Mixing It Up

A few years ago, Uniseed was in need of a new venture capital manager in Sydney. We advertised in traditional media, on Seek and in the Australian Venture Capital and Private Equity Journal.

Like past positions we had filled, we received a large number of applicants (~70) but only about 10% were women. Various female colleagues have provided possible reasons for this – ranging from “It was my fault because I must have written the add incorrectly” to the possible more plausible “men may tend to think they can meet 8 of 10 job criteria and say “I can do that job, I will apply”, while women faced with the same ratio may tend to say “I have no experience in two of those criteria, so I won’t apply”.

Venture Capital had been receiving fair criticism of the gender diversity imbalance in the industry, which fortunately made me more determined to employ a female candidate. Uniseed had previously given a number of young female graduates their first role in the industry, and we were proud that all had gone onto great careers after their initial experience with Uniseed (https://uniseed.com/uniseed-intern-program/), and we have another Intern role available now (https://uniseed.com/uniseed-seeking-investment-intern/). Women had also been well represented on Uniseed’s Investment Committees over the years – particularly in biotech and life sciences. However, I am embarrassed to say Uniseed had never employed a female Investment Manager.

To get a broader group of applicants, we decided to tap into our network. We circulated the job spec through the women in technology group and the two other Uniseed Investment Managers and I went through all our LinkedIn contacts to identify potential candidates.

Through this process we identified Natasha Rawlings, Uniseed’s current Investment Manager in Sydney. I had met Natasha at a conference in Brisbane when she was raising capital for her own start-up (StreetHawk). We hadn’t been in contact since then but I remembered her passion for her start-up and her common sense approach to understanding customers and why they want your product.

Natasha (and she says this herself) didn’t fit the mould of previous Uniseed Investment Managers (and not just by being female). For a start, she didn’t have a PhD or deep experience with intellectual property. However, she had significant business, sales and marketing experience and knew the importance of understanding your customer, and this was a great fit with the trend in research organisations to more product rather than technology focused companies emerging from their incubators and accelerators. In addition, she was a people person who was passionate about innovation, and she had worked with founders as mentor at The University of Sydney’s Incubate, and given the importance of relationships to Uniseed’s success, this was a great fit. To top it off, she had significant start-up experience of her own, and understood the difficulties of the start-up world, so she ‘got the gig’.

Jumping forward to today, employing Natasha has been a great move. She has provided another perspective to our business and our investment decisions. We don’t always agree, but this has led to better decisions by drawing on our collective experiences and looking at opportunities through a different lens. Natasha has now championed a number of investments including Forcite and Wildlife Drones. Apart from these investments, Natasha has been pivotal in refining Uniseed’s mission, vision and values, growing awareness of Uniseed in the community and creating social change in partner research organisations. 

So what have I learned? 

When looking at new positions you have to look for and encourage different people to apply for roles (“look outside the box”). And when they apply, you need to be aware of your own biases and preconceived ideas, as we may have a tendency to employ people who are similar to us.

And I often hear the argument from colleagues “but you want to employ the best person for the job”. But if you are filtering through your existing biases how do you know who the best person for the job is. Breaking the mould can lead you to find a better person for the job by bringing in someone with different experiences and a different lens through which they view the world. Diversity does lead to better decisions.

And a final tip for the guys out there … Don’t say “I’m passionate about gender diversity as I have two daughters”. It doesn’t matter what gender your children are, or if you have no children at all, diversity is important regardless.