Don’t be so focused on your title

Follow @renatavc on CLUBHOUSE for new episodes

Since the book Women Who Venture was published, Theresia Gouw has left Aspect Ventures to start Acrew Capital

?

Aspect Ventures’ office in Palo Alto was once the original headquarters of Facebook. Theresia Gouw is used to saying that it has ‘good karma’: in 2005, she was one of the investors from Accel to deliver the first term sheet to Facebook.

Before Aspect, Theresia was the first female investor at one of the top-tier VC firms — Accel Partners. She then became the firm’s first female partner and first female managing partner. In February 2014, Theresia co-founded Aspect Ventures, one of the first and currently the largest female-led venture capital firms, backed by such renowned investors as Melinda Gates’ Pivotal Ventures and Cisco. Theresia is a well-known investor, having been recognized eight times on the Forbes’ Midas List as one of the “world’s smartest tech investors”. 

Summarizing all her wins, some media called Theresia an overachiever, but she doesn’t think that way about herself. “I was trained by my parents to certainly be a hard-working perfectionist, which is what I would call myself.”

Gouw came with her parents to the US at the age of three, from Jakarta, Indonesia, where she was born. A lot of political turmoil was going on at the time and a lot of backlash against ethnic Chinese. “My parents are true believers in the American Dream, and they felt very strongly that if you do well in school and work really hard, then America is the place where you can achieve whatever you dream of. They are true believers in the American dream, which was why they chose to come here in the first place. This belief impacted me the most, but another lesson that I learned from my parents is that you can always start over and create opportunities,” she summarized her early learnings. 

Theresia’s father had been a dentist in Indonesia, and her mother had been a nurse. They came to the United States, and as many other immigrants did, had to start over literally. Her parents worked at a Chinese restaurant: her father as a dishwasher and mother as a hostess. But along with that, her father was also studying at a medical school to get his American certification in dentistry.

After getting her MBA, Gouw joined a startup called Release Software, launched by some of her Stanford classmates, just after they had raised their first million dollars for the seed round. She then helped them raise more than $30 million of venture capital over the following rounds, all the way to pre-IPO. But when they started getting the company ready to go public, she realized that they had once again changed the CEO, which meant that they had had three CEOs in 12 months. “I felt that it wasn’t the greatest sign for my stock options, so I went to one of our venture capital investors and asked him to introduce me to some of his other portfolio companies that I could possibly join. He did so, but he also introduced me to three venture capital firms because he knew my background and experience and thought that I would be interested in that as well,” she described how she mitigated career risks in her pre-venture times.

 â€œI realized that working in venture capital would allow me to be still involved with startups, but with multiple companies at the same time, and it seemed like a fascinating opportunity to me. It was undoubtedly a career risk to move from something that I had known, which was being an entrepreneur and executive at a venture-backed startup. But I took the chance because my parents had always said that I should try what I am drawn to.

“When I was choosing between VC firms, I followed the advice I was given by the investor who had introduced me to them. He said, ‘The most important thing is to find a place where you feel like you’re going to get good mentorship. Don’t be so focused on what your title is. Find a place where you’re going to learn from some great people who will be willing to invest in your development.’ Accel Partners seemed like the right place. I started as an associate. In just one year, I became a partner, then a general partner, and a managing partner later on. It all happened in less than five years, so it obviously ended up being a great opportunity for me. Looking back now, I could have definitely chosen another firm that would have offered me a better title to start with, but I remembered the advice I received and was more focused on what I could learn”.

When I asked Theresia what the most critical skill was that she had obtained before getting into venture capital, which helped her in investing, she told me, “Fearlessness. I had done many jobs at the startup, from product marketing to customer support and beyond, but I was really good at business development. I was not afraid to do cold calling and cold emailing. I landed big tech companies like Symantec, Macromedia, and Netscape as our customers. I had to start doing the same at Accel, with the only difference being that I was looking for investment opportunities. I had to identify the startups that would be a good match for Accel, go out there and get in front of their people, get connected, and convince them that we were the right partner to have.”

