Here is a list of resources to help better understand (1) the underrepresentation of women and (2) the challenges faced by women in the “tech industry” or “start-up ecosystem”; both on the operating side (female founders, co-founders, female workers) and on the financing side (female investors, VCs, angels, etc.). A large part of these resources were found in the Mattermark newsletter. Hope this helps – happy to connect, drop me a line lola@hummingbird.vc
- FundersClub shares thoughts from some of the women whom FC has funded on what’s challenged them in tech, and what and who has inspired them, along with their most cherished accomplishment in “Female Founders: A Growing Force“
- Joanne Wilson, an angel investor, expands on why the tech industry needs to be the leaders in closing the gender gap — not the leaders in “bro-culture” in “How We Can Close the Gender Gap Before 2086“
- Suzy Ryoo of Atom Factory offers some bold, everyday actions from multiple perspectives on how we can collectively move the gender gap needle in “The only woman in the room” & How to Change That By 2186“
- Claire Burke and Kate Dwyer of Female Founders Fund reports that as the total number of Series A deals in the U.S. declined in 2016, NYC-based female CEOs 2016 represented 17% of total Series A’s raised in “2016 Review of Female Founders Raising Institutional Capital“
- Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures recognizes the longer you wait to build a diverse team, the harder it gets, and highlights ways to start now in “Gender Diversity”
- HBR, “We Recorded VCs’ Conversations and Analyzed How Differently They Talk About Female Entrepreneurs” https://hbr.org/2017/05/we-recorded-vcs-conversations-and-analyzed-how-differently-they-talk-about-female-entrepreneurs
- Standard, “How Debbie Wosskow and Anna Jones are building a London powerhouse of fearless female entrepreneurs” http://www.standard.co.uk/lifestyle/london-life/how-debbie-wosskow-and-anna-jones-are-building-a-london-powerhouse-of-fearless-female-entrepreneurs-a3437811.html
- Bloomberg, “How Women Won a Leading Role in China’s Venture Capital Industry https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2016-09-19/how-women-won-a-leading-role-in-china-s-venture-capital-industry
- Jesse Genet of Lumi outlines five things she’s never said about the things nobody in the business community should say either in “Running a Business With Boobs: The Things I Never Say”
- Sheila Lirio Marcelo of Care declares that our industry can #BeBoldForChange by shifting our attitudes to think about women in the workplace the way we think of them outside of it: as equals in “Benefits and Policies Won’t Close the Gender Gap”
- Christina Sass of Andela finds a simple solution to tech’s gender imbalance… hire more damn women in “How Do We Convert This Energy Into Lasting Change?”
- Andressa Chiara of Concrete Solutions encourages men to advocate on women’s behalf, by pointing out the injustices you see, or helping women regain their right to speak when they have no voice in “Women in Tech: A Message for Men”
- Erin Rand of ServiceRocket reminds us to remember how fraught with anxiety and trepidation giving feedback can be the next time someone overcomes it to share their gift with you in “Feedback is a Gift… Make it Easier for People to Give it to You”
- Nicole Hallberg shares her experience working for a boss that didn’t believe sexism was a problem at his company and what she did about it in “Working While Female”
- Nicky Goulimis of Nova Credit describes meeting her cofounders, getting an MBA, being a female founder, and gives advice for other founders in “Founder Stories: Nicky Goulimis of Nova Credit”
- Damien Hooper-Campbell of eBay offers a few exercises and tactical takeaways that every leader can try at her organization in “Humanizing Diversity and Inclusion”
- Cadran Cowansage of Y Combinator surfaces a group of female engineers’ thoughts on what reasons may have prompted them to leave companies in the past, and what might motivate them to move out of a technical role in “How Can Managers Help Retain Technical Women on Their Team?”
- Brittney Riley of Village Capital reveals research on the traits of founding teams with the goal of reducing bias in the investment process and ultimately making better decisions around what makes founders “strong” in “How Do Investors Evaluate Founding Teams?”
