail
her company”) that popped up in his head, I’m glad he asked the
specific question he did – specifically: “…how in the hell is this
founder* going to lead a team, build a company and change the world
for these businesses carrying a kid around for the next few months
and then caring for the kids after?” Jessica response"There’s another
aspect of this conversation about a founder of a company to have the goal of achieving balance at all
when in start-up mode, and I’d like to address that too. Do I work long hours? Weekends? Of course!
Pull all-nighters when needed? Sure. But working until I fall asleep on my laptop and doing nothing else
on a regular basis makes me less effective. Turns out that getting at least a little sleep, exercising
regularly, having healthy relationships outside of work, spending time with my family, reading a book for
fun now and then, etc. makes me a better Founder/CEO."
Adeo Ressi, Founder Founder Institute speaks about how they find
women have differing perceptions from men as entrepreneurs. He
also speaks about how startup culture may need to change to
encourage more women.
"For whatever reason, we find that the females drop out a little easier.
I’ve spoken with other women’s groups about why that is. And I think
that a lot of females have perceptions that differ from male
perceptions on the world. I think men expect things to be often times
hard & sometimes women expect things not to be as hard. And I think
women deal with things differently. So I think there’s going to be a balancing where some of the norms
have to change in how startups are done to attract more females in? Because if we just say hey we’re
just going to give you stuff that you need to do in a startup regardless of gender, race, age & we see
more females drop out, clearly the way that startups are being built & run today do not appeal to
females as much as they do to males. With that said the way startups are built & managed will need to
change to attract more females. Startups are very cut throat & maybe too cut throat I would argue? The
work load is often excessive & it’s arguably too excessive. So I think if we can balance startup life a little
bit more, that will also help attract females into startups."

Possible Hindrances
Nancy Pfund, Managing Partner DBL Investors speaks about the

challenges of being a female venture capitalist. She also speaks
further about the challenges of being a female venture capitalist & the
benefits. 'ADD is a benefit!' You need to have a love of
entrepreneurship & you get to work with really cool people!
"First of all it's a very challenging field. It's not for the faint of heart!
It has immense rewards on all levels but it's very difficult. You have to
be comfortable with the fact that some of your efforts will fail because
no-one has 100% perfect track record. I think for women really it's not
the kind of job that is as predictable & confining to a work place. It
kind of takes over your life in a way! I think you have to have a
mentality & a life style that's accepting of that rather than resenting that. There are women & men that
like that & then there are women & men that don’t. They want to have their work & then they want to
have the rest of their life. I would just say that if you’re in the latter category it’s not going to be a happy
job for you."
"I always like to say in this profession ADD is a benefit! Because you are dealing with a lot of businesses
& a lot of management teams, a lot of exogenous factors. Something is blowing up, while something is
doing terrific. You have to be nimble, you have to like that kind of environment. A lot of people don’t &
that’s why it’s a bit of a self selecting pool. It all comes down to the people & having that love of
invention, of entrepreneurship. I mean we get to work with really cool people that are making the world
a better place! So that makes all of the hassle worthwhile."
Leila Chirayath Janah, CEO Samasource speaks about the myth of

work/life balance for entrepreneurs. Partners of female
entrepreneurs need to be accepting of the demands of being an
entrepreneur.
"Carol Bartz said in a report that I thought was really interesting, she’s
the CEO of Yahoo & quite an outspoken woman entrepreneur, she said
that women believe in this myth that you can have work/life balance.
In a startup or if you’re running a technology company there’s no such
thing as work/life balance. You can’t wake up in the morning & make
breakfast for the kids & do some yoga, go to work, run a company all day, come home & manage to have
time to make love to your husband! It’s just not possible, right! A lot of the men who do this work end up
getting divorced or devoting every second of their lives to the company because that’s what it takes. I
think that means that the partners of women entrepreneurs have to be accepting of that & women have
to recruit partners who know that the business is going to take priority over everything else for a certain
amount of time. We have to be realistic about what we can do. Part of that is expectations that are
placed on women by others. But we can set those expectations!"

Sex & Power
“I have yet to hear a man ask for advice on how to combine marriage and a career.” Gloria Steinem
Dave McClure, Founder 500 Startups speaks about the challenge of

sexual chemistry between a venture capitalist & a female founder.
"On the risk of tarnishing my image: I think it’s impossible to

completely ignore the human sexuality issues & other sensitive issues
in all contexts. I think you always have to fight biases one way or
another when you’re making investments. Sometimes it’s a positive &
sometimes it’s a negative but it does enter into the equation. I think if I
believe in what I’m doing as a venture capitalist, you take risk in all
forms & match it. That’s part of the equation."
Prerna Gupta, CEO khu.sh speaks about the tension between being
sexually attractive & powerful.
"One thing that I just want to say about this whole issue of sexuality
which I think is really important. I think that this is one issue that
definitely affects women from a really early age. The reason we don’t
have more women in technology & as a result more women in
entrepreneurship is because there’s this tension. And again it’s a
human tension, individuals are not bad people, they’re not doing it on
purpose. I think when you’re a woman being attractive is one of the
most important things you can do as a woman, as a human female. For whatever reason, being
intelligent & being powerful, these things are at odds with being sexually attractive for a woman. We are
very sensitive to this at a young age. I think if you have to choose between the two, a lot of women go
towards being attractive. That is one thing that I hope will change."

