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Category Archives: Girls Rule!
FemBots, Rise Up!
If you are a regular follower of my blog, you know I like to write about the plight of women in business and the challenges we sometimes face in being treated equally to our male colleagues. As a regular reader you would also know that I am fascinated by how technology is being adapted and adopted to improve the human condition and that I sometimes like to make fun of some of the more over-the-top applications (see FitBit article HERE). And yet, when I read a story in the International Business Times entitled IBM Develops Brain-like Chip, I immediately recognized that my two of my pet issues were on a collision course.
According to the IB Times article, “IBM is deploying its [research] expertise in the attempt to accomplish the unthinkable: developing a chip to mimic the human brain. IBM says its new chip, called SyNAPSE, comes closer than anything done before at replicating the human brain, a breakthrough considering the system is capable of “rewiring” its connections as it encounters new information the same way the biological synapses of a human brain would.”
According to IBM Research … (read the rest)
Posted in Girls Rule!, Healthcare Information Technology, Random Thoughts of the Day, Uncategorized, Women in Venture Capital & Private Equity
Tagged brain chip, cognitive computing, Dharmendra Modha, healthcare IT, IBM, psilos, SyNAPSE, women in private equity, women venture capital
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Peer Pressure Cooker
There was an article in the August 8th issue of Venture Beat entitled, “Do teens make good founders? 6 teenage teams make their debut to find out.” As the parent of a teenager, my immediate thought was, “yeah, sure, right after they clean up their rooms and set the table, they can be totally awesome founders, as long as they can tear themselves away from the latest installment of the Twilight series.” What do I know? As it turns out, some kids actually do get off the couch and take action to be the next Steve Jobs.
The VentureBeat article I mentioned above is about an entrepreneurial incubator put together by Teens in Tech. The Teens in Tech Incubator is an 8-week summer program which helped six teams of young entrepreneurs launch six products over the course of a summer. Teams come with ideas, get paired up with mentors and resources, and are guided through the process of bringing their ideas to life. At the end of the 8 weeks, the teams present their startups to a group of venture capitalists, tech influencers, members of … (read the rest)
Women on the Verge
Today the Asian Venture Capital Journal published an article on women in private equity and venture capital entitled, “Minority Report.” Among the things the article points out are that about 9% of those working in the venture capital and private equity fields are women and that figure is basically the same in the U.S., Europe and Asia. Nice to know that if you are going to be discriminated against, the discrimination will be distributed equally worldwide! Lots of good stuff in this article, including some of my usual politically incorrect quotes. To read the article from the AVCJ, click HERE
Interestingly, there was another article this week in the Wall Street Journal blog that reported on a study of women and angel investing. In an academic study of 183 angel investing groups, it was found that women are far less risk-averse as investors than the stereotype suggests. In fact, angel groups with a larger percentage of women investors made more and larger investment bets than those that had few women. I am not sure whether this means that a larger number of women means the risk tolerance overall rises or … (read the rest)
Don’t Let Breast Cancer Steal Second Base!
So I was driving across the Golden Gate Bridge this morning and I saw the wonderful sight of hundreds of pink-clad women hoofing it across in support of the Avon Walk for Breast Cancer. This event is truly lovely, with thousands of women (and some brave men) walking a minimum of 26.2 miles in honor of those they love who have fought breast cancer. I have done this walk myself 4 times, twice in SF and twice in NY (each time with my sister Tracy), and it was a wondrous event each time. It is a rare experience to be able to lose yourself among thousands of people all there to support something more important than themselves while wearing pink feather boas and classy t-shirts that say, “Save 2nd Base–Beat Breast Cancer!” I think I’ll do this walk again next year.
After taking part in the 2005 Avon Walk I penned one of my favorite pieces of writing and I decided that, in homage to those fab women out there walking today and tomorrow, I would re-post that here below. If you are out in SF or Marin today and … (read the rest)
Sister Christian, Oh the Proxy Has Come
Since I’ve started writing this blog (I’m sorry, I refuse to concede that “blogging” is a real verb), readers often send me articles that might spur additional posts. A recent one came from Annette Bianchi, partner at Vantage Point Venture Partners (colleague, friend and cool Bernese Mountain dog owner) entitled, “The Sisters Bite Into McDonalds,” probably in response to the post I wrote about the Heart Attack Grill a few months back.
For those of you following the mega-burger trend, I am sad to report that the Heart Attack Grill’s 29-year old 575 pound spokesman recently died quite suddenly. The conjecture is he died from pneumonia complications after having the flu. While his obesity has not been directly linked to his death, the poor guy made his living eating the restaurant’s Triple Bypass Burgers. Obviously the death of a young person (or any person) isn’t funny, but I have to think that the company’s business strategy of giving anyone weighing over 350 pounds free food isn’t exactly the path to a long-term customer base. On the other hand, I guess if they eat for free it’s better if … (read the rest)
Estrogen-Fest!
