Alpha Girls
Page 15
“My partner Bill [Draper] played right into it,” Robin said. “He urged me to pursue the deal and to enlist my husband for product testing and product recap.” Everyone knew of Bill Draper, who began his career in venture capital in 1959. (His father had started the first VC firm on the West Coast, Draper Gaither & Anderson.) But he also had a mischievous streak. “There was no way to talk about the condoms at meetings without getting into trouble,” Robin said. “I tried to say this deal was out of our realm, that we were more software based. Even that drew laughter.”
“I once got a pitch from a prisoner at San Quentin,” Kate Mitchell said. “The guy had an idea for a new type of toilet seat and toilet seat cover. He sent me a letter, written in this beautiful cursive and with perfect grammar. He clearly knew a lot about toilets and had been in business before landing at San Quentin. He drew this design of the new toilet seat, showing how it rotated, providing a new seat cover with every turn. We didn’t fund it, but I was so impressed by the effort he made that I wrote back to him.”
Magdalena remembered a pitch shortly after she’d joined USVP. “It was in this field that I knew nothing about—urinary incontinence for women,” she said. “The pitch was for an RF [radio frequency] remote control, basically. The RF device would be inserted into the opening of your bladder, and you would have a remote control—like a garage door opener—that would open the bladder when ready, the pee would come out, and then you would close it.
“Anyway, I was sitting there listening to the pitch and thinking about due diligence,” Magdalena said, drawing laughter. “I’ve had garage door openers that would open garage doors that were not my own. I know how much interference there can be. So I asked the inventors, ‘What if you are in a public bathroom—let’s say an airport with twenty adjacent stalls—and you’ve got several of these devices implanted, and you open someone else’s bladder by mistake?’ ”
The women buckled over in laughter. Sonja looked at Magdalena with a straight face and said, “I think we financed that company!”
* * *
Theresia and MJ had been invited to the weekend but couldn’t attend. Theresia was about to have a baby, and MJ was overcommitted at work and home.
Kate Mitchell, in subsequent years, loved telling the story of the first time she had attended one of Silvia’s off-sites. She boarded the plane in San Jose, and even before it took off, Maha Ibrahim, who was sitting toward the front, pulled an electric breast pump out of her bag and waved it at her friend and fellow VC Amanda Reed, who was a dozen rows back. Reed then pulled out her breast pump and held it high. The women burst into laughter.
Over the years, Kate had met many remarkable women at the annual weekend getaway, including Jennifer Fonstad, Karen Boezi, Patricia Nakache, Carla Newell, Catharine Merigold, Cindy Padnos, and many more. They told each other stories of female entrepreneurs like Katie Rodan, a Stanford-trained dermatologist who self-funded two start-ups after being turned down by male VCs. Both of her start-ups—Proactiv, which revolutionized acne treatment, and the skin care line Rodan + Fields—grew into hugely successful companies. Katie’s dad had told her early on, “Katie, be your own boss. Make your own money so you don’t have to rely on anyone to take care of you.”
As the night wore on that weekend, the women’s stories became more personal. They talked about their favorite songs, and the craziest places they’d ever “done it.” Silvia suggested they share their most embarrassing moments.
For Silvia, it was her wedding day. She was having the time of her life, drinking and dancing and wearing a vintage wedding dress that looked beautiful but fit imperfectly. In the midst of her reverie, there on the dance floor, she looked down and realized her strapless dress had fallen, and her breasts were fully exposed.
“What did I do?” Silvia asked the other women. “I pulled up my dress and kept dancing!”
The women also shared stories of some of the boorish behavior of the men they worked with. Heidi Roizen told about making a pitch to VCs for her early software company T/Maker, founded by her brother. As she made the pitch in the glass conference room, she noticed men in an adjacent room making sexually explicit gestures at her. Heidi finished her presentation and took her pitch elsewhere.
