Pandemic Impacts Entrepreneuring Women at Work and Home

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The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted all business owners. The Diana International Research Institute (DIRI) team wanted to uncover just how it impacted a specific category of business owners: women.

How are the entrepreneurs responding to the revenue decline? Nearly 40 percent of business owners are deferring or reducing executive pay, more than one-third are delaying payment, and one-quarter are reducing employee hours.

The survey found that women-owned businesses face key structural inequalities due to smaller size and business age, and these businesses also are over-represented in the industries hardest hit by both need for essential services and the economic shutdown.

See Bias | Block Bias

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Research shows that stereotypes can introduce errors in managers’ decision making about talent throughout the employee life cycle. While most people agree that bias exists in the abstract, many cannot see their own role in enacting bias or how it functions in their organization. Further, resistance to the idea that bias exists at all is what we call “bias backlash.”

To address these issues, the Stanford University VMware Women’s Leadership Innovation Lab has produced this methodological framework to diagnose, address, and overcome bias in the workplace.

Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny

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Misogyny is a hot topic, yet it’s often misunderstood. What is misogyny, exactly? Who deserves to be called a misogynist? How does misogyny contrast with sexism, and why is it prone to persist or increase even when sexist gender roles are waning?

This book is an exploration of misogyny in public life and politics by the moral philosopher and writer Kate Manne. It argues that misogyny should not be understood primarily in terms of the hatred or hostility some men feel toward all or most women. Rather, it’s primarily about controlling, policing, punishing, and exiling the “bad” women who challenge male dominance. And it’s compatible with rewarding “the good ones,” and singling out other women to serve as warnings to those who are out of order.

How Do Venture Capitalists Make Decisions?

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In this paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research, the authors survey 885 institutional venture capitalists (VCs) at 681 firms to learn how they make decisions across eight areas: deal sourcing; investment selection; valuation; deal structure; post-investment value-added; exits; internal firm organization; and relationships with limited partners.

In selecting investments, VCs see the management team as more important than business related characteristics such as product or technology. They also attribute more of the likelihood of ultimate investment success or failure to the team than to the business. While deal sourcing, deal selection, and post-investment value-added all contribute to value creation, the VCs rate deal selection as the most important of the three.

The authors also explore (and find) differences in practices across industry, stage, geography and past success. They compare the results to those for CFOs (Graham and Harvey 2001) and private equity investors (Gompers, Kaplan and Mukharlyamov forthcoming).

Gender and Venture Capital Decision-Making: The Effects of Technical Background and Social Capital on Entrepreneurial Evaluations

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In the high-tech industry, women without technical expertise are less likely to be awarded venture capital than their male counterparts who lack this same technical expertise. This gender gap does not exist when comparing men and women who both possess technical skill.

This study from the Harvard Kennedy School explores the interaction of having a technical background with gender biases in performance evaluations of male and female entrepreneurs and their proposed ventures through an experimental design.

The Economic Impact of Venture Capital: Evidence from Public Companies

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This working paper from the Stanford Business School explores the economic impact of the venture capital industry.

Over the past 30 years, venture capital has become a dominant force in the financing of innovative American companies. From Google to Intel to FedEx, companies supported by venture capital have profoundly changed the U.S. economy.

Despite the young age of the venture capital industry, public companies with venture capital backing employ four million people and account for one-fifth of the market capitalization and 44% of the research and development spending of U.S. public companies. From research and development to employment to simple revenue, the companies funded by venture capital are a major part of the U.S. economy.

Why is advancing the next era of venture capital important?

Venture capital is an American national treasure. It has fueled the advancement of innovation, economies, and people. It has created value, jobs, wealth, and life-changing products and services. Though venture capital as an industry may be young and as an asset class may be small, high-growth startups and their long-term investors have truly changed the world.

To continue the success of the industry’s past 50 years to the next 50 years and beyond, we must expand opportunities for people of all backgrounds to access the venture ecosystem and thrive. We must educate future leaders on best practices and help them learn from the industry’s rich history. We must help firms build strong, healthy cultures and values. We must keep the public and ecosystem informed through qualitative and quantitative insights.

By investing in tomorrow’s leaders today, we shape the next era of venture capital.

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10,000+

high-growth startups—across all 50 states and DC—raised venture funding in 2019 to build and grow their businesses.

42%

of all U.S. IPOs from 1974 to 2015 were venture-backed companies, representing 63% of the market capitalization and 85% of R&D.

2.9 million

is the average net jobs created annually between 1980 and 2010 by high-growth startups, which account for ~50% of gross jobs created in the U.S.

1,300+

U.S. venture firms are active today, managing an aggregate of $444 billion in assets.

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