The City high-flyer on why women should freeze their eggs
Venture capital supremo Eileen Burbidge tells Cara Mcgoogan that we need to make room for talented women to reach the top
Eileen Burbidge was 33 and had recently split from her first husband when she moved from Silicon Valley to London in 2004, to become one of Skype’s first employees. She was entering the prime of her career as a single woman in a new country, and she didn’t want to put any undue pressure on herself.
“I told myself it would be OK not to have children,” she says.
Fourteen years later, Burbidge is one of the most powerful women in the UK’S burgeoning tech scene, and an adviser to HM Treasury. She is a co-founder and partner at Passion Capital, a venture capital firm that has invested in the likes of Monzo, Gocardless and Lulu, a private social network for single women.
In the event, unlike many of her high-flying female counterparts, she didn’t have to forgo a family to achieve success. Burbidge now has a happy brood of five children, the first of whom she gave birth to at 35, the fourth at 41. The fifth, who is three, is the daughter of her new partner, Tom Powell, and his ex-wife. “We co-parent with my ex-husband and my partner’s ex-wife,” she explains. “The whole thing, it takes a village.”
To balance career and family life, Burbidge and Powell look after the children every other week, with their former ex-partners sharing the care-giving duties equally. They have a full-time nanny, and Burbidge has supportive colleagues, who are happy for her to keep flexible hours that allow her to do the school run.
“I’ve had a lot of help, but I’ve loved it,” she says. “I have breastfed in company board meetings; I’ve had my day nanny, who comes early in the morning and leaves in the evening, bring the baby in so I could feed it then take it back so it could sleep.”
Burbidge, now 47, and Powell, who is 32, have been trying for a sixth child, though, after a second round of failed IVF, she is coming to terms with the idea that it might not be possible to have another biologically, and is looking at egg donation and adoption.
“Women in their 20s and 30s should take a month out and freeze their eggs,” she says. “You don’t have to use or donate them, but it gives you options. I’m a big proponent of that. I didn’t freeze any, and I wish I had.”
This advice is even more pertinent given recent research by Brigham Young University suggests there’s a shortage of eligible, educated men for high-flying women to marry.
A finding that chimes with the latest figures from the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, which showed a 22 per cent rise in single women going through IVF solo, having not found Mr Right in time.
Burbidge, who despite the warm weather is sipping a hot chocolate when we meet on the Passion
Capital rooftop in east
London, says she has always existed in a “man’s world”. But this has neither fazed her nor held her back, which she believes is down to her suburban Chicago upbringing. “I was so aware of being Chinese that it hadn’t occurred to me that there was a second disadvantage of being a girl,” she recalls. “It wasn’t until I was working that I appreciated there was also systematic bias against women.”
To a degree, Burbidge profited from being the only female student in the lecture hall, and the only woman in the boardroom. “Personally, I have been very fortunate. I can think of times when I’ve benefited from being memorable as the Chinese-american woman who talks about tech,” she says. She is certainly in the minority: just 27 per cent of the UK’S venture capital work force are women – a figure that drops to 13 per cent for decision makers. Burbidge doesn’t like quotas, and never wanted to be a “token woman”, but has recently realised that introducing such mandates can prompt important conversations about gender imbalances. She mentions the recent Government-backed review into why 152 of the FTSE 350 companies have no women on their boards.
The reasons, which were described as “pitiful and patronising”, included: women don’t want the hassle or pressure, they don’t have the right credentials, and they don’t fit comfortably into the environment.
New targets were released after the review, which will require nearly half of all board appointments in the next two years to be female. “It’s great we’re having that conversation, and can see how ridiculous the excuses were,” says Burbidge. “Does it bring about scrutiny? Yes. Is that a good thing? Yes.”
Removing gender bias in the workplace hinges on the removal of “mediocre men”, Burbidge believes. “It’s not that women are asking for the bar to be lowered,” she says. “We’re just asking for mediocre men to be pulled out. Not enough deserving and talented people get through, so I’m all for mediocrity being stamped out.”
She applies this argument to claims that female investors play a role in the funding gap between female and male-run start-ups. Men are 86 per cent more likely to secure venture capital funding than women, according to the Entrepreneurs Network – a discrepancy that The Telegraph is seeking to tackle through its Women Mean Business campaign, calling on the Government to redress the balance.
It is since she started working in politics that Burbidge has really experienced what it means to be a woman in business. Her political roles include Fintech envoy to the Treasury, and chair at Tech Nation, an organisation set up by Theresa May to support digital entrepreneurs, which is partly Government-funded. In these roles, she rubs shoulders with ministers, and is invited to No10.
“Compared with politics, tech is a utopia. Politics is so inherently, ridiculously sexist it’s unbelievable,” she says. “There’s the ratio of men to women, the comments, the remarks.”
Burbidge won’t go into detail, but describes such exchanges as “what would historically have been viewed as ‘old school’ behaviour”. There have been occasions when she has felt so unnerved by things that people in politics have said to her that she has immediately called a friend to say, “I can’t believe so-and-so just said this”.
That said, she is more thickskinned than most. “If I was younger, and had less confidence in my own abilities, it could have affected me more,” she says.
Burbidge copes with sexism and harassment by thinking carefully about which events she attends and how involved she is. For example, she has boycotted a number of tech conferences that have been known to host President’s Club-style models. “You could attend events every evening, and I’m definitely more judicious about that,” she says.
Besides, Burbidge would far sooner be at home with her children in Hampstead, encouraging her sons and daughters to play football with one another, while taking on her next role: convincing their school to adopt unisex games uniforms.
‘Women in their 20s and 30s should take a month out and freeze their eggs’