But there was often a point to the stories the women told each other. “I was in my twenties and working in the pretty much all-male corporate banking group at First Interstate in San Francisco,” Silvia began. “I somehow got promoted at age twenty-four to a vice president position that I was not qualified for. I was calling on CFOs of Fortune 500 companies, including Bechtel and Transamerica Corp., and putting together lines of credit. One day we learned that the president of our bank was coming in—this was in the eighties—and I was to go out on client calls with him that day. I look down and see I’ve got a huge run in my pantyhose. This was the era of Nordstrom pantyhose. I was like, ‘Crap!’ So I pulled my colleague and confidante Mary into the bathroom and said, ‘I need your pantyhose.’ And she immediately stripped down and gave them to me.” Silvia paused. “I realize we are no longer in the era of pantyhose. But my point is, you need your network. You need that woman who will share her pantyhose.” It was, in many ways, the central message of the annual Hawaii get-together.
* * *
Before heading off to bed, Silvia asked the women to share any advice or tricks of the trade that they had learned in the trenches. Kate Mitchell said that when she traveled to board meetings, she always made a point of listening to the morning news or reading above the fold of USA Today for at least one important sports story.
“I want to walk into a board meeting and say, ‘What do you think about the Rodriguez trade?’ Of course, I have no idea what this means, but that doesn’t matter. The guys of course always know more than I do in this category and are always in a race to share what they know.”
Early on in her career, Robin realized a lot of business gets done on the golf course. “I thought, ‘Do I invest the time to become a good golfer?’ I thought, ‘No, I’m a good tennis player. I’ll set up matches with the guys I want to network with.’ Network with what you are good at.” She offered the group a few additional tips from her years on the front lines: Work really hard your first ten years; save money; get your work travel in; and if possible, become a partner before you have children. Don’t take one-on-one meetings with men at night but do attend association events and get-togethers. And most important, know that the person you marry will influence your career more than anything else.
On their last day in Hawaii, the women enjoyed a ride on a chartered sailboat, where they swam and snorkeled and shared news of recent deals in enterprise software, cybersecurity, and the nascent field of social networking. After a few hours, they reluctantly headed back to shore. On their way in, a crew member who had been intrigued by the women’s conversation, asked whether they were in Oahu for the big banking conference. The women said no. Were their husbands with the bank? he asked. No again.
Finally he asked, “Who are you?”
Robin replied, “We’re a women’s think tank.”
The weekend had been a welcome respite for those who, between work and family, had little time to seek out new friendships or attend networking events. The gathering felt like a trip home, a place they didn’t know they’d even missed.
On the return flight, Magdalena wondered about the studies showing that women investors were more inclined to back men than women. Maybe they didn’t have a precedent, she thought. Maybe they didn’t know women like the ones she’d met in Hawaii. She thought of her friend’s story about stitching and bitching. If her time in Hawaii was the sun-and-sea variation of “stitch and bitch,” Magdalena was up for a lifetime membership.