Sex & Power
Adeo Ressi , Founding Member Founder Institute speaks about the

challenges female entrepreneurs face when raising capital with
venture capitalists.
"So many of the female founders that I consider my friends have told
stories that you would obviously guess. They often get meetings for
the wrong reasons, potentially their looks or something of that nature.
A lot of times they may even do an investment based on looks & things
like that. Then the second something goes wrong, they’re eliminated
very quickly. When things go wrong people are eliminated pretty
quickly in the venture industry no matter what. But it’s pretty clear that the shoe drops faster based on
the experiences I’ve had with female founders."
Jessica Jackley, CoFounder Kiva speaks about interesting events whilst

raising venture with venture capitalists, including being hit upon &
being sidelined for being female.
"Yes we’ve had some interesting struggles & interesting comments to

us. We’ve been asked out. We’ve had the flippant comments here &
there about being women. One funder who we’re not working with,
made a comment about that he was worried about future funding
(even though he wouldn’t do this) conversations going down a
different path & us being hit on by other funders. It was just such a
strange sort of cop out for it. But again in general it’s a big wide world out there & there are a lot of
people. Even though you might be sitting across the table from someone who doesn’t look like you, is not
the same gender as you, I feel like i learn all the time from men who themselves would fit that old
stereotype funders entrepreneurs & teach me about how to treat people the right way."

Children
“You should never say anything to a woman that even remotely suggests that you think she's
pregnant unless you can see an actual baby emerging from her at that moment.” Dave Barry, 'Things
That It Took Me 50 Years to Learn'
Indu Navar, Founder Serus Corporation speaks about making a

difference & commitment as a female entrepreneur. Be yourself! She
also mentions balancing being a mother & having a business.
"I really think focusing on the value. I really think right now is a good
time for women to be in the world & trying to say I can make a
difference! Because we’re not really proving anymore? There was a
lot of other women who’ve been very successful, look at the CEO of
Pepsi or look at Meg Whitman that have actually proven that they can
run a business & be very successful at it. So I don’t feel I need to prove
but at the same time not many women have come out & said I’m going to take my career very seriously
& have the same amount of perseverance & dedication & commitment to anything else I do to my
career. I think that’s what somebody would want to see that is that you are really committed & you are
going to make sure that this is one of the big goals in your life. It’s not an experiment, it’s not a test! So I
would say the attitude should be not to worry if you are a female or not, not to worry that you are
different."
Wendy Lea, CEO Get Satisfaction talks about how women can cycle in
& out of the life cycle of their careers at different ages & stages of
their lives.
"The wonderful thing about the female gender (there’s so many

wonderful things about the female gender!) but I think we’re much
better at pulsing in & out. What I mean by that is, you take a run, you
take a 5 year chunk & you say ‘I’m in between movies!’ Let’s pretend
like I’m an actor. ‘I’m going to go have my children!’ I’m at the stage
either early or late, I’ll adopt them or have them. I’m going to take a
break & do that & come back. When I come back, I’m going to start the next Google or the next
facebook. Then I’m going to take a pause, because I want to go to Bali & do a meditation path & I want
to come back & I want to be in politics. Then I’m going to come back & run a non-profit. It seems to me,
based on my observation of my friends from 20 year olds to 70 year olds, that we feel more comfortable
opting in & out over the life cycle of our career. I think that’s a beautiful thing. I think that makes us
better at each stage. I think it makes us more whole. I think it gives us more ability to lead because we
have more empathy relative to where everyone else is. I think that’s a beautiful thing."

Children
Jennifer Toney, CoFounder WeMakeItSafer speaks about the bias

about mothers in the business community. She offers a new way at
looking at the criticism that mothers don't have time to be an
entrepreneur. A new model of work/life balance by being intelligently
creative about how to get things done! She also speaks about being a
mompreneur and how she manages her time along with having a
family
"I do think there are some biases towards mothers in general in

business in general. And the venture community is probably not
separate from that at all? I think there tends to be a fear that Moms aren’t going to have the same
amount of time as a single person or someone without children to spend on their startups. To that I
would say everybody has something else that they’re working on. I think by definition if you’re a
successful entrepreneur you’re most likely an overachiever. So whether you’re a marathon runner or a
sailor or you’re sitting on boards of other startups or you’re trying to work on a charity & solve world
hunger, you’re doing something else anyway. So for a Mom your something else happens to be your
children. When I had kids it wasn’t the business & technology & entrepreneurship that got sidelined, it
was the other things that I was doing. I didn’t spend as much time at the gym. I didn’t compete in
triathlons anymore. I didn’t do painting & things that I normally did. So it changes but it doesn’t mean
necessarily that you have less time to work on your business. I think also talking about work/life balance;
you switch how you think about things. I’ve sat in a number of conferences where there would be a
panel on work/life balance & you do unfortunately hear a lot of women who are in positions or CEO
positions that will say it’s not possible to do both. I think that will always come from somebody who
doesn’t already have kids. So they feel like I know what I’m doing now, I know how hard it is, I know how
much time I’m spending, there’s no way I could have children. That’s probably true! In that mind frame &
in that model that you’ve set yourself, you probably couldn’t also have children & do a good job. I think
that a lot of work/life balance is being very creative, intelligently creative about your organization &
changing your mind about how things work when you get things done."
"Again it’s about changing the model. It’s being willing to erase the lines & redraw them & step outside
of the box. Sure you might not be able to do the 10am to 4am work & incubator with a bunch of people.
But you’re also not doing other things that take away from other entrepreneurs/startups. So Thursday,
Friday, and Saturday you will never find me at a bar from 9pm to 2am. I’m back at my computer working
very hard & progressing on the company. Whereas my single entrepreneur friends will out at the bar
drunk tweeting. Some of it I’m sure is helpful to their business & networking but a lot of it is just drunk
tweeting. They’re having a great time & it’s great. But those are a lot of hours during the week that
Moms are spending, or people who have other obligations are spending on their companies. So I think
it’s a misnomer to think that just because you have children that you have less time to spend on your
company. I think if you were to compare productive hours, it would be very similar it’s just that they’re
happening at different times & in different ways."

