Menstruation is fertile for innovation. A cycle as old as time is finally getting more attention from the next wave of entrepreneurs.
The Global Tampon Market was projected at $2.58B in 2015. It doesn’t take personal experience to recognize the large market, but the rise of a diverse set of entrepreneurs innovating in this area is a win for women everywhere.
There are a number of entrepreneurs reimagining products in women’s health from fertility to fitness, mental health to healthcare. Here are a few of the breakout companies bringing new ideas to an ancient problem:
The Flex Company - Positioned as a product to use while having sex on your period, this product is a tampon alternative. You’ll rarely find a woman who loves existing period but, with few alternatives, it’s exciting to see new innovation. Newly launched, sign up for their first pre-order now. CEO Lauren is on a mission to create a healthier, eco and empowering product.
THINX - Unhappy with tampons? Thinx offers underwear so you can skip them all together. Thinx offers a range of underwear in styles for women on their periods. Side note: In a society where we don’t “talk about periods” cheers to Thinx for placing ads in the NYC Subways, a public place to share a period product. CEO Miki is a pioneer in bringing periods into public conversation.
Clue - Period tracking for menstruation is one of the oldest forms of cycle management. Clue takes it a step further by providing tracking for a bigger picture of your health, from energy levels to predicting pms symptoms. The app can be used for promoting or preventing fertility, monitoring your cycle, and tracking your holistic physical and mental health. CEO Ida is a visionary for women’s health.
I love to see entrepreneurs solving problems they’re uniquely positioned to solve in industries underserved by innovation. Nearly a third of the population will have a regular reminder of this problem. I’m excited to see continued innovation.
How to Stop Talking About Diversity and Actually Do Something About It - TechfestNW, August 2015
In August, I was invited to TechfestNW in Portland to share thoughts on how startups, communities and event cities can not only talk about Diversity, but take action daily to improve it. This is a video of that talk and the fireside chat that followed.
In this talk I provide two small pieces of action that everyone, not just those considered underrepresented, can take to increase diversity in their companies.
The talk is around 15 minutes followed by a Q&A by the talented Mara Zepeda, CEO of Switchboard, artist and visionary.
Thank you to TechFestNW, Mara and the Portland community for being incredibly receptive and open to make changes to support an inclusive environment.
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Bethany & Jon welcome a full house to the Beyond Coding Classroom.
Last night I sat in on one of the Beyond Coding’s classes hosted at Stack Exchange. An innovative new program to help bridge the knowledge gap between learning to program and finding a job as a programmer. The best part of the event was getting to witness the evolution from idea to execution.
A few months ago I learned about the program from Bethany, Marketing Manger of Stack Overflow Careers at Stack Exchange. Bethany was thinking about how to put action against many issues she cared about. She’s been an active voice at Stack and in the USV Portfolio on creating diverse and inclusive work environments. She’s professionally and personally passionate about helping people find a rewarding career in programming. On top of that, she’s a proud New Yorker who recognized that investing in the ecosystem early is the best way to support the future of a Tech community here in NYC.
Bethany had a vision and she’s made it happen. She’s been hard at work with countless others to get this program off the ground for this summer.
Today, Beyond Coding sets out to equip emerging computer programmers in New York City with professional skills needed to help them succeed in their first job working with code. The program launched June 11th, as a direct response to the City’s Tech Talent Pipeline efforts to grow NYC’s local tech ecosystem. Beyond Coding is free to participants due to the support of a joint partnership among six companies in New York City’s startup ecosystem: Crest CC, Foursquare, Kickstarter, Tumblr, Trello, and Stack Overflow. Full disclosure, you’ll recognize 4 out of the 6 are part of the USV Portfolio.
As you see in the photo above, there was no shortage of interest. The program received so many applications that they needed to split the attendees into two cohorts. The curriculum is the same for each class but the split was mostly decided by their current education path. The program last night was filled with college students and recent graduates, most between the ages of 20 to 25. The second cohort is composed of students switching careers, who hover between the ages of 30 to 45. Students in both cohorts represent all neighborhoods, ethnicities, genders and beyond. Everyone is there to do the work, learn from others and collaborate.
