I’ve been conditioned from an early age that what I look like to men matters. My mother was one who would put on lipstick at the time she knew my father was coming home from work and, based on 50+ years of conditioning, I have a part of my brain which worries all the time about what men think of how I look. I had a chance a few days ago to remind myself of just how ridiculous this brainwashing is. It was Sunday and I had spent the whole [...]
From a talk I gave at VMware in Palo Alto earlier this month Leadership comes in many styles - charismatic, intellectual, bullying - but in all cases leadership is hard to sustain over time unless it is authentic. Real. Genuine. These 5 keys are from a woman's perspective, but most apply just as much to men. 1. Embrace making decisions. Not only embrace them, but have confidence in how you make decisions. I'm a fast, intuitive decision maker. I make a decision on minimal visible information and then use data [...]
Silicon Valley is on a roll right now. The relatively low levels of capital needed to start a software company has meant that start up incubators and small software companies wanting to be the "next big thing" are popping up all over. Bars are crowded, San Francisco is hip and traffic is worse than L.A. All signs of a booming economy and tech infrastructure that has spawned new wealth-generators like Facebook, Zynga, Instagram and now Yammer. And yet, this is just the face we like to present to the world. [...]
If you are thinking of starting a company, or raising venture capital, and happen to be female then Pemo Theodore's new ebook is for you.Why are Women Funded Less than Men? a crowdsourced conversation presents a thoughtful collection of advice on how to do it and the challenges you face, drawn from a fascinating set of video interviews. Pemo interviewed VCs, entrepreneurs and advisors, asking them all to speak about the issues and challenges facing women trying to raise venture capital.In a world more than 95% run by men, and [...]
Sometimes I read articles about women in tech that make me angry, sometime they make me laugh. They rarely make me sad but this one did.Penelope Trunk wrote a piece for BNET titled: Are Startups Better as Single-Gender Affairs? Based on the author's experience in three startups it reinforces the stereotypes that women and men can't work together because they are too different and just can't get along.This is just simply not true, but feeds the confidence of the men who don't want to bring women into the workplace, or [...]
So often women long to ask the “girl questions” – the ones tied to their roles as mothers and household managers – and yet fear asking them in a male dominated workplace.Every time I talk with groups of women about anything I am swamped with questions about child care, sharing house work and what my husband and/or kids think about me working and being a CEO. It’s as if there is a pent up demand for answers or guideposts along the road and yet, in reality, there are none.Yesterday’s excellent [...]
Sadly there is no titillation with this story - just the usual gender patronage.I was on the phone with a sixty-ish business man a few days ago and I was selling. Not selling hard but describing my business and answering his many questions as he queried me to get a good sense of where we are, what our strategy is and the source of our momentum.After an hour of high quality conversation I went for the close and asked for his conclusion. His response "You are a naughty girl for [...]
I was very amused by a recent post on TechCrunch by Vivek Wadhwa:Silicon Valley: You and Some of Your VC's have a Gender Problem.It's a good read - and a less politically correct article than the one Vivek wrote in Business Week. Here are some stats from it:An analysis of Dunn and Bradstreet data shows that of the 237,843 firms founded in 2004, only 19% had women as primary owners. And only 3% of tech firms and 1% of high-tech firms (as in Silicon Valley) were founded by women. Look [...]