Olga Petrova is a Product Manager at Scaleway. Her tasks range from developing new product ideas to defining and maintaining product roadmaps. She’s also in charge of identifying customers’ needs and matching them with Scaleway’s business objectives. She regularly carries out AI (deep learning) projects and shares them with the machine learning community via blog posts, webinars etc. Thanks to her international experience and her Ph.D. in Theoretical Physics, Olga has an excellent technical background and a unique view of machine learning.

We have had the pleasure of speaking with CEO and Founder at Newfund, Patrick Malka.

We explore Patrick's commitment to building a culture of inclusiveness, from his equal pay policy to his unbiased vision of his employees. As he points out, Patrick's career has been dotted with key encounters and he believes that his path has been made possible thanks to and with the support of women. This is quite uncommon in the ruthless world of finance! 

Tune in to discover about his vision and how he applies it to his company culture.

> The reason and mission of the book

Min 1

In the podcast, Claire tells us how she grew up into tech as her father was an engineer. "When I grew up I thought a computer had no gender," she said. But society bias and inequality later taught her otherwise: she felt a distance between technology and women and, as a journalist, she started looking into the hidden stories of women in tech to bring them back into the light.

The more she was looking into these stories, the more she realized there were hundreds of women who made fundamental contributions to the internet, as important as Steve Job's ones. This is how the idea of her book was born, from the sense of solidarity across history that can bring women in tech together today.

> The importance of history in tech

Min 7

But how did history forget about the key role women played in technology?

Internet is the culprit. At the very beginning of the computer industry, before the 70s, programming was seen as women's work, a mix between mental and labour work. Only with the rise of modern computing, as a real business that makes people earn money, programming became a valuable and desirable job. This is when women started to be pushed out.

Min 10

At the same time, women who were actually working and making progress didn't have the time to write about their accomplishments, and even when they had the opportunity to do so, they didn't feel empowered enough to underline their achievements and ask for recognition. This is a recurring theme that often works as a barrier to gender equality. A barrier we need to demolish.

Min 15

Claire underlines how learning history and understanding it is fundamental to make progress, especially in the technology industry, where we are so projected towards the future and we forget so quickly about the past. But we should never forget that looking at past mistakes helps us to challenge the status quo and really make a change.

> The role of men in the tech industry

Min 20

This is what Claire's book aims for: educating people in the tech industry or not and empowering women by giving them a sense of belonging and pride. But the book is not for women only: men in the tech industry are in a position of power and they should be the first ones to read about women in tech to gain a new perspective about diversity in the industry and hire and promote more women in the ranks.

> The importance of diversity

Min 26

Diversity is key, it brings new ideas, it builds software made for everyone, it provides inclusion, it avoids bias and exclusion.

The software is as important as the hardware, but it is easily forgotten because it's not visible and it's far behind the machines we use every day. We should never forget that the human side and the personalities of people brings a lot to the table: 75 of the exact same personality is not going to build great things and it's ridiculous to reject someone which doesn't fit the culture. Culture is fluid.

Hi, my name is Seb Butt and I work for a fast growing start-up called Craft, as their General Manager for Europe. In addition I am an investor and a non-executive director at boutique executive search firm Engage Infotech. I am an advocate of organisations of all forms, types and in all industries making systemic changes which can lead to opportunities for everyone.

This interest led me to join Diversity VC back in 2016 as a volunteer and I still work with Diversity VC now and most recently, in fact this past summer, I helped to launch the Future VC programme.

The Future VC programme is the first of its kind globally and we brought together 30 people from diverse backgrounds who had a desire to learn more about venture capital as a potential career.

Today I will talk about the importance of diversity within Venture Capital specifically, but much of the rationale can be applied to any industry, and in the second half of the podcast I will share a few tips that you can start to use today to make your place of work or industry a more inclusive and diverse place to be.

Broadly speaking some of the fastest growing businesses in the past 20 years have been huge technology companies and many of these have leveraged venture capital funding in order to hit growth milestones and ultimately become successful. It is accurate to say that VC investors take on high risks to put money behind new ideas.