The courses focus on learning the necessary skills to land a job in the next 6-18 months. Everything from learning about data and it’s importance in any tech job, to building a github and Linkedin profile to be visible in the talent market. Some of these steps may seem like a no-brainer to those already in the industry, but when you’re an outsider with few peers working in the industry, it’s all new. This environment of interactive learning, collaboration, turning in homework assignments on time, and providing feedback to peers is a learning experience too. Each component adds to making these talented developers workforce ready.
Last night’s course focused on learning how to learn. A lot of software engineering jobs aren’t just looking at the skills you have, they are looking for your ability to acquire new skills. Jon did a great job helping students discover their own motivations, learning styles and passions through an engaging lecture that included group participation, sharing with peers, videos and stories of his career in tech. The three hour course had everyone participating and collaborating in a way that few classrooms do.
Individuals working on their own assessments before they share with their peers.
Participants recording their stories, motivations and learning styles.
I was impressed with the course, but even more so by the students. I took part in a peer discussion with two engineers entering their senior year of a computer science degree. A young woman and man who both realized the way they got interested in computer programming was through video game cheats and making edits to their Xanga blogs. They didn’t know it was programming, it was just looking up how to write commands to make the site or game do what they wanted. They both grew up with computers as far back as they could remember. That sentiment surprised me as I reflected on my own experiences. I had learned how to hack to get my video games to work but my family didn’t have a family PC until at least 3rd grade. What a difference a decade makes in access. It will be great to see the impact these early start engineers has on the future of the web, the problems solved by software, and the potential for fun.
I’d bet on everyone in that room. If you’re a startup hiring for great entry level engineering talent, you can too. Sign up to participate in the hiring fair at the end of the summer on their website.
This post is the third in our “Lessons from the USV Diversity Summit” series. In December, USV hosted our first Diversity Summit. Below are some of the most helpful insights we gathered about how to take action.
If you’re just joining the conversation, you can find previous posts Part I: “Lessons from the diversity summit” here and Part II: “How to start talking to your team about diversity” here.
Take inventory
If you want your company to embrace diversity, the first step is transforming your corporate culture. Your first step is assessing what the current culture is like.
What exactly does culture mean? People sometimes use the word “culture” to refer to company perks like game rooms, free lunches, or vacation days. And while those benefits certainly have an effect on teams, they aren’t themselves culture. Culture is about how your team communicates.
At its core, your company’s culture requires three things: its mission, its vision, and its values. What problem does your company solve? How does it solve it? And upon what values do you base the decisions you make?
The mission, vision, and values are unique to each company, and each will no doubt be rewritten, revised, and revisited many times over the lifetime of the business, all the while shaping and influencing the culture of the company.
So to make sure that your corporate culture is welcoming toward diversity, you need to revisit your mission, vision, and values to assess how you’re communicating them to the people you employ, serve, and represent.
Beware of inadvertently sending messages that conflict with your values
Start by conducting an “external culture audit” to get a picture of how your company presents itself to the outside world. Imagine you’re a consultant and you’ve been asked to evaluate the company’s corporate culture from an outsider’s point of view. First, visit your company’s website and consider what messages are being sent by your landing page, job postings, careers page, and social media accounts.
What words does your company use to describe itself?
What visuals are provided—photos, logos, or graphics?
If there are photos, how would you describe the people shown? The environment?
Imagine you’re a world-class candidate for an engineer/sales/marketing/HR job landing on your company’s website. What would you find appealing and what would be off-putting?
Consider how different types of people would respond to the messaging on your site. What if you don’t drink? What if you’re a parent? What if you only want to work with the best talent? Are there things on the site that would make you feel uncomfortable or unsure about whether this is the place for you? If so, ask yourself this question: Is your company intentionally trying to filter out certain kinds of candidates, or is it accidental?
Now, the most important step: Are there conflicts or inconsistencies between your company’s stated mission and the way it comes across online? Does your company’s Twitter feed accurately reflect the mission, vision, and values of the company, or is it filled with off-color jokes? Does your company’s digital presence successfully reflect the values you want to celebrate?
