Startups are often founded by friends and staffed by people in the founders’ networks, so it’s not a surprise that many early stage companies are staffed by people who look the same and come from similar backgrounds. That’s a problem for a number of reasons — it furthers inequities in our industry and country, it fosters groupthink and inhibits creativity, and it weakens companies’ ability to draw on different experiences and perspectives to solve big problems.

We also know that our portfolio companies, and many startup founders, want to improve their company’s diversity metrics and create an inclusive culture, but they don’t know how to translate that commitment into practical action. …

Let’s put it out there — Q2 was not a big quarter for hiring. It was a quarter for preserving cash, revising budgets, and taking care of your team. Four months in, it’s time to take off the hiring pause button and bring on new team members. As we discussed this shift and the associated challenges with our companies, we realized there was a lot of excitement around hiring new people, but a big “fear factor” around onboarding them remotely. …

EDIT: If you’d like to sign on to a version of this letter on behalf of the entire PCDS community, to be shared with the Board and the public on June 8, please fill out this form: https://forms.gle/Cbz9PeHsiiiJUTYK9

Yesterday, PCDS Head of School Andy Rodin sent a letter to the community addressing “the weight of the…actually I’m not even sure what to call it.” He said that “While I know that our words are critically important, it’s really our actions that need to be on point, and ever-evolving,” and then failed to outline a single action that he or Phoenix Country Day School would take to address or even acknowledge systemic racism, police brutality, or the massive built-in inequality at a school where tuition is over $20,000 per year. I thought that was pretty disappointing. …

“The purpose of this meeting is….”

I wrote that sentence on hundreds, maybe thousands, of memos during my four years as a political scheduler and fundraiser. My first boss, then a Congresswoman, taught me to start every conference call, every one-on-one, every conversation from the backseat of the car while we raced to the airport for her flight after votes ended — what are we talking about, and why are we talking about it?

In 2018, that boss ran for the Senate, and practically overnight, we built a large-scale statewide campaign infrastructure. We had to quickly create new decision-making processes, communication structures, and workflows. …

I spent the early years of my career working in politics. I raised money for candidates and managed day-to-day operations for campaigns. I loved the pace, the team environment, the magic of a small group coming together around a few folding tables and working crazy hours to achieve a huge goal. But there were drawbacks, too — an unsustainable lifestyle and feeling stuck in my own development — and after four years I decided to go back to school to pursue an MBA.

After diving into the world of startups as a leader in the Entrepreneurship & VC Club and an intern at an early-stage fund, I’ve found that the things I loved about working in politics are at the center of day-to-day life at a startup. Both political campaigns and startups are scrappy, low-budget, crunched for time and cash, and staffed with folks wearing a lot of hats. Both pride themselves on hard work and no fluff. And both rely heavily on the quality, flexibility, and rapid growth of their people and teams. Helping small, hardworking teams pursuing big, crazy goals by implementing what I’m learning about managing people and teams at school and bringing in my experience from campaigns has made me think a lot about how leaders in both fields can, and must, motivate their teams to improve and grow. …