However, whilst VC might be the dynamic and exciting subset of the private equity industry, the industry is still lagging behind others across the board when it comes to diversity and inclusion.

Diversity VC was set up in 2016. It is a non-profit which is focused on diversity of thought within venture capital and by extension within the start-up ecosystem. One powerful impact of Diversity VC has been its ability to evoke debate but Diversity VC is also very keen to implement practical strategies to make a difference and one of these practical efforts was this past summer when we launched Future VC which is a programme to support highly-skilled professionals and graduates from diverse backgrounds into the UK VC landscape. (...)

We understand that many firms are breaking with well-worn hiring habits. Some firms that volunteered to take on an intern from Future VC had not hired any interns before. We want firms to understand that talent is evenly distributed and, so far, opportunity has not been. We’re also keen for them to understand that they don’t need to undergo huge upheaval to reap the benefits of this untapped talent, and in fact, just a small few procedural tweaks are required.

I am now going to offer you 4 of tips and ideas about ways you can either use to position yourself better to get a job in VC, or a job full-stop!

Tip 1 - Research everything and everyone

Tip 2 - Network with a purpose

Tip 3 - Connect with people

Tip 4 - Deep dive into a subject

Thanks so much for having me on 50inTech podcast. 

Diversity VC and I are very aligned with the goals and ambitions of 50inTech and I am excited to be on the platform. The practical nature of 50inTech is perfect and I would encourage everyone to use it and be involved in this community. 

Only by working together collaboratively across industries, across companies and across communities we can have a positive change.I believe 50inTech will be a valid contributor enabling women to involve in technology.

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Hi, I’m Check Warner, I’m the co-founder & CEO of Diversity VC. Diversity VC is non-profit set up to promote diversity and inclusion in venture capital in tech. We collect original data, we help young people to get into the industry from all kinds of background through our internship program, we help VCs turning more inclusive and we help entrepreneurs to access capital. And it’s our mission to make venture capital representative and diverse to represent the society that we invest into.

So the advice I wanted to give today is how you, as a founder of an early-stage company, make your company inclusive from day zero.

We at Diversity VC published with Atomico a guide to build inclusion into your company and ut us available at inclusionintech.com (...)

The second piece of advice is prioritizing it, and reading around why diversity and inclusion really matter. One ressource I’d highly recommend is Fearless Future. It’s a great website which aggregates lots of really important writing on diversity and inclusion.

The third piece of advice is about hiring. It’s really easy when you are an early-stage company to just look within your existing network to hire the first 5 to 10 employees, but that’s going to lead you to developing a really homogeneous employee base. So think about hiring outside of your network. One tool that we have used which I really recommend is called Applied, and what they do is an applicant tracking tool which you can use to (...) source candidates from outside your typical networks.

The fourth piece of advice is about (...) how do you actually make sure that they feel included on a day to day basis. So that’s about having a dialogue where people feel like they can talk about which issues they are facing and bring themselves, their whole selves, to work. So, as part of that it is really important to think about things like parental leave policies, flexible working policies, religious beliefs, and different needs that each member of your company might have.

Finally, none of this would be effective unless you constantly revisit it. It’s not something that you can do once, and then shut the book and never look at it again. It is really important to collect data on what’s going on in your company, use feedback and survey tools like Typeform (...) and then also collect data on the wrong things like the gender pay gap, the equity pay gap, ethnicity pay gap (...)

So one thing I think companies don’t explore enough, which we have been promoting for Diversity VC, is actually using interns. Internships are a fantastic way to bring in diversity of thought into your company without having to make a commitment to necessarily hiring people (...) So think about whether you can offer an internship program, maybe during the summer, and make sure that the interns that you bring in are as diverse and representative as possible (...)

I was delighted to accept the 50inTech invitation to record this podcast. Our mission with DIversity VC is about making entrepreneurship more accessible and inclusive and that’s extremely aligned with what 50inTech are doing. I’m really excited to see what they are building and excited to join all of you on the community of 50inTech. Please do tell your friends about it and encourage other people and spread the word.

