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Hello LPs! We are posting the audio of our fantastic book club zoom session with Emily Chang here in
digestible, almost podcast form. The discussion was fantastic. Thank you to everyone who joined and especially big thank you to Emily for making time for us. We didn't realize it at the time, but it was right before her big interview with Bill Gurley that afternoon on Bluebird technology. So big thank you for making time for all of us in the acquired community.
The video recording is live on the LP Google Drive. You can find it there. That is linked in the show notes below. We've also posted our
What should we get started?
Yeah, let's do it. Well, Emily, I have, we didn't prepare you for this question, but my first question is a technical one. Do you have a home studio? Like you look so like you're in the Bloomberg studios and recently, how do you pull that off? Yeah, well, right now I'm in my bedroom, but we,
For the first six months, we were in an office, quote unquote, in our house with some bookshelves that were, you know, had to be obsessively curated every day. But that was kind of in the line of too much traffic and we were getting some child noise. So we actually just moved down to the basement with a big monitor behind me and they put up a graphic kind of like this one, the Golden Gate Bridge behind Kashish.
And it kind of actually looks like we're in the real studio. So I've gotten many comments like, are you back? I'm like, no. You're real studio. You have the, you have the Bay bridge behind you. Yeah. Well, we have the Bay bridge behind us in the, on the normal set, which is actually like the actual Bay bridge. This is a photograph of the Golden Gate bridge. But yeah,
It's more like a typical TV studio look, and it's actually working quite well. Our Bloomberg office in San Francisco is still completely closed, so there's no one there. Like most of my colleagues in New York, however, many of them have gone back, the TV folks, but...
We're still here for the foreseeable future. Do you have a production crew in your house or do you do? So I have one producer who's been coming every day since the shelter in place. And she's amazing. I mean, the things that she has rigged up are incredible. And like the first time
I mean the first day I grabbed a couple of outfits, we didn't know how long we were going to be doing this. We honestly didn't know if we could do the show from home technically, if there wouldn't be any glitches. And I've been doing this job long enough that
I don't get nervous anymore unless it's like a huge interview, but I was like terrified. No prompter, no, you know, like you're basically like in a black box by yourself. There's no control room. No, it's basically just someone in my ear giving me guidance. And it, it, it came off.
pretty well, no technical glitches. And like that was the way it was for the next seven months. Well, and then we get to see all your guests, you know, setups. I love the Tim Sweetie, just so classic in this like barren room with an old, I couldn't tell if it was an Apple II behind it. It was an Apple II. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, some setups are better than others. I will say that. Oh,
Oh, man. Well, Emily, it's such an honor to have you here. We were thinking, I mean, obviously you need no introduction, but I think you are our number one, if you're not number one, your top three source for us on Acquired Episodes. And you are the only interviewer that we've ever used a clip that we've spliced in to an Acquired Episode on our Zoom episode when you had Eric go on. Which clip was that?
When you had Eric Yuan on the day of the Zoom IPO, he said the price is too high. I know. When he said that, I was like, oh my gosh. Did he really just say that? Your face is like amazing. But that's kind of what I love about him. I do think he's so authentic and kind of catching that moment was very real. Yeah.
Yeah, so cool. But obviously we're here to talk about Protopia, so thank you so much for joining us. We thought, so logistics, we want to give most of the time as usual to everybody else in the audience to ask Emily questions.
But we thought we'd kick off with two to start. One just kind of fun one. You start the book with this story of the Lena photograph and you track down William Pratt who was running the lab at USC, I think it was, where the JPEG was developed. How did you get that story and find him? So I'm so glad you asked me that question because that was such a victory question.
Because in all of the
limited retellings of the Lena story, he was basically written out of the story. Like his name had never come up. It was always this other guy named Andrew Sawchuck who is still a professor at USC. And, you know, I was scrolling through old message boards trying to find more information. I actually tried to interview Andrew Sawchuck. He declined all of my interview requests, sensing the possible controversy.