Children
Emily Olson, CoFounder Foodzie speaks about the age ranges that
women can be entrepreneurs if they also want to raise children.
"I think there is something simply biological about a woman having a

child that kind of affects the time frame that we have. I fortunately
started a company when I was 24, so pretty young, & companies take
a long time to build to be successful, right. So I have another, hopefully
8 years ahead of me doing this. So if you think about the window of
time child bearing years, the time you need to start a business to be
successful, there’s an interesting dynamic going on. So I think it’s less
about ability or traits that a woman has to be an entrepreneur, that there are maybe biological factors
that we may put our focus elsewhere for a period of time. And I think that’s ok. The post that Fred
Wilson wrote about women in their 40s starting companies & there was like a wave of, after the kids
were grown & they start having time again? And they’re in an interesting phase of life where they have a
perspective of certain problems that can be solved that other younger generations don’t. There are a lot
of younger entrepreneurs these days & that can be solved. And they need a support system to be able do
that. There’s this group of people after they raise their children and I think it’s an interesting thing that
women sit on each end of that. "
Mark Suster, Partner GRP Partners speaks about the ages that women
want to have kids & somehow eliminates them from working as
entrepreneurs during that time & therefore limits the number of
female entrepreneurs raising capital.
"If we’re going to have an honest discussion about men versus

women, we have to be honest with each other about the biggest
difference. The biggest difference is that somewhere between the age
of 30 and 42 many women have kids. Obviously families have kids and
our society, rightly or wrongly, (I’m not having a judgment call) tends
to be such that the man continues with full time work & the woman
either does part time work or stops working completely or takes 6
months off or whatever. She then usually has primary child
rearing/caring activities. Well then let’s look at the age of most men
when they’re out raising capital? Well it’s probably somewhere in the
28 to 35 range. And I honestly think, again if we’re going to talk openly about this, I think that plays a
role in it."

Children
Margit Wennmachers, Partner Andreessen Horowitz speaks about

women's biological clock & how that can slow a woman's career
down. Her advice is that you can work it, so go for it!
"I think sometimes women can be their own worst enemy. There’s the
whole biological clock. Sometimes women put their career on slow
burn in anticipation of having to juggle it all & those kinds of things. I
would say if you’re a woman, you’re smart, you’re ambitious, go, go
for it & don’t stop. Because once you have children or the husband or
both you will figure it out!"

Helping Other Women
“It is because of men that women dislike one another.” Jean de La Bruyère, Characters, 1688
Fred Wilson, Partner Union Square Ventures speaks about self belief
in women entrepreneurs & the need for good role models for women.
He says there is too much emphasis in the culture on male
entrepreneurs.
"I think it’s a question of whether or not women believe that they can
be successful. I think it’s just a question of changing people’s
perspectives on that. I think if women felt that they could be successful
entrepreneurs, you would see more women do it. I think that there
aren’t as many role models out there. If you think about popular
culture, whether it’s in movies or tv shows, books or magazines, reading on the web, I think that the role
model of the entrepreneur is most often played by a man. And I think that as a result there’s a little bit of
a perception that it’s a man thing. I don’t think that’s true. So if we just had more role models & we saw
more women being portrayed as entrepreneurs, I think that a lot of this would shift very quickly."
Brad Feld, Managing Director Foundry Group speaks about bias being
driven out of the system as more & more women become
entrepreneurs & then are funded. Women need to help each other
remove the bias & men need to not reinforce the bias.
"It’s a self fulfilling prophecy both positive & negative, the more
women entrepreneurs there are, the more successful women
entrepreneurs there will be, the easier it will be for that bias to be
driven out of the system or the more that bias will get driven out of
the system. And subsequently the more women entrepreneurs will be
funded. It’s not just a’ be funded’ phenomena, it’s engage in the process? You asked me at the beginning
what percentage of companies are women & it’s a small percentage. And it’s not because we’re looking
for male oriented businesses or we are explicitly looking for female entrepreneurs oriented businesses.
We don’t care whether an entrepreneur is male, female, young and old & frankly if they were from Mars
or from Pluto & they were working on something interesting to us, that would be fine. So we’re not
focused on the gender, age, ethnicity of the person but interestingly that population is such that it is
much skewed male. I think what women do to help each other is important. I think that’s true of all
aspects of society, if there’s a bias in the system the people that are in the minority should work together
to overcome the bias. And more importantly the people that are in the majority should be very tuned into
the bias & should work hard to try to eliminate the bias, not necessarily by modifying their specific
decisions but by eliminating the bias from their decisions."

