I was asked to help address the tech/startup gender bias question a couple of times recently at SxSW in Austin. The first opportunity was as a panelist for a session covering fundraising for startups, as part of the Women in EdTech track during SxSWedu. The second was as part of an impromptu panel at SxSW Interactive during a Women in Tech Meet-up to which I was invited by one of the female executives at a company where I am on the board. The timing was propitious, as the topic has also been pervasive in Silicon Valley of late with the extensive coverage of the Kleiner Perkins gender bias lawsuit.
What is particularly troubling about this topic for me is that the whole question around gender in the tech/startup world isn’t one I’ve considered much, mostly because throughout my career I’ve had the privilege of working with many senior executives who happen to be women.
At my last startup, Agile Software, my first investor and board member was a woman. My first VC investor and board member was a woman. My first and long-time CMO was a woman (OK, this is not so unusual since woman tend to be much more prevalent in the marketing disciplines, including in the technology industry.). More unusual though, my second long-term CFO was a woman. Most unusual, given industry data about the lack of women in the STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) disciplines, my first two SVPs of Engineering were both women.
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In my current career as a startup investor, two of my partners are women, three out of four of our operating executives are women, and four of the companies where I am on the board have a female in a top executive role.
I’m not recounting my background to say, “Well, I’m not the problem.” It’s to point out that I haven’t paid much attention to it given my experiences, and that is a problem.
In MDV’s overall portfolio, we have backed more than a half-dozen female CEOs in the past several years. Granted, that‘s not close to a 50/50 ratio for the CEO role in the portfolio, but it’s a lot better than the industry averages. Part of the challenge is that we just don’t see pitches from that many female entrepreneurs. That begs the question of selection bias.
Do we screen them out? Not likely given how many female partners and executives we have in our firm. Since our networks are a large source of deal flow, does our network somehow screen them out? Does the educational system screen them out or otherwise discourage women to follow STEM educations – almost a prerequisite for starting or being in a tech startup? I don’t currently understand why this is happening, but am certainly more than open to better understanding the exact root cause of this issue.
Making a startup successful is just too darn hard and challenging to let gender biases (or any other kind of biases) influence finding and hiring the best-qualified candidates. Gender has just never entered my mind when trying to build the best team. The data, though, suggests that there is a serious imbalance between the percentage of women in tech, and women in the world (for the sake of brevity and focus, I won’t detail the numbers here – there is plenty of current data readily available on the subject). Unfortunately, I’m posing far more questions in this blog than answers or solutions. The same was true of the panelists and audiences at the SxSW sessions where I spoke – lots of questions, few answers as of yet. But addressing the issue has to start somewhere, so getting the questions on the table is a start.
I’m far from a social psychologist or anthropologist, so I have no clue why it’s happening, and whether or how much the drivers are genetic, cultural programming, social/peer pressure from other women or men, gender bias (conscious or unconscious), etc. But the numbers do suggest we should pay attention, because my experience with women in top senior positions has been very positive, productive, and profitable. That alone suggests to me that we are missing something by not having more women in senior roles.
It’s also interesting how women react to this issue. One of my partners at Mohr Davidow Ventures, Katherine Barr, takes very serious issue with being labeled a “female venture capitalist.” She wants to be known as a great venture investor, period. To her, being called out for her gender contributes to the problem, rather than make it better. Not that she doesn’t want to be a role model, but she wants to be a role model for everyone, not just women.
My co-panelist at SxSWedu, Angela Lee is the associate dean of the Columbia Business School and the founder of 37 Angels, an angel investment organization. She is as perplexed about the problem as anyone, but, like me, she is not interested in playing amateur sociologist either. However, in trying to tease at the question, she did offer up the following observation:
When she posts job openings for teaching assistants for the coming semester, she immediately gets a deluge of résumés, almost all of which are from men. The résumés from women come in days and even weeks later, by which time she has already filled many slots and the remaining available positions are limited. She didn’t want to guess or assume why it’s happening. She just shared that it does happen.
One of the more notable points from that first panel session at SxSWedu was the make-up of the audience. A good 1/3rd or more of the audience were men. The panel chair pointed out that five to ten years ago, a session about gender inequality would have been made up of almost all women. Now, it’s a conversation that is drawing in both sexes. They felt that was a very healthy and positive trend that reflects progress towards addressing the issue.
During the SxSW Interactive session, one line of discussion that really stuck with me was this: men and women can be different -- in how they think, in how they assess risk, in how they look at a problem, in how they solve a problem. The differences can be real, and pretending they are not is absurd. However, what we really need to pay attention to is the fact that different ways of thinking and approaching problems – diversity in general – is an asset and something to be desired, embraced and sought after.
During the session there was also a reference to research that says mixed gender teams solve problems faster with better outcomes than same-sex teams. I did a little quick fact-finding of my own, and discovered some interesting studies:
- A 2011 University of Amsterdam study that showed that mixed gender teams perform better with about 50/50 being the ideal ratio.
- A study by a Carnegie Mellon professor and an MIT Sloan professor, as reported in the Harvard Business Review, indicates that a group’s collective intelligence rises as more woman are added to the team.
- A 2014 Credit Suisse study, as reported in The Washington Post, found that companies with more female executives had higher returns on equity, higher valuations, better stock performance and higher payouts of dividends.
Alas, there were also studies that claimed gender diversity had little to no impact, or a negative impact. I guess you can choose your own point of view.
From my perspective, I do know that having mixed gender teams on my board and my executive staff resulted in a great company with a winning outcome. I think it’s because we hired the best people for the job regardless of gender. For our part, we want the very best entrepreneurs pursuing the best opportunities, regardless of gender or any other form of bias or discrimination. Nothing less is likely to produce the next great company.