I went to two women-focused conferences this last week, the Women’s Private Equity Summit and the UC Berkeley Haas School of Business Women in Leadership Conference. Both events were great and there were about 400 experienced professional women at each; 800 women in two days is about 50 times more than I get to interact with in the average 5 years in my business, so they were great experiences and well-worth the time. If I interact with even one woman in my average workday, aside from my very capable and wonderful assistant, it is pretty unusual. Lisa Stone, CEO of BlogHer and a participant in my Haas Women in Leadership panel called “Navigating the VC Process,” said it well, “the VC world is one inhabited by middle-aged white guys with extreme side parts and degrees from Harvard, Wharton, and Stanford.” As Charlie Sheen would say, “Duh, winning!”
I am puzzled why men fail to attend these high quality women-dominated events (if I failed to go to male-dominated events I would never leave the house). For one thing, if you’re trolling for chicks, what better place to do it … (read the rest)
Posted in Girls Rule!, Uncategorized, Venture Capital, Women in Venture Capital & Private Equity
Tagged astia, BlogHer, Haas school of business, Lisa Stone, psilos, Rebecca Lynn, Sharon Vosmek, venture capital, women in leadership conference, women venture capital, women's private equity summit
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Of SportsCenter and Ovaries
On February 9, 2011 in Fortune’s online newsletter called The Term Sheet (required reading for us venture/private equity folk) there was a story written by Dan Primack entitled, “Private equity is a man’s world… seriously.”
In the article, Dan chides: “Are you a woman who wants to succeed in private equity? Here’s some free advice: Learn about sports. And don’t get pregnant. In fact, it might be best to project an active antagonism toward motherhood.” I have met Dan and I am quite confident he doesn’t actually believe this sentiment himself, but it does have a remarkable ring of truth to it.
Dan came to his advice by way of a study by Catherine Turco, a Harvard scholar who published a new study called Cultural Foundations of Tokenism: Evidence from the Leveraged Buyout Industry. In her study, Turco reminds us that fewer than 10% of private equity professionals are women and identifies two primary reasons for the somewhat overt discrimination against women: a lack of sports intelligence and the presence of functioning ovaries.
According to Turco, the first reason men exclude women is because they can’t quote the point … (read the rest)
Alas, No Line for the Ladies’ Room
I am still recovering from last week’s 29th Annual JP Morgan Healthcare Conference (“JPM”). For those of you who did not spend last week at JPM, you can creatively visualize the experience: just imagine being crammed into a 4 square block area of San Francisco with every single person who ever uttered the words “health care” and “money” in the same sentence. In fact, most of the people I know don’t even go to the conference itself, but use the week to meet with a myriad of companies, bankers, institutional investors, VCs, private equity people and related persons who they might not otherwise get to see in person.
In some ways, JPM is like 5 straight days of speed-dating–you meet with new people every half hour or hour for days on end, followed by a myriad of cocktail parties and dinners. Instead of running between tables you dash between hotel lobbies, Starbucks, Rulli and John’s Grill. The only problem with the speed-dating analogy is that while there are legions of gray-suited men, there are hardly any women.
Nearly 9000 people officially register for JPM and probably at least two … (read the rest)
Posted in Girls Rule!, Healthcare, Healthcare Venture Capital, Uncategorized, Venture Capital, Women in Venture Capital & Private Equity
Tagged Davos World Economic Forum, healthcare, healthcare venture capital, JP Morgan Healthcare Conference, private equity, psilos, venture capital, women in private equity, women venture capital
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Girls Rule! Astia Rewards VCs that Foster Women’s Entrepreneurship
“Only one man in a thousand is a leader of men — the other 999 follow women.”–Groucho Marx
The following is a reprint of a November 20, 2010 press release from Astia, which is an organization dedicated to fostering women’s entrepreneurship in many forms. They recently gave awards to several venture capital firms for their own efforts to sponsor female-led corporations and innovations, which I thought was worth passing on.
I wish I saw more female-led companies in my daily travels. In theory there are definitely more women executives in the healthcare field than there are in many others, but in practice it is rare to see them at the helm. Hopefully this will continue to change with the work of Astia and others like them, as well as the actions of the venture capital community, at least the enlightened few.
I know that when many of my colleagues interview a potential CEO candidate, a very common interview question is “what did your dad do for a living?” Next time, guys, remember to ask what their mom did for a living as well. No doubt they were pivotal in
Posted in Girls Rule!, Healthcare, Healthcare Venture Capital, Uncategorized, Venture Capital, Women in Venture Capital & Private Equity
Tagged astia, CEO recruiting, female CEO, healthcare, healthcare venture capital, psilos, venture capital, woman CEO, women venture capital, wonder woman
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We’re Women; We Have Double Standards to Live Up To –Ally McBeal
As I have written elsewhere, about 8% of all venture capital investment goes to companies led by women and fewer than 15% of all venture capitalists are of the female persuasion, despite women comprising approximately 37.5% of all MBA students (not the only route to venture capital and/or the CEO’s chair, but at least a partial correlate). As of one year ago, only 25 of the Fortune 1000 companies had a woman CEO, yet women make up about 50% of America’s labor force. Women also held only 11% of Fortune 1000 company Board of Director seats in 2009; 25% of Fortune 1000 companies have no women board members.
So the point is: women have some real challenges in reaching parity with their male counterparts in the executive suite. Yeah, yeah, heard it all before.
But a friend of mine who knows I am interested in such things sent me a New York Times article that pointed out yet another example of the lack of parity that women can experience, and this one is, shall we say, even more personal. The article, linked here, discusses how a … (read the rest)