Helping Other Women
Vivek Wadhwa, Senior Research Associate Harvard Law School speaks

about how if women help each other it will change the ratio.
"The lesson for women is that by pulling each other up, one woman
achieves some success, she pulls up another 2 women behind her. If
they started doing that, I have zero doubt that you would have a
major impact here."
Cydni Tetro, Founder Womens Tech Council speaks about women

who give back to their community & therefore are more successful in
raising venture.
"Women who are willing to spend some amount of time giving back to
communities tend to have higher success rates in venture. Because
they’re seen as these well rounded individuals where they’re giving
time in certain places, they’re leading specific initiatives. They have
business skills outside of the venture that they’re giving. So people see
them in all sorts of fashions, so when you sit in front of an angel group
or venture firm they get exposed to all these experiences that you’ve had because they start talking to
people. And they say Oh yes I worked with so & so at this & it just creates these lasting connections that
you can’t create if you’re just in a bubble. I think that dramatically helps women! It’s all just part of this
ecosystem you have to build if you really want to play in the entrepreneurial community."
Cameron Lester, General Partner Azure Capital Partners speaks about

how women entrepreneurs are helping each other by networking &
how that will change the ecosystem.
"I think there is a concerted effort on the part of the successful women
entrepreneurs in the valley to really build their own set of networks &
help those who are less connected get inserted into the main stream
venture capital entrepreneurial network. I think that this is a work in
progress, 10 years from now it’ll be much further along. But I do think
that these types of initiatives & the kind of rallying cry that I’ve seen
here amongst some of the most successful women CEOs is having a
good effect. That coupled with the fact that some of these women
CEOs are generating great results."

Helping Other Women
Cindy Gallop, Founder IfWeRanTheWorld quotes Madeleine Albright

to encourage women to help other women.
"I could not more heartily endorse Madeline Albright’s wonderful

quote: ‘There’s a special place reserved in Hell for women who do not
help other women.’"
Penny Herscher, CEO First Rain encourages female entrepreneurs to

help each other to increase our numbers.
"When I started there were no women in management in the firms

that I joined & I was the first woman executive in the company I
worked for. And then in Semi-Conductor I was the first woman to be a
CEO of a company in the space. And now I see more women running
companies, more women with technology degrees, more women
studying Computer Science. So I think it’s more a generational thing &
I think it’s only a matter of time now. But we have to help each other,
those of us that do it, need to help the other women at least get trained so they have a fair shot at it!"
Dr Telle Whitney, CEO Anita Borg Institute talks about the Impostor
Syndrome which many women experience & how mentoring helps
change the culture of bias.
"Look at women who choose technology. We work a lot with women

who stay in technology & we’re offering this wonderful panel called
‘The Imposter Syndrome’ where so many very talented & very
successful women talk about how much they feel they are an
imposter. If you think of a young woman who is just starting out on
her career, being able to talk with someone & understanding that lack
of confidence is something that many of us suffer from. So being able to reach out to role models is
certainly one of the things that I feel is really important. Mentoring is widely quoted as being a very
successful practice of changing the culture. And I think that often peer mentoring is as successful."

Helping Other Women
Natalie Wood, CEO TheThoughtNet speaks about how women are

great consensus takers & how helpful it is to get advice & mentoring
from women who are successful.
"Women are good at researching & so I think they can usually can
come up with & understand who might be a good match for them.
Also women are great consensus takers & so if we can go out & tap
into other women who have made it, we can alleviate some of the
issues & problems that we’re going to have to face trying to do it all
on our own."

INVESTORS
Investors Position
“Being a VC in a room full of entrepreneurs is like being the hot girl at a nerd party.” Venture
Capitalist friend of brianrothenberg.com
Fred Destin, Partner Atlas Venture speaks about venture capitalists

being very ego & passion driven. The reality is that vcs should enable
entrepreneurs to get on with growing their startups & not driving the
business themselves.
"I’ve seen a lot of vcs are alpha males. They’re generally very smart
(but they’d like you to know they’re smart!) Unfortunately that applies
to me, but I’m working on it! You get a fair amount of ego! You get
people who want to be respected, want people to recognize their
smart, feel they’re important. Even though the vc industry is an
absolutely tiny industry but nevertheless. Then combined with a general passion for creating stuff & so
there’s a ton of very different profiles out there & there’s also a lot of marketing hype! So we always say
success has many fathers & failure is an orphan! The reality is the vcs basically direct money & vaguely
influence the course of the company. In rare cases do we play a fundamental role in shaping it but I
would say that’s the outlier. Usually the better the entrepreneur, the less we provide in terms of absolute
value add, right. So fundamentally our role is to help the entrepreneur spread their wings & add really
create value & avoid massive mistakes we’ve seen before to help them attract good talent."
Randy Komisar, Partner Kleiner Perkins suggests that the venture

industry needs to embrace all heterogeneity. He also speaks about
the lack of female venture capitalists & how people may tend to stick
with people they feel are alike them. He suggests that younger male
vcs may be more comfortable with women.
"I think that it’s important for venture capital to be more embracing of
heterogeneity not just gender heterogeneity, but all heterogeneity.
And I think gender heterogeneity is part of that."
"There are not enough women in venture capital today & that’s part
of the problem. Venture capital tends to be clubby in the sense that
you tend to have confidence & trust & perhaps better communications with people that you feel are
more alike than you feel are less alike. And that applies across genders too as well. I do think that there
is a generation of younger venture capitalists who are male who are particularly more comfortable with
heterogeneity including gender heterogeneity."

INVESTORS
Investors Position
Robin Wolaner, author Naked in the Boardroom speaks about how

venture capitalists are like sheep & follow trends.
"So every time you’ve got something that reduces the pool of available
women whether it’s whether they’re in engineering or whether they’ve
had the track record, there’s less for the vcs to invest in. But vcs are
complete sheep. They follow the trend, right! So if a woman walks in
with what they’re funding that week (I’m not saying they all do but the
lion’s share of them are lemmings) so if a woman walks in with that
hot sector that they’re all funding that week, they’ll fund her
company. Whether she’s done it before, female, male or anything in between. They will overlook
anything in the race to get in on the next hot deal."
Rachel Sheinbein, Principal CMEA speaks about awareness of gender

in venture capital. She also talks about her collaborative attitude &
the lone wolf & personality branding in venture industry. Her
collaborative style has been successful for her.
"For some reason in this, its finance related or a bunch of really smart
ambitious people, it’s become much more evident to me, the bit about
my gender. One thing is there is a bravado & competition among vcs,
getting into deals or having the connections or relationships. I came
out of Intel, a very intense environment but very collaborative. I
always felt that you’re rewarded for win/win: everyone can win! (Well maybe I naively felt that way?)
But here I’ve noticed there is more of a lone wolf mentality, a little bit of celebrity, personality branding.
But I have to say that I’ve been rewarded for sticking to my personal style & way of doing things. I always
feel if someone has great skill set in finance, why wouldn’t I have them help me with due diligence."

