Category Archives: Women in Tech

Good For Her Welcomes Cohort Five!

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It’s that time of year when we get to announce that we have a new cohort at Good For Her (GFH). Cohort five has launched! We get an average of forty new applications each year and it was incredibly hard to narrow it down to this select group of exceptional women. This new cohort consists of nine extraordinary entrepreneurs as well as one aspiring entrepreneur. Our members are all founders, primarily in the c-suite, of operating businesses. We bring in a new cohort each year and intentionally keep each cohort small to ensure strong bonds form between members. Our cohort members are selected based on how they will complement the diversity of our current members as well as their willingness to contribute their experience and skills back to the community.

While fundraising is not the only metric of success, our current members have raised over $100M capital since January 2021 — including several $12–20M Series As. Beyond funds raised, these businesses are focused on being great employers with high retention rates, growing revenue exponentially, and building industry leading brands. Our newest cohort members are based in NYC, Boston, Miami, Chicago and Los Angeles. Our newest member companies represent a diverse range of industries — from B2B SaaS, FinTech, EdTech and Digital Health to consumer products and services. While each cohort has a special bond, the GFH community supports all members with our “give as much as you get” philosophy. From quick responses on Slack to jumping on calls in the moment when urgent advice is needed, these women strive to support each other 24×7. We meet as a community in-person a few times a year and cohort members regularly meet with each other one-on-one and in smaller groups off-line.

Herewith, our newest members:

GFH Cohort Five — 2022
Good For Her Cohort Five — 2022

(Listed from top row to bottom row)
Rave Andrews — Aspiring Entrepreneur
Wana Azam — Ullabelle
Lillian Cartwright — ShelfLife
Tiffany Faith Demers — Upkeep
Cindy Estes — Rapt
Ngoc Le — Phase Zero
Kait Margraf Stephens — Brij
Rebekah Wilson — Source Elements
Brittany Wright — Endex
Peggy Yu — Stack Education

Welcome cohort five!!

GFH operates as a registered 501(c)(3) and, in addition to the latest cohort, the organization recently added Monique Jean to its board of directors. ”I’m excited to support an organization dedicated to helping women entrepreneurs connect and build a community. As women, many of us have been in situations where we are the “only”, having a community built by women, for women, is not just about engagement or mentorship, it’s about being intentional in facilitating the progress of women entrepreneurs and supporting them in their journey.” We couldn’t be more thrilled to have you on board, Monique!

About GFH

Julia Austin started GFH to pay-it-forward after her three decades as an operator in the startup industry. “While we still have a long way to go, there has certainly been major progress since my early years in startup land when I was often the only woman in the boardroom. I didn’t feel I could fully celebrate my success without ensuring that the next generation of female leaders had access to the resources and support systems I never had.” You can read more about the founding story of GFH here.

GFH has had tremendous support from valuable women in the community. Jenny Fielding, General Partner at The Fund says “It is critical for underrepresented members of the startup community to have a trusted network like Good For Her to give them the best possible opportunities for success. I have personally seen how this community has supported their members as they build and scale their businesses and I am delighted to see this new group of entrepreneurs welcomed into the GFH community!”

Best selling author, coach and mentor Kim Scott was an early advocate for launching this non-profit when Julia decided to leave the operating world. She encouraged Julia to turn the energy around her frustration with the “injustice that surrounded the underrepresented MAJORITY” into efforts that empowered them to overcome adversity. “When underrepresented leaders come together in solidarity, we can confront bias, prejudice and bullying effectively and create teams where everyone can “just work” — in both the justice and the get sh-t done senses of the phrase.”

Check out our website for more information about GFH and pay attention to all of our members — they are doing amazing things!

If you are interested in joining cohort six in 2023, apply here.

Walk The Talk…Every. Damn. Day.

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On March 8, 2022’s International Women’s day, from social media posts with the year’s theme of #breakthebias to the New York Times Crossword puzzle theme of women in history, we saw friends, colleagues and leaders across the country proclaim their respect for and commitment to women. It was inspiring to see. However, let’s remember it is what comes after the day of celebration that really matters. The #metoo movement got the ball rolling beyond a special day or month for women in many ways, but are we still talking about it? My friend Susan’s callout of Uber in her famous blog post in 2017 lit a fire that led to lawsuits and the start of some regulatory changes in the heat of the moment, but when the party is over and we’re sweeping up the confetti, are we still keeping the momentum?

Image credit: Imobi Group

Recently on social media, I saw several fundraising announcements that made it all too clear that many companies are talking the talk but not walking the walk on creating equitable working environments. The dichotomy between the images of those who raised extreme amounts of cash for a pre-PMF (product market fit) company to those who raised modest seed rounds for their post-PMF company was infuriating. The posts about someone’s upcoming participation on a “mannel” (all male panel) or their new Crypto team (left) are cases in point. Why don’t they notice what they are doing?? How do companies allow this to happen? Has anything really changed despite all our efforts for equal rights?

This image was posted on Twitter on International Women’s Day ’22 — It has since been removed.

This morning, one of my coaching clients sent me a picture of how he planned to show up at his board meeting today (below, right – shared with permission). It was great to see his solidarity in this moment. In this case, I know Nick’s business, Help Scout, is on the bleeding edge of striving for equality. The company has made conscious efforts to prioritize hiring, culture and product decisions to be sure they remain 100% focused on a diverse team and providing an equitable and inclusive environment for their employees and their customers. They are transparent about how they do this and the metrics they track to stay on top of this focus. More importantly, they keep the beat every single day. Not just during International Women’s Day or Women’s History Month or Black History Month. Every. Damn. Day. 

