Margit Wennmachers, Andreessen Horowitz: Advantages of Being Technical


Transcript follows & video below

Which themes do you like to invest, what is your sweet spot?

Well the firm likes to make big bets. We’re looking for an entrepreneur that has a somewhat radical idea & who goes after a big market. Within that we are what’s called stage agnostic, so we will write a check for as little as $10,000 all the way up to $100m. We invest at all stages. In some cases it is a young entrepreneur who is out of school or not even out of school who has a big idea. And we feel that he or she has the guts to pull it off & it’s a big market & we’ll put some money in. At the venture stage we will make $3m to $12m investment & someone will go on the board. Then we do a lot of growth stage investments. I’ll give you an example Groupon, Skype, Zynga, facebook, Twitter are all growth stage investments that we’ve done. We like everything that’s related to computer science so where intellectual computer IP is core to the business. Within that it is consumer tech like a Zynga games company but it’s also deep enterprise like some of our stealth investments that do networking or storage or cloud services. So it runs the gamut. What we don’t do is clean tech or transportation or space elevators or algae.

Margit Wennmachers

Best to stick with what you know really, isn’t it? Then you have success. What do you look for in women entrepreneurs & startups that indicate interest to you in investing in their businesses?

I think it’s basically the same thing. It’s absolutely the same thing. We don’t make a difference. In some cases women have more of a knack for design & that kind of sensibility. So that often comes out which is nice to see.

Margit Wennmachers

I heard someone say that if a woman had designed facebook it would have been much prettier.

It might not have been IBMish blue.

Margit Wennmachers

I’m joking. I think it was a joke that made the rounds.

Yes I think the women entrepreneurs that we would look for fit the exact same mold as the men.

Margit Wennmachers

So no bias there, fantastic.

Advice for pitching for venture is often correlated with dating. What sort of chemistry makes for a good match & is a success for both entrepreneur & venture capitalist?

I’m not sure it is like dating & if it were like dating I might not be able to kiss & tell. There is something to be said about the chemistry. The first thing we look for is success factors. Is that entrepreneur, does she have a strong vision & a real backbone to go after a big idea? I think the things we get most disappointed about is when we think the entrepreneur doesn’t have an idea that’s big enough. Sometimes you optimize for ‘Oh I could sell this to Google, Yahoo or whatever’ & those are not the kind of things we like to invest in. We like to invest in men & women who have a big idea & want to go after it. Then chemistry, we have a point of view that a good entrepreneur will know what she wants to do & what she wants to accomplish with the business. She will build the product & the competitive set much better than we do. So we try to be super respectful of the entrepreneur & get involved when they want us to. Be super, super helfpful oftentimes at the tactical level. But really respect the entrepreneur’s vision. I think that ends up creating a good chemistry. Entrepreneurs have a lot of pressure on them already. They have big things to accomplish. You don’t want a venture capitalist who’s up in your shorts all day long telling you what to do & over coaching you.

Margit Wennmachers

In your experience are there many women entrepreneurs that are unsuccessful in sourcing venture? We already know that the percentages of women who are successful are very low.

Yeah I can’t speak for other businesses but when it comes to tech there is a uniqueness when it comes to the technology business. That is that the company & the product end up being very, very closely related. If you look at Apple or all the big companies, the product & the company are almost one. Now what that says often times the technical entrepreneur ends up being the most successful entrepreneur because it is so much about the product. And I think that’s where we run into trouble when it comes to men & women. If you look at the engineering degrees, at least in the United States, the number of female engineers that have graduated has been small & is actually going down which is huge disappointment.

Margit Wennmachers

Yes that’s what’s concerning.

I think that’s why in the tech business you have so few female entrepreneurs. The most successful companies are run by the technical founder. Think about Bill Gates in Microsoft’s heyday, Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison, Mark Zuckerburg. You can go on down the list. There are very few women who fit that mold. I think as a result we see fewer women who get funding. There’s some great exceptions to that. Dianne Greene started VMWare which is one of the really big software franchises. She created a whole new layer in the stack which is admirable. She was & is a great engineer & broke that mold or stereotype. And I think the other thing to consider is that there are more women who are successful in the business. When it comes to that technical founding spot, we see fewer women than we want.

Margit Wennmachers

What can women entrepreneurs/startups do to increase their chances in sourcing venture?

I think that the engineering degree would help. And if you don’t have the engineering degree, be a great product picker. The ability to understand a product & how a product can fit into the market, particularly the enterprise place. Can you extract a purchase order or PO from a big company with this particular product? What does it have to integrate with? How does it have to work to really get that done? I think that there are exceptions where you might not have the technical degree but you’re exceptional at product picking & you’re also exceptional at nurturing engineers because that is just crucial to the process. And there are very successful women who are super, super high up & run technology companies like Sheryl Sandberg who does not have a technical degree but is exceptional. I think the product picking & the nurturing of engineers end up being two important components.

Margit Wennmachers

So there would have to be some sort of visionary element of the product picking wouldn’t there? It would be women who could actually see the disruptive potential of a product or service?

Yes so in the absence of having the technical degree, you can still know a lot about what enterprises are buying or what consumer behavior looks like. How do you make a product not just a product but fit into an overall solution with services & integration points to other products & all those kinds of things. Those are fundamental things to understand & to excel at that may not require a technical degree.