INVESTORS
Investors Position
Penny Herscher, CEO First Rain speaks about lemming behavior in

venture capital & how she is a venture capital snob. She also talks
about different types of venture capitalists & whether they are biased
or not when you are pitching your business.
"I think there is a lot of lemming behavior in venture capital. I’m a

venture capital snob! I think there are 5 or 10 firms worth spending
your time with & the rest are not worth spending your time with”
"I think there are 2 kinds of vcs: 1) There are vcs who really don’t care
what gender or color you are. They care about who you are as a
person. They care about your experience & your ability to build a team. So if you have strong ideas &
you’re very sure of yourself & as I said, you have operating experience so you know how to build a team,
you know how to build a product, you know how to go to market. Whatever your experience is? You’ve
come from Sales & Marketing or you’ve come from Engineering. By the way you’ve a much higher
probability if you are Technical than if you are not, just statistically much higher chance. There’s a set of
VC’s who just don’t care. 2) There’s a set of vcs who politely listen to you & are slightly patronizing
through the whole thing & say ‘I’ll get back to you!’ And I’ve learnt how to sort those out very early on in
the process & make sure I only spend my time with the guys who actually looking for ‘Are you a spark,
are you a leader? Are you going to change the world with your ideas?’ And focus your time on them.
The ones who patronize you, just shake their hand & thank them."
Jason Mendelson, CoFounder Foundry Group talks about the lack of

transparency of some venture capitalists. He also mentions how good
vcs say yes & no very quickly which is kinder to an entrepreneur
"I think a lot of vcs are not very transparent in what they’re thinking.
An entrepreneur comes & says ‘Hey I’d like you to fund my company’
and they never really engage emotionally, they’re never really
intellectually honest & they never say no quickly, they say get back to
me, get back to me, get back to me & I think that just adds to this
whole perception of this wall. I think that the good vcs these days are
the folks who say yes & no very quickly. In fact the nicest thing you can do for an entrepreneur is to say
no very quickly.."

Disadvantages of Investing in Similarity
"The only difference between a rut and a grave is their dimensions." Ellen Glasgow
Cameron Lester, General Partner Azure Capital Partners speaks about

why most vcs invest in those similar to them & how this is not how to
make money in this industry. Diversity brings disruption.
"So I think vcs have in general been victim to the fact that they see if
you come with a Stanford background or another Ivy League
background or Havard background & you have worked at an Apple or
a Google or a Netscape or pick your hot tech company & you’re
typically younger therefore associated with working the 100 hour
weeks & you’re well spoken therefore you can be viewed as someone
who can market your business to customers, future other investors or
acquirers, then you’re somebody that should be backed. So as we sit
in partner meetings & somebody comes in with that school
background & that pedigree in terms of where they worked & pitches. If they speak well & they have that
background there’s a comfort zone. That being said, I think that that can lead to a lot of erroneous
decisions. The way to make money in this business is not to make money by backing what everybody else
is backing. The way to make money in venture capital is to think against the grain & be ahead of the
curve to invest in something that has yet to be discovered by everybody else & to build it into something
great. Whether it’s a male CEO or female CEO doing that is really irrelevant. What we’ve found is, at
least in the experience we’ve had in over a decade of doing this is that there’s a crop of women CEOs
who are doing great things in this industry. What we’re trying to do as a firm here is to back something
that doesn’t necessarily check all the boxes but has the potential to be great. I think if you take that
mindset, you get out of the trap that you’ve just described of backing the pedigreed male CEO from the
right school with the right work background."
Eve Phillips, Co-Founder Empower Interactive Inc speaks about the

relationship between CEO & investors. Female entrepreneurs need to
show that they can build relationship with investors as well as male
entrepreneurs.
"The investor & CEO relationship is one where you are likely to be
together for several years. It’s not just sending information back &
forth kind of thing. You’re both going to learn more from the process if
you know how to communicate together & can share constructive
feedback or criticism in both directions being able to share back &
forth. Being able to share bad news & celebrate good news. These things all work much better when you
can build that connection with the other person. That’s why I think, being female, showing that other
person that you can build that same kind of relationship even though that person probably has fewer
business relationships with people like with you, you just have to get them over that hurdle."

Leila Chirayath Janah, CEO Samasource speaks about the evidence

that people fund those that are similar to them. VCs need to look at
results & be meritocratic.
"I think that there’s this myth that it’s harder to get visibility as a
woman. I don’t think it’s harder to get visibility. I think where there’s
substance to that myth, is that it may be harder to actually close
funding deals. There’s a lot of evidence to suggest that people fund
companies or people fund other people who look & act & are from the
same social milieu as them. I think something like 85% or 90% of
venture capitalists are men from certain socio economic backgrounds? I’m sure that plays into who they
eventually fund. I don’t think it’s conscious & I don’t think there’s any malice on the part of people in this
community. I also think that if you run a good venture capital firm, your job is look at results & to try &
find people who are going to deliver results. The best firms are highly meritocratic in the entrepreneurs
they select."
Chris Dixon, CoFounder Founders Collective talks about venture

capital Monday meetings & the flawed process that test for qualities
that are not necessarily about good startups.
"So it depends. When I invest for example our process is a much

shorter process: you meet with a few people individually & then we
make the decision. With almost all big vcs, you do that & then you
have the most important event you present to the entire partnership.
And this is like this ritual every Monday they have people come in &
you sit there in front of 20 people & maybe 10 more people on video
conference or something. And you know it’s a very intimidating thing. You’re going to have to walk into
a very skeptical crowd & act like you own the place or something, I don’t know. I personally think it’s a
flawed process. I think it ends up optimizing for the wrong things. I think it optimizes for things which I
don’t see as necessarily being correlated with pretty good startups!"