As I looked at the t-shirt Nick was proudly displaying, I asked myself “Do people know that Nick truly lives the slogans on his t-shirt? Are other companies doing what Help Scout does, but not sharing it broadly to inspire? Do other companies that are announcing mannels or their 5th, homogenous, executive hire despite public proclamations that they understand the practical and ethical importance of diversity simply not believe what they are saying?? Do I give them a pass and hope they’re working hard every day just like the team at Help Scout? Or, do I call it out when I see it? Do I run the risk of getting dismissed as a “salty old broad” or keep challenging this behavior because I just have to do what it takes?” Every. Damn. Day. 

My dear friend Kim Scott’s voice rings in my head frequently reminding me to care personally, to challenge directly and not to display obnoxious aggression. I try to embrace Radical Candor every chance I can (I promise, Kim!), but there are days where I don’t care personally. I am fed up. Tired. Pissed off. I’ve been at this business of combatting bias, sexism, gaslighting and outright discrimination for over three decades. It’s exhausting! I have hope, though. I see more action than I have ever seen. Part of what gives me hope are, to borrow a phrase from Kim’s new book Just Work, “upstanders” like Nick. I don’t have to do all the work, leaders who identify as men understand that they will find more success and also do the right thing by hiring and promoting more diverse people. 

The young people I work with also inspire me. I was conducting office hours with an exceptional student of mine the other day who is a Freshman at Harvard and cross-registered in my graduate-level course. As a young woman of color, she is breaking barriers in many ways. She aspires to be an entrepreneur and can actually believe that this is possible for her. When I was her age, few women dared to have the hopes and dreams that she has. The stories about how I was treated in the executive conference room when I was a college intern would  shock her. The kinds of egregious things that happened all the time 30 years ago are unimaginable to young people today. 

I have tremendous hope for her and her generation of women; for my own three daughters who are already fighting this fight in their early adulthood, and have far more options (and regulations and guardrails) than I ever did at their age. We are shifting, albeit slower than I’d prefer. What can I say, anyone who really knows me knows that I am impatient as hell!

So I ask you, what are you doing on March 9, the day after International Woman’s Day, to affect change? How about on April 1, when Women’s History Month is another moment in the history books? How will you continue to foster growth of your teams and embrace diversity “Every. Damn. Day”? For me, I will continue to push every daily, but also remind myself that change is happening, and celebrate it.  It’s a marathon, not a sprint. I just hope I am around long enough to see what broken bias really looks like. When this topic is no longer a “thing”. That the shift has happened and things ARE in fact as they should be. Equal and just.

Welcome GFH Cohort Three!

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I am so very pleased to announce that the third Good For Her (GFH) cohort has launched this week! Back in 2015, I noticed that there were a lot of male founders supporting each other. Some had informal monthly meetups for beers where they’d talk about leadership and fundraising challenges. Some were part of programs created by investors or startup accelerators. When I asked why there were so few women integrated into these groups, I got answers ranging from “I don’t know any women founders” to “It would be weird to have only one woman in our group”. I knew plenty of women founders, so I decided that if they were not getting invited to these groups, I’d create one for them.

The focus of GFH is to create an intimate community for like minded startup founders who identify as women. Each cohort of 8-10 founders is carefully curated to ensure a diversity of backgrounds, experiences, company stage and types of businesses. We have founders of B2B, D2C and B2C products. They’re bootstrapped to post series A. There’s no limit to where their businesses can go to be part of the group. The only requirements for a member are that they are a founder of their business (not all are CEOs), have a product in-market and they are good humans. All members are vetted by me and occasionally another GFH member before they are invited to join. Most of our cohort two and three members are in NYC, however with the pandemic, we’ve become more flexible and now have members based around the country.

Including an “Emerging Leader” in each cohort is something we started with cohort two and will continue to do for all cohorts going forward. These young women are aspiring leaders who would benefit from being among the incredible GFH women. They are part of the GFH family and included in every way.

GFH is fully funded by me. There is no fee, equity grant or financial obligation for any of our members. It is my way of paying-it-forward and I take great pleasure from watching these groups and individuals thrive. Pre-covid, I hosted events that ranged from dinners in my home to taking members to the theater and book signings to organizing pitch practices and how-to sessions (our most recent one was on the product roadmap process). I lead on topics I know well and bring in experts from my network as needed. During the pandemic, our connections are primarily in Slack and Zoom meetups – we’re hoping that’ll change some day soon! Meanwhile, in the GFH Slack, each cohort has its own private (and very active!) channel and there are open channels for cross-cohort connections around topics like fundraising, hiring and leadership. All members sign a code of conduct ensuring what happens in GFH, stays in GFH! I am also available (practically) 24×7 to every member for networking and coaching. Oh, and there’s a lot of fun too – the GFH community has a great sense of humor 🙂

When a new cohort starts, I am very engaged in pulling the group together and fostering discussions. It is my goal that, over time, each cohort becomes its own “thing” without my routine facilitation. With two cohorts now well on their way, it’s time to welcome cohort three! Herewith are our newest members (hover on images for name & company):

Geetika Agrawal (VAWAA)
Jennifer Brisman (VOW)
Cathy Chukwulebe (Emerging Leader)
Rebecca Greene (Stealth)
Julia Hawkins (Cabinet)
Christie Horvath (Wagmo)
Shanea Leven (CodeSee)
Chrstine Schindler (Pathspot)
Mai Vu (Maivino)

I am sooooo excited about partnering with this group! The buzz has already started on slack and they are receiving the much needed support they crave. Welcome cohort three!!

Check out our website for more information about GFH and pay attention to all of our members – they are doing amazing things!

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GFH Cohort Three Kick-off – July 2020!

Is The Future Bright?

