Vivek Wadhwa, Author & Journalist @NVCA 2014 who spoke on the Diversity Panel. Less than 5% of venture capitalists are women, they know the female market & they are more compassionate. He says the trouble with the venture capital industry right now is that it’s the same boys club, the same people who’ve invested together – they have group think! This is why the venture capital community is in so much trouble! VCs may be doing well now because of the boom in IPOs but since the last decade its decimated itself! Women have different perspectives – diversity breeds innovation! You need to have different thinking, you need to have people challenging each other, questioning each other. The worst thing you can do is to bring in people who are like minded or the same & then try & look for innovation. The venture capital industry needs to fix itself for its own good! Twitter has an all male board & look at how the company is struggling. It didn’t have the broad perspective from the beginning – it doesn’t understand it’s customers & it doesn’t understand it’s markets. It is the best of times & the worst of times in the venture capital industry! it’s the best of times because there are so many exits right now. It’s the worst of times because the future is bleak for venture capital because the cost of developing technologies has dropped exponentially. You don’t need venture capital anymore! Whatsapp came on the scene 6 months after Mary Meeker’s Internet Trends. The greatest vc didn’t even see that coming & it was the most valuable acquisition ever! That’s because vcs are not able to keep up with advancing technologies. VCs are not looking beyond social media types of companies. They all jump on the same band wagon. They need to diversify & start connecting with the next generation & their technologies. Its the next generation that is going to build these technologies & they’re not college dropouts! There are some great vcs btw who are focused on the right technologies but they’re the outliers. The good news is that they will be the next moguls, the next leaders in venture capital but it will take 5 or 7 years before we get there.
funding
Steve Blank, Startup Author @K&S Ranch
Steve Blank is a retired serial entrepreneur-turned-educator who is changing how startups are built and how entrepreneurship is being taught. He created the Customer Development methodology that launched the lean startup movement, and wrote about the process in his first book, The Four Steps to the Epiphany. His second book, The Startup Owner’s Manual, is a step-by-step guide to building a successful company. Blank teaches the Customer Development methodology in his Lean LaunchPad classes at Stanford University, U.C. Berkeley, Columbia University and the National Science Foundation. He writes regularly about entrepreneurship on his blog Steve Blank & you can find him on Twitter @sgblank.