And I found this one little post on a message board that said it wasn't Andrew Sawchuck, it was William Pratt, and Andrew was just a student in the lab at the time. And so I mean, it's kind of not that glamorous, but I
LinkedIn messaged William Pratt, who is I think still doing imaging at Stanford Hospital. And I said who I was and that I wanted to talk to him about this. And he was like, sure. He was my student. I was, I was, I was the one running the lab and gave me his phone number and I called him and his wife was in the background and he's like, honey, like, and it was just like a,
He just said what he said. It wasn't a super long conversation, and I really kind of pushed. I was like, but what about the fact, why a Playboy photo, of all photos, would you choose to use as your imaging standard? And he was like, well, first of all, it was just a good photo. And second of all, there were no women in the classroom at the time.
And that was the line that ended up. I loved it. That line in the book, I just read that. I was like, holy crap. Like that says everything right there. Yeah. Yeah. So he, you know, I could never get a hold of him again. So I honestly don't know. I have no idea what his reaction to it was, but it's a perfect example of how
It wasn't intentional necessarily, but it was this unintended bias that basically stacked up on itself over the years and that image became so influential. I don't know if anyone has seen that image in there. For those of you who have a technical background or maybe studied this. I think I remember it from a college textbook. Yeah. Yeah.
For especially women who might have been looking at that same college textbook, it's kind of alienating when the main photo that you're using as the standard is the photo of a naked woman. Some companies like I know Google banned it in 2004 or something. So some companies kind of caught on early, but it's still out there. It's still used in presentations. And it's just a perfect example of the things about the industry that need to change.
It's funny because in the book, when you describe the initial image, I was like, oh, I'm surprised I've never seen that. And then you get to the part about in order to make it sort of more acceptable to be used as the standard image, they cropped it to the shoulder. And I was like, oh, I've 100% seen that image. Yeah. And I actually got my hands on the original Playboy version.
magazine from that time and I was just like I cannot believe this was just hanging around in the lab and that the students were just looking at it for fun. It was just like imagine if that was in your office. Yeah, I mean the crazy thing is like you know in your book and reporting like we know being in the industry five years ago it wouldn't have been crazy for that to be in a startup office in Silicon Valley in 2015.
I'm sure it still is in some, let's be honest. Yeah, let's totally do it. Yeah, that was one of my biggest thoughts reading the book was I can't believe, like in some ways, all of this stuff feels like just yesterday, like especially all of the Uber blow by blow. But in other ways, it feels like it was a million years ago. Like there's a, if, while much of the industry is still the same, it feels like we've made so much progress since the stories you write about toward the beginning of your book. Yeah.
Totally, I would absolutely agree. Like, there has been progress, there have been movements, the #MeToo movement, the Black Lives Matter movement, but so much has not changed.
you know, I, for example, I just did an interview with someone from Glassdoor and they had put out a list of the most, I can't remember the exact name of the list, but it was the CEOs who have performed best in COVID. And I think there was like one woman on the list and it was just a little bit tone deaf.
How did you make this list? Like, how do you get these reviews? Like, we know women in leadership are more well liked and, you know, face more criticism. So if there's a, you know, a female leader who is getting bad reviews, are you digging in like one more level to find out where that is coming from?
And so they actually did follow up and came out with a new list. We did that interview of companies that are performing best on diversity and inclusion. And I think that they got the message.
And they're trying and, you know, you know, in my daily work, I'm kind of always trying to figure out when to make a point about it. You know, I don't, I don't want that to be the only thing. I mean, it's not the only thing I cover, you know, we cover, you know, everything about big tech, but I also want to use my platform as, you know, an opportunity to, to, to make sure that people are thinking about these things. And I think generally when people come on the show, they kind of know they should be prepared for a possible question on this issue, but yeah.
And that maybe in itself is good pressure that these are something that all companies should be thinking about and leaders should be thinking about anyway. Yeah. Well, definitely want to open it up to everyone, but we had one other question for you. So folks, everybody get your questions ready. And I'm not seeing the hand raise function working for me. So I don't know if you're seeing it, Ben. It sounds like you are. Maybe you moderate. No, I mean, maybe it went away with...