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My dad was a science fiction buff, Democrat and a WWII veteran. As a single parent, he did a marvelous job inspiring me to explore my interests in technology and encouraging me to be my own person with the strength and means to create the life I wanted to live. We were “not that Jewish” in terms of rituals and convictions, but our heritage and suffering was always a thread throughout our lengthy family debates about politics and the world at large. Being a Jew was part of who we were as individuals and as a family and his role in the war and the stories he told from his experience was a constant reminder of how important it is to stand up for what’s right, defend minorities and protect our freedom.

I often have days where I wish my dad was still with us so I could see his mind explode when I showed him the latest in tech. An avid Azimov reader and Star Trek viewer who bought every single new calculator (the first one was a Sharp CS10A weighing over 50 pounds!) and Radio Shack TRS80 as they were released, he would have totally lost it if he were to see the iPhone and all the applications one can use on it today. If I were to share a VR headset with him or bring him to an AR installation, he would marvel at how the technology he imagined from all his Sci-Fi reading was coming to life. He would have also said none of it surprised him, because he believed all of it was inevitable. The future was always bright in his mind.

Despite all the progress we’ve made in tech in the US since my dad’s passing in 2009, we’ve had a lot of regression in the country at the same time. I imagine how my dad would feel today about our current President and the rise of hate and bigotry in this country. I imagine how he’d feel to see women continue to deal with discrimination and adversity; where inequality still exists across industries, across the nation. As a Jew, I imagine his disgust at some of the unimaginable things that have happened in our country in the most recent weeks. I imagine that he would not think the future’s so bright right now.

I am not a political activist. In fact, I refer to myself as “A-political, ‘A as in anti'”. I do vote on the regular and keep an eye on important bills being passed, but until recently, I’ve tried to avoid the topic as much as possible. Today however, I am embarrassed for our country and ashamed at myself for not doing more. As I read my twitter feed, I take pleasure in seeing the lack of fear in calling out our President for being ignorant and crass. We are very lucky to live in a country where we can be so vocal without recourse. But I fear we may not have those rights much longer if we allow things to persist. I am now challenging myself on what I personally, as an apolitical non-activist, can do to support our country getting past all of this.

I plan to start by surrounding myself with good humans who care deeply about these issues and have a zero tolerance for hate and bigotry. I will only work with and for organizations where they stand by these same beliefs (I am proud that my employer* has recently committed to standing against hate and violence). I will ensure that whomever I work with, mentor, or coach knows that I will always focus on creating a safe space for them to thrive, speak their minds and be supported – no matter how they identify (race, gender, religion or otherwise) as long as they reciprocate. Finally, I will do what I can to support those on the front lines trying to make our country a better place. I may not run for office or join a picket line, but I will speak up more about the issues, fund programs that are allowing us to make progress on equal rights and social justice (I donated yesterday to https://www.splcenter.org/), sign petitions, and encourage others to do the same. Anyone and everyone can make a difference in some way. We cannot just sit back and watch this happen.

So, Dad, if you’re watching what’s going on right now from wherever you are, please send good vibes and support us any way you can as well. Change won’t happen overnight, but I believe the good people of this country will push hard to turn things around and once again, the future will be bright.

Got other ideas about ways those of us who are apolitical can make an impact? Please share in the comments!

*UPDATE: @DigitalOcean has recently created a site to also foster donations to SPLC as well! Go DO!

Visualizing Mile 26

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Boston Marathon

“I don’t know how you do it” seems to be the comment du jour these days. I think it’s a compliment most of the time – an appreciation for everything I have taken on – but I do get this little jab in my brain when I hear it and it makes me wonder if I am insane.

I have a lot on my plate, that’s true. I am the CTO at a growing tech company in NYC, I teach a very hands on course at Harvard Business School in Cambridge. I have three daughters – one college kid in NYC, and a freshman and senior in high school (that’s right folks, college application season, round two!) – and two cats (one of which has a chronic disease requiring daily meds). I manage my household solo (yep, I’m a single mom) and I advise a few companies, coach a few rising stars and sit on a couple boards. Oh, and I occasionally blog.

What?

Ok, so I have taken on a lot, but I simply LOVE everything I do and I make it work by visualizing Mile 26.

I have never run a marathon, but I did the 26 mile Walk for Hunger many years ago with two of my BFFs. I remember being at mile 24 that day and thinking “oh my God, two more miles?!”. I had practically lost my mind because my feet hurt and I was tired and hungry, but instead of throwing in the towel, I just powered on and ran the last 2 miles and left my two friends in the dust, aghast. I had committed to this thing and I wanted to reach mile 26. It was for a good cause and my feet would feel better a week later.

Our lives will always have peaks and valleys. There were many sleepless nights when each of my girls were newborns that I thought would never end. By child three, when I had some experience under my belt, I got through those hard days of barely having time to eat, let alone take a shower, by visualizing Mile 26. The time would come when they’d all be sleeping straight through the night and the days would come when I had to drag them out of bed for school! I was close and I could make it to the end of this phase – Mile 26.

We also have to constantly recalibrate our priorities. When my Dad had major heart surgery back in 2001, I was running Engineering at a tech company and I had two little girls at home. During that time, my mile 24 was several weeks of a daily drive from work to the hospital to home to keep all the balls in the air. I missed many dinners and bath times with the girls, and my work suffered a bit, but Dad was a priority at that time. He eventually was back to himself and under good care at home – Mile 26 – and I was back to having dinner and splashing in the tub with the girls.

