Category: Philanthropy
I’m extremely impressed with Vivek Wadhwa’s posts on TechCrunch. He’s been blogging periodically for them since last fall and has shown that he’s willing to take on difficult, controversial, and complicated issues and discuss them in data driven and systematic ways.
Recently, Vivek wrote a post titled Silicon Valley: You and Some of Your VC’s have a Gender Problem that resulted from a research project he did with the National Center for Women & Information Technology (I’m chairman). I thought the post was excellent. The comments, however, were really enlightening to me. The amount of anger and hostility, especially irrational attacks, surprised me. Well – I guess it only surprised me a little – it mostly disappointed me.
After that article, Vivek sent me an email with the following questions “why did you originally get involved with NCWIT” and “how would you fix the problem of the dearth of women entrepreneurs?”. The first one was easy – I pointed him at a post I wrote in September 2005 titled Why the NCWIT Board Chair is a Man. I then spent some time thinking and emailing with Lucy Sanders *the CEO of NCWIT), about what we have learned to address the question of “how would you fix the problem of the dearth of women entrepreneurs?” My goal was to boil my answer down into a very simple set of suggestions, as NCWIT has several programs in their Entrepreneurial Alliance that address this problem. In my experience, a simple answer is much better than a complex one, especially for people who haven’t yet thought hard about the problem but are interested in it.
I came up with two specific things that I’ve learned over the past five years and have incorporated into my brain:
1. We simply need more technical women in the software industry. If there were more, there would be more starting software and Internet companies.
2. Existing entrepreneurs and VCs can help a lot by encouraging women to become entrepreneurs and then supporting them when they take the plunge. It turns out that the simple act of encouragement (from parents, teachers, peers) is hugely impactful across the entire education and entrepreneurial pipeline so it shouldn’t be a surprise that it is also important in the startup phase.
At some level it’s that simple. The implementation and execution of these two (related) concepts is really difficult. So, when I read Vivek’s post this morning titled A Fix for Discrimination: Follow the Indian Trails I realized he had once again totally nailed it. The example of how Indian entrepreneurs, first as individuals, and then through TiE, became a force in entrepreneurship through the US and the world, is a great one. And it’s an excellent analogy for women (and other groups that feel discrimination in the entrepreneur ecosystem.)
Once again, the early comments were disappointing in their anger and hostility. However, given some of the stuff I’ve heard over the past five years through my involvement in NCWIT, they weren’t a surprise to me this time.
I think Boulder is one of the absolute best places to start a tech company. The depth of talent and overall strength of our tech community here is superb. It turns out that makes it a great place to start a community-based tech nonprofit startup, too. I’ve written before about SnapImpact’s great work in making doing good easy. Having already created the first volunteering app for the iPhone, they’re started taking on some additional challenges.
Specifically, their developers got the attention of All for Good, a Silicon Valley-based project that managed to make data-sharing agreements with all the major volunteer data providers in the US – not an easy feat. Over the past year, they’ve built the US’s biggest database of volunteer opportunities and are the back-end for the serve.gov website. The SnapImpact crew has been given the go-ahead to create All for Good version 2.0.
They’re kicking it off with SnapCamp on Feb 19-21, an intensive weekend event for non-profit stake-holders, developers, designers, marketing gurus, startup geeks, and anyone else who wants to make it easy for volunteers find ways to contribute. Of note to developers, v2.0 will be utilizing Scala/Lift – with full support of the Lift community and Dave Pollak, it’s creator.
SnapCamp is taking place in the TechStars Bunker and is being fully sponsored by All for Good. I encourage you to show up, have some geeky startup fun, and do something really big with your weekend. Sign up at Eventbrite: https://snapcamp.eventbrite.com.
Vivek Wadhwa has a strong article in BusinessWeek today titled Addressing the Dearth of Female Entrepreneurs. He makes the argument that “There are too few women running high-tech companies; that’s too bad, considering evidence shows female-led businesses outperform those run by men” and concludes “[I] hope that when I revisit this topic in subsequent years the percentage of women launching IT companies rivals the percentage of women going into law, medicine, and higher education. The outcome would benefit us all.”
Vivek worked with the National Center for Women & Information Technology – an organization that I’ve been chairman of for five years – to analyze data on the background and motivations of 549 successful entrepreneurs that he had previously published research on in the article Anatomy of an Entrepreneur: Family Background and Motivation. Only 8% of the sample was female and there were some very interesting conclusions from it that Vivek summarizes in his BusinessWeek article.