Yesterday's Zap platform announcement. We need to install a Zap. Well, we'll figure it out in moderation. But speaking of Zoom, do you have a sense, Emily, what... I mean, that was the biggest thing to me reading the book again was just like, wow, going to a strip club at lunch, but going to a strip club, nobody's doing that anymore. Yeah.
Do you have a sense of how things are? You know, I feel like the Zoom reality is probably solving a lot of these issues, but I don't know. What are you seeing?
So I haven't been to the Gold Club recently. I honestly don't know. You're not a frequent patron. I definitely think that there has been a wake-up call. I know that the party scene itself, the Chapter 6 sort of culture has calmed down or it's a little less public than it was in general in terms of the numbers like yesterday.
they're barely moving and that's the reality. And in some cases they're getting worse and they're already low to begin with. I think there's certainly more awareness, but like awareness isn't enough. We need to see substantive change. And you know, it just, it's like, it's just requires hard work, dedication and focus. Like it has to be a,
priority and it has to be a priority for CEOs and the, you know, I think employees and, you know, everyone who's not a CEO, you all have more of a voice than you ever did before at your companies to, um, you know, amplify these issues, you know, amplify the things that you care about. But in the end, if leadership doesn't buy in, then, then nothing is going to change. Um,
There have been, you know, all raised the group of female venture capitalists that have come together. You know, that's been an amazing, you know, some of those women, you know, I've known them, you know, for 10 years now. And like, it's incredible, the partnership and the fellowship and just how vocal they are now because, you know,
10 years ago they didn't want to do interviews or talk about this at all. Now it's like, they're like, I'm happy to talk about this. I'm happy to be a voice on this. I realize that it's important. But Maha Ibrahim, who is one of the VCs who is part of All Race, told me, she's like, I don't think we're going to see meaningful change for 10 to 15 years. So we have to be patient. But think about how long that is. Like, okay, in 2030, let's reevaluate. Right?
Because of the long cycle of like, at least in VC, like you start as an associate or you got to be a founder and be a successful founder and then come in, like you got to earn your stripes somehow before you're a decision-making GP. Yes. Yes. I mean, it's good to have like a reality check. Like we can't be expecting, you know, huge changes in the numbers next year, but it's also a bit depressing that it is going to take years.
or it could take that long. And you know the industry is changing now. I mean so much innovation is happening now. We need women and people of color to be part of that innovation and developing the companies and the apps and the services that are going to be changing our lives and shaping our future. So that's why, I mean that's ultimately the reason this is so important.
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It's like Amira, I think has figured out the hand raise function. Yeah, at least on my screen, I see an option to raise a hand. Well, thanks again. Emily, I'm just curious about the journey in writing the book and what inspired you to write it. Obviously, when you got started, the environment,
looked so different. And so I'm curious just to dig in and have you tell us about sort of that first stroke of inspiration for writing it and maybe a couple of fun stories along the way in terms of the journey and, you know, things that stick out in your mind is like, I can't believe that happened while I was writing this book. Well, you know, it was an issue that I had always cared about and, you know,
Some of the women who are very powerful, who I would have on my show in the earlier days, like didn't want to talk at all about being women, didn't want to talk about the lack of women and would do these interviews and then get off the set and be like, but oh, my God, it's so horrible. I'd say, well, why don't we talk about that? So there is that happening. And I started becoming more sort of.
courageous about just asking a question about this to every prominent male investor or CEO who I had on the show. And one of them was Mike Moritz, who you read about in chapter five. And I wasn't honestly like trying to trap him or catch him in a bad moment. It's more like you just want, you just want to make sure that people are thinking about these things. And I said, you know, why don't you have any women partners?