- FT, “Women far under-represented at UK venture capital firms https://www.ft.com/content/ad5abace-3f0f-11e7-82b6-896b95f30f58
- Diversity VC casts a light on the men and women working in U.K. venture capital in “Women in U.K. Venture Capital 2017”
- Francesca Warner of Downing Ventures, “International Women’s Day: Why tech VCs must reflect the diversity of the firms they fund” http://www.cityam.com/260461/international-womens-day-why-tech-vcs-must-reflect
- TechCrunch, “Why we need diverse founder and funding teams and how to find them https://techcrunch.com/2017/02/23/diverse-founders-and-funders-why-we-need-them-and-how-to-find-them/
- “CB Insights: 48% of the startup world thinks meaningful change will only happen if women continue coming forward” https://pando.com/2017/07/17/cb-insights-48-startup-world-thinks-meaningful-change-women-will-only-happen-if-women-continue-coming-forward/420555851edf894e23b485cde86dee8578409cb0/
- NYT, “Women in Tech Speak Frankly on Culture of Harassment https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/30/technology/women-entrepreneurs-speak-out-sexual-harassment.html
- Stephanie Manning of Lerer Hippeau Ventures hopes her insights serve as useful, tactical suggestions to help men avoid being that guy at work in “From a Woman in VC to Men Everywhere: 5 Things You Can Do Now to Avoid Being That Guy”
- Joanne Wilson, an angel investor, states that there should be repercussions for bad behavior and that the foundation for a power shift towards women in business has been built over the last ten years in “The Gig Is Up”
- Elizabeth Yin of 500 Startups finds that speaking up about sexual harassment is hard and recognizes we must start a new chapter in “We Have a Real and Undeniable Problem Here in Silicon Valley with Sexual Harassment”
- Brad Feld of Foundry Group vows, along with his partners, to be both more forceful and aggressive in their actions to stand up for the workplace ethics they believe in and have advocated for throughout their entire careers in “Our Zero Tolerance Policy On Sexual Harassment”
- Tracy Lawrence of Chewse encourages founders, investors, men, women — all of us — to listen, learn, and engage in an honest dialogue to truly understand & fix the broken power dynamics in our industry in “Cracking Open the Gender Dialogue: What I Want the Men (and Women) of Tech to Know”
- Julie Zhuo of Facebook writes her take on how to balance an ambitious career with a thriving life outside the office in “The mystery of work-life balance.”
- Aileen Lee of Cowboy Ventures shares very specific advice to female founders who are looking to raise capital.
- Elizabeth Kraus of MergeLane wants venture capitalists, LPs, and entrepreneurs to actually believe that gender diversity produces better returns vs. seeing it as a “charitable thing to do” in “Dear Venture Capital, Thanks for your offer to “protect” me. I really just want you to value me.”
- Alli McKee of Stick.ai outlines the key points from the talks of Jessica Livingston of Y Combinator, Avni Patel Thompson of Poppy, Laura Behrens-Wu of Shippo, Aileen Lee of Cowboy Ventures, and Morgan DeBaun of Blavity, along with some of her favorite quotes in “Illustrations from the Female Founders Conference”
- Erica Brescia of Bitnami and XFactor Ventures gives background details on joining XFactor Ventures (Danielle Morrill, CEO of Mattermark is an investment partner) where they’ll write $100k checks to female-founded startups out of their $3M fund in “Making Money While Doing Good”
- Kara Egan of Emergence Capital offers five immediate ways to hire more women investors and invest in more women founders, but omits the broader LGBTQ perspective, in “VCs in the Land of the Redwoods Need to Stand Taller and Address Gender Inequality”
- Bethany Marz Crystal of Union Square Ventures details “The Creation Story of Women in VC”
- “If you think women in tech is just a pipeline problem, you haven’t been paying attention” https://medium.com/tech-diversity-files/if-you-think-women-in-tech-is-just-a-pipeline-problem-you-haven-t-been-paying-attention-cb7a2073b996
- “Recruiting diverse engineering candidates: What tech companies still get wrong” https://techbeacon-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/techbeacon.com/recruiting-diverse-engineering-candidates-what-tech-companies-still-get-wrong?amp
- Amrit Richmond of CMYK lists women improving design, manufacturing, shipping, CPG, food, apparel, tech, art, advertising, and more, in “Awesome Women Owned Businesses”
- Laurel Woerner of Work-Bench offers lessons learned from launching a mentorship program for women in technology, in “The Alchemy of Diversity: Structuring Mentorship Programs for Success”
- Rachel Kaplowitz of Honey reveals what it’s really like to be a pregnant startup CEO on the eve of her second child’s birth, in “Frozen Veggie Pizza Every Day… or the daily creative compromises of a pregnant startup CEO“
- Brian Harwitt of CoVenture describes how the community approach can save venture capital from its systemic gender power dynamic in “We Must Educate Everyone”
- Chip Hazard of XFactor Ventures and Flybridge Capital breaks down the volume, quality, and breadth of opportunities that have come into XFactor two weeks after its launch, in “A Fortnight of Female Founders“
- Sophia Eng of InVision suggests a counter-manifesto to the #googlemanifesto in “Hear Us Roar: A Manifesto for Women and Minorities in Startup, Tech, and Business Communities”
- Cadran Cowansage of YC continues the “Ask A Female Engineer” series with “Thoughts on the Google Memo”
- Ellen Pao writes “This Is How Sexism Works in Silicon Valley”, an excerpt from her book, Reset, which comes out in September.