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Hey I'm Kim Walsh Global VP of HubSpot for Startups. (...) We partner with VCs, incubators, basically all startup organizations, and our mission is to help millions of startups grow better.

So we started this, HubSpot for Startups, three years ago. The team is a global team now, we help over 10,000 startup customers. We love to empower all types of companies, and we think that's really important, but we really love to support our female founders as well. (...)

What we see happen so often in sales is that marketing is dominated by women typically in companies, but sales positions are dominated by men. What happens and why I'm the executive sponsor of a woman in sales group, is that we feel it's really important to empower women to have a career in sales.

From a financial perspective having a career in sales gives women opportunities. One of the things that also happens in our women in sales group that I actually hate to see happen, I spent a lot of my time trying to help women is, they’ll get to a certain point in their career they'll graduate college, they’ll come in as an entry level sales person, they’ll do really well, often times they are the top performers on their team, and then what happens from there is they say: “I really love customers, I want to go to work with customers, I want to join the customer success team.” (...)

So what we do is we try and change the landscape of what is sales. Sales isn’t going out drinking every night with your buddies. Sales isn’t closing deals on a golf course. Sales is actually talking to a customer, understanding what the customer's pain points are, understanding how you can help them. (...)

So, if you frame sales, to a woman who’s doing well in sales and let her know that she can actually have a great career, and provide for her family over time. Also, in sales you have a ton of flexibility. I've seen this happen over time, where they’ve dealt themselves because they want to do a career change into something that seems a little bit more safe and they stay in sales and they've actually gone on to do really really well.

So it's really cool and those women are empowering other women. What I think has to happen inside sales and marketing too, that is really important, is that women need examples of people who have done it before. (...)

So what I think about today's world is that so many of us women are sick of our voices being quieter, you know we need to have a platform so many other women are giving us a platform, that we want to be heard, and we can collectively come together and help each other. I think that's happening in today's world as well. (...)

My few key things of advice for anyone out there looking to get into, you know, maybe you're looking to leave marketing, and go into sales, or maybe you're looking to build a career in what we call a “go to market function”.

1/ Be a good listener, be empathetic, love helping people

2/ Put more women in CRO roles, give them a seat at the table, give them a platform

3/ Put more women in leadership positions, put more women in C level positions

In conclusion, I'm really excited and thank you for allowing me to be on this podcast today and talk about something that I'm so passionate about. I accept the 50inTech’s mission, I support it in building a community for women, and building an inclusive platform, this is what the world needs right now, at a really cool time. (...)

Let's continue the conversation and I guess be passionate together, because the more of us that can do this together, the more we can help other people.

Hello, I am Amy Lewin. I'm a journalist at Sifted which is a new media platform backed by the Financial Times. At Sifted, I write about startups and tech across the whole of Europe. Although, I have a particular interest in what I call “the people side of companies” (...)

Today, I am talking about how to catch a journalist's attention.

So, journalists get a whole lot of emails. I get dozens if not hundreds of pictures and press releases every single day. And it's rare that I even bother opening them. Unless I know or trust the person who's sending them to me or, unless they have a really, really, great subject line which I'll talk about a little bit later on.

If you're trying to get media attention, I realize that's not what you want to hear. But don't worry because I have some tips about how to capture a journalist's eye.

Number one, you have to pick your journalist. There are lots of journalists out there and we all are interested in different things. You need to figure out which journalists are going to be most interested in you and your company. (...)

Next, think about if they write about your sector. (...) Do they write about companies and people in a way that you would like to be written about? (...) Think about what kind of stories they write. (...) Finally, also think about whether or not they write for a publication or work for a media outlet that your target customers, investors or potential hires actually read. (...)

Next thing to do is to follow them. (...) You can go to events that they speak at, try and say hello afterwards. But, please do not pitch them your company there and then. (...) Sign up to their newsletters, follow them on social media, a bit of flattery never goes a miss. (...)

