Ann Miura-Ko discusses All Raise, an initiative pushing venture capital to include more female investors and founders. The conversation centers on how diverse voices in VC shape innovation and drive industry change.
So All Raise is an initiative that started a few years ago really with Aileen Lee from Cowboy Ventures, when she sent out an email to a bunch of female investors saying, hey, I'm just.
Tired of all of this.
Everything is sort of in the middle of the Me Too movement and feel.
Like we can actually do some things.
To create changes and create pressure for change too. Not only for funders because we're seeing.
It within investors, but really for founders as well.
And so bunch of us got together for dinner and then out of that dinner were a bunch of initiatives that started up. At first I was working on a dinner series to encourage operators to become VCs. And so I would gather a bunch of operators who were great candidates for.
Being venture capitalists and then help them.
Negotiate as they were going through their.
Interview process with venture capital firms and.
Then get them into these positions. And so we had a number of folks who collaborated and then also were.
Giving each other data so that they understood what the negotiation process would look like.
And it helped sort of grease the.
Wheels on that front.
I later joined another initiative called Founders for Change where we were getting founders.
To talk about the fact that they.
Wanted change not only within their management team, but also within their boardrooms and.
Also on their cap table.
And I believe that that initiative was really, it was led by Jenny Lefcourt.
From Freestyle Capital and I joined it.
And the thing that I thought was.
Really important about that was when really.
Hot companies would go back to venture capital firms and say, I'm not going.
To take capital from you.
In fact, I'm not going to meet you for pitch meeting because you are not.
Your partnership doesn't represent the partnership that I want to be associated with.
I to want that actually really moved.
The needle, created fear.
There was a New York Times article that talked about this and we realized that it was going to become a movement and what we didn't want was it just to be sort of fear oriented.
But from a capitalist standpoint, what I.
Loved was as founders talked about it, the the VC firms realized that in.
Order to have the best deal flow, in order to have the access to.
The best founders, their decision process needed to change and the people around the.
Table needed to change.
And so we started to see a significant movement amongst many of the VC firms that were all male to then include new general partners who are women. We believe that this is just a starting point. And obviously diversity is not just gender, but many other things. It's an initiative that's really close to my heart.
Because I believe that by finding diverse.
Voices, a lot of what we think about innovation, the way we think about innovation can change from being disruption within an industry to how do you create.
Abundance for the world?
O processo de reconhecer limites, mesmo quando a vida parece exigir sempre mais.
Depois de tantas histórias, aprendizados e pausas necessárias, o @interior_iza está de volta