And he said, well, we're looking very hard, but we're not prepared to lower our standards. And like when that hit, when he said that, I was like, it was like a gut punch. Like I was like, oh my God, did he really just say that? And it was again, sort of kind of like the William Pratt comment. It was a moment of truth, right? That's how he felt. You know, they feel like in order to find and hire a woman, they would have to lower their standards. And they are most certainly not looking hard enough.
And that was that moment that interview started to jump in. But the woman he did reference who was their summer intern was one of my Stanford classmates. And so like in the Stanford GSB class of 2014, that interview got shared around so much and everybody was just like,
Well, I won't speak for her, but she didn't go back. Do you know her reaction to it? What was her reaction to it? I never asked her directly, but her name's Amanda Bradford. She's the CEO and founder of The League now. So she's been wildly successful. I mean, crazy journey. But yeah, I mean, we were all just like, whoa, holy crap. Yeah.
Yeah, and the fact that like an intern was the only person he could think of, like, come on. And so that to me was kind of, the reaction to that comment is what made me realize that there was something here. You know, everywhere I went for like three months, people wanted to talk about that interview. They were like gasping about that interview. And it wasn't all just people thinking like he had said something horrible. There were some people who were like, I totally get what he was saying.
Someone literally said to me, "We just have to wait 20 years." And it's interesting in terms of the process of writing the book. I have some amazing colleagues who are very talented. Ashley Vance, who wrote the book on Elon Musk, and Brad Stone, who wrote the book on Amazon. I think some of them have been on- You're naming all of our sources. Yeah. I love them. They were super helpful in me navigating this journey.
Brad connected me with his book agent and was like, "Pitch your idea." And so she's in New York, in the New York publishing industry. And I tell her my idea and she's like, "Nah, I don't think so."
And I kind of was like, okay, you know, she knows better than me. And it's not like I didn't wake up, you know, I didn't like, I wasn't born and I wanted to write a book. You know, I care about this issue, but it wasn't like I have to do this. And I kind of thought, okay, she knows best. I'll just keep on, you know, bringing this up in interviews. And then a week later, she called me and she said,
I was totally wrong. I just talked to an editor. She's been trying to find someone to write this book. She worked in publishing and she went to the tech industry for two years and it was so awful. She came back to publishing and decided she wanted to find someone to write a book about women in tech. So I didn't have to do like a whole book proposal. Like book proposals are like 50 pages. I had this three page description and they...
we basically, you know, sold the book basically on that idea and honestly had no idea where it would go. It was before Me Too, before all of these stories started pouring out. And so all of that was, to your question, that was sort of happening as I was reporting and it was like, you know, trying to keep up with the roller coaster. There was just so much information and change and they wanted the book out now, but I was like, but it's happening now.
And so that ended up being the biggest opportunity and the biggest challenge. Yeah. How did you figure out when it was time to ship versus like? Well, I didn't want to ship ever. Like I was like, I'm recording on this. There's more.
Or, you know, I've got a pile of tips on my desk and they were like, we need this book out now. So in fact, they actually pushed the publication date up. It was supposed to come out in May of 2017. They pushed it up to February.
but they let me write to the very last minute. Like the publishing industry lives in the Stone Age. Like books that you get, like they were done six months before they go on sale. And I'm like, that does not work here. Like there's like stuff happening up to the very minute. And so I think I finished it in the end of November, but like the Shervin Peshawar story, which I broke was, that was the last thing I was like, I need to get this in the book.
And that was sort of the end of November. And they basically ran it to the printer and started printing the books. And then you did a second edition a year later, right? Yes. So I did a paperback edition with an additional, like an afterword talking about some of the updates and stuff.
