“5 Things We Need To Do To Close The VC Gender Gap” with Tina Hoang-To EVP at TCV
Tina first joined TCV in 2008 and rejoined in 2019. She focuses on investments in internet, digital media & entertainment, mobile technology, and software. Her investments include Modsy, where she serves on the board of directors.
Before joining TCV, Tina was an investment banker in the Tech Group at Bear Stearns where she worked on IPOs, mergers & acquisitions, leveraged buy-outs, and divestitures. Following JPMorgan’s acquisition of Bear Stearns, Tina joined TCV’s investment team and was actively involved with Merkle (acquired by Dentsu) and Splunk (NASDAQ: SPLK).
Most recently, Tina spent four years away from TCV and founded Wedding Spot, the first online marketplace to offer real-time, itemized price quotes for wedding venues across 43 states in the U.S. after experiencing a lack of transparency in pricing during her own wedding planning process. As CEO, Tina provided strategic direction for the company in the areas of revenue growth, market expansion, customer acquisition, and product development and helped the company reach profitability in its third year. Tina built the sales organization from scratch and in 2015 grew Wedding Spot’s coverage from 3 states to 38 states within one year.
After Wedding Spot’s exit, Tina rejoined TCV on the Consumer Internet team with a passion for real estate, travel, e-commerce, marketplace, health & wellness investments. Leveraging her operational experience, Tina enjoys helping companies grow and being a sounding board to CEO and founders.
Can you tell us the “backstory” that brought you to this career path?
Growing up in Silicon Valley, I was always fascinated with technology. After college, I joined a public semiconductor company doing corporate FP&A work, but the pace was too slow for me. I was reading a book called “Monkey Business” about Wall Street and investment banking and had an epiphany: “This is what I need to be doing!” I networked my way into the industry by attending presentations when top investment banks came to campuses and scored a job offer at Bear Stearns, where I was able to work on some of the largest deals in the tech industry and realized my desire to be an investor. In 2008, I joined TCV’s investment team where I had the opportunity to be at the forefront of technological innovation. I get to hear the stories of why someone decided to leave their job to build something from scratch every day. It’s incredibly inspiring. When my Associate program ended at TCV, instead of going to business school, I decided to start my own company. I’ve always been very pragmatic so I thought that gaining operating experience would make me a better investor. What better way to be more relatable to a founder than if you had been one yourself? I founded Wedding Spot out of frustration with not being able to get accurate pricing while planning my wedding.
After I sold Wedding Spot, I rejoined TCV as an investor. This time around I have such a different lens on evaluating companies. Having been a founder myself — and lived the rollercoaster ride of a startup — made me appreciate the work and perseverance that is required to grow companies.
Can you share a story about an Angel or VC investment you are excited about? In your opinion, what was its main lesson?
Merkle was one of my first investments at TCV and it taught me a valuable lesson. Merkle had thrived for 20 years without taking any investor money. No one at TCV had been able to get in front of the CEO. For two years, I made it my mission to build a relationship with the company — emailing executives, attending industry conferences, putting together market maps for them. We even sent them M&A opportunities. Finally, I got a meeting with the CEO. Ultimately, Merkle saw the growth opportunity that we saw, which led to an investment from TCV. The lesson is that what seems impossible in the beginning may not be in the end. Seeking to add value and persistence will always pay off.
A recent 2019 study shows that US VC investment in female founders hits an all-time high. Venture capital investment in all-female founding teams currently represents 2.8% of capital invested across the entire U.S. startup ecosystem this year. That is a significant jump from 2018 where, according to this article in Fortune, that shows only 2.2% of VC dollars went to women last year. What have you seen over the past year within the industry that has contributed to this change?
There is so much that has changed in such a positive way. Firstly, we are seeing more successful founders and CEOs that inspire other women to start their own companies. Think of Katrina Lake at Stitch Fix, Jennifer Hyman at Rent the Runway, and Mariam Naficy at Minted. These women have done an amazing job paving the way for other women in tech, and some of them have also been strong examples of balancing motherhood and running a company. Secondly, we are seeing more diversity in general at investment firms. The more diversity we have in this industry — in gender, experience, culture, and ethnicity — the more perspectives we will have at the table and hopefully that leads to better decision-making and outcomes.
Can you share with our readers what TCV is specifically doing to help close the VC gender gap?
TCV is focusing on a number of things that we think can make an impact. One of those is increasing the diversity of the firm and creating an environment in which diversity is an even greater strength than before. This has naturally resulted in a higher percentage of women in the firm. A related focus is recruiting and promoting women for leadership positions within TCV, whether that’s on the investment team or in our portfolio operations team, which my colleague, Susan Clark, leads as a General Partner. TCV has also invested in women-founded and women-led companies. As a venture firm, you don’t always get to control which opportunities come to you, or whether they’re a good fit with your strategy. So, we’re acting on our values internally while looking for ways to do that with our investing criteria as well.
Can you recommend 5 things that need to be done on a broader societal level to close the VC gender gap. Please share a story or example for each.
We could talk all day about this question! First, as an industry we need a bigger pipeline, so number one is to inspire more women to go into business and finance for their careers. Then society needs to encourage VC and private equity to put more money behind companies founded and led by women. There are great examples of VC-backed companies founded by women and we just talked about three of them. Thirdly, we should make sure every woman in venture has a mentor — not just in name, but with passion for making our society more equitable and more successful. I could point to my own career because my mentors have made a huge impact on me. Finally, we should make it a priority to place more women on the boards of public companies since it provides opportunities for them to influence the VC ecosystem either directly or indirectly. I just led our investment in Modsy, and it has a female majority board, which is rare.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)
Mentor someone! Mentor as many people as you can! I’ve had incredible mentors throughout my career. In every chapter of my career there was at least one influential person that played a huge role in my development. As a leader of an organization, the biggest impact you can make is investing your time and wisdom in the younger generation.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
Joseph Campbell said, “If the path you are on is clear, you’re probably on someone else’s path.” I believe that the most successful people are the ones that see opportunities that others don’t. This is also why I have so much respect for founders. It takes a lot of courage to start a company when you know that of the vast majority of startups fail. One of the most rewarding moments of my life was about a year after I founded Wedding Spot. A Lyft driver asked me where I worked and when I mentioned Wedding Spot, he said “My fiancée and I use your site every day!” It was a reminder to me that a year earlier the company was just an idea in my head. Nothing was built yet. Now there were thousands of people using it to book their wedding. So, if you think you have a good idea, I encourage you to be thoughtful about it, do your due diligence, but if everything checks out, then go out there and build it!
Some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might see this, especially if we tag them. :-)
Oprah would be on the top of my list. She is the ultimate power woman and I believe an inspiration to women around the world. She is charismatic and thoughtful. Despite her success, she manages to come off so approachable and relatable. And she does such incredible things with her humanitarian efforts. It’s wonderful to see her use her voice and platform to do a lot of good for the world and women in particular.
This was really meaningful! Thank you so much for your time.
