What’s next for Voices of Women in Venture Capital?
“So far, we’ve shared 165+ episodes from over 80+ podcasts, amplifying 159 unique women’s perspectives.”
One year ago, I pressed pause on my side project Voices of Women in Venture, a curated playlist of podcast episodes featuring the top women's voices in venture capital. At that point, I’d shared 165+ episodes, featuring 159 different women in venture capital, and built a small following on Instagram and Twitter. There was a level of burnout I felt from 2021 for reasons unrelated to this project but the result was the decision to “pause.” In the last year, I had a moment to reassess my values and goals for this project. I wrote this to share my thought process and roadmap. Now it’s time to press “play” on Phase II.
Reflecting on Phase I:
Voices of Women in Venture started in 2019 as a side project when I was 4 years into my venture capital career and was looking to learn from role models in the industry. I wanted to make it easy to listen and learn from unique and diverse perspectives in venture capital.
My Inspiration: I was frequently listening to VC podcasts on my 2 hour commute everyday and although I found lots of great episodes — many were hosted by men and the majority of guests interviewed were men in VC. Don’t get me wrong, these conversations were informative, inspirational, shared awesome frameworks but there was a personal disconnect. I was looking for someone who could model the way for a woman (me!) building her career in venture. I wanted to hear informative, inspirational, advice and thoughtful frameworks from another woman (like me!) who was a few steps ahead and could share her journey.
The Right Motivation: All Raise (founded 2017) was inspiring a rise in awareness around women in venture capital and building a community. Attending that first conference in 2018 made it so obvious that 1) there are a multitude of brilliant women in venture 2) these women in venture capital are badass and definitely role-model worthy and 3) that I wanted to be inspired, learn and hear more from women in our industry on a regular basis (not just at conferences).
The Right Tool: I had been working with Wenbin, CEO & Founder at Listen Notes since Boost VC had invested in early 2018 and when he released this “Listen Later” tool later that year I remember thinking, “this could be the right tool!”
Taking Action: With the inspiration + motivation + the tool, I got started. Weekly I would search the VC podcasts for the right episodes to add to my curated podcast playlist. My criteria was fairly simple, “All episodes will feature women's voices and focus specifically on venture capital (ie. investment, fund construction, platform strategy, and LP relationships).” We launched 1-2 new episodes a week fairly consistently for about 2 years. Once I got it started, I hired a social media assistant part time to help me keep it going.
Results: So far, we’ve shared 165+ episodes from over 80+ podcasts, amplifying 159 unique women’s perspectives on venture capital. You can see the full playlist here on Listen Notes.
Defining Phase II:
Since we paused in 2022, I’ve missed this project. Creating that Listen Later RSS feed started as a selfish project for my own commute listening experience, ongoing career growth and continuing education – and since I wasn’t putting in the work to find and aggregate the episodes, they weren’t magically appearing in my own podcast feed. And I’ve missed them.
Personal Alignment: For many reasons I won’t dive into here, I give a shit about getting more women to the decision making table in venture capital. According to Pitchbook, women decision makers in Venture Capital have increased from 9% in 2018 to 16% in 2022. Huge progress in a relatively short amount of time. But there is still lots of work to do and this can be a piece of my contribution to the ongoing education, empowerment, amplification and promotion of the women in venture capital as role models to the next generation (and as bat signals to women and underrepresented founders that there are a more diverse cast of characters, styles, personalities and capital to raise from).
Clarifying the Customer: Even though the inspiration + motivation is aligned with promoting the voices of women in venture capital, the real customer is the podcast host. I want this tool to be in service of the podcast hosts, generating more listens, more downloads, more subscribers and as a result, more ad revenue. I want the podcast hosts to win bigger because this episode was promoted and amplified by Voices of Women in Venture and the surrounding community. I want Voices of Women in Venture to be a resource for hosts as they are diversifying their guest lists. I want existing hosts and future podcasts hosts to feel the celebration and encouragement to inspire them to host more great conversations, candid insights and vulnerability with unique perspectives in the VC industry.
Updated Messaging: Voices of Women in Venture welcomes voices from all women, including cis and trans women, who are comfortable being promoted and celebrated in a community that centers the experiences of women in venture capital.
Next Milestone: Share 50 Episodes. It should take around 6 months, let’s say by July 2023. We will take many of the lessons learned on the past promotion, content and social media front and run new experiments. We will focus on celebrating women’s perspectives on investing, fund construction, platform strategy, and LP relationships.
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