The fundamental assertion that Vivek makes – that the dearth of female entrepreneurs is a societal issue – is consistent with the ideas I’ve developed around this over the past five years of my involvement with NCWIT. My assertion around the importance of this issue is simple – in the US we need more women involved in computer science, IT, and entrepreneurship to maintain our country’s long term leadership position in innovation.
When I sit in a room, like I did last night at the Colorado Open Angel Forum (which was spectacular), and see only one woman out of about 30 people, this issue is just reinforced. It’s not that the event wasn’t open to women, or that we filtered against women, it was just that very few applied. As we like to say at NCWIT, “it’s a pipeline issue.” As a society and a country we’ve got to start working today to get more women into the pipeline for 20 years from now.
While there will always be people who say this is a gender equality issue (and come out either for or against this dynamic as a result), I think they are missing the real issue. This is about innovation, competitiveness, and entrepreneurship. I’m glad Vivek highlights this issue and am especially proud of all the work that NCWIT is doing.
Regular readers of this blog know that I’m Chairman of the National Center for Women & Information Technology. In five years, NCWIT has become a prominent national organization helping encourage, inspire, advocate, and educate women (and girls) to get involved in computer science based on the following belief:
“We believe that inspiring more women to choose careers in IT isn’t about parity; it’s a compelling issue of innovation, competitiveness, and workforce sustainability. In a global economy, gender diversity in IT means a larger and more competitive workforce; in a world dependent on innovation, it means the ability to design technology that is as broad and creative as the people it serves.”
One of the disheartening things I’ve learned in the past few years from my involved in NCWIT is the abysmal state of computer science in K-12 in the United States. It’s just awful – I’ve looked at some of the curriculum, the AP test, and some of the courseware and it’s so bad it makes me want to crawl under my desk and curl up in a ball. Here are a few scary facts for you:
- More than 1.6 million students took Advanced Placement (AP) exams in 2009, but barely 1% of the AP exams taken were in computer science.
- The portion of high schools offering rigorous computer science courses fell from 40% in 2005 to 27% in 2009.
- The U.S. Department of Labor estimates that nearly one million information technology jobs will be added to our workforce by 2016, but U.S. universities will produce only half the computing graduates needed to fill the new jobs.
As one of its major initiatives, NCWIT is taking on reforming computer science education. Help us out by making a tax deductable donation to NCWIT for our DC Campaign. And help us spread the word – our friends at Google (great supporters of NCWIT) have sponsored an all expenses-paid trip to Australia to meet with the Google Wave team and have lunch in the Google Sydney office (ok – and three nights for two people) for anyone that forwards this message on.
Call for Applications for the NCWIT Award for Aspirations in Computing
I spent the morning at an NCWIT (National Center of Women & Information Technology) board meeting where I’ve been chairman for the last few years. NCWIT’s mission is to increase women’s participation in IT. We focus across the entire pipeline (K-12, higher ed, industry, academic, and entrepreneurial communities) and – in addition to having a number of our own programs – work hard to leverage the efforts of other organizations around the country. We’ve got a superb board of directors and executive advisory council and an incredible staff which I’m especially proud of. For a quick overview, take a look at the Fact Sheet and the FAQ.
In today’s board meeting we spent a lot of time talking about computer science among high school kids, especially girls. The stats are depressing and unambiguously point to a massive shortfall of computer scientists in the US in the next decade. Having spent some time discussing the current AP Computer Science curriculum with some people I consider experts, it’s clear that it sucks and probably hurts the cause of educating kids in computer science more than it helps. There is uniform agreement that AP Computer Science (and high school computer science in general) needs massive reform, but the time frame is painfully slow (2014 before the new AP Computer Science curriculum is deployed.)
All is not gloom and doom for high school kids. When I think about my experience with “computing” in high school, it involved an Apple II computer and a TRS-80, along with a bunch of BASIC programming. My 300 baud modem with acoustic coupler (eventually upgraded to 1200 baud) gave me access to BBS’s which I explored the nooks and crannies of endlessly. When I got to college, I learned the joy of Unix and DEC-20’s (did you know the DEC-20 was a 36-bit computer – go figure.) The experience today of “computing” is radically different and integrated into the “life flow” of most kids so that the leap to “computer science” from “computing” is not an unnatural one.
