Supporting Women Founders, Women Investors and the Future of Venture Capital
By Nihal Mehta, Founding General Partner & The Eniac Team
Today is International Women’s Day, and my team and I are proud to honor and celebrate the Women’s Empowerment Movement.
Championing women has always been part of Eniac’s commitment.
Hadley, Tim, Vic and myself founded Eniac Ventures on values of diversity. We firmly believe the world’s best innovation stems from the most diverse perspectives. And we are proud to say that we’re putting our money where our mouth is: In 2017 alone, we invested in 13 companies, with 12 founders from diverse backgrounds, including women and minority co-founders.
Going back to our time at UPenn, we were inspired by all the people that helped design, build and operate ENIAC. Almost forgotten in recent history, were the six women — Kathleen McNulty Mauchly Antonelli, Jean Jennings Bartik, Frances Snyder Holberton, Marlyn Wescoff Meltzer, Frances Bilas Spence and Ruth Lichterman Teitelbaum — that actually first programmed the machine. The “Computers,” as they were nicknamed at the time, were recruited as top mathematicians and many of them went on to teach programming and develop some of the earliest tools for software engineers.
Somewhere along the way of the last 70 years, women were pushed out of many industries, tech being a big one. The VC community has long been a “Boy’s Club” that continues to make headlines for blatant sexism and harassment. And, as part of that industry, we are committed to changing it.
Recently, it has been great to see more and more resources to help accelerate the culture shift. For example, theBoardlist helps to recruit amazing women for company boards. Trade organizations, such as Women in Wireless, have tens of thousands of women organized to embolden women in tech. Female founder focused venture funds such as Female Founders Fund and BBG Ventures are making incredible investments and creating community. To solve pipeline issues at earlier ages, non-profits such as Girls Who Code (disclaimer: my wife’s organization!) and Black Girls Code are inspiring hundreds of thousands of girls to a career in Computer Science. Not to mention dozens of educational articles circulating our newsfeeds daily, such as “The 7 Ways to Increase the Number of Women Venture Capitalists.”
These are all amazing steps in awareness to give women an equal opportunity, but we still have a long way to go.
In celebration of International Women’s Day, my partners and I want to focus on the proactive actions. We want to get our network together to support the incredible women in our communities, our companies, and our families.
We hope you will join us in making a difference in someone’s life, and helping move the needle for the industry, one day, one woman at a time.
Here are five easy ways to move the needle:
👩🏿💻👩🏻🏫👩🏽🎓👩🏼🔬Mentor four new women entrepreneurs/month (1/week)
Grab a coffee, provide advice, make introductions, or just … listen!
🎟Bring a +1
Tech events are still mostly male, so next time you are attending an industry dinner, panel or networking event, bring a female founder or investor. Introduce them and support them in having access to establish meaningful connections. When producing or hosting events or dinners, curate your guests for gender parity.
👋🏽Be a line into LPs
One of the most staggering stats was the number of female GPs/investors (under 5%). And one of the easiest ways is to help female GPs make meaningful connections with the LP community. Even just one introduction to that family office, university endowment, pension fund or fund of funds, and you can dramatically set things in motion.
🚪Open your doors
Encourage founders and firms to look beyond typical flow to find opportunities or new hires. You never know who is around the corner, if you don’t look. We are seeing many organizations implement an “inclusion rule” in their HR policies so that, for example, “at least one woman and/or member of a population currently underrepresented within the Company shall be formally interviewed for any open executive position.”
👨👧👧Calling all fathers, uncles, brothers, neighbors: Let’s not forget to prop up our daughters!
The culture shift starts at the beginning. Let’s prove to the next generation that we are committed to encouraging them to follow their passions, to be limitless in their ambitions regardless of gender or race.
We have the ability to affect the industry from the inside if we all work together. Thank you for fighting for parity in the technology industry we live and work in, and beyond…
Best,
nihal mehta & Team