Conclusion
Is There a Problem?
Whilst I have been doing these interviews, many people have
said to me that no problem exists & that women can be as
easily funded as men if they have a great idea, team, plan &
advisors. However the statistics, some of which have been
mentioned at the beginning of this book, show another story.
The percentages of women in technology, female
entrepreneurs & female venture capitalists are extremely low
compared to men. The reasons are multifold & complex and
cannot be answered or resolved quickly or easily.
Many wonderful people & organizations are working to

#change the ratio & I am sure that this situation will slowly shift due to their efforts. When I started this
project a year ago, the conversation & debate was hot & heavy & continues to carry a lot of emotional
response from both genders. So I surmise that it is timely to showcase these conversations about the
lack of women being funded compared to men, to shed further light & awareness on the subject.
Is There Overt Discrimination?

Many suggested that there is no conscious bias on the part of investors but that we all naturally feel
more comfortable with those who are similar to ourselves. Investors are using other people's money to
invest & therefore are looking for low risk & high reward. If someone is dissimilar to themselves & they
do not understand them, they may see them as a riskier investment & pass them by. True to the law of
you get what you put out; many suggested that if you acted as if there was no overt discrimination, then
you may tend not to be discriminated against. However women may tend to keep mum about
discriminating behavior by men in business to protect their credibility & careers.
Does Bias Keep Women Disadvantaged for Investment?

Studies suggest that we all have unconscious bias & that of course then can affect female entrepreneurs
when raising investment due to their low numbers. Also if more women are raising investment through
other means like crowd sourcing, debt etc, then this fact may also point to the fact of unconscious bias
operating in the venture & angel industry. Successful women may also strive to succeed through their
own merits & therefore collude with the notion that there is no gender bias.

Are there Advantages of Diversity?
There have been studies done about the
advantages of diversity & many people spoke
about how startups, just like corporations can
produce better results having a diverse executive
team & board. It was suggested by some that
having women on the executive team of a startup
would then reflect the markets that are being
targeted, being a truer representation of the real
world. Women bring different perspectives to
board decisions & teams that can usually promote
more stability.
Should we Generalize about Gender?

Many of those interviewed baulked or apologized about generalizing about gender but most did do just
that at some point in the conversation, including myself. Obviously this is a human propensity for us to
try & make sense of those dissimilar to us? However it was pointed out to me that this really doesn't
help the issue & any ideas generated through this avenue have a shaky & very limited foundation.

Despite that fact, I will mention some generalizations that people discussed. We all acknowledge that
men & women are different, not just physically but our early training & roles deliver a different version
of life. There are also many studies on the fact that our brains are wired differently along with the fact
that we are ruled by different hormones. It was suggested by many that women generally perform
better with management & teams & human factors in business & often attribute their success to others.
Due to their varied roles & responsibilities they also seem to be able to manage both home & business
well. Women may tend to take business more seriously than men. However it was also suggested that
women can be just as competitive & ambitious as men, particularly when that is encouraged &
supported.

The female market is huge particularly in online businesses & drives a lot of revenue. Women are also a
tougher market to target as they are more demanding. Therefore having more women in startups
means that the teams have better insight into customer needs. They could possibly serve those markets
better & therefore achieve greater success. Female entrepreneurs could inspire confidence in investors
who are looking to reap benefits from this huge market.

Are women even interested in becoming entrepreneurs? A great many small businesses are run by
women so it follows that the answer should be yes. The demands of startups are great however & there
are adjustments & learning curves that may need to happen for women to embrace the entrepreneurial
lifestyle. Women have been proved to be good credit risks & are a major force now in business so there
possibly needs to be a new focus on the strengths of women in business to counteract old erroneous
images in the culture. In the technical world there is a certain stereotype of the young, white, male geek
that has been the driving force in startups & with funders. It is important that female entrepreneurs
challenge this stereotype & leverage their differences that can lead to success both in their startups & in
achieving funding. The best way to challenge this stereotype is to be disruptive with new ways of
solving problems & working in businesses that can also achieve success & make for great startups.
Raising Capital
A lot of feminine strengths may not match up to historical &
media portraits of successful entrepreneurs. This could mean
that some women may need to learn skills & shore up certain
qualities to be a good fit. Many tips & hints have been included
in these interviews. Many spoke about the need for great
female entrepreneurial role models & mentoring of women
both by men & women, which includes peer mentoring as well.
Women entrepreneurs may also need to learn about the venture & angel industry & to identify the best
investors to whom they should pitch their startup. There are now many women friendly investors, all of
those interviewed in this book at the very least. It is helpful to establish networks & to get to know
investors before stepping up to the plate to raise investment capital. This can help a female
entrepreneur’s general confidence & help her identify the best avenues for her to target.