Next thing to do is to get out there yourself. So, you can also make it easier for journalists to find you rather than you hunting them down. The first thing to do is to speak at events. (...)

You can also (...) write things. So write things, tweet things, set yourself up as a thought leader. (...) Show that there are certain things that you really care about and you're an expert on. (...) And then when a journalist is looking for someone to speak to on those issues, your name will probably come up.

The next thing to do is to make friends with journalists. So, treat that relationship as you would treat any relationship. If you give to them, you might expect to get back. So, be helpful. (...)

If you can't actually meet them in person though, then you'll probably need to resort to the dreaded pitch email. (...) The first thing, if you're emailing a journalist out of the blue, is to write a really sexy subject line. (...) Then in the main body of the email, make sure that you explain what your company does in really simple language. (...)

Include useful information like, when your company was founded, how much money you've raised, how big your team is. So that the journalist has to do less hard work there. Make sure the email is short though. Be funny, show some personality. Include links and assets. (...)

And then finally, be available. Some journalists work to really tight deadlines. So you need to be able to speak to them that day straight away if they’re interested.

I'm very excited to be joining the 50inTech community. If you want any advice on speaking to the media, storytelling, how to catch a journalist's attention or even how to, kind of, network and connect with people more broadly in the world of startups, then find me on the platform.

We recorded this special femtech episode in partnership with our pioneer partner, Axa. Hello, my name is Ariella Dreyfuss, I am originally from England. I moved to Israel around 14 years ago and I am a partner in the M&A department of Barnea Jaffa Lande & Co. law firm. I’ve been working as a lawyer in the high-tech space for over 10 years, during which time I have represented startups, mature tech companies, VC funds, corporate ventures and private equity funds. One of my soft spots has always been MedTech and I am delighted by the recent traction and attention that FemTech is receiving.

So today I am going to speak briefly about FemTech: what it is, why I think it’s important, what are some of the early challenges, and offer you some tips.

So what is FemTech? 

Let me start by saying what it isn’t: we are not talking about male or unisex products that have been shrunk in size, painted pink and remarketed for women. FemTech is essentially a palatable term for VC men to describe tech products and services in the space of female health, including periods, menopause, fertility, breastfeeding, incontinence, contraception (...).

Why is iT important that FemTech receives attention? 

Because we live in a world where there is one size, and it doesn’t fit all, it fits men. I believe that the statistics are that on average, smartphones are 5.5 inches too big for women’s hands (...). Women are also hugely underrepresented in clinical trials, so drugs are designed for men (...).

Right now only 4% of tech investment in life sciences are aimed for women’s health tech solutions, so I think it is obvious that this imbalance needs to be readdressed.

What are the early challenges for male and female founders in the space?

Well, one of the main challenges is funding, and one aspect here is gender: gender of the founders, and gender of the investors. With respect to the founders,  FemTech has predominantly female founders. This is largely due to personal experience (...). In other words, women identify the pain in FemTech, the problem that needs to be solved, but female founders are underfunded compared to male founders. For example, in 2018, female led startups in the US received just 2.2% of the $130 billion in VC funding that was available.

Now, with respect to the money man, a colossal 94% of decision-makers in US venture capital firms are men, and it’s difficult to raise financing from someone who does not understand the problem and is uncomfortable by the still somewhat taboo subject matter. Writers write what they know, entrepreneurs innovate what they know, and venture capitalists fund what they know.

Another challenge is the legal landscape: healthcare, which includes both digital products and medical devices is highly regulated (...). 

So what are my tips?

1/ Do your homework

2/ Find the appropriate fit

3/ If you are pitching to a woman, first tell a story and wait for the nod

4/  If you are pitching to a male venture capitalist, focus on the money

5/  Emphasize the power of the female driven economy

6/ If you are developing a digital app, leverage the general trend towards digital health

7/ If you receive a snarky comment about being a women, emphasize the profitability of female leadership

8/ Don’t forget the ask

I am very happy to be part of the 50inTech community and to help empower and support women in tech. Please feel free to reach out and speak to me by the platform.