Did you have the Stuart interview and Slack in that? Because I didn't remember that in the first edition. It is in the first edition. It's the ninth chapter really focuses on Slack and Stuart. And then the afterward really focuses on kind of the results of the Me Too movement, the Google walkout, for example. I, you know, the Christine Blasey Ford, Brett Kavanaugh,
hearings were happening at the time that I was writing that. So I incorporated that as well. And it was kind of, again, it's like an example of how far we've come, but how long, how far we still have to go. Yeah. Miz has his hand up, but Ben Greinel sent me a message. I think, Ben, you had a question. So we'll do Ben and then Miz. Yeah. Thanks, David. Thanks for all the thoughts in the book, Emily. And
Yeah, it was really interesting to read. So I'll give a little preamble before the question. I had the experience, I guess I went through the experience of a
pretty heavy bro tech company, if you want to call it that. A lot of the people that were working at the company came in without experience at previous tech companies before. And so they're pretty green and they were young. So their benchmark for what is acceptable was non-existent. And
The mindset within the company was everything you had written about, minus like the eye-opening thing as a side in the book was the strip clubs and all these parties. I was like, what? There is this world? Because I live in Winnipeg, so we're pretty removed from that. I was like, this is insane. But that's neither here nor there. What ended up happening at the company was anybody who aligned themselves with this bro, like this bro-topia mindset and aligned themselves with the founders,
male or female were basically celebrated and anybody who went against the grain and was like, this is not acceptable. It caused major contention within the organization. And so I saw, I saw it with like, again, remove gender, remove any background. Anybody who subscribed to that, that didn't previously would come down on everybody else in the company. And it created the most toxic work environment. And so it's,
So my question is two parts. One, how do you stop this from spreading? I was in a leadership position where I didn't subscribe to it, and it was interesting.
how do you stop it from spreading? And now I've seen anybody who's subscribed to this, they're going to other startups now and they're carrying this forward. And I'm like, no, you're spreading, you are literally spreading the disease right now. And I don't like, I don't know what to do other than to try to like spread the word of kindness and respect. So I don't, I don't know if you've got any feedback or advice. Yeah.
So I'm sorry you had that experience and it's disturbing to hear how alive and well it is. I think that the easiest way to stop it is to start from the ground up. And when you're starting a company and building a company, just to start with the understanding that you need to have an inclusive culture and
talk about your values and build that into the organization as it grows. Like that's the easiest way to make sure that you don't get there and that doesn't creep into your culture. But obviously if it doesn't work, if the people who are starting the company don't understand that, if you're at a company where it already exists, I do think that, you know, like I said earlier,
you as a leader and employees have a louder voice than ever before, but you can only do so much. I do think that places can change and places can, people can change and things can be changed from within. But you sort of have to decide how much, how loud you've screamed and whether, you know, you're tired of it and, you know, no progress is being made.
like you can vote with your feet and go to a company, the talented people who care about these things will go to the companies like Slack, for example, which, you know, you've got Stuart out there saying he cares about it. And Slack is not perfect, by the way. You know, I've talked to a lot of employees at Slack, but I do think that they're trying really hard and doing a lot better than almost everybody else. And that's the reason they've got so many talented people. That's the reason they have such a huge black community.
And other black employees want to work there because they see people who look like them. And then it's harder for other companies to get them because they don't have any. They don't have enough representation. And so I realize this is probably overly optimistic, but the hope is that the good people will go to companies that care about this. And therefore, those are the companies that will succeed, not the companies like
the one you're talking about, those companies will crumble from within. I mean, I think if you look at Uber, you know, the Travis and the bro culture and the bad things about Uber culture really damaged the company. And, you know, they're working, they're working, you know, new leadership, working hard to change, change things. But I think it hugely damaged their actual growth prospects and took them on a detour. And, you know, maybe they'll get back to where they wanted to be. But, you know, it's a perfect example of how
damaging this can be. Yeah. Did you ever try to change it? Like, I'm just curious what you tried to do and what the response was. I know it's hard to put yourself out there and seem like you're not aligned with the management. So without going too deep, I was willing to expose myself and
like being right in line with the founders. I was willing to take the exposure and take the backlash to somewhat like protect, if you want to call it that, protect anybody from below to say like, they don't have to subscribe to it. I'll do what needs to be done and just like prove with results. And I think like to your point of
Building from the ground up. That's the only thing that I've been able to be able to rationalize myself is like, I guess you have to do this. The challenge was there was no other game in town. Like it's a smaller community. And then to make it worse,
results and high performance of a company not of people just results of a company and exits and all these things reinforce the bad behavior so it's like pat pat yourself on the back as a founder we're doing great and when you keep getting quarter over quarter ridiculous growth and you're seeing it like to this day there's earnings report that came out about this company and it is
absurd. What does it do? It just reinforces like, well, of course, of course, meritocracy and of course crushing it. And like all these words that you're like, dude, don't write, but it just, people think that they're doing right. And it's like really unfortunate to see. So product market fit hides so many sins and like,
Sure, the sins we're talking about, but it also just masks less reprehensible behavior of just poor operating, like being pretty bad at your job, but the product that you launched, you just nailed it and tons and tons of people want it and it's just growing and it can teach, it can just reinforce all kinds of bad behavior because you can say, but it's working. Right. Like Uber. I mean, perfect example. Yeah.
