Women On Stage In Venture Capital

In this post, I will talk about the presence of women on stage at venture capital (VC) events or as part of digital media. In the past, I created and produced about 75 short TV interviews on TechCrunch TV from about 2012-13, and after that show was cancelled, created and produced interviews with eight (8) VCs which spanned 12 episodes in total. Last year, I helped organize the Post-Seed Conference in SF (Dec ’14), and this year, as a friend, I helped StrictlyVC design and launch the “StrictlyVC Insider Series,” for which there has been an inaugural event and one coming up in May ’15.

Every now and then, someone will inquire about why there aren’t more women involved in these events or on digital media. Sometimes, these inquiries start as accusations rather than trying to open up a conversation with me, so in this post, I will do my best to detail some things I believe everyone should know and discuss openly:

TechCrunch TV: From 2012-13, while I was an official contributor to the publication, I created and helped produce a weekly TV show which included all founders and investors and one journalist (who happens to cover VC). Out of the 75 guests, there were only three female guests, but I certainly did ask many visible women to be on the show, and for whatever reason, they either declined or didn’t return my email. Looking back, I could have pushed it more as an issue, but I wasn’t consciously trying to achieve gender balance on the show.

Sunday Conversations: After the TechCrunch TV show was cancelled, I had a friend who kindly offered to sponsor all the video, editing, and production o the interviews, and for my first interview, I chose the guest who was slated to be on TechCrunch TV as that show was put to bed. After that, I chose a small handful of VC general partners and, in early 2014, decided to not continue them past 2014. I have since stopped, and the last four (4) were all of Keith Rabois. I extended the series with Rabois because of the overwhelming response from the audience who wanted more. I did not ask any VC women general partners to be on the show because almost as soon as it started, it was over.

[Today, I posted the audio and video from Sunday Conversations, and it triggered a conversation on Twitter. You can click here to open up the thread. As I mentioned, as soon as I started the show I basically made a decision to shut it down as my friend was producing the video out of his pocket. So, yes, there were no women out of these eight (8) guests, and had I continued the show, I would most certainly have tried again to bring women GPs on the show. I was surprised to learn some people didn’t believe that I had asked female guests in the past with TCTV, so all I can do is state here that I most certainly did. Many times.]

The Post-Seed Conference: In the organization of this conference, the organizing committee (which comprised of a woman entrepreneur) actively discussed this issue, and we all independently sent requests for speaking to a number of people; in my case, those requests were mostly not returned on email. Did I send an email to every single general partner at a VC firm? No, but I definitely spent time thinking about it and inviting people to speak, and it’s important for me that people know that. I recognize what people see is what they see, so I’m sharing a bit more about what went on behind the scenes. Right before the event, a female friend emailed me the note below, which triggered a conversation. I tried to explain that we did absolutely consider it and sent out invites, but they were not returned:

“Hey! Would love to attend. I have to be honest though, I was shocked guys who I really respect like you and (redacted) would be cool with an event that has only 2 women speaking, both journalists it looks like? There are so many great female investors, I know women can be harder to come by and get to say yes but I can think of 20 women who are in sf and would be great, at least 5 of whom would say yes even on this short notice. Is there room to add more speakers on the panels? An investing conference that ends 2014 with no women investors feels like a step backwards 🙁“

The StrictlyVC Insider Series: This was started by and is run by Connie Loizos. She is a friend, and I offered to help her organize a small handful of speaking events for her brand and newsletter this year. I will bring it up as a topic of discussion for one of the events.

Ultimately, now in 2015, I have my own blog, and I help out a little with StrictlyVC. I do not engage in organizing any other media or events, so it’s important people recognize this — just this blog and maybe 2-3 events with StrictlyVC. I will do my best to get more women in venture involved. People will see what they want to see, but it’s critical people know that many people do not respond to requests to appear at an event or on media. I’m sure there are many good reasons. Maybe they don’t want the scrutiny at work; maybe they don’t want to be part of a quota; maybe they don’t want to talk about this topic specifically, which would invariably come up; maybe they get too many requests because they’re visible and people are trying to get them on stage more. I could go on and on.

I do not recruit people into general partnerships, so this is a small way for me to bring the issue into the light, though of course, there are other inescapable facts about diversity in venture capital which I don’t have control over. I can think of one thing to do where I’m in total control of what is produced — on my blog — and I will email a bunch of female VCs to see if they’ll share their thoughts on email so I can reproduce them here in a compendium. I hope they respond, but I understand if they don’t want to, as well. (If someone has an email list of women VCs, could you please send that to me or post it here? Thank you.)