I’m not the only one trying to balance so much at once, so here are a few tips and tricks I use to keep it all together (most of the time) that others may find useful:

Give yourself permission to let stuff slide and get help
The school months are my most hectic time of year with many mile 24s (think: 90 degrees and humid running up a hill after 23 miles). I visualize many Mile 26s during this time, like holiday breaks, scheduled trips and the summers when school is out. During these killer mile 24s, I let some stuff slide like that growing pile of clothes I should really get to Goodwill or cleaning out the refrigerator (petrified clementines are cool). I may skip an evening networking event in favor of sleep or to catch up on work and I get help when I need it for errands, home repairs and cleaning (thank you Instacart, Taskrabbit and Handy!).

Say “No”, but offer an alternative
As my career has progressed, I get a lot more requests of my time outside of work. I love paying it forward whenever I can, but my cycles are few and I am getting better at saying “no”. I’m flattered by every ask for advice, to speak or to attend an event of some sort. I wish I could do all of it but over the years I’ve learned to become more selective about what I say “yes” to. Whenever I have to say “no”, I try to find an alternative for the requester. Someone else who could coach or speak or attend the event. I find it not only gets me off the hook, but it usually ends up being a great experience for the alternate and very often the requester is quite happy with the result. It’s great when these situations turn into a win-win.

Block time off to GSD
I routinely block off time to make sure I can get stuff done (GSD). Sunday mornings are my most productive times – because #teenagerssleepuntilnoon. I focus on cleaning up my in-box and getting prep work done for the coming week. I have help at work with my calendar, but I do all of the personal stuff myself like making doctor appointments or coordinating carpools. I maximize driving/Uber time for that sort of stuff. It’s important to me that I stay plugged in and not offload everything – especially most things to do with my girls – and there’s something satisfying about getting out of the car and feeling like I just knocked a few things off of my to-do list – mini mile 26s!

[If Applicable] Respect your kids – you only get to do this once
My mile 24 life has taught my girls to be highly independent which is not so bad! They can make themselves meals, do their own laundry and help around the house (ok, with some prodding). That said, I make sure we have dinner at the table together a few nights a week and we have a no cell phone rule at meal time so we can actually talk with each other face-to-face.

I keep an open line of communication for my kids to voice when they need me for anything or feel like my crazy life is not in sync with theirs. When I’ve got a lot going on in a given month, we have “family meetings” where we make sure their priorities for me are in check. For the theater geek, I have a minimum number of shows I must attend (I usually make all of them, tyvm!) and for the sports kid, I have to attend at least two games a season – home or away. I get quality time with my big kid in NYC (perk of the job!) and thank God for texting and social media where we all stay connected probably more than my parents did with me when I was their ages! From Instagram, FB and snapchat to our “My3girlz” text stream that’s endlessly entertaining and annoying 24×7, we are in constant communication.

Take Care of Yourself
If I’m not ok, no one in my life is OK. I do yoga, walk or run a couple times a week. I am a self-proclaimed spa addict and try to get to one at least once a month – even when I was just scraping by early in my career, I made the budget work for this little luxury. I love to travel and take my all three of my girls on a trip together at least one a year. I do acupuncture, sleep eight hours most nights and I am a total freak when it comes to what I put into my body (GF, sorta vegan, organic). I also make time for friends – because friends are what keep me whole beyond my kids. Whether it’s a well needed night out on the town or just a long stream of texts to vent or to laugh, I have an amazing network of people that bless my life.

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So, I guess that’s how I do it. I’d be lying if I said it’s a piece of cake. Sometimes I lose it amid a mile 24 and snap at the girls when I’m exhausted and stressed. Sometimes I cancel a few meetings and check out for a couple hours when I’m at work because I need to just think. Sure, a few balls get dropped on the floor – maybe a lot, sometimes – but that’s life and I try not to beat myself up over it. After all, Mile 26 is right around the corner.

Do you take on a lot or wonder how you can take on more? Share your thoughts and concerns in the comments.

Scaling Another Rocket Ship: Hello DO!

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Every once and awhile, I meet a company so exciting, I can’t sleep because I’m thinking non-stop about its potential to scale, massively. Fortunately for me, I ended up joining two of them that turned out to be great success stories and I think I just found my third. Starting this month, I am joining the ranks at DigitalOcean as their CTO.

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Anyone who knows me well would agree that as much as I am an organizer and planner, I am also a risk taker. I love diving into challenges and creating results that require skill, agility and building relationships. While business savvy and technical skill are paramount to growing a successful tech company, understanding the human element and building high performing teams is what separates the good from the great.

In 1999, with a three year-old and an infant, I quit my healthcare IT job to go to Akamai to help them get organized before our IPO. Most of my friends and colleagues thought I was nuts, but I was hungry for bringing order to chaos and building something that made an impact. My three years at Akamai were among the toughest and most rewarding years of my career. We created the world’s first CDN for businesses and turned it into the backbone of the internet. The teams I led and partnered with were some of the smartest and coolest humans I’ve had the pleasure to work with. We pulled all-nighters together, cried together when we lost our CTO-Founder Danny Lewin on 9/11 and still celebrate the company’s success together at our annual “Akamai Pre-2002’ish Employees” reunion.

In 2005, I landed at VMware right after the EMC acquisition to help them figure out how to run a global engineering team. I took a leap of faith that we would not get fully absorbed into EMC (which was their MO at the time) and that I could help build another company made to last. What I found when I interviewed at VMware was the same good vibe I had at Akamai. Super smart people, fun, passion and humility…and of course, a wicked cool product. I still remember my final interview in Palo Alto – a last minute “Diane Greene would like to meet you” – that threw me for a curve. I was pretty frank with Diane that I wasn’t sure I could balance my role at VMware with three small children. She assured me that VMware would make it work, and they did. Both my career and the company flourished over my eight year tenure at VMware. When I joined the company, we had just over 800 employees and around $200M in revenue. Today, it boasts close to 19K employees and 2015 revenues were $6.57B. It was an incredible ride to help scale something that spectacular.