Yeah, that was, well, we'll move on to other questions. But for me, that was one of the big things, again, especially rereading the book after the past few years is like just how much, you know, success in tech in Silicon Valley.
Due to a lot of things. Sometimes it's despite the decisions made at the companies and yet people start to feel like we're talking about, like you point out, Ben, that the success was because of things they did. Right. It's creating causation in your mind out of correlation. Let's go to Miz and then Anna.
Sure. Yeah. Thanks, Emily. Loved the book. And on that meritocracy note, Ben, I think that if there's one chapter that's probably one of the most important ones in the book, it's the meritocracy one that I wish Silicon Valley was a college course that everyone was required to take as a prereq to learn about meritocracy. Because there's a lot of companies say just
Seeing what other companies have done and believing like we're a meritocracy. We've got to do this right without the lessons learned So that chapter in particular is a good takeaway. But anyways on to the question, I think The timing of this book was really interesting. I read it back to back with Ellen Powell's reset. They were like a one-two punch and
I thought I knew everything going in, but definitely opened my eyes between the two of them as a combo. I was at Uber for most of the ride. And particularly remember a lot of the all hands meetings early 2017 when Lydia and Anna are getting up and asking these questions and then realizing in the book now that they were at your apartment at the exact same time in this like focus group was kind of eerie. So...
Question theme number one, which Ben and David alluded to earlier, was just like the timing. Did you realize where we were at? Did you realize what was going on in the bigger cultural moment? And I think you spoke to that a little bit. But even more importantly, I think the...
I don't think we've gotten there yet. I think we all agree on that. But what I think is happening is that a lot of these smaller startups, younger founders are coming in, seeing what these companies have done and really trying to emulate that. And it's hard to see that because they're not getting the big VCs that are involved there. They're kind of on their own doing this like work hard, sleep never, sleep in the office, hustle our way through this.