A lot of well-intentioned companies inadvertently deter the most diverse candidates not because they don’t care about diversity, but because they fail to control the subtle messages being sent by their public-facing materials. Last year, for example, I did an external culture audit for one of our portfolio companies. I found a lot of conflicts between how the company viewed itself and how it was presenting itself to the outside world. Conflicts will inevitably creep in, so be vigilant and make sure to get feedback to ensure the company’s voice aligns with its values.
Values-Messaging Conflict: The Case of RunKeeper
In a comment on a previous diversity posts, Emil pointed out that RunKeeper, a company that makes an awesome fitness app, may be sending mixed messages to its users. RunKeeper is not a USV portfolio company, but I’m a big fan of their product and I’ve heard only good things about their team. Let’s take a look at their website, one page at a time, and consider where there may be an unintended conflict in their messaging.
As you can see above, RunKeeper clearly states its core values, addressing the issue of inclusiveness directly.
I love these candid job descriptions. It’s easy to get a sense of the fun, lighthearted tone of the company. There are some inconsistencies, however. The job post doesn’t list the core values, but there are some hints about what it takes to fit in. So the question is this: If you’re not into The X-Files and arguing about beer, can you still work there? Would you think twice about applying? What if you’re not into TV, but you’re a fantastic UX Designer? Would you still apply?
There’s no doubt that teams within companies have their own idiosyncratic ways of getting along with each other, and I have no doubt that the above description really does capture the kinds of personalities that make up the UX team at RunKeeper. And it makes sense that they’d look for someone with a similar personality who’d fit in easily.
But the problem with a job listing that describes what the people on the team are like—and subtly demands that anyone applying fit that same mold—is that it creates a bias against people from different backgrounds, excluding people who don’t fit the profile of the existing team. The message is, “This is what our team is like, and we want to hire someone just like us.” But if you want to increase diversity, that’s not the message you want to be sending. What you should be saying is, “We’re an inclusive environment looking for top talent, and we want to welcome you to our team no matter what your background is.”
How to align your messaging with your values
The good news is that there are straightforward ways to communicate your company culture by speaking about the things you value, not just the things you do.
Take Simulmedia, an advertising technology company. Simulmedia has been thoughtful about making sure the job descriptions on its website include the company’s mission, vision, values, and culture. The same language is used consistently on every job description. (Yes, they’re hiring).
The thoughtfulness of the language in these descriptions subtly reinforces the idea that Simulmedia values hard work and play, but it’s through multiple mediums and the emphasis is on team or individual perks: “While we work ‘startup hard’ we also believe in letting loose via Happy Hours, team activities, and an unlimited vacation policy.”
So write a list of the values you want to convey in your own company’s job listings. Check out how other companies communicate their culture.
Another great example is SoundCloud. They recently published a new jobs page. They discussed the project at the Diversity Summit and I think they successfully delivered a more inclusive and very SoundCloud experience. The took the extra step to use their platform to talk about the company culture by share audio recordings from employees.
The internal culture audit
After the external culture audit comes the internal culture audit, which can be more challenging. Running a business means communicating all day long, which often means that speed gets prioritized over thoughtfulness.
To conduct the internal audit, keep your company’s mission, vision, and values in mind as you consider these questions:
How is good news communicated at your company?
How is bad news communicated?
How is feedback given or collected?
What happens if an employee violates a core value when they’re in a meeting with colleagues? With a customer?
How do you describe your company culture to friends?
How do you describe your company to people you’re trying to recruit?
Do your answers align with your mission, vision, and values, or do they conflict?
Ask your colleagues the same questions. Are their answers the same as yours or different? Where are there conflicts, are they coming from a subset of employees who are dissatisfied? Are they the same or different? Explore the disconnect and see if the company culture is evenly distributed.
Right fit your mission, vision, and values
The purpose of the internal and external culture audits is to understand what the company truly is and believes. The audits will signal whether the company is acting in alignment with it’s values.