When I left VMware in 2013, I felt very lucky to have been part of two incredible rocket ship stories in the technology industry. After much soul searching around “Julia.next”, I settled into the startup ecosystem in Boston. I became a mentor at TechStars and recently began teaching a Product Management course at Harvard Business School. Until recently, I was fairly certain this was the tail end of my journey, but something was gnawing at me that I had at least one more in me. One more amazing rocket ship I could help scale.

Over the past few years, I’ve made a few investments and became a formal advisor to the founders of several local startups. It was one of these founders who introduced me to Moisey Uretsky, DigitalOcean’s co-founder and Chief Product Officer. For those who don’t know Moisey, let’s just say brilliance and tenacity is an understatement. Despite my protests against working with a company in NYC, Moisey convinced me to come to DigitalOcean HQ back in January to meet his equally brilliant and tenacious brother and co-founder-CEO, Ben, and get to know the business. One visit became several and within a matter of a few weeks, I was fully enamored and signed up to advise the company.

During my early work with the DigitalOcean team, my instincts told me that this is going to be another winner. It is beyond impressive how, in just four short years, DigitalOcean has built such a strong platform and community. Ben, Moisey and I – along with the other key members of the DigitalOcean leadership team – began to work together to forge a partnership that will enable us to super-scale this company. The achievements we’ve made to grow the business so far left me unable to resist the temptation to join full time to help take it all the way. So now here I am, honored and excited to be DigitalOcean’s new CTO.

So what is it about DigitalOcean that gets me so excited?

In addition to our tremendous business growth, strong culture, talented team and impressive list of investors, the most striking is the simplicity of DigitalOcean’s features that developers love. We let developers create, automate, and manage a robust cloud server infrastructure out of the box with floating IP addresses, shared private networking, tier-1 bandwidth, team accounts and SSD hard drives which all come as standard. And all of our services can be provisioned in as little as 55 seconds with a plan for as low as $5 a month.

I am continuously blown away at the reaction I get from people in our industry who hear I am working with this company.

“I love how easy it is to spin up a Droplet to build software!” – MIT graduate student building software for his own startup

“I have 6 Droplets of my own!” – Boston VC

“Their tutorials and community engagement is the best in the industry” – Engineer building a neuroscience application

“DigitalOcean gets developers – they give us what we need with no BS” – SaaS application developer

In addition to our core feature offerings, our multiple data centers around the world and a 99.99% guaranteed uptime enable companies to build and scale robust SaaS applications. Even more exciting is what’s to come. Our storage capabilities will begin to roll out this summer and what follows is a list of features that developers building production applications will surely love. Because at DigitalOcean, it’s all about love…

This is going to be another incredible journey of risk, opportunity and balance for me. We are an organization that values learning and what better way to hold that true than to continue teaching my course at HBS (fear not, @teisenmann & PM101’ers!). And, while I’ll certainly be spending a lot of time at our HQ in NYC, I will remain living in Cambridge and to continue to be an active member of the Boston area startup community.

Finally, I am hiring! We’re looking for amazing talent across the company. Check out our current career opportunities both in and outside of NYC.

Will DigitalOcean be another massively scaling rocket ship ? I’m pretty bullish about it. So check back here soon for updates on how it’s going!

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“I was right, I am the only girl. AGAIN!”

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This is the fourth summer in a row that my youngest daughter, now 13, has done some sort of a programming camp. For three out of four summers, she has been the only girl in her group. While I commend these programs for a great curriculum and instructors, this has caused me to think about how, as parents and a community, we need to step up efforts on gender balance in computing much earlier than college or even high school. If girls are not participating in programs like this in their formative years, how are to expect them to be computer science majors or pursue technical careers?

As we walked to Harvard this summer for her first day of camp, my daughter was a bit anxious about yet another digitalmediaacademy.orgsummer as the token girl. We had chosen a new program through Digital Media Academy (DMA) largely because they were one of the few to offer a Virtual Reality course where she could play with Oculus Rift and learn how to design virtual worlds. A second major factor was that much of the DMA website and materials are full of images of girls having fun with technology – suggesting they are very successful in recruiting girls to sign up for their courses.

In response to “Mom, if I am the only girl again this summer I am going to be so mad.” I tried to be encouraging and focus on the coolness of the course she was taking. I told her how leading edge she was to learn about an emerging technology before most people her age even knew what it was. I didn’t talk about the potential gender imbalance and instead focused on the fact that this was about pursuing her interests and passions. Inside though, I was hoping…no praying…she wasn’t the only one. Not just because I didn’t want her to be the one girl among the boys, but for the bigger picture. I was dying for a sign that the canaries were singing loudly in the coal mine. Hopeful that I would see a mixed group of boys and girls in the room eager to dig into technology.

The canaries weren’t singing…

When we arrived at the camp check-in area, we were relieved to see a few other girls signing in and heading off to their classrooms. The counselors whisked my daughter away to her classroom so I didn’t have a chance to see the gender composition. I asked her to text me at lunch with a pulse on how it was going.

As I walked back home, I reflected on the prior three summers. The first summer, she signed up for a game design course through ID Tech, hosted at MIT. The boys in this class were obsessed with Pokemon cards – something my daughter knew nothing about and had no interest in – and their break time was used to trade cards or play video games. As a pretty typical 10 year-old girl, she would have rather spent her lunch break talking about boy bands and Youtubers or maybe tossing a frisbee around outside. Needless to say, between that and being among a group of 8-10 year-old boys with zero interest in socializing with girls, my daughter felt pretty isolated among the group. Outside of learning a bit of Javascript, she was pretty disappointed with the experience that year.