Margit Wennmachers

What sort of challenges do women face if they become a venture capitalist from your experience, although you’ve got a great firm here?

I’ve nothing to complain about, I have to say.

Margit Wennmachers

You’re having fun!

I’m having a great time. It is a really good firm. We have 3 partners here. We have Shannon who runs the Talent Agency. She has a whole bunch of people working for her. She is super, super successful. I think again where a potential issue might arise is if you’re dealing with a technical founder, you’ve got to be able to talk to & relate to a technical founder that makes them respect what else you bring to the table if it’s not being able to talk code one on one.

Margit Wennmachers

Yes, yes that’s a bit of a challenge definitely. Thank you. What needs to happen for venture companies to employ more women venture capitalists? (obviously you guys are ahead of the pack)

We are although, at Kleiner Perkins there are a number. There’s Trae, there’s Aileen.

Margit Wennmachers

Beth?

Juliette and Beth. There are a number of partners who are brilliant women & are very successful in their own right. I think the thing that we look for for our general partners & also our other partners is having operating experience. Because sometimes when you’re talking to an entrepreneur & helping an entrepreneur make the company more valuable & build the business, just having been in the shoes & having the pressure & the reward & the understanding what it takes to build a business. I think that’s really, really hard to fake. If you have a purely financial background, you might be great at spreadsheets & great at the modelling. But that’s not how an entrepreneur lives their day to day lives. So having empathy & understanding for how it works & all the sausage making that’s involved is super, super important. I know that that’s something that we look for with all of our partners whether GP or others. Having not watched the movie, but have really built something!

Margit Wennmachers

That’s a really good image. I’ve been doing a series of interviews with European vcs & European founders & it appears that a lot of European vcs come from financial backgrounds. That appears to be the missing link or the missing piece for women founders in Europe. There are new firms now that are popping up which are similar to what you’re talking about. It’s obviously a crucial piece really.

I think it’s a super crucial piece. Because what happens when you don’t have the experience of having built something you tend to get a lot more nervous when you see the problems. Every startup, every growth company, every single… there’s a lot of hair on all of these situations. So you can either get way more nervous or extremely opinionated & strong advice that might be off just because you’ve never actually done it. So that is something, if you’re a woman entrepreneur here & with the other entrepreneurs in the valley I think you would have a much better chance than if you have a purely financial background.

Margit Wennmachers

What is the key, from your experience, to bridge the gender gap with male venture capitalists, both for women venture capitalists & women entrepreneurs?

Well, the gender gap…I think if women are given a shot, they tend to work hard. They tend to be very team focused. They tend to be pretty good communicators. They tend to be very team oriented. They tend to have a lot of collective female burden on their shoulders. So I think once they’re given a shot, they tend to do really, really well. I think as a group, we do really well & then we support each other. We’re going to make within a generation or 2 generations we’re probably going to make a lot of changes.

Margit Wennmachers

So in other words we are already building that bridge, you think?

I think we’re building the bridge. I think there’s a huge way to go & there’s a glass ceiling. And I think sometimes women can be their own worst enemy. There’s the whole biological clock. Sometimes women put their career on slow burn in anticipation of having to juggle it all & those kinds of things. I would say if you’re a woman, you’re smart, you’re ambitious, go, go for it & don’t stop. Because once you have children or the husband or both you will figure it out!

Margit Wennmachers

Thank you, that’s great encouragement. In the dance with an entrepreneur both in the decision making process of funding a startup & then in working with those startups what are the necessary qualities that make a good venture capitalist. Some of the talents mentioned: Would you trust your gut instincts & feelings that happen within the relationship with the entrepreneur as signs about what’s happening in the business, in the startup? Or would you ‘manage by influence or persuasion’?

Yeah in the decision making process it really depends on what stage you’re looking at. When we’re acting as angel investors, it’s a pretty quick decision & it has a lot to do with gut. Because you really have is an entrepreneur & an idea that is hopefully connected to a big market. But you don’t have any traction & there are no numbers to look at. So it’s very much a gut driven decision. When you’re doing a growth stage investment, there’s a lot of data. There’s a lot of revenue, there’s a lot of how many countries? there’s a lot of what does your team look like? There’s a lot to look at & a lot to analyze so it becomes a much more cerebral exercise. Now let’s just assume your decision has been made. After that once a decision has been made, you’re backing an entrepreneur. That’s it! So you work with the entrepreneur, you find out what she wants to do, what are the challenges, what are the obstacles? You try to help that entrepreneur remove as many of the obstacles as you might find. I think it always needs to come from the point of view of respect & we’re in the same boat. Maybe it’s because of my service business, I ran an agency for a long time but you know I feel like the doctrinal ‘you shall’ tends not to work as well as ‘here are 3 options, here’s how the movie could play out if we do this versus that versus the other. And it ends up being the entrepreneur’s call. An entrepreneur will have a much better time deciding & living with the decision if she gets to make it!

Margit Wennmachers

Thanks so much & thanks again for your time. I’m sure that any entrepreneur that manages to find their way into Andreesen & Horowitz is going to have a fantastic ride!

Send them my way!  Thank you

Margit Wennmachers