And there's one part of the culture that's like wellness matters. Ariana's telling everyone to go sleep more. And like, we're getting that. The culture is changing. Zoom has changed things. But I kind of think your approach of like,
We can try with the VCs. The LPs are a completely lost cause. And I think you kind of left that chapter open-ended, right? You kind of just said like, they're not going to change. The quotes from them are like, we just care about the results. So want to hear your thoughts there. If you had somewhere to add there on the LPs. And the second part is like, I think to the point I made earlier about smaller companies. And I think a lot of this comes down to inexperience to younger founders. And like having been working now for 10 years, I look back at the things I saw early on that
you know, I like to think I'm one of the good ones and like tried to do the right thing along the way. But it is hard to see how like when you're in certain circles, you look at things with a different lens. You think that this is what this culture is about. And I worry now that that's even, things are even more insular. We're pushing it further underground that like if you're really not trusted, you're not in the circle, but the culture is still alive and well. And there's a reaction to like
the media, like they're going to write these stories. We're going to keep doing what we're doing and we're rich and we're in the right circles and we can do this. And so I'll stop there. Yeah. Yeah. I love it. Thank you. So first of all, right now is a very interesting, we're obviously an unprecedented, very
very fascinating moment where you know, we're all doing this on zoom and I think there's a huge opportunity to actually be more inclusive in this environment invite everyone into the meeting but also the danger that like people are just so much more easily excluded and it's harder to get time with the person who needs you need to to get that upward mobility
And so I think that's something that companies really need to be conscious of. Like this could go either way in a lot of situations. Like I've talked to Sheryl Sandberg about this and she's like very worried that, you know,
you're not going to get that sideline time that you might have with someone if you were passing them in the office that might help you get the next opportunity. Whereas, I see Kenderson Cassidy is the CEO or the founder of the board list, which helps get women and people of color on boards. It's kind of like she's more middle of the road. She's like, I actually think this is a huge opportunity and kind of a level setting moment where, you know,
we're all kind of on an equal playing field and in some ways we've had more intimate interactions with everybody on our team than we would have if we were in the office. And so there's possibility there for positive growth. To your question about Anna and Lydia, so yes, I realized at the time
what was happening, but I just had no idea how big it would be. And I remember that night, like it was literally like a week before I, I, I was getting close to being finished with the book. And I realized after Susan Fowler that I did not, I had not done enough to talk to the women engineers who were in the trenches. Like I had focused on,
and Susan Wojcicki and Marissa Meyer and Aileen Lee, but I had not talked enough to the people on the ground.
And Tracy Cho quickly helped me put together this group of people who just happened to be available and interested in coming on a Sunday night. And when Lydia and Anna showed up, I didn't know them personally, but I was like, oh my God, I cannot believe they're here. It was literally the weeks after Susan's post and they were so...
refreshingly open. And because they were so open, how open they were made me realize just how bad it was, right? They were fed up. They, you know, wanted to talk about it and wanted to, you know, do what they wanted
could to try and try and make change. And so I'm super grateful for that. Like, I mean, without their voices, the book would not have had the impact that it did. And it, it, you know, required a lot of people opening up and making themselves vulnerable and, and, and, and putting them out there to your question about LPs. Um,
Again, probably a little overly optimistic, but now I've heard more and more investors like venture capitalists saying like, we're not going to take so-and-so's money if they don't, if I don't feel like they share our values. Right. So, you know, for example, one investor told me that, you know,
Some LP was like, how do you do it with three kids? Oh my God, crazy. She's like, I don't, like what? She could just sort of sense like he didn't believe she had the ability to be a good mom, a good investor if she had three children. So she was like, I don't need, I don't need it. I can tell you too, this works both ways where like VCs are,
And Emily, I believe every word that you reported in the book, it's been my experience more recently that LPs care a lot more about in your fundraising material, seeing performance, strategy and story. And how are you addressing the systemic problem? Because it's I think it's showing up in a lot of their KPIs as they're measured internally in their organizations, too, at least on the institutional side.
So I agree with you. I agree with you as well. Like, I think this, the movement has become so much bigger and it is touching, touching
you know, more organizations than ever. And so there certainly are LPs that are thinking more about this, that are trying to invest in women and people of color and thinking more about the people than the obvious results. Like they do want to make money, but they also want to make money by doing good. Yeah.
I'm not sure if Ella or Anna was next. Let's do Ella and then we'll do Anna. - So this is, my question is kind of strangely timed with the previous question, but I was kind of reflecting back on a similar chapter where you talk about VCs and how there's no quote unquote like industry code of conduct. And I'm kind of curious about this notion that
I've heard other kind of like anthropologists, sociologists discuss, which is there seems to be a decline in kind of maybe traditional moral values that America has experienced over the past 60 years that maybe would have
not necessarily guided every decision that people make, but there was definitely a norm of here's what is commonly acceptable and this is kind of agreed upon behavior and you don't really step outside of that. And in my own life, I've seen that there isn't that kind of framework. It's kind of depending upon the school that you go to, the college that you go to, the people that you interact with, people have