Female partner lifts prestige of revered VC firm
44-year-old Sequoia Capital hires its first U.S.-based woman in its investment arm
MENLO PARK — In what diversity advocates are heralding as a milestone in closing the tech industry’s notorious gender gap, one of Silicon Valley’s most prestigious venture capital firms has hired its first U.S.based female investing partner.
Sequoia Capital, a 44-yearold Sand Hill Road firm famous for its early investments in Google and Apple, on Thursday confirmed it’s bringing Yahoo’s
Jess Lee into its ranks. Women in the industry say the hire, which comes at a time when tech companies and VC firms are coming under fire for their predominantly male cultures, is a step forward for the entire ecosystem.
“Without a doubt it will have an impact on funding going to female-founded companies,” said Donna Wells, president and CEO of Palo Alto-based cloud training platform Mindflash Technologies.
Tech companies and VC firms throughout Silicon Valley are facing mounting pressure to bring on more women, particularly after last year’s high-pro- file gender bias trial against another storied Sand Hill Road VC firm — Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. That trial focused an international spotlight on the issue, but progress has been slow.
Women make up 7 percent of partners at the top 100 VC firms globally, and most top firms have no female partners, according to a recent study by startup data platform CrunchBase. Meanwhile, 41 percent of entrepreneurs starting new U.S. businesses last year were women, according to an annual study by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, a Missouribased nonprofit that studies startup trends.
Lee is set to start at Sequoia on Nov. 7, joining the firm’s 10 other investing partners — all men — in the Silicon Valley office. Sequoia has five female investing partners in China and India.
“We’re thrilled to welcome Jess to Sequoia,” partner Roelof Botha wrote in an emailed statement. “Her rare blend of product and design sensibility, leadership and grit will make her a tremendous asset to Sequoia founders and our team.”
Lee comes to Sequoia after eight years at Sunnyvale-based fashion and home decor startup Polyvore, which was acquired by Yahoo last year. She rose up the ranks at Polyvore over the years, according to her LinkedIn page, starting out as a Polyvore user who wrote in to complain about the product, then getting hired as the company’s first product manager, and ultimately becoming CEO in 2012. In between, Lee did everything from writing code and selling ads, to finding office space and washing dishes.
She started her career at Google, where she worked as product manager for Google Maps.
“Excited to help other entrepreneurs navigate the roller coaster that is startup life. The struggle is real,” Lee tweeted Thursday morning, ending the note with a smiley face.
Like other VC firms, Sequoia has faced scrutiny for its lack of women in top investing positions.
Last year Chairman Michael Moritz came under fire after telling Bloomberg the firm wouldn’t lower its standards to find a female partner. And former Sequoia partner Michael Goguen left the firm this year, after he was accused in a lawsuit of sexually abusing a woman — a claim he denies.
Sequoia, which has been courting Lee for more than a year, says the firm was looking for the best candidate and wasn’t explicitly trying to hire a woman. But in recent years the firm has tried to diversify its pool of candidates, which historically came from Sequoia companies. Polyvore is not backed by Sequoia.
Other VC firms also have recently brought on women as investing partners, including First Round Capital and Greylock Partners.
Laura Gomez, founder and CEO of San Mateobased recruiting startup Atipica and co-founder of diversity initiative Project Include, said her gender often has been an elephant in the room when she’s met with male-dominated groups of potential investors.
“A lot of the questions they asked — second guessing my data and my information,” she said. “The comment, ‘when are you going to get a CTO?’ Meaning, ‘when are you going to get a male founder?’ ”
Now that Sequoia has a female partner, more women will approach the firm, Wells said, and Sequoia also will be more likely to fund women-led companies.
“Would I have loved for it to have happened 43 years ago?” she asked. “Yes. But I’m of an optimistic nature and I’m ready to celebrate that it’s happened now.”