Hi I’m Maren Bannon, I'm the co-founder of Jane VC. Jane is a new fund to invest in early stage female lead startups in Europe in the U.S.

Before moving to Europe and starting Jane, I spent my career as an operator in San Francisco. I worked at large tech companies, startups, and I was also a founder. At university I studied engineering, and over and over again I was surrounded by rooms full of men. I got the idea of starting Jane from my experience as a woman in tech, and recognizing the huge untapped potential of female founders. I want the technology being built to be as diverse as the people on this planet.

Today I want to give founders actionable advice on how to cold pitch a VC.

60% of VCs are white men who went to Stanford or Harvard. If you went to one of these schools, chances are you have a warm connection. If you're one of the other 7 billion people in the world you likely don't have this network, but you still may be building something incredible. This is why we started Jane VC: we decided to let anyone cold pitch us because we believe that access to venture capital should depend on what you're building, not who you know, or, where you went to school. I'm personally a huge believer in cold emailing, calling, pitching. I've gotten jobs, made friends, and acclimated to new countries this way. There's something magical about the way a cold intro inserts you into a new network, and broaden the people that you interact with.

So today, I'm going to give some actionable advice about how to cold pitch a VC.

Tip #1:  tailor the email to the person you're trying to reach. VCs are inundated with emails and impersonal emails are very obvious, so when you're writing to a VC take the time to research that particular investor and explain why you think they would be interested. Have they made investments in adjacent industries? Do they have a past role at a company your competitive sat? Is there something unique about the way they think about the world that you think would resonate?

Tip #2: nail you're one liner. This is the old elevator pitch, it's still highly relevant. You need to be able to describe your business in a ten second elevator ride. You should be able to describe who you are, what makes you unique, and what you offer, in one simple sentence. Until you can automatically and succinctly explain the heart of what you do this quickly you'll be wasting your time pitching anyone. (...)

Tip #3: list bullet points on your traction. This could be users or revenue numbers, notable customers, advocates, angel investors with relevant industry expertise. A bulleted list makes these bragging points easy to skim and gives VCs a quick overview of who you are and why you matter.

Tip #4: make sure to explain why YOU. In this initial pitch you should have a brief description of your founding team. Make this easy to skim, again, highlight which parts of your background make you the ideal people to run this business.

Tip #5: include and ask. Be explicit, why are you contacting this VC? Are you trying to raise a seed round? Are you simply looking for advice? Be very clear about what you're asking for.

Tip #6: include the right materials. Your letter can be very brief to a VC, but make sure to include more information in case it is something that's interesting to them. This could be a deck or a one pager about your company. You could attach it as a PDF with compressed photos, or a link like Dropbox or Google Drive.

Thanks for having me on this episode today, I'm really excited about 50inTech’s mission of reaching gender equality in the tech industry. It's very aligned with what we're doing at Jane.

Hi my name is Alison Murdock, and I am the Chief Marketing Officer at SocialChorus. We’re a work force communications platform that helps organizations connect and engage everyone in their work force and I am based in San Francisco, California. I've worked in Silicon Valley and here in Europe with many startups over the last 20 years, helping them find their super powers and winning.

Having worked a long time in Silicon Valley, I often get asked about the “bro culture” and “How do you manage that?”. With the exception of my own business which I've had for 7 years, I'm often the single woman on the executive team. It's not the most comfortable thing, but I work to be direct and not put up with bullshit. Because bullshit really sucks.

(...)

But, I'm really here today to talk to you about how to build and scale your B2B brand.

(...) Building a B2B brand it’s just as important, and the key difference is that you're appealing to a business person or group that is looking for you to solve a problem; they don't actually make snap decisions and actually they're happy to take a free trial. So, this poses a real challenge to build a brand that is differentiated. What is the same with consumer brands is how you look, and how your product works, and whether you're meeting the promise that you've offered to your customers. This is just as important for B2B companies. Customers want to believe that you can deliver. It's never too early to think about your B2B brand, because you own it, and you can cultivate it, and scale it, and win.

