1 Year in Venture Capital: Lessons in Diversity and Empathy

Disclaimer: Opinions in this piece are my own and not of 500 Startups.

Last year, I made the jump from digital media in LA to one of the largest early-stage VC firms in San Francisco. I was fully aware I was going from one extreme to another, and while I was no stranger to the world of entrepreneurship, I was excited to enter the eccentric and sometimes controversial world of VC. Here are just a few of the things I’ve learned as a content marketer in VC:  

Yes, diversity is still an issue

When trying to network with fellow VC employees in San Francisco, I came across this one P/E firm that a couple of my friends had mentioned. When I went to their website, I found a list of all 40 employees. Only three were women.  

Working at 500, I have had a different experience in VC. I’ve worked primarily with women on the marketing team and have never doubted our commitment to diversity and inclusion. When the COVID-19 pandemic struck, we came out with a recommitment to female founders, a demographic that had made strides in representation in years past and who was at risk of losing their momentum to the crisis.

The pervasiveness of the issue outside of 500 was made especially apparent to me when one of 500's founders tweeted from a finalist workshop. She mentioned that without our mothers’ room, she would not have been able to make the event. She had recently become a mom to a little pone and that mothers’ room allowed her to continue her duties as a founder and a new mom. A woman in the batch also mentioned to me in-person later in the program that it was the only mothers’ room she had ever seen at a venture capital firm. That's a statement that has continued with me throughout my experience in VC.

The entrepreneurial ecosystem is better when we lead with empathy. 

Entrepreneurs are constantly in search of empathy. There’s nothing that truly prepares you for running a company. And as a founder, you are constantly getting advice from every direction that will give it to you. From your investors to your customers to your friends and family, one of the hardest parts of being a founder can be processing huge amounts of feedback quickly and effectively. So when that feedback comes from a former founder themselves, it's easy to prioritize. 

On another note, all that feedback can feel crushing when its compiled with a global pandemic and recession. Like I mentioned in my article on founder mental health during COVID-19, after a few high profile founders took their own lives a few years ago, the conversation around mental health became a necessity for the entrepreneurial community. Now, the conversation feels even more pressing. 

While you don’t have to be a founder to become a VC, conversations around founder wellbeing and mindset with VCs like Aaron Blumenthal and Courtney Powell, two former 500 Startups founders turned 500 Startups employees, instantly put the founders at ease and give them the chance to have honest conversations about leadership, resilience, and growth. 

Post inspired by: Mia Nguyen