K
Kathleen Martin
Guest
Sitting in her Bay Area home office, Anarghya Vardhana, a venture capitalist, cradled her one-week-old baby at her breast and logged on to a Zoom video call.
In the days since she had given birth, the founder of a cash-strapped portfolio company had called an emergency meeting. A different company had thrown the founder a lifeline with an acquisition offer, and they now needed the counsel of their trusted investor, and fast.
Breastfeeding on a Zoom call wasn't exactly what Vardhana, a partner at Maveron, expected in her first week of maternity leave. But she said she couldn't ignore a founder's plea for help.
"I have biological children and my portfolio companies, which are also children," Vardhana said. She added that in a tumultuous market, "My portfolio companies need me more than ever."
Being a mother is an around-the-clock job, but many venture capitalist-mothers are finding that it's hard to draw a firm line to focus on being a parent when on maternity leave.
And with more women entering the male-dominated venture industry, firms are being forced to craft maternity leave policies on the fly to accommodate new mothers. But those policies may not necessarily mitigate an investor's urge to be available to counsel a startup founder or be at the ready to snap up a funding round for a hot startup, while fewer startups go out to raise.
Insider spoke to a dozen mothers in VC who said that even though the industry is adding more support for them like financial assistance with fertility treatments or breast-milk delivery, many continue to clock-in during their maternity leave for fear of missing out on a deal or simply because there's no one else to fall back on to help their portfolio companies while they're away.
"You're always on call in a sense," Esther Dyson, a prolific angel investor, said. "It's just like being a parent."
Forty years ago, the clubby male world of venture capital admitted so few women that maternity leave as a benefit was effectively nonexistent. At the time, Dyson was a globe-trotting investor and entrepreneur whose newsletter, Release 1.0, sparked conversations about tech issues in the internet's infancy. Her Rolodex gave her access to high-tech deals, and an appetite for risk led her to make early bets on 23andMe, Square, and SpaceX.
Continue reading: https://www.businessinsider.com/women-venture-capital-change-maternity-leave-policy-culture-2022-10
In the days since she had given birth, the founder of a cash-strapped portfolio company had called an emergency meeting. A different company had thrown the founder a lifeline with an acquisition offer, and they now needed the counsel of their trusted investor, and fast.
Breastfeeding on a Zoom call wasn't exactly what Vardhana, a partner at Maveron, expected in her first week of maternity leave. But she said she couldn't ignore a founder's plea for help.
"I have biological children and my portfolio companies, which are also children," Vardhana said. She added that in a tumultuous market, "My portfolio companies need me more than ever."
Being a mother is an around-the-clock job, but many venture capitalist-mothers are finding that it's hard to draw a firm line to focus on being a parent when on maternity leave.
And with more women entering the male-dominated venture industry, firms are being forced to craft maternity leave policies on the fly to accommodate new mothers. But those policies may not necessarily mitigate an investor's urge to be available to counsel a startup founder or be at the ready to snap up a funding round for a hot startup, while fewer startups go out to raise.
Insider spoke to a dozen mothers in VC who said that even though the industry is adding more support for them like financial assistance with fertility treatments or breast-milk delivery, many continue to clock-in during their maternity leave for fear of missing out on a deal or simply because there's no one else to fall back on to help their portfolio companies while they're away.
"You're always on call in a sense," Esther Dyson, a prolific angel investor, said. "It's just like being a parent."
Forty years ago, the clubby male world of venture capital admitted so few women that maternity leave as a benefit was effectively nonexistent. At the time, Dyson was a globe-trotting investor and entrepreneur whose newsletter, Release 1.0, sparked conversations about tech issues in the internet's infancy. Her Rolodex gave her access to high-tech deals, and an appetite for risk led her to make early bets on 23andMe, Square, and SpaceX.
Continue reading: https://www.businessinsider.com/women-venture-capital-change-maternity-leave-policy-culture-2022-10