The following year, I decided to combine a week I needed to spend at VMware’s Palo Alto HQ with an opportunity for her to try ID Tech again, but this time hosted at Stanford. She was willing to give it another try, thinking it was cool to “attend Stanford”. Once again, I dropped her off at the sign-in area and hoped for a better outcome than we experienced on the MIT campus the prior summer. At pickup time, she joyfully jumped in my rental car bubbling over about all the fun girls who were in her mobile app game design class. Just like her, some were there because their parents were in the valley for work and others were locals and long-time ID Tech participants. Not only did she have a lot more fun than the prior summer, but she accomplished a lot more in that week than I would have expected. We were both thrilled.

Flash forward to last summer and another year with ID Tech at MIT. My daughter was pretty into Minecraft at the time and was eager to go deep and get better at programming in general. She is a very go-with-the-flow kind of kid and told me she didn’t care if she was the only girl, she just wanted to geek out for a week after her return from a month at sleep-away camp. After such a good experience on the west coast the year before, I hoped that I’d see a trend shift here and she’d have other girls in her course. Alas, once again, she was the only one.

While I only have one data point of one summer in the valley, it was pretty interesting to experience such a different situation out there as compared to here. Are more households tech savvy out there because of the thick concentration of tech jobs? Is the bar higher in Silicon Valley schools such that kids out there are exposed to programming/technology earlier? Perhaps it’s climate and spending a week inside to code is a welcome break from sunshine (?!) whereas here we take every moment we can to get our kids outside before the next snomageddon.

Or, perhaps the girls here are not signing up because, like my kiddo, they’re worried they’ll be the only girl.

“I was right, I am the only girl. AGAIN!” was the text I received during her lunch break last Monday. I told her to hang in there and get as much as she could out of the course. But, I felt so very disappointed. Where are the girls that were shown so prominently on the brochure? Why are parents not signing up their girls for these cool classes? It’s Oculus for Pete’s sake!

My biggest concern here above all is that this is one of the biggest factors that impacts the pipeline of young women choosing technical degrees and jobs. If 8-13 year-old girls think their only option to learn how to code or experiment with new technology like Virtual Reality is to be an outlier in a room full of boys, they won’t sign up. Even now, while she learned a lot and got along just fine with the “gamer boys” (her nickname for them) in her class, my daughter is desperately looking into more girl-friendly programs for her age group next summer. Thankfully, now that she’s older, there are programs like Girls Who Code or Technovation. Even though I am a huge fan of programs like these and they give girls the critical mass of peer support they need, I worry it swings the pendulum the other way. I want to see balance in these programs. Not programs for just girls or those that cater to just boys.

So, how do we solve this problem?  Some suggestions:

  • Parents: Sign up your girls for programming summer camps! In most cases it’s ONE week. One! Your kids will survive a week of being indoors most of a day, trust me. And if not in the summer, sign them up during the school year or during school vacations (gasp!). Also, have them sign up with a friend to further balance whatever program they choose. And if you have boys interested in tech, try to sign them up for programs that are diverse too! The younger boys are sitting next to girls who are coding, the more “normal” it’ll feel to them as the grow up with technology.
  • Tech Camps: Don’t just try to recruit girls, sign them up. Reach out to faculty and school technology programs that have girls enrolled and develop partnerships that drive these girls to your camps. Also, try to mix up your courses so it’s not eight solid hours a day of programming. Stop catering to the boys who play video games all day and offer time to run outside or maybe even swim in the afternoon. Kids learn fast. There’s a lot they can learn in a week without having to sit in front of their desktop the whole time. And please, for the love of God, stop plastering your brochures and websites with just pictures of girls. Show boys and girls working and having fun together. Foster diversity.
  • Groups that target professional technical women: Invite young girls to some of your events or encourage mentoring between your members and the girls’ programs mentioned above. If more young girls interested in tech have role models, they are more likely to persevere in rooms full of boys. Maybe even start a camp of your own?

As the VR camp came to a close, I attended a showcase to see what my daughter had accomplished for the week. It was pretty cool to navigate the funky landscapes and terrains she had designed as though I DMA_showcasewas in them via the Rift. She was proud of what she had learned and was eager to download Unity at home so she could keep working on her project. I asked her how she felt about the week overall and she said “It wasn’t so bad this year being the only girl, in fact the best part was that I had the bathroom all to myself.”

Got ideas about how to get more young girls into tech?  Please share in the comments!

Step One: Investing in the Minority

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Once, in my first few weeks in the early days at Akamai, I was pulled aside and told I had to stop wearing suits every day because people thought I was looking for a new job. I promptly went out and bought five new pairs of jeans and mothballed my vast array of suits and dresses. I wanted to be sure I was taken seriously as a senior member of a technology organization. Now here I was, 15 years later, asking myself if jeans were OK to wear to a program I was invited to attend at Stanford Law. The event was hosted by a16z and is designed to prepare future corporate board members of venture backed companies. I’m a big believer in the value of strong first impressions and, like it or not, what we wear is part of that first impression.

I sought advice from a friend who’s been a senior leader at a few top technology companies in the valley. Her opinion is that jeans “are part of a wardrobe that connotes technical competence. Dressing like a stereotypical engineer offsets the fact that I’m female; people can place me as an engineer in spite of my gender. And the converse is true as well – jewelry, high heels, emphatic makeup, skirts, scarves – most garments that emphasize femininity also connote non-technical because they connote femininity.” However, she goes on to say “being female, of course, still connotes ‘not a leader’ just like it does ‘not technical’ so you’re still going to have to dress like a guy to get intuitively bucketed as leader instead of an admin.” This last part struck me because the guys I know, in our field, who are some of the best leaders I have had the pleasure to work with, routinely wear jeans; not just to go to work but on stage and in executive meetings.