Despite having a skyrocketing career in venture capital at one of the top international VC firms, Theresia then decided to become an entrepreneur again. She chose to launch her own VC firm. I wondered why.

“Why do people leave Google and start their own companies? It is because they saw a market segment while working at Google and wanted to do something in that area on their own. It was very much the same for me when I decided to leave Accel. I had worked with startups from many different sectors. We had invested in all the stages — from seed to pre-IPO. But at some point, I wanted to be laser-focused on Series A investments in sectors that I enjoyed the most and had the most success in. I wanted my firm to be small enough to provide flexibility and close collaboration with entrepreneurs and co-investors.” 

As with many other investors interviewed for this book, Theresia was very involved in sports growing up. She was a figure skater, played field hockey, volleyball, and ran track. She still loves football, which she used to watch with her dad every Sunday. “My dad was an avid sports fan, and he had always wanted a son. When he had two daughters, he instilled the love of sports in us, and we were season ticket holders for the Buffalo Bills. It would be 5 degrees below zero and snowing, and we would still be sitting in the stadium, huddled under blankets and cheering on our team,” she remembered. 

"The most important thing is to find a place where you feel like you’re going to get good mentorship."

Theresia gives some credit to sports for building her character. “I grew up being a very competitive team player. I’m a big believer in team sports, where I not only learned how to be competitive, but I also learned how to play in a team in order to achieve my goals.

“I also have to admit that being a sports fan has helped me to build relationships with my colleagues in the venture capital and tech worlds. These are male-dominated industries, and many men are sports fans as well. So I can always find common ground. But aside from that, many sports terms have populated business language at large. We all talk about “home runs” and “hitting a Grand Slam.” Even just knowing the lingo can help you to strike up a conversation and connect with people.

“Nevertheless, earlier on in my career, I definitely felt more like I needed to play by the boys’ rules. Chatting about sports was just one thing. What was funnier is a particular dress code when I started in the venture capital business. In the late 90s, it was blue button downs and khaki pants (just like now it’s jeans and a fleece vest now). I was dressing like that for quite a while. As I became more secure in my career, however, I started dressing the way I like to — dresses and skirts more often than pants and high heels instead of flats.

“Earlier in our careers, we often find that we need to play by the boys’ rules because it helps us feel that we belong here. But what we are looking for is commonality, and that could be anything! For example, could I still talk about sports in a dress and pumps? Of course, I could! And that would be enough for me to be regarded as one of them. So to all the younger investment professionals, especially women, I’d like to say that you need to find what unites you with other VCs without changing yourself.

“Most likely, you will have at least a couple of other things in common, which are your love for startups and passion for technology. And they are the foundation of our business. You can always talk and bond with your male colleagues, whether they are other VCs or entrepreneurs, about the things you mutually care for. The best part of it — you don’t need to change anything about yourself!”

However, on a different note, Gouw pointed me to a study conducted by the BoardList that suggested differences in Midas List members. “If you take a look at the Midas listers, you’ll see that about 80% of women have technical degrees, while only approximately half of the men on the list have them. What it says is that if you don’t belong to the majority, you’ll absolutely need to have all the credential boxes checked.” 

Despite all her titles and speaking the same language with male colleagues, Gouw has, from time to time, found herself in uncomfortable circumstances. “I always find that humor is a great way to defuse an awkward situation. It has been my tendency, especially in a group setting. And then, if I still felt like there was something I would want to say to the individual who created the awkwardness, I would do that at a different time, in a one-on-one setting. I’d tell them very calmly something like, ‘You know, what you said (or did) made me feel uncomfortable.’ In my experience, people are more open to a different point of view when they aren’t publicly exposed at the moment.

“Way too often, people don’t necessarily understand how others perceive what they are saying. I’ve heard so many times, ‘I didn’t mean it that way’, which only confirms my tactic of bringing humor in and changing the topic in awkward situations. It helps to avoid a lot of drama — so that you don’t get upset, but also that you don’t embarrass that person in front of others.”

I want to highlight that this advice is prevalent among the top women-investors in this book.