![]() When you create an ecosystem of role models, people who are younger tend to think they can do that as well,” she said. “When I was in high school, I didn’t have a female CEO taking a company public. “Women are still a minority percentage of all investors, but I think the percentage is increasing quite a bit,” she said. Instead, she turned the question around: “I think the big burning question is: Is there opportunity that has been overlooked traditionally? And the answer is yes.”Īfter the discussion, Joanne Chen, a Raleigh native now living in San Francisco and a partner at Foundation Capital, opened up about what it’s like being a female VC. “We just invest in the best companies, in our opinion,” replied Monique Villa, Mucker Capital investor. Then he asked: “Why invest in diversity and female leadership?”īull City’s Jason Caplain, Ashley Brasier, a partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners Joanne Chen, a partner at Foundation Capital in San Francisco Janey How, vice president at Cisco Investments, Monique Villa, an investor at Mucker Capital.īut he might not have gotten the answer he was expecting. An audience member remarked on the unusual sight - an all-female panel of VCs. “For us, we’ve been trying to figure out more ways to put data into the conversation, what data out there is available for us to use to identify companies, and vet out the companies that we want to win.”īut then it was question time. It’s really about how do you get to the best deals the fastest, and how do you show your value,” she said. “There’s so much money coming into the market now. It’s about opportunities overlooked, not genderįor the most part, the panel’s discussion focused more on the tricks of the trade, than the personal experiences of the women VCs themselves.Īshley Brasier, a partner at Lightspeed, talked about some of the challenges facing VCs in the market today. venture capital firms.Īnd, while the number of women-owned businesses is on the rise, women are still not getting as much VC funding as their male counterparts.Ī BCG study founded that investments in companies founded or cofounded by women averaged $935,000, which is less than half the average $2.1 million invested in companies founded by male entrepreneurs. Women make up fewer than 9 percent of all investors across U.S. Still, they are considered to be a rarity.Īccording to a recent analysis by Axios, the VC world is still overwhelmingly dominated by men. They have a sincere interest of investing into our local ecosystem, and we see them all coming regularly into our market on an on-going basis,” he said. People will have the patient to understand the needs of what they are creating and think of solutions that will make what they do more inspired and easier.“All of them are from the West Coast. To Ashley, when a person thinks about craftsmanship, they care about what they are creating and building. ![]() While she is helping these startups, she is thinking about the concept of craftsmanship. As part of this team, she works with startups on their growth strategies. Lightspeed then moved on to Lightspeed Capital Ventures and became part of their consumer investing team. These consulting jobs showed that she likes looking at many different industries as well as partnering entrepreneurs to turn dreams into reality. She soon quit Thumbtack and went to study at Stanford GSB, While studying, she thought about starting her own company as well as consulting startups to earn some money. What tempted her to become a venture capitalist was that it was about trying to predict the future and to support trends even before they come into being. It should enable anybody to fail fast and iterate faster.Īshley Lightspeed was introduced to what an angel or a venture capitalist was when she was working as fundraising at Thumbtack. She thinks that prototyping should be a key part of the entrepreneurs' toolkit. Whatever position she has, Ashley Lightspeed believes in prototyping as a way to gather feedback and to tell the world how to improve ideas and products. ![]() She also had to worry about making Events & Weddings grow. Her primary responsible was customer service. She became part of Thumbtack as a Category Manager. After getting your Bachelor, she started your Bain as a consultant.Īfter many years at Bain, Ashley Lightspeed grew tired of doing operational work and wanted to do something different like exploring the world of Silicon Valley. After going to Duke and going abroad to Copenhagen, she liked making up business ideas than real buildings. She would sit at her father's drafting table in the garage and try to draw what she imagined. When she was a kid, Ashley Lightspeed of Lightspeed Capital Ventures dreamed of being an architect like her father. ![]()
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