Mary Jane Hanna (right), age four, with her sister Shirley, seven, and father, Michael Hanna, 1958. Photo courtesy of MJ Elmore
Magdalena Yeşil with her father, Kevork Yeşil, i
n Moda, Istanbul, 1959. Photo courtesy of Magdalena Yeşil
Magdalena Yeşil in Moda, Istanbul, around 1961. Photo courtesy of Magdalena Yeşil
From left: Sonja Hoel, her father, Lester Hoel, her twin sister, Lisa, and her older sister, Julie, 1968. Photo courtesy of Sonja Perkins
Theresia Gouw with her grandparents, Jakarta, Indonesia, 1969. Photo courtesy of Theresia Gouw
Theresia on her high school volleyball team, 1985. Photo courtesy of Theresia Gouw
Theresia and her best friend Sangeeta Bhatia on graduation day from Brown University, 1990. Photo courtesy of Sangeeta Bhatia
MJ at Purdue, sorority photo, 1975. Photo courtesy of MJ Elmore
MJ at Stanford business school, graduation photo, 1982. Photo courtesy of MJ Elmore
MJ (front row, fourth from left) at an IVP retreat, 1987. IVP founder Reid Dennis is to her left. Photo courtesy of MJ Elmore
MJ in an IVP partner photo, 1994. Photo courtesy of MJ Elmore
The Elmore family, Christmas 1996. From left: MJ’s son, Will, husband, Bill, daughter Hanna, MJ, and daughter Kate. Photo courtesy of MJ Elmore
Sonja (center) with father, Lester Hoel, and sister, Lisa Hoel, graduates from the University of Virginia, 1988. Photo courtesy of Sonja Perkins
Magdalena was named Entrepreneur of the Year by Red Herring magazine, 1997. Photo courtesy of Red Herring
Magdalena joins US Venture Partners on Sand Hill Road, 1998. Founder Bill Bowes is at front center. Photo courtesy of Magdalena Yeşil
Magdalena at a Salesforce Christmas party, Roy’s Restaurant in San Francisco, ca. 2001. Photo courtesy of Magdalena Yeşil
Magdalena with husband, Jim, and their sons Troy (left), sixteen, and Justin, eighteen, 2006. Photo by Joe Murray
Theresia as a partner at Accel, with Washington Post CEO Don Graham and Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, at an Accel CEO event at Stanford, 2011. Photo courtesy of Theresia Gouw
Women of venture capital on a getaway in Hawaii, organized by Silvia Fernandez of Silicon Valley Bank. Silvia is in the black bathing suit and sun hat (far left), Magdalena is in sunglasses (front row, third from left), Jennifer Fonstad is seated next to Magdalena, and Sonja (front row right). Photo courtesy of Silvia Fernandez
Sonja and husband, Jon Perkins, in front of his restaurant Ferry Plaza Seafood, San Francisco, 2004. Photo courtesy of Sonja Perkins
Theresia with son, Luke, and daughter, Sarah, Lanai, Hawaii, 2012. Photo courtesy of Theresia Gouw
Theresia (front row, second from left) on the dais of the NYSE with Trulia founders Pete Flint (holding gavel) and Sami Inkinen, 2012. Photo courtesy of Theresia Gouw
Sonja featured at the Forbes Women’s Summit in New York, June 2016. Photo courtesy of Sonja Perkins
Sonja and Jennifer Fonstad at Google in Mountain View, 2015. Photo courtesy of Sonja Perkins
Broadway Angels on The Easy Way boat in San Francisco, 2014. Sitting in the front row, Magdalena is at far left; Sonja is fifth from left, and MJ is sixth, followed by Jennifer Fonstad and Karen Boezi. Photo courtesy of MJ Elmore
Sonja founded the nonprofit Project Glimmer to inspire teenage girls and women to believe in themselves. Photo courtesy of Sonja Perkins
PART
SIX
Marriage, Motherhood, and Moneymaking
2002–2004
MJ
MJ, determined not to let IVP die, decided that she, Reid Dennis, and Norm Fogelsong would raise the money for the next fund themselves. They brought in $225 million for IVP X, each putting in a chunk of their own money.
To be sure, IVP was on life support, having suffered the defections of Geoff Yang and others to Redpoint and Versant Ventures. As MJ’s fund-raising plan went into high gear, she and her partners hired a new team that included Todd Chaffee, Dennis Phelps, and Steve Harrick. Their investing focus would be on successful late-stage companies that could make three to five times their money in three to five years, with an average investment of around $7 million. And as a continuation of Reid Dennis’s lifelong enthusiasm for the stock market, the IVP partners would continue with public market investing in companies they knew well.
Even during the darkest days of the dot-com crash, when the small team hunkered down and pondered whether the world as they knew it was ending, Reid Dennis remained positive. One of his favorite sayings was “I don’t know many rich pessimists.”
