Should You Speak up?
When we speak alone, voicing our adversities harms our reputations as women founders.
But collectively, our stories paint a powerful picture of the systemic inequities in venture capital’s longstanding norms and practices
Submit your story here, and we’ll publish it alongside other women founders’ stories.
or post on social media or your own blog with #the2point8
We’re all busy building our companies, but hopefully each of us taking a little time to raise awareness will make a dent in helping women spend less time battling gendered problems, and more time tackling company-building ones.
Speaking out alone as a woman often backfires. As founders in particular, if we call out institutional problems, we are painted negatively. We’ll be perceived to be liabilities, or lack grit and potential. We can’t blame ourselves for staying silent when it’s bad for business to speak out.
But calling out systemic problems shouldn’t imply that we lack agency or see ourselves as victims. We can name our adversities while still doggedly pushing through them. We are a community of women boldly persisting in an industry made by men, for men. There is nothing defeatist about that.
By disclosing inequities we face when raising and using venture capital, we can start to identify the real causes behind them.
By speaking out, we help others understand the unique problems women face when fundraising VC, and we use our voices to move the needle.
The conversation is incomplete without voices from all orientations, racial identities, ages, and industries. We are inclusive of non-binary and third gender founders.
Write anonymously or with attribution. But please, be a part of the conversation.
