sedojy的部落格

When she started her
child-support tracking business SupportPay, Sheri Atwood
expected all kinds of suggestions - but not the tip she got from
a female investor who suggested she dye her blonde hair darker
to be taken more seriously by venture capitalists.

To Atwood, who eventually won her funding from other
backers, the recommendation underscored an attitude in Silicon
Valley that women make second-class entrepreneurs. If more women
held the purse strings at venture capital firms, the attitude
would change, she said.

Despite the lip service Silicon Valley has given over the
past couple of years to the need to recruit more women venture
capitalists, at senior levels the industry's gender balance
hasn't budged, even as other industries with poor gender
diversity show improvements.

The issue matters because women venture capitalists have a
direct effect on the success of companies other women launch,
say female entrepreneurs, including serving as role models and
being more likely to spy potential in businesses that target
other women.

About 4 percent of senior investing partners in U.S. venture
capital are women, according to data from Pitchbook, a
consulting firm. That is down slightly from 5 percent in 2010,
and about even with 2008.

The numbers compare to 15 percent of executive officers at
Fortune 500 companies, 24 percent of tenured faculty at U.S.
business schools, and 20 percent of the U.S. Senate - all areas
that have shown gains for gender parity in recent years while
venture capital has stagnated.

A leading ranking of venture capitalists, the Forbes Midas
List, noted just four women on its latest list of top 100
venture investors. A few years ago, five women typically made
the list each year. And despite much discussion over the need to
improve gender balance over the past few years, many of the top
firms still have no senior women partners at all.

KEEPING QUIET

Some Silicon Valley women shy away from openly discussing
the shortage and the climate for women, believing their comments
would peg them as whiners and cut them out of deals in the case
of venture capitalists, or funding in the case of entrepreneurs.

Among firms that Forbes ranked as top because they provided
multiple partners to its Midas List, only one, Kleiner Perkins
Caufield & Byers, appears to have more senior female investing
partners in the United States compared with five years ago.

Kleiner has two women listed as lead partners in its most
recent funds. It is battling a lawsuit brought by former partner
Ellen Pao, who alleges harassment and discrimination. Kleiner
denies the accusations.

Kleiner declined to comment, but in a blog post two years
ago partner John Doerr said his firm was one of the most diverse
in terms of gender, age and ethnicity.

Another venture capital firm, DFJ, has one senior woman in
the United States, the same as five years ago. DFJ said it
believed "a diverse group of people makes better decisions, both
within our industry and the companies we fund." Accel, which
declined to comment, has no senior women investors in the United
States, although it had one previously.

Others, including Sequoia Capital, Greylock Partners,
Benchmark, Meritech Capital Partners, NEA, Andreessen Horowitz,
and Bessemer Ventures, had no senior women partners five years
ago. They still don't today.

"No excuses," said a Sequoia spokesman. "We need to do
better and we're pursuing a number of initiatives to help."
Sequoia funds groups such as Girls Who Code, which teaches young
women computer programming. Many venture capitalists say a lack
of women in technology exacerbates the shortfall in venture.

Bessemer partner Ed Colloton said the firm believed in
developing talent internally and had "a strong pipeline of
future female partners" on the current team. A Greylock
spokeswoman said the firm has discussed how to improve the
situation, including backing startups with diverse executives in
hope of cultivating a more diverse next-generation group of
venture capitalists.

A spokeswoman for NEA said it was "focused on having a
strong bench that will result in a more diverse GP (general
partner) group over time."

Andreessen Horowitz's Peter Levine and Benchmark's Bill
Gurley, both general partners, said their firms were eager to
hire a senior female investing partner but hadn't found the
right fit. Meritech founding partner Paul Madera said he hoped
to one day hire a female partner.

BAD PRESS

The paucity of senior women VCs exists at a time when
difficulties facing women in technology have hit the headlines.

Examples include statistics showing low numbers of women at
companies such as Facebook and Google; a lawsuit by a female
founder of dating app Tinder alleging she was pushed aside; and
three suits brought by female employees at venture firms
alleging harassment or discrimination, or sometimes both.

Despite the lawsuits, female venture capitalists say, the
troubles in venture generally lean to the subtle, such as
leaving women out of key meetings or social gatherings.

Even if they lack women in investment roles, which carry the
most prestige, many firms have senior partners in operational
roles such as marketing and finance, and many back
female-founded companies.

"I am quite optimistic about women in venture," said
Benchmark's Gurley, who while he has no female investing
colleagues himself named Ruby Lu at DCM, Jenny Lee at GGV, and
Rebecca Lynn at Canvas as "fantastic" investors.

Other accomplished female investors include Mary Meeker and
Beth Seidenberg of Kleiner Perkins; and Theresia Gouw, formerly
of Accel Partners and now head of her own firm, Aspect Ventures.

FITTING IN

Many venture capitalists, both women and men, say that a big
part of the problem lies in the educational and career paths
many women have opted to pursue at a time when many firms seek
VCs with technical backgrounds.

The percentages of women majoring in engineering, computer
science and math have declined over the last decade, to 19
percent, 18 percent, and 43 percent of all students majoring in
each of those fields respectively, according to the National
Science Foundation.

The percentage of female entrepreneurs has stagnated since
the early 1980s at around 27 percent, says Ross Levine, a
professor at the Haas School of Business at the University of
California, Berkeley.

"You have to say, 'Where are the women in computer
science?'" said Ann Winblad, a founding partner at Hummer
Winblad, who added that her firm hires partners largely from the
group of company founders it has backed.

Top firms especially tend to lack senior women, leading to
comparisons with "Mad Men," the TV show about 1960s-era
advertising where men dominate. Benchmark and Sequoia, for
example, employ no women in any investing capacity in the United
States.

Most firms do the bulk of their investing in the United
States, but some of them say their numbers would be better if
overseas offices were included. Sequoia employs female managing
directors in China, for example.

Another issue is that top firms enjoy spectacular investing
results, leading to little pressure from their own investors
-known as limited partners - to change things, the LPs say.

"At the end of the day, it does come down to returns, and
their network," said Atul Rustgi, a principal at Accolade
Partners, a limited partner whose portfolio includes leading
venture firms such as Accel and Andreessen Horowitz. Accolade
raises the gender issue with its portfolio firms, but "how much
pressure you can exert is a whole different matter," he said.

Judy O'Brien, a five-time Midas List venture capitalist who
is now a partner at law firm King & Spalding, says, learning the
ropes without a female mentor can be tough. "You don't quite
know how to conduct yourself in a senior position," for example,
establishing stature in a meeting.

Many women say they did not initially aspire to become a
venture capitalist and needed someone to nudge them into the
business.

Aileen Lee, a onetime engineering major who stepped back
from Kleiner Perkins two years ago to start her own firm, Cowboy
Ventures, spoke in April about her career in a speech at Upward,
a women's organization founded by Lisa Lambert of Intel Capital.

It took Kleiner Perkins reaching out to her while she was an
executive at Gap, the retailer, before she even considered the
industry. The men she had known at Harvard Business School who
aspired to venture capital seemed worlds away. Drawing laughs,
she pegged them as preppie squash players and overly ambitious
briefcase toters.

"I just figured I'd never fit in," she said at Upward. "I
don't still."

(Editing by Edwin Chan and Ross Colvin)