Some of their early investments from IVP X in private companies included the cybersecurity enterprise ArcSite; the search engine Business.com; and Danger, founded by Apple alumni, including Andy Rubin, who made the first always-on, Internet-connected smartphone, the Sidekick. A few of IVP X’s public market investments included the semiconductor company Artisan Components; @Road, a provider of software to manage a mobile workforce over the Internet; and Concur Technologies, a travel management and expense software maker.
It took time, but IVP got back on its feet, and when it did, MJ was able to return to her part-time schedule, now with no nanny. Her daughter Kate was busy with soccer, water polo, and tennis and was a bookworm who excelled at school. Will, now fourteen, played on Palo Alto High’s football team and seemed to grow bigger and taller by the day, already dwarfing the petite MJ. On Friday nights, the football team descended on the Elmore household for MJ’s home cooking. Will excelled at sports but was bored by school, and MJ fretted over his college placement options. Her daughter Hanna, ten, was dealing with normal middle school angst. They had a new rescue dog named Cruz who was part black Lab, part German shepherd.
The disconnect in MJ’s marriage had not gone away; if anything, it was worse. Years earlier Bill had surprised her with a new car, a white Porsche convertible with manual transmission. Everyone—including MJ—was wowed by the lavish gift. But MJ was not a car person. Looking at the fancy sports car, she wondered how she would transport the kids. The car’s engine was loud, making it hard to talk on the phone, and the kids struggled to get in and out of the backseat. She was grateful for the gift but left to wonder: Did Bill see her as a hard-charging, Porsche-driving exec? Actually, she would have been happier with a new minivan.
THERESIA
When Theresia went into labor with the birth of her daughter, Sarah, she felt good enough to send BlackBerry messages to the Accel office en route to the hospital and from her room. But just as she started to push—at which point she finally relinquished her BlackBerry—Sarah’s heart rate tacked up and down, and Theresia’s temperature spiked. At nine forty-five P.M., after a long and slow labor, the doctor ordered an emergency C-section and spinal block. Theresia, who had never had anesthesia, was given too much of it. The injection that was supposed to deliver pain relief to her lower body rendered her immobile from the neck down. She couldn’t feel her limbs or so much as turn her head.
Sarah was born with only a minor infection but was nonetheless put in the neonatal intensive care unit. Tim followed his newborn daughter there, while Theresia’s mom stayed in the room to take care of Theresia, who was still immobile.
Theresia knew from the beginning that Tim would be a wonderful dad. In addition to having five siblings, he grew up with a gaggle of nieces and nephews. Still, when the couple attended classes in baby care and it came time to practice dressing and undressing a doll in a onesie, Tim removed the onesie with a triathlete’s flourish (he was in training)—causing the doll’s head to pop off and fly across the room. They decided Theresia should probably be the one to dress their baby.
In Israel, Hezy Yeshurun and the team from the two-year-old cybersecurity company ForeScout had bets going on how long it would take Theresia after delivery to resume sending messages on her BlackBerry. Sure enough, as soon as the anesthesia wore off and she could move her head again, she was back in action, her thumbs flying acro
ss the small keyboard.
Accel had given Theresia six months of paid maternity leave, but she was called back to the office after only three weeks. Things at work had become challenging for the once-storied Accel, and she felt a responsibility to her partners, investors, companies, and the team. She had received word that partner Jim Goetz would be leaving the firm. Goetz, a friend and an ally, had joined Accel in 2000 and had become a managing partner in 2001 during one of the most tumultuous times in the tech industry’s history. She was disappointed that he would be leaving later in the year.
Accel needed to get its mojo back. When the market correction began in March 2000, followed a year and a half later by the September 11 terrorist attacks, Accel was forced to reduce its $1.2 billion fund to $680 million, returning cash to the limited partners. In addition, founders Arthur Patterson and Jim Swartz had been stepping away from day-to-day operations, handing the reins of succession largely to Jim Breyer, Peter Wagner, and Goetz.