“I want inclusive teams because the returns are higher. It’s been estimated that if women had the same access to venture capital as men, GDP alone would increase by six percent. No other single factor could increase growth of our economy in that way.”
— Sharon Vosmek
Sharon Vosmek is the CEO of Astia & Managing Partner of the Astia Fund ($100 million) and a founding member of Astia Angels. Astia is the pre-eminent organization working to ensure the success of high-growth start-ups founded and led by women. Sharon is well-known around the globe for her opinions, research, and commentary on the importance of women leadership being integral to innovation and high-performing entrepreneurial companies.
Her work began in the political sector, where she worked for US Senator Dennis DeConcini. She became very interested in global economics and women’s economic participation, in particular, the policies and roadmaps that were available to ensure that women successfully participated in the economy. A chance meeting with the founder of Astia, Catherine Muther, at a dinner party paved the way for things to come and Sharon was appointed CEO of Astia in 2007. Under her leadership, Astia has grown from 20 individuals in Silicon Valley to a global community of more than 5,000 investors, entrepreneurs, and industry leaders that make up its investment ecosystem today.
In this episode, Sharon goes in depth to describe the extent of the under-investment in women-led companies venture capital firms and cites a number of studies and some very interesting statistics on how much money seems to be left on the table by doing so. We discuss at length what she considers to be the shortcomings of the typical VC investment approach as well as race and gender bias in the VC investment community.
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Castbox, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform. You can watch the interview on YouTube here.
What was your favorite quote or lesson from this episode? Please let me know in the comments.
SCROLL BELOW FOR LINKS AND SHOW NOTES…
SELECTED LINKS FROM THIS EPISODE:
- Connect with Sharon Vosmek: LinkedIN, Twitter
- Astia
- The Body Shop
- American Express
- White House Women’s Entrepreneurship Conference
- Asia Pacific Economic Cooperations Women and the Economy Summit
- Food First
- Global Exchange
- Cisco
- Documentary ‘Something Ventured’
- Babson College research
- Portola Creek Capital
- Toniic
SHOW NOTES:
[00:00] Episode intro and a quick bio of the guest; Sharon Vosmek
[02:58] What we will be discussing in this episode
[04:11] Sharon describes her role as the CEO at Astia
[05:22] Her interest in women’s participation in the economy when she worked for the US Senate
[07:30] Sharon describes her family background
[11:36] How Sharon came to join Astia
[14:24] How meeting Cate (Catherine) Muther at a dinner party was transformational to Sharon’s future
[20:00] An overview of Astia’s mission and its theory of change (“why this matters”)
[23:18] How GDP would increase if women had the same access to capital as men in the VC space
[25:25] Sharon shares eye-opening statistics around investment in companies with female CEO’s or founders
[33:13] How does investing in companies with women in leadership roles or founders deliver better results to investors?
[36:23] Typical failure rate that Astia benchmarks against
[37:17] Overview of Astia as a VC fund
[40:27] Astia’s Expert Sift™ investment process versus the typical VC process
[49:55] Sharon’s research about the importance and the power of networks
[01:01:35] The single most important challenge in the VC space at this time
[01:02:25] What Sharon knows about VC investing now that she wishes she’d known back when she started at Astia
[01:03:30] Lessons learned from an investment that didn’t go as planned
[01:08:05] Advice to anyone wanting to get into the VC space with a sustainable and responsible mission
MORE SHARON VOSMEK QUOTES FROM THE INTERVIEW:
“Doing what you’re good at isn’t necessarily what you should do. ”
— Sharon Vosmek
“Investment – especially Venture Capital – is really personal…trust flows very poorly against gender and race. Building that trust is essential to make the investment happen. ”
— Sharon Vosmek
“I think Venture’s greatest challenge, if it wants to be relevant to this next set of problems that we have to address: climate crisis; pandemic; health; growing population… it needs to professionalize itself and grow up. ”
— Sharon Vosmek
“We should never underestimate the power of that body of research that shows that, when we are presented with facts that challenge our assumptions, we don’t learn from these facts, we become further entrenched in our assumptions. ”
— Sharon Vosmek
“You must have an introduction. So you’ve got to know someone who knows VC…then they do a first meeting. And I can tell you having sat in many of the first meetings, the first meeting goes like this: Do I like you? Are you attractive? Do I feel good when we talk to each other? Do you listen to me? So it’s all very bias-laden assessment in that first meeting”
— Sharon Vosmek