- Valerie Alexander of Speak Happiness says that a lack of specificity in accelerator transparency reports demonstrates that female founders may not be as well supported as is often claimed in “The Great “We Support Female Founders” Lie Continues…”
- “Closing the gender gap in venture capital deserves our immediate and sustained attention” by Melinda Gates https://www.recode.net/2017/9/12/16284058/melinda-gates-venture-capital-gender-equity-diversity-minshew-gouw-fonstad-hoffman?linkId=42113669
- “2 women entrepreneurs who invented a fake male cofounder say acting through him was ‘like night and day’” http://uk.businessinsider.com/witchsy-founders-created-fictional-male-cofounder-2017-8?r=US&IR=T
- Emily Cho of Helpful cites her internship experience as a model of how to make any workplace feel inclusive in “Stop pointing out there’s a female engineer in the room”
- “For Women Entrepreneurs or VCs, Doors Will Only Open If We Pound on Them, Loudly and Persistently” https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/300133
- Annie Tsai of Edio provides an in-depth guide to help new moms balance life with returning to work, and for operators to provide a healthy work environment in “A Survival Guide to That Startup Mom Life”
- “The Comprehensive Case for Investing More VC Money in Women-Led Startups” https://hbr.org/2017/09/the-comprehensive-case-for-investing-more-vc-money-in-women-led-startups
- “AllBright: Making the UK the best place in the world for female founders https://www.director.co.uk/allbright-making-the-uk-best-place-for-female-founders-22293-2/
- “How do investors evaluate founding teams?” https://medium.com/village-capital/how-do-investors-evaluate-founding-teams-7ba012de6384
- “Investing in Private Companies Achieves the Goals of Philanthropy and Impact with a Financial Return”, Plum Alley’s Deborah B. Jackson https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/investing-private-companies-achieves-goals-impact-deborah-b-jackson/
- Linda Xie provides a list of direct suggestions (applicable in any conversation, not just those related to cryptocurrency) to ensure “Women in crypto” are included in the conversation.
- “Female leaders boost the bottom line” https://www.ft.com/content/f88a7c58-96ff-11e7-8c5c-c8d8fa6961bb
- “Push for Gender Equality in Tech? Some Men Say It’s Gone Too Far https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/23/technology/silicon-valley-men-backlash-gender-scandals.html
- The Economist, “Venture capitalists with daughters are more successful https://medium.com/@the_economist/venture-capitalists-with-daughters-are-more-successful-3a4933ccf3f0
- “BBC 100 Women” http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/topics/875e94b8-021d-4411-93f4-a8d5e09d6adb/100-women
- TechCrunch, “Announcing the 2017 update to the Crunchbase Women in Venture report https://techcrunch.com/2017/10/04/announcing-the-2017-update-to-the-crunchbase-women-in-venture-report/
- Evening Standard, “18 women entrepreneurs that will inspire young girls to be their own boss” https://www.standard.co.uk/lifestyle/london-life/18-young-london-female-entrepreneurs-that-will-inspire-you-to-start-your-own-business-a3484926.html
- Bloomberg, “In Israel, ultra orthodox women emerge as tech entrepreneurs https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-17/in-israel-ultra-orthodox-women-emerge-as-tech-entrepreneurs
- “TOP 50: Europe’s most influential women in the startup and venture capital space http://www.eu-startups.com/2017/10/top-50-europes-most-influential-women-in-the-startup-and-venture-capital-space-2/
- Fast Company, “Vive La France: More Female Entrepreneurs Are Moving To Paris For Funding And Support” https://www.fastcompany.com/40482640/vive-la-france-female-entrepreneurs-leaving-the-u-s
- “From World Champion to Women’s Champion, Embracing Enoughness” with Lisa Wanghttps://ldrventures.com/lisa-wang-from-world-champion-to-womens-champion-embracing-enoughness/
- Fred Wilson from Union Square Ventures talks about the book “Reset” by Ellen Pao http://avc.com/2017/10/reset/
- “30+ diversity and inclusion activists and organisations I look up to” by Karolina Szczurhttps://medium.com/@fox/30-diversity-and-inclusion-activists-and-organisations-8b39b6bf537b
- Fast Company, ““The Industry Is Fundamentally Broken”: Women On Sexism In Silicon Valley” https://www.fastcompany.com/40477163/the-industry-is-fundamentally-broken-women-on-sexism-in-silicon-valley
- HBR, “Male and Female Entrepreneurs Get Asked Different Questions by VCs — and It Affects How Much Funding They Get” “https://hbr.org/2017/06/male-and-female-entrepreneurs-get-asked-different-questions-by-vcs-and-it-affects-how-much-funding-they-get
- Hunter Walk of Homebrew urges men to ask themselves “what do I do – or permit – that leaves women feeling unsafe, belittled or minimized?”, in “What I Learned Backing Female Founders: Every One Has a #MeToo Story”
- “My first year as a female founder”, Anna Jones, AllBright co-founder https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/my-first-year-female-founder-anna-jones-allbright-co-founder-jones/
- “10 Investors Who Are Authentically Committed To Funding Female Founders, Part 1“https://www.forbes.com/sites/lisawang/2017/10/31/10-investors-who-are-authentically-committed-to-funding-female-founders-part-1/
- “Women in Healthcare 2017: How does our industry stack up?” A new report by Rock Health reveals that the majority (61%) of VC firms investing in digital health lack women partners. Further, the study found that women make up just 32.4% of executives and 11% of CEOs at the 100 largest hospitals in the US. https://rockhealth.com/reports/women-in-healthcare-2017-how-does-our-industry-stack-up/