Female venture capitalists are a very small percentage of the venture industry. It was noted that many
successful entrepreneurs become venture capitalists later in their careers & due to the small numbers of
female entrepreneurs this has limited the number of female venture capitalists. The problem is the
funnel & by increasing the numbers of female entrepreneurs, that will also increase the numbers of
female venture capitalists. There are a few great organizations that encourage & support young girls to
study science, maths & engineering like NCWIT & Anita Borg Institute. Also if investment firms allow for
mentoring & encouraging women into their ranks, this too will increase the numbers.

Advantages of Being a Female Entrepreneur
One of the current advantages of being one of the few female entrepreneurs is that you are noticed &
often remembered more than men. If an investor is conscious of bias then this could work to her
advantage. If women entrepreneurs can deliver the necessary requirements when pitching & develop
the qualities that investors are looking for, then they should not be held back from raising capital.

Consumer internet has already a number of successful women & this may be an area that women feel
comfortable leveraging their considerable strengths to achieve successful startups initially. By
leveraging women’s strengths, resourcefulness & creativity there is no reason why more female startups
cannot succeed. By networking, creating fabulous teams & advisory boards & managing their
businesses & staff well, women can win the
startup & venture game

It was stressed by most investors & founders
that it is crucial to the success of a startup &
raising funding to be yourself. Being a minority,
women may be under pressure to act like men
but most of those interviewed suggested that it
was important for entrepreneurs to be
authentic when pitching for investment. Therefore acting like a man is out of the question, unless of
course you are one? It does not help anyone’s confidence & sense of presence if they are not relaxed &
comfortable with whom they are, no matter what gender.
Women's receptivity to others may at times undermine their confidence & they may not come across as
brash as some men. However a positive focus & encouragement can easily change this issue. It was
also noted that extreme aggressiveness is required to achieve success in business. This may be a key
factor that holds some women back. There may also be a challenge for women in their style, finding a
middle path between being empathic & warm & making tough decisions. It is of course possible for
women to become very balanced in these different modes of operating or feeling. Women may have
higher toleration rates of unfriendly or unsupportive people around them. Inner strength & confidence
raise awareness of this propensity & skills such as assertiveness, active listening & negotiation can be
learnt.

Everyone spoke about the need for extreme confidence & passion in entrepreneurs when building their
businesses & raising capital. Women often attribute their success to others or circumstance & may not
focus enough on building a healthy ego container. Our training & our culture encourage us to put others
first, as the principal care takers in the community. It is helpful to stay objective & ensure that you have
great data & research to show investors that your startup can succeed. Having the necessary
requirements to inspire confidence in investors & knowing the data well can be the best confidence
boost. A healthy ego makes for a balanced person & a great business. Overconfidence & brashness may
be confused with authentic confidence but many investors suggested that this can be a turn off &
doesn’t necessarily inspire confidence! Women are often great consensus takers but ultimately a good
CEO will be able to make her own decisions after listening to her advisors
Risk & Failure

Many people that I interviewed suggested that also women can
be less risk tolerant than men. Risk always implies the
possibility of failure. Women may take risk more seriously than
men; it may feel more like a life & death challenge. If women
are not exposed or interested in sports when they are young,
the question remains are there other ways to support them in
being willing to sustain risk & failure & at times to even enjoy
the thrill. We need to encourage the competitive urge without damaging women’s receptivity to others.
Think Big – Scale your Business

Whereas many men have big dreams, women may tend to ‘think too small’. This may stem hormonally
from our primary focus on the immediate people in our care or responsibility. Historically big picture
thinking & exploring may have just been the domain of the male hunters. However this can easily be
learnt & changed if needed. Women’s sports & working on teams can provide confidence in winning &
losing on a big scale.

Another big issue is that women don’t like to ask for money & this many mentioned. Of course this is a
huge problem if you are an entrepreneur & you must pitch for funding. You definitely have to become
comfortable with asking for money! There seems to be something deeply ingrained in us as women that
we should do what we can with what we have.

Possible Hindrances
Then there is the challenge of the intensity & crazy lack of balance in startup culture that is not
appealing to many women who value their family & personal lives. This necessitates women’s
organizations & networks, along with individual female entrepreneurs developing their own version of
startup culture. Creativity is necessary to match the time demands & pressures. A few mompreneurs
spoke about thinking outside the box & solving these problems.
Sex & Power

One of the big differences for female
entrepreneurs is the physicality of their
gender. Some had been propositioned by
investors. It is important that both investors
& women keep clear about sexual
boundaries in the pitching process. Everyone
needs to understand that funding is based on
merits of the startup & team. However when
chemistry does happen between people who
are looking to work together, it can easily be
mistaken for sexual chemistry because it
comes from the same place in us, our passion! Rather than pretending this important part of the
creative process doesn’t exist or misinterpreting it by fearing it, literalizing & acting out sexual innuendo
or relationship, investors & women entrepreneurs need to respect & honor this chemistry so that they
can work together successfully. Investors need to take this risk along with the financial risk, just as Dave
does & know that this is fertile energy to harness & work with a female entrepreneur & do great things.
And female entrepreneurs should not be afraid of the power of this chemistry & its transformative
affect on them & their business.

Children
Female entrepreneurs may choose to segment
their careers around child rearing ages before &
after or not but it is important that investors do
not prejudice their choices in funding an
entrepreneur on supposition that they will
abandon their business to start a family. For
female entrepreneurs it is important to address
the elephant in the room (as Mark Suster
suggests) & update investors even before they
ask, how they have prioritized their business &
family issues.
Helping Other Women

Many people suggested that things will change is when more women help other women. Most women
are juggling a lot on their plates but that does encourage empathy for others in the same boat. There
are already some great organizations that support female entrepreneurs like Astia, Pipeline Fund &
Women2.0. However it is on each one of us to do what we can for other women as we move forward.
The female startup ecosystem will only become stronger & therefore will be more conducive for
meritocratic funding.

