Joining the “Dark Side”

So you were at the venture capital firm Accel Partners in the 1990s, the industry was very male dominated back then. It still is, but much more so back then. There were very few women. What made you say to yourself, I want to pursue that path? Yeah, I want to do that.

You know, I came out here to come to Stanford for business school and I thought I knew what venture capital was, but that really wasn't on my radar. My whole idea was, you know, come to Silicon Valley and well, at first I thought, you know, join one of the big tech companies. But then being here in Silicon Valley during the time, literally, I remember while I was in business school downloading the first Web browser, it was still Mosaic, then obviously became Netscape. So it was literally in Silicon Valley during the birth of the Internet. So the draw of going to a startup was very strong. And so I joined a startup that a couple of my classmates had started, a company called Release Software in 1996. And that was really how I became aware of what venture capital was. So, you know, Venture wasn't really on my roadmap, but the idea of being an entrepreneur and raising venture capital was very much on the roadmap after going to Stanford. And through that process I was there for three years. We went through three CEOs in 12 months and that made me think about maybe I should go on to another startup. I didn't know a whole lot. I was still pretty green, but I was like, that's probably not a great sign for my startup. And so I actually went to the VC's on my board. By then we had raised three or four rounds of venture capital and said, you know, look, I love the startup thing. You know my background. I have an engineering degree of Stanford MBA. I've now kind of been through the fundraising cycle here. You have any other startups? This time I'd be happy to come in on the ground floor even before funding. I think I could write the business plan and help launch the business. And one of the VCs on my board said, OK, I'm going to introduce you to three startups that we're thinking of funding or have funded. But I'm also going to introduce you to three other VC firms because he knew my background. At this point it was late 1998 or 1999, he said, you know, most VC firms are raising bigger funds, so they're looking to hire more people on the investing track. Maybe you would like doing that. And so that's how I ended up joining, as the entrepreneurs say, the dark side and becoming a venture capitalist. And I joined Accel in the beginning of 1999.