Saturday, 12 August, is World Elephant Day.
And maybe you wonder why I mention this, but the reason is simple.
When I speak to experts on diversity, the one thing they keep stressing is that diverse teams perform better than non-diverse teams.
And studies, even with tech startups, show this.
So, you’d think that most Venture Capitalists make it a policy to prefer investments in startups with diverse teams. And to invest in both male-led and female-led as a way to diversify the portfolio.
Yet, they mostly don’t.
And I did not understand this.
Until I read this article by Saskia van den Ende on the Antler blog. It’s about biases that people in Venture Capital have.
One of the biases she discusses is gender bias. Besides a lack of representation and stereotyping, one of the reasons is that we traditionally associate the qualities that men have with the qualities of a good leader.
In other words: you can’t be a good leader when you’re a woman.
And that got me thinking. Is gender bias the real elephant in the room when it comes to funding female-led teams?
Women Disrupting Tech | The Podcast 