If you want to make your company more diverse, you need to say so explicitly in your official statement of values. The only way things will change is if you’re new values are actually recognized. If not, it’s time to revise the way business is done.
Most mission, vision, and values come from senior leadership, so it’s important to include top managers in your list of findings and recommendations. Keep the team small for the first version, opening up the process to feedback from the wider team in time.
Your company’s mission shouldn’t change very often, but its description can fluctuate, especially given how fast companies today grow and change. During my time at USV, I’ve always been able to get a read on the health of an organization by asking various employees to explain what the company does. If their answers vary widely—like if one employee says, “We’re a Facebook app that books flights” while another says, “We improve travel with social recommendations”—there’s a disconnect. It’s a signal that communication of the mission is getting muddy.
Inclusion is a practice, not a statement
Values may need closer inspection too. Is the behavior of your employees consistent with your company’s core values? Almost every company has a stated value that captures the importance of diversity. The problem with diversity is not with the values companies have, but with the execution. Inclusion is a practice, not a statement.
Although not in the USV portfolio, BufferApp came up as a great example of a company living its values. Buffer values “defaulting to transparency,” which they embody by publishing a full transparency report that includes real-time revenues, salaries, and equity. The value they place on transparency is demonstrated with visible behavior.
Our summit attendees celebrated Buffer, but most were not in a hurry to implement this kind of transparency at their own companies. Values are important, but can overlap at the edges. The best way to navigate values that seem at odds is to provide more context or multiple values. AMEE balances the trade-offs between transparency and privacy, values that can seem at odds, in their principles and values: “We have 5 main values that guide our decisions: Open, Honest, Transparent, Simple, and Respectful of Individual Privacy.”
Companies need to live the mission, vision, and values they set forth. If they don’t, they should change either the values or the corporate culture so they align. Diversity initiatives need to be part of the company’s values. Revising the company’s values statement is only useful if the company lives in accordance with them.
Putting values into practice
Once the vision is laid out, it’s time to put it into practice. Small changes add up to make a difference. Companies in our portfolio have had success printing posters with the company’s values and hanging them in every conference room. The posters get referenced during difficult discussions, helping ground the conversation in what the company values and not just what one individual believes.
A company’s mission, vision, and values should also be posted on its website, included when onboarding new employees, shared at the beginning of town hall meetings, and compared against employee 360s performance reviews. Consistency is best complemented with feedback loops. Whether it’s surveys or informal asks, find ways to get feedback from customers, clients, and candidates on how you’re performing against your values. Values are a tool to help set a standard across the organization of what’s expected, celebrated, and prioritized. They have the biggest impact when they are part of the everyday communication of the company.
Distributed diversity initiatives
Once you’ve made sure your mission, vision and values are in alignment, it’s time to start implementing diversity initiatives. In our summit, the most often-mentioned way to start is to create three small working groups to tackle different issues and set a budget.
The working groups should focus on increasing diversity in three areas: internal, external, and recruiting. The most common reaction is to push all implementation to HR. Don’t do this. Do not make diversity only an HR issue.
Return Path, an email deliverability company, found success breaking diversity initiatives into three internal working groups: Retention, Recruitment, and Communication. They saw even more progress when people from cross-functional teams participated.
Tumblr took a similar approach. Instead of making diversity an initiative siloed within HR, they have cross-functional working groups. There are members of the HR team, but the team is not limited to it.
The same construct works for larger companies too. Morgan Stanley, for instance, has one diversity and inclusion council, but three sub-committees:
Recruiting/pipeline
Internal employees
External relationships
These sub-groups work best when they have a clear mission, support from senior leadership, and a dedicated budget to get things done. The council as a whole has a budget allocated to it, and the funds are split among the three sub-committees. Having a straightforward structure makes it easier for employees to pick up a project and run with it based on which sub-group they support.
Many startups are wary of setting a budget for diversity sub-committees. I asked Lisa Lee, Pandora’s Diversity Manager, how she suggests how highly cash-conscious startups should allocate funds. She advocates having a budget, “It’s important to do diversity work. You don’t need a massive budget. There are so many ways it can still be done. ” So whether it’s the cost of a team lunch or a team offsite, remember that making a financial commitment to get things done is a way to invest in change. Look for ways to put that money to work. We’ll cover those in the last two posts in this series.