So what does this have to do with “Investing in the Minority”?

As noted above, the program I was about to attend was to prepare future corporate board members. I knew I was invited along with another CEO friend of mine from Boston in part because we were women, but I thought it was to round out the attendee list. We are often the token “nerd chicks” in our circle of professionals. So, while I was stressed about walking into a room full of white dudes in suits and being taken seriously (on first impressions because of what I wore), it turned out to be a totally moot point. As soon as I arrived, I knew this was about getting a new class of highly diverse board members and no one cared about what we wore. The room was ~75%, ethnically diverse, women and of all the male attendees, I counted only two white dudes. Most of the presenters were, however, white dudes (and most of these white dudes were wearing jeans), but they had clearly been tutored on balanced use of pronouns and were careful not to patronize or overtly call out the diversity in the room.

Audience diversity and wardrobe aside, what was really striking was that a16z put a stake in the ground that they are intent on solving the dearth of women and diversity on corporate boards by training up a bunch of us for the job. This realization reminded me of a recent conversation I had with a founding CEO and CTO duo who want to hire more women engineers. Women were applying for their job postings and they were great fits for this company, but they were finding that most of these women were not “technical enough”. I questioned whether there was unconscious bias at play or whether these women were really not as technically competent for the roles they were hoping to fill. The founders insisted these candidates were great in every way, but they just didn’t have enough coding experience. Just like a16z is investing in diversity for boards by training us up, I pushed these founders to invest in these women engineers. If they are great in every way, but just don’t have enough experience, give them that experience!

Which leads me to think more about this group of newly enlightened future board members. Now that we have been schooled in the duty of care and the duty of loyalty, who is taking the next step to actually get us onto boards? This is no different than the very capable women engineers who just need hiring managers to give them a chance, and perhaps some training/mentoring, so they can get experience. Unless we are actively marketed, recruited and given a chance to sit on boards, this investment in us as minorities is for not. I am not saying that we sit back and wait for others to do the work for us. I will definitely tap my board and others to make sure they know I am now even more prepared to take a board seat than I was with “just” my 25+ years of experience in management in startups and mature companies and from sitting on three different non-profit boards. However, I do think it’s incumbent upon a16z and others who aspire to support and foster diversity on boards and in corporations to seek us out and take a chance on us.

A16z made it clear in their invitation to this event that they are not guaranteeing us board seats. I get that and nor should they as we each need to stand on our own and demonstrate what we can do. However, they should, IMHO, commit to Step Two:

  • Create a directory of newly minted “board ready” professionals who have completed programs such as the one offered by Stanford Law
  • Upon election to a board, provide a mentor directory to those who have completed the program so we can have an experienced, trusted advisor or two to call upon in our first year of board service [Note: They may have to sign an NDA to do this, but if they are trusted professionals without a conflict, this should be a reasonable ask.]
  • Pressure their portfolio companies, current boards they sit on, and others in their networks to take a chance on us, or perhaps if not already oversubscribed with board observers, let us observe so we can start to get real board experience.
  • Finally, track our progress. Where are we in 9-12 months? Are we sitting on a board? Did anything we learned in this program become valuable in our first months as board members? Did we make an impact? As Professor Daines noted in his lecture last week, not enough research has been done on corporate board governance – especially on VC backed companies – so let’s start capturing the data now.

I am truly grateful for the invitation to participate in the program last week and hopeful I can leverage what I’ve learned on a private or public board soon. Much thanks to Marc Andreessen, Ben Horowitz, Margit Wennmachers and their team for taking the time to organize and participate in last week’s program!

…and for those wondering “but she never said what she ended up wearing??!”, I wore jeans.

Got ideas about how to foster more diversity on corporate boards? Please reply with a comment!

Computer Science – Because It’s Just Plain Fun

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I’ve worked in tech for my entire career and I love it. I get to work with people who are really smart (and very cool) and I get to build things that people actually use. Where did my interest come from? It all began in an office a long time ago…

I got turned on to technology in the 70’s when my Dad would take me into work with him on the weekends and give me girl-techprojects to do on his fancy Radio Shack TRS 80’s. He’d go through these huge stacks of Byte magazines and hand me cool programs he wanted to use for his civil engineering work. I’d sit in front of the “trash 80’s,” pop one of those huge 5+ inch floppy discs into the computer and start to code. The instructions were simple: Enter the text on a particular page and type “run.”  If there was an error, it was up to me to debug until the program ran successfully.

At eight years old, I had no idea that I was coding or that what I was doing was a rare activity for a girl. I liked how it felt to click on the keys. Debugging was like solving a puzzle and it was so satisfying when I finally got program to run. I was learning a new language and soon I could translate what the code was telling the computer to do. I was hooked.

As a studio art major in undergrad, I took computer graphics and Computer Aided Design (CAD) as electives. I can remember spending hours in the computer lab with my fellow students as we hacked away in BASIC to make little stick figures jump across the screen. We would fantasize about how cool it would be to get a job where this was actually what you got to do all day (If we had only known that Pixar was brewing out West!). Before the days of simple LANs and mainstream internet, I would work late into the evening with my male colleagues writing code in the lab. But not once did it ever occur to me that as a woman, I was a minority. All I knew was that I was alongside people who were as passionate as I was about what we were doing. That was all that mattered. And it still is.

Working with people who are passionate has been a fundamental driver for my career.  It concerns me that there are not enough women taking an interest in this field. Lenore Blum’s research at Carnegie Mellon demonstrates that women are more inclined to stay within the field if there are female professors and student role models to learn from and emulate. While I agree that we need more women role models in the field, and I will always try to be one myself, I also believe that if we inspire our children early to be creative thinkers who are comfortable with, and have access to, technology (beyond their smart phones and iPads), they will pursue careers in the field because it’s just plain fun.