Two years ago the Bank of America (one of NCWIT’s investment partners) and NCWIT created the NCWIT Award for Aspirations in Computing. The video about the award is awesomely inspiring and the award has served to begin creating a real community of young women engaged in computer science.
The award recognizes high-school level girls for their computing-related achievements and interests. All US high school young women (grades 9-12) are invited to apply. Awardees are selected for their demonstrated, outstanding aptitude and interest in information technology/computing; solid leadership ability; good academic history; and plans for post-secondary education.
Each qualified national awardee will receive $500 in cash, a laptop computer, provided by Bank of America, a trip to attend the Bank of America Technology Showcase and Awards Ceremony, March 27, 2010, held in Charlotte, North Carolina, and an engraved award for both the student and the student’s school.
As of this afternoon we’ve received 450 applications in the first week that applications were open. If you are the parent of a high school girl who is interested or involved in Computer Science, please spread the word. Applications are open until November 15th.
As the co-founder of the Entrepreneurs Foundation of Colorado, I’m a huge fan of what the Entrepreneurs Foundation is all about. Two weeks ago, when I was in San Francisco at Cloud Engines’ offices (makers of the Pogoplug and one of our investments) I noticed their Entrepreneurs Foundation plaque signifying their membership in the bay area chapter. I asked Dan Putterman – the CEO of Cloud Engines – if he’d write a guest post about why Cloud Engines joined the Entrepreneurs Foundation. It follows.
As a serial entrepreneur, it feels like there is always a reason to sacrifice; spending too much time at the office at the expense of one’s family, not getting enough exercise, eating poorly, and certainly not taking enough (or any) time to give back to the community, environment or people in need. The rationale is that at some point there will be the ever elusive "exit" and things will
change. The truth is that most of us perpetuate the circle by starting or getting involved in something new right afterwards (being an entrepreneur seems to be in one’s blood). Although guilt can be a great motivator of change, most entrepreneurs just lament amount their shortcomings and soldier forward (tenacity is also one of the traits that makes us successful).
I’ve been trying to break all of the rules at Pogoplug. Yes, we work hard and pretty much live on email morning and night, but I encourage people to take care of themselves and their family. And I do my best to personally demonstrate this life balance through example. This time around, we joined a wonderful organization called Entrepreneur’s Foundation, a well-run group of high-tech focused philanthropists that help you allocate a little time to give back to your community through events and individual time contribution and actually run a foundation on your behalf based on equity that your company donates to it.
Here’s what’s so cool about this model: the more successful a company is, the more the foundation grows in value. The team then gets to put the money to good use on a liquidation event. This way, if you selfishly work tons of hours one week, you can put the guilt aside knowing that the growing the value of your company is good for more than just you and your investors. During our last board meeting, I proposed that we put 1% of our company into the foundation. Everyone unanimously and enthusiastically approved the motion. With the "big picture" out of the way, we’ve also picked two awesome organizations in San Francisco, 826 Valencia and Homeless Prenatal Program. We’re going to do some group events and spend some personal time helping these organizations, including helping to purchase turkeys for hundreds of families who will prepare their first Thanks Giving meal. EF takes care of all of the details so all we have to do is show up and get involved.
Thanks to EF, we are giving back and feeling great about ourselves – and most importantly, we are breaking some outdated and dumb rules about entrepreneurship.
A month or so ago I got a voicemail from William Barrett at Forbes. His message was something like “call me back – I want to talk to you about your bathroom.” Now, I never view a phone call from one of the major business magazines as a good time. I don’t have a publicist so most of the calls are about something negative – which is fine – but rarely something I’m looking for.
Barrett’s message intrigued me so I called him back. We proceeded to have a hilarious conversation about my CU Bathroom gift along with a variety of other topics concerning charitable contributions. I got off the phone thinking – if nothing else – this article will be funny. The resulting article Cash Strapped Charities Put Donors’ Names On Just About Everything is everything you’d expect it to be.
But – it gets better. On the call Barrett said he might want a picture of me in front of the bathroom. I said “sure” expecting never to hear about it again. A few days later I got a call to schedule a photo shoot at CU. Here’s the result.