Consistency and iteration
Diversity is never done. Adding it into the company culture requires time and constant evolution. But the earlier you start, the easier it will be to grow with your company.
Whether you’re an early-stage startup or a larger company, take inventory of your culture, build diversity into your values, organize teams to implement initiatives, and hold people accountable.
In our next post, we’ll explore more ideas on how to integrate diversity into your recruiting and onboarding processes.
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This post is the second in our “Lessons from the USV Diversity Summit” series. In December, USV hosted our first Diversity Summit. Below are some of the most helpful insights we gathered about how to take action. If you are just joining the conversation, you can read the first post here.
Start somewhere
Who starts the conversation around diversity? Who will be the first one to say something, out loud, to your team? How do you start that conversation?
Talking about diversity can feel awkward. Many of our attendees found themselves leading the charge at their companies simply because they were the first person to speak up about it. Others had their leadership role bestowed upon them because they happened to be the first person on their team to represent diversity.
A lot of our attendees told stories about how their company first “discovered” they had a diversity problem. Sometimes the team’s lack of diversity was pointed out by an outsider: “So how does it feel to be the only female engineer in your company?” Other times it was something people realized for themselves: I noticed I was the only black person at our all-hands meeting of 100 people.” Occasionally, diversity came up because employees realized there was a mismatch between the team and its customers: “As a team of ten white male engineers, we don’t represent the market or our customers.”
Most of the time, it was up to the diverse member of a team— whether they were a minority with regard to gender, race, or background—to take up the diversity initiative themselves. This can create the impression that diversity is important to that person simply because they want more representation for people “like them.”
We asked our attendees to tell us about their fears and concerns. Here are some of the sentiments that emerged:
“I’m a woman and I’ve never been discriminated against, but I know others have, so I’m making sure that behavior doesn’t continue for others.”
“I’m Latino, and I know a number of talented engineers of all backgrounds. I don’t want them to feel like an outsider like I did when I joined.”
“I’m the only male on my team, and I don’t want my opinion to be perceived as, ‘this is what all men think.’”
“I was the first female engineer, and I wanted to show other female engineers that they would not feel alone here, the way I felt alone when I was the only one.”
Waiting for minority team members to start the conversation themselves is dangerous, because if there is no diversity in your team, how will you ever start? So don’t wait. Start the conversation now.
If your goal is to be the best place for top talent to work, it should be the best place for anyone—even if they don’t work there yet.
We’re all in this together
No matter who or “what” you are, diversity belongs to all of us. To frame the discussion about diversity at our summit, we discussed unconscious bias early in the day.
We are all different from the next person. We all have biases that we use in our decision making, biases that come from our upbringing, our life experiences, and our interactions with the culture and the world.
Leaving it to the professionals, we played a portion of Google’s video on unconscious bias. The video explains the importance of bias awareness in how a tech company successfully makes decisions. The video is worth watching in its entirety.
The concept of unconscious bias gives us a shared language to frame our personal experiences. Instead of saying “we,’” “them,” or “us,”—or using general statements like “men like to…” or “as Hispanics, we…”—we instead each framed our own thoughts around bias, conscious and unconscious.
Here are some examples: “I’m biased in favor of iPhone users, since I’ve always used an iPhone and never an Android.” “I’m biased in favor of NYU grads, people who grew up in North Carolina, and middle children.” It’s okay to have these biases, but letting them go unnoticed is where we get into trouble. If I only want to interview candidates who come from NYU, I’m letting my personal bias affect decisions for my company. If I believe that people who have been entrepreneurs just “fit the culture better,” I may not realize that I’m biasing a hiring decision. The idea might sound logical, but that doesn’t mean it’s true.
