My XX’s bring all the women to the event

I’m a woman. I’m also the Founder and CEO of a seed-stage startup.

Since my product is a professional network, sometimes I throw events so people can meet colleagues and other people in their industry.

I announced an event last week, and an interesting thing happened… while the percentage of women who use my product* is similar to the low percentage of women in the tech industry, the percentage of women who RSVP’d to the event is 41%.

41% !!

That’s crazy high, right? Some random thoughts on why:

• If you’re actually engaged and interested enough to come to an event, you probably know that I’m steering the ship (I’m kinda hard to miss in the product), and maybe want to hang out and associate with a company that’s probably super women-friendly.
• Since I’m a woman, I think I have slightly different preferences for the types of events I want to go to. Another after work drinkup, yelling at people over shitty EDM? Meh. Or maybe I’m just old ☺
• My subconscious biases and behaviours somehow make the event more interesting and compelling to women than those created, managed, and put on by a man.

I don’t really have any deep thoughts on any of this, I was just so happy to see one woman, then another, then another woman signing up for the event. It’s nice to know that just by doing what I love to do, it’s moving the needle a little bit to make tech more inclusive.

Check out some of the great comments from members on this post too