Investors Position
The role of a venture capitalist is to support &
encourage & fund startups to become successful &
profitable businesses. It is a cottage industry & has
developed its own culture. As with the startup
culture it is composed mainly of men & even though
they deal with risk in a major way, it has been shown
to be an industry that is slow to change. Limited
Partners who provide the funds to venture firms are
resistant to change & insist on continuing with a
model that is possibly broken. As Chris Dixon said to
me “They're people that work at pension funds,
endowments etc. and just like in any situation where
somebody is investing on behalf of somebody else,
there's what economists call 'agency problems'.”
Despite this background challenge in the industry,
the one constant that we all face is change & the
venture industry will not be immune to this force of
nature, particularly as it hits the bottom line. All the
venture capitalists that I interviewed were open & willing to invest in great female founded ventures.
Some have already discovered the benefit & advantages of being ahead of the pack & are deliberately
investing in great women led startups. And of course venture capitalists & angel investors will
ultimately benefit more when there are greater numbers of female startups.

Because women think differently & see the world through different eyes than male entrepreneurs there
may be great opportunity now. If we encourage openness with each other & respectful networking
then all will benefit. This is also the path to improve economies in the western world which continue to
suffer from collapses in past years that were led by mainly by men in the financial industry. This hardly
tapped potential of accessing female business leaders through encouraging more female entrepreneurs
to build great startups & be funded with venture & angel capital could bring the prosperity that we all
want.

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Why are Women

Funded Less than

“Simply put, every time I work with a woman, be it an entrepreneur or

Penny Herscher, CEO First Rain

Why are Women Funded Less Than Men? a crowdsourced conversation

Sharon Vosmek, CEO Astia

“The importance of women’s role in fueling innovation and economic

Why are Women Funded Less Than Men? a crowdsourced conversation

Why are Women Funded Less Than Men? a crowdsourced conversation

Why are Women Funded Less Than Men? a crowdsourced conversation

Why are Women Funded Less Than Men? a crowdsourced conversation

Why are Women Funded Less Than Men? a crowdsourced conversation

Why are Women Funded Less Than Men? a crowdsourced conversation

Catharine Merigold, General Partner Vista Ventures talks about how

Why are Women Funded Less Than Men? a crowdsourced conversation

Indu Navar, Founder Serus Corporation speaks about her lack of

Why are Women Funded Less Than Men? a crowdsourced conversation

Why are Women Funded Less Than Men? a crowdsourced conversation

Eve Phillips, Co-Founder Empower Interactive Inc says that gender

"Gender does matter! Nobody is coming in & saying that it doesn’t

Why are Women Funded Less Than Men? a crowdsourced conversation

Fred Destin, Partner Atlas Venture suggests that women need to

Why are Women Funded Less Than Men? a crowdsourced conversation

Dr Telle Whitney, CEO Anita Borg Institute speaks about

"I happen to know that most of us have unconscious bias. That we

Danae Ringelmann, CoFounder Indiegogo speaks about crowd sourcing,

Why are Women Funded Less Than Men? a crowdsourced conversation

Natalia Oberti Noguera, CEO Pipeline Fund speaks about diversity in

"In terms of the importance of gender diversity or any sort of diversity in a

Fred Destin, Partner Atlas Venture speaks about how successful

Cindy Padnos, Founder Illuminate Ventures speaks about research stats on

Why are Women Funded Less Than Men? a crowdsourced conversation

Jeff Clavier, Founder SoftTech VC speaks about potential differences

"There’s a lot of research to support that. Women don't like to ask

Why are Women Funded Less Than Men? a crowdsourced conversation

Jalak Jobanputra, Managing Partner Future Perfect Ventures, talks about

Randy Komisar, Partner Kleiner Perkins speaks about general strengths of

Why are Women Funded Less Than Men? a crowdsourced conversation

Dimple Sahni, Fund Principal Hattery speaks about the differences in

Why are Women Funded Less Than Men? a crowdsourced conversation

Brad Feld, Managing Director Foundry Group: Brad speaks about

Demian Entrekin, Founder Innotas: Demian notes that it is not

"Women do better in collaborative environments? I think once you

Why are Women Funded Less Than Men? a crowdsourced conversation

Patricia Nakache, General Partner Trinity Ventures likes to invest in

Shaherose Chairania, CEO Women2.0 believes the only difference

Why are Women Funded Less Than Men? a crowdsourced conversation

Chris Dixon, CoFounder Founder’s Collective believes that the

"I hope, as I mentioned before, it's a legacy of a bygone era &

Cindy Gallop, Founder IfWeRanTheWorld speaks about the potential

Why are Women Funded Less Than Men? a crowdsourced conversation

Guy Kawasaki , Founder Alltop & author Enchantment speaks about

Why are Women Funded Less Than Men? a crowdsourced conversation

Victoria Ransom, CoFounder Widfire App suggests qualities that

Emily Olson, CoFounder Foodzie identifies the qualities that are

Why are Women Funded Less Than Men? a crowdsourced conversation

Why are Women Funded Less Than Men? a crowdsourced conversation

"If something’s too hard it becomes impossible whereas if something

Vivek Wadhwa, Senior Research Associate Harvard Law School speaks

"Women have a lot of advantages. They're are a lot more sensible

Why are Women Funded Less Than Men? a crowdsourced conversation

Ann Miura-Ko, Partner Floodgate encourages women to become

Why are Women Funded Less Than Men? a crowdsourced conversation