There are three things you need to do to build your B2B brand and it feels like B2C... But remember, we're all buyers who are biased: we make judgments, and we feel an emotional connection to the brand. Just like in our everyday lives with any consumer product we use.

1/ The first thing I would suggest is “write your narrative”. (...)

2/ The next thing to think about is the experience: you have to design the experience. (...)

3/ You get to design this, and you also get to talk about what you believe, this is the third thing. Be vocal. (...)

(...)

Now, how do you scale? It comes down to taking your brand to market and their three strategic ways to scale that B2B companies can do really easily.

1/ One is content marketing. How do you promote your narrative and your beliefs to your target audience? Your company has a story you can craft an editorial calendar and build thought leadership around what you do. (...) 

2/ You can also use PR. PR simply amplifies everything you've done in content marketing and your research might be interesting to a journalist, you never know. (...)

3/ Finally, sales and marketing, so bringing your ethos to prospective customers. They've read about you and now they want to meet you, so your sales people need to be trained about how to talk about your company and what to say. (...)

(...) Marketing also needs to align with your brand. I know first hand how much there is to do in marketing, every single day, and it's really hard. Things can really go off brand; especially in all of the channels and all of the formats that you're producing. But it's up to your entire team in your entire company to: promote the brand, scale it, and be consistent. If it stops working, then, everyone's on board to make the change.

(...)

I am Jade LeMaitre, I am the CTO of Hease Robotics. Originally, I have a background in engineering before I completely fell in love with robotics. That's why three years ago I decided to team up with Max my co-founder, and start Hease. It is a robotics company, our mission is to have businesses to use air ride driven robotics

Today I am here to share something important for me to the 50inTech community, and that is: “as engineers we have the unique ability to build the future you want so, and my mission is, and always was to: put robots in the public where they can solve everyday problems and inspire people like you and me.

We as women, have the unique responsibility to take back this field that was quite dominated by men and make the most: out of our experience, our values, our strength, our resilience. That's not quite an easy task, and I learned a lot of things over the past three years and that's what I wanted to share with the community today.

The first one is, when you have a technological role, or a management for a technical team, you have to have a technical background. It matters because you deal with big technological product, so you have to stay up to date: you have to network with your peers, you have to attend conferences, and read academic papers.

The second advice, will be about the posture of a few women in a technological field. You see in France there are fewer than 1 in 4 engineers that that women. Also, I'm starting to be known in my field; business people still frequently ask to speak with Monsieur LeMaitre. They always mistakenly assume that I am a man, and I struggled with that since the beginning, so that's three years. So no matter how much of an expert in your field you are, no matter how big is the company you are growing; you have to prove yourself ten times and you have to be ready for that so we remain.

It's important to be prepared. Technology is not the only key, non-technical skills also matter, and that's my third advice. Learning non-technical skills will help you understand the challenges that are faced by your startup.

You are a founder, you are not building the technology, you are building a product; understand the ecosystem behind that. You're building a product for customers so you have to understand the fields: marketing, sales, finance; as well. So you are knowledgeable in these fields and you choose the right people to work with you. It will help you to spread the problems early on, and that is something I learned quite early. So my advice would be either you gain this knowledge by yourself or you surround yourself with knowledgeable people that share your values and will help you grow. And when I look back three years ago, I see that the knowledge that was missing for me was, finance. I had no clue about financing a startup, about how you grow a company. I think that was my biggest mistake. 

Shares are not a problem when everything is going well in your company. But your voice has to matter, especially when things are not going the way you want them to be.The journey of an entrepreneur is like a roller coaster, there are ups and downs everyday. So you have to be prepared for the downs, much better than you are prepared for the up.

My last advice and recommendation would be: to not do it on your own. You have to find a partner that will have complementary skills to you. Being a single founder is hard, being two founders is less hard.The survival statistics of companies founded by two people is much higher, and much better. A technical person & a non technical one. This raises the statistics and the chances of your startup to survive