That’s my plaque on the left. I haven’t seen the physical copy of the magazine yet (I’ve only seen it online) so I don’t know if the photo made the magazine, but if it did I now get to say that “the first time my picture was in Forbes was while I was standing in a bathroom.”
I love working with Todd Vernon, the CEO of Lijit. Todd and I have been friends since I met him in 1997 when I was an investor in the seed round for Todd’s last company, Raindance (fka Evoke fka Vstream fka Something Data Something I can’t remember). Todd’s a great example of an entrepreneur that you just can’t deny – he’s going to get it done no matter what.
Todd just posted Come to Puttin on the Leash 2009 – his plea for support and participation at the Humane Society of Boulder Valley annual event that is happening on Saturday, April 25th at 6pm at the Coors Event Center on the CU Boulder Campus. The goal for the event is to raise $300K for the programs and services that are provided straight back into the Boulder County Communities.
When Amy and I started ramping up our philanthropic activity a decade ago, we started out anonymously. It felt weird and uncomfortable to talk about what we were supporting, but I soon found out that I was missing the point. While some people talk publicly about the charitable organizations they support for ego purposes, many people are doing it to provide visibility to the organizations they support and leadership for the friends to encourage them to support the things they are interested in. Over time, I’ve developed a deep respect for people putting their mouths where their money is with regard to their philanthropic activities. Todd does this beautifully in his post, describing clearly what HSBV does:
- The HSBV serves 8,000 animals annually.
- The HSBV facilitates 5,300 adoptions annually.
- 40% of the animals who come through the front doors of the HSBV need some type of medical attention through the shelter medicine program.
- 150 Dogs received behavioral modification training last year, from food guarding to separation anxiety.
- Average length of stay for dogs is 4 days, for cats 10, these are outstanding statistics!
- Some of the services the HSBV provides include, Adoptions, lost and found, Veterinary Clinic, Behavior and Training Center, Humane Education, Pet Retail Supplies…
- The HSBV Live Release Rate, representing the percentage of animals who come through the door and are reunited with their guardians or placed with a new family is 89% – this is among the highest in the nation.
If you are a pet lover and live in Boulder, help put a leash on Todd by supporting the Humane Society of Boulder Valley and participating in Puttin on the Leash 2009.
I’ve been involved in helping start a number of non-profits. One of them – National Center for Women & Information Technology – has surpassed my wildest expectations. Lucy Sanders and her team have done an awesome job of building a coalition of over 170 prominent corporations, academic institutions, government agencies, and nonprofits working to improve U.S. innovation, competitiveness, and workforce sustainability by increasing women’s participation in IT.
I’ve been chairman of NCWIT since its early days. As with most of the non-profits I’ve been involved in helping start, the board of directors evolves over time. Unlike for-profit companies, each stage feels like a step function as you add new board members who bring a new set of capabilities, range, and diversity to the board.
Stage 1 for NCWIT’s board was a group of early board members who simply helped get things going. There was a lot of evangelism for NCWIT, a lot of ad hoc help, and plenty of ambiguity about roles and responsibilities. The board members were extremely enthusiastic and supportive – we wouldn’t have made much progress without them.
Stage 2 for NCWIT’s board was an effort to build some formality into the board. We included several members from our larger investment partners, a handful of folks that played specific functional roles, and began to organize around a set of board committees. Some of these committees were effective; some weren’t. The consistency of board communication increased and while there was still plenty of ad hoc activity, in general things were more organized.
Stage 3 for NCWIT’s board has just been launched. We just announced the appointment of eight new board members.
- Thaddeus Arroyo, Chief Information Officer, AT&T Services, Inc.
- Phillip Bond, President and Chief Executive Officer, Information Technology Association of America (ITAA)
- Dr. Rodney Brooks, Founder, Heartland Robotics, Inc. and iRobot Corp., and the Panasonic Professor of Robotics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
- Lisa Brummel, Senior Vice President of Human Resources, Microsoft
- Carol Mosely, Senior Vice President of Information Systems, Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.
- Nancy Phillips, Chief Operating Officer and Co-founder, ViaWest
- Merle Waterman, Chief Financial Officer, OneRiot
- Emily White, Senior Director, Asia Pacific and Latin America Online Sales and Operations, Google
It’s an incredible set of people that cross the boundaries between entrepreneurship, academia, and established technology companies. They are joining a well established board that has a great working tempo. I’m really psyched about the next stage of NCWIT.