In your conversations, you may find it easier to talk to your peers about diversity if you have thelanguage to talk about differences, rather than generalizing. Instead of saying, “I only hire SVA grads,” you might try substituting, “In the past, I’ve had a bias toward hiring SVA grads.” Modifying the language you use in your mind can make the difference between weighing a decision and having your mind already made up.. It’s the difference between being open to discussion vs. being closed.
We found that establishing a shared vocabulary empowered us to speak up, be empathetic, and encourage without turning the conversation into an “us vs. them” type argument. Unconscious bias training is a great way to kick off diversity discussions, but it is only the foundation of a larger conversation. There are more unconscious bias resources listed here.
Allies and open conversations
The most cringeworthy stories we heard about at our summit came from people’s efforts to try to “get people talking about diversity.”
One company had held an all-hands meeting to discuss diversity. Anyone could weigh in, share ideas, and speak up about what they wanted changed. To ensure that employees were building off each other instead of battling, the facilitators required everyone to say “yes, and…” instead of “yes, but…” The conversation generated a lot of ideas but left everyone exhausted. At the end, everyone had to come up with one word to describe how they were feeling. Most people chose words like “uncomfortable,” “tense,” or “stressed.”
In hindsight, brainstorming sessions that have more than 50 people are rarely productive. Extroverts excel, introverts hang back. Leaders speak up while newer employees proceed with caution. It’s not the right forum for most topics, and it;s not a great forum for diversity discussions either. The meeting generated conversation, but nothing moved forward until a smaller group took the lead and started to make changes.
Starting with a small group proved to be a successful strategy for several other companies as well. Two different companies set up lunches to try to bring women in engineering together and ask: “What can we be doing better?” One company found that just creating a space to discuss the question already helped the attendees feel supported and heard. At the first meeting, only women were invited. Once the safe space had been established, the second lunch was open to anyone. Ultimately, the meetings led to several positive outcomes: (1) women in the company were encouraged to attend the Grace Hopper Conference, the leading conference for women in engineering (2) the company started requesting a Code of Conduct from conferences attended, and (3) the company pledged to have more diverse hiring panels.
Several companies advocated starting the process by assembling a small group of people to brainstorm about objectives, then bringing in more people only after the small group had a handle on what they wanted to accomplish. The small groups don’t need to be limited to one type of diversity. It’s enough to start with a small, diverse group of individuals who all share the same mission: to increase diversity on their teams.
Defining Diversity
Once you’ve gathered your small team of allies, the next step is to define what diversity means to your company.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has an extensive (and evolving) list of classes who are protected from discrimination. Since discriminating against members of these classes is against the law , it’s probably a good place to start. But you don’t have to stop there.
Here’s Stack Exchange’s philosophy on diversity in the workforce. This statement can be found on all of their job listings:
Diverse teams build better products
Legally, we need you to know this: Stack Exchange, Inc. does not discriminate in employment matters on the basis of race, color, religion, gender, national origin, age, military service eligibility, veteran status, sexual orientation, marital status, disability, or any other protected class. We support workplace diversity.
But we want to add this: We strongly believe that diversity of experience contributes to a broader collective perspective that will consistently lead to a better company and better products. We are working hard to increase the diversity of our team wherever we can and we actively encourage everyone to consider becoming a part of it.
Another company defines it as “Diversity of Thought.” They built off the EEOC guidelines, but expanded it to include diversity of skillsets, education, and interests. They took what was required legally and added to it to make sure it felt authentic to their company culture and their existing team. Diversity belongs to everyone at the company, not just a subset of employees.
Start small, start today
One of the break-out sessions from our summit was “Talking about Diversity without Tension.” There were a few takeaways from that discussion. There will be always be tension, even in a small group. Trying to avoid tension may actually be counterproductive. It’s more important to have the conversation than to try to avoid it.
The best way forward is to start small. Assemble a small group of people to start the discussion in a safe space. Invite a professional trained in diversity or unconscious bias to join you. Or bootstrap early conversations with online resources. We’ve collected a few recommendations in the Diversity Hackpad here: Unconscious Bias Resources. Whatever the size your company, start your small group conversations today.
The next post in this series will explain how to take the small group conversations and extend them to the wider company culture.
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