In this segment, the speaker—originally from Tunisia—describes the culture shock experienced upon moving to the United States, focusing on the stark gender gap in startup funding. Citing that only 2.2% of venture capital goes to women‑led companies, the speaker notes the stagnancy of this figure since its 2018 release. They critique the common industry excuse that there is a "lack of female talent," arguing it masks deeper biases. The speaker highlights that most investors are male and often expect women to pitch in the same way as men, leading female founders to adopt masculine attire, behavior, and speech to fit in, while many investors remain unaware of their own biases. The overall tone is reflective and critical, emphasizing systemic issues rather than individual shortcomings.
Chapters
Now, when it comes to funding, people would think sometimes that, you know, on this side of the world, on the western side, that we have it better. But actually, I feel, as somebody who grew up in Tunisia, one of my culture shocks coming to this country, having been living here for many, many years, was the gender gap. I was like, what? Like, you know, in my country, I never— I mean, we have our own challenges, let's be clear on that. And, uh, but like, that was a big culture shock. And so, and then when I became a CEO and a founder in tech, like starting to listen to the numbers that are, you know, 2.2% of women get funding only, and that number is barely moving. And this was released like it was a big deal in 2018, but that number didn't move much, right, Rachel? You're seeing it yourself. So, and I think part of it, I think beyond the access to resources, there's also the lack of talent, right? That's the excuse everybody likes to use, though. It's like, oh, we try to invest in women, but there are not enough women. And for me, I'm like, Yeah, that's, that's a, that's an excuse. That's an easy excuse to go to. The thing is, is that the gap is happening also on the funding side, right? They're not like most investors are men. They're not women. And they treat men and women the same way. They expect a woman to pitch the same way as a man versus we're two different creatures. So we're not going to have— so like what, what ends up happening, though, we try to fit in that men's world. So we start dressing like a man and we start acting like a man. We start talking like a man. In order to try to make it work, and the biases are still there. And I think what's worse in all of it is a lot of them are not aware of their biases.
