• Women will expect to have every qualification and skill and years of experience. Men are promoted based on potential, women on performance.
• You can’t play the game if you’re not in it
• ‘I used to get in my car and drive around South Palo Alto and look at names on doors’, he said. ‘if something said ‘electronics’, I would knock on the door and see if they needed money. That was how investments were made. Venture was not an industry; it was an activity’.
• She felt she was constantly choosing between being liked and being respected
• There was no point in looking for discrimination; she realised; life was too full of opportunity.
• Being liked in Silicon Valley was a currency. It’s what made one VC invite another in on a deal. It was a tacit requirement in a complex game. For the few women in the game, being liked meant learning to be assertive without being aggressive, to be heard without being loud, and to like money without being seen as greedy. It meant when a partner wanted to take her to a shooting range to teach her to shoot, she readily obliged. It meant saying yes to a downhill race when she barely skied.
• In her time in venture capital so far, Sonja had shot guns, knocked back whiskey, cold-called countless companies, chased down competitive deals, babysat triplets - and now, performed some scary skiing manoeuvres. She had not made it this far by backing down from challenges or sitting on the sidelines. That’s why Menlo Ventures had elevated her to partner, four days before her thirtieth birthday. She was the youngest partner in the firm’s twenty-year history.
• She loved the phase of a company when it was just getting started, when chaos and purpose collided daily.
• Theresia, surrounded all day, every day, by type A guys, had adopted some of their habits. She interrupted often and spoke loudly to be heard. But she had also gleaned tips from successful women. One female executive had told her to speak up early in meetings: ‘ If you wait too long to speak up in a meeting as a woman, you’ll become invisible. It’ll be too late.’ Bain executive Orit Gadiesh advised Theresia ‘Don’t take notes. Others will think you’re there to take notes. Your memory will have to suffice’. Gadiesh also shared her strategy for what to do when male clients directed questions only at other men, even those who were her junior. ‘ I told my associates before meetings started than when that happens, they should look to me and ask what I think. Your male team can be your ally.’
• 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-together. And most important, know that the person you marry will influence your career more than anything else.
• After every board meeting, she called him to ask how he felt. No one else on any board had ever called to ask him how he felt. She asked because she cared about him, they were friends. But she also wanted to better understand his thinking on business decisions. She was that rare individual who went beyond the numbers and strategies on a whiteboard. She was interested in his emotional state and how it related to the future of the business.
• I’m going to spent time with my three best friends. Me, myself and I.
• Don’t be a martyr, be more selfish about your own needs, keep your foot in the door of a job you love; and whatever you do, don’t leave to make someone else happy.