We need to show children (and their parents) that computer science is an interesting and cool career path and not just an option for nerdy boys. We need to integrate lessons on programming, networks and clouds into daily curricula because these are basic tools one should possess. Children learning about how our bodies work, science works, or how to do math equations should be equally educated in the history and workings of the technology they use and rely upon every day. This is how we can diffuse the “nerdy boy” stigma associated with computer science. This is how we can better prepare our children to be innovators of the future.

I have three daughters who are all tech savvy. It’s unclear which side of the nature vs. nurture debate that falls under but regardless, technology has been a part of their lives since they were born. They see it as an enabler for a variety of fields and not just the basis to become programmers. With two who are artists and one who is a musician/budding architect, their days are filled with high tech sound mixing, computer graphics and CAD tools. It is a part of their daily lives. They are well past making a stick figure jump across the screen and blow me away with what they can do with the technology at their fingertips.

As we kick off CS Ed Week in MA this week (December 8-14), hundreds of young people and their parents will be checking out Hour of Code at their schools or with local community groups. The purpose is to provide access to coding and demonstrate how fun it can be. My hope is that somewhere a young boy or girl will be as excited about technology after that hour as I was when I was in my dad’s office years ago, and still am today.

To find a group in your area that is leading an Hour of Code, check out this list. You can also help promote computer science in your community by signing this pledge to encourage policy makers to include computer science in core curricula.

Please tweet or post your experiences during CS Ed Week using the #HourOfCode and include @Masstlcef if you’re in MA!

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People Who Code – A Call to Action

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I am a huge advocate of the women in computer science movement. coding-bannerI am also a huge fan of the Computer Science (CS) field in general and, despite my number of years in this industry, I continue to be amazed at the volume and speed by which new technology is coming at us. Yet, with all that’s going on out there, it is still incredibly hard to find talented developers and designers. So, while I want to see more young girls learning to code and women in professional technical roles, quite frankly I just want to see more people who code.

Three things happened recently that made me realize that I need to focus my efforts on encouraging more young people to get into computer science:

First, there was the scuttlebutt around the “Male Allies” panel at the Grace Hopper Conference a couple of weeks ago. Everyone was so wound up about the gaffes of the three men on the panel that we lost sight of their key messages which were to support gender balance and eliminate wage gaps in tech across all levels of a company. How are we going to make progress for women and minorities in tech if we attack the majority when they aim to support the movement? When will meritocracy prevail over gender? My friend Jocelyn Goldfein has a lot of good thoughts on this topic here. We need to bring men into this conversation without them worrying about being attacked for speaking up and we need to focus on how to build great careers in CS for everyone – not just women.

Second, I have been thinking a lot lately about the preponderance of women and girls’ organizations that are encouraging and supporting women to code and choose technical careers. It’s wonderful that there are SO many of these organizations out schools-codingthere, yet it is so hard for girls and women to know which ones are the best to meet their particular needs and/or interests. I am concerned by how many of them position themselves competitively against each other vs. combining forces to form a stronger, united, movement. A founder of one of these organizations told me recently that when she approached a nearby, similar, group to collaborate she was met with “hostile resistance”. Also, that some of the members of her organization did not want to be part of meta-organizations because it drew too much “adverse attention” to their roles – akin to the extreme circumstances of #gamergate where women are fearful for their lives because of their chosen profession. Certainly there are varying views on how best to encourage girls and women to code, but imagine how powerful these groups would be if they combined efforts instead of competing with each other or fearing retribution (or worse) for participating. Perhaps the mere size of these groups would deter those who attack them today or maybe, even, convince their attackers to support vs. challenge their mission.

Finally, I was recently enlightened by my friends at the MassTLC Education Foundation on the rather pathetic state of our k-12 CS programs in Massachusetts. I view CS as basic literacy in the 21st century, yet in most publicmassCS_stats and private schools it is treated like an elective, not a core math or science requirement. In 2012, only 1000 students in Massachusetts took AP CS and 559 passed; of those who passed, only 24 were underrepresented minorities and 89 were female. There are also no standards or licensure for teachers who teach CS in k-12. According to this NPR story, only an estimated 10% of k-12 schools in our country teach computer science. This interactive data chart shows the steady decline of CS majors in the US. With all the money out there to invest in new technology and innovation, we are not making the same level of investment in the people we need to make these innovations a reality and sustainable into the future.

From the past we have learned that big issues such as the civil rights and feminist movements took large groups of likeminded people to go from controversy to significant policy and cultural changes. We take for granted that women can vote in the US and in many, but not all, other countries around the world and we tend to forget that not too many years ago, schools and busses were segregated. Today, we are fighting for equal pay and career opportunities for women and there is controversy about how few women there are studying CS, but there is a bigger issue to solve. If Venture Capitalists and technology industry leaders want to support these movements, we need to do more than just attend conferences and speak on panels. We need to change policy – like eliminating noncompetes in MA to allow talent to move where their passions take them instead of feeling trapped in their jobs or eager to depart from the field of technology altogether.  We need to band together instead of standing on hundreds of different platforms to solve a greater issue. We need to fund programs for young people – not just girls – that foster interest in creativity and technology. We need to enlighten high school kids about the opportunities in technology and be available to mentor these kids when they go to college. We need people who code.

Do you agree that we need to do more to encourage young people to code? Join me the week of December 8-14 for CS Ed Week where the MassTLC Education Foundation will be championing Hour of Code in cities and schools across all of Massachusetts. This national program is designed to inspire students to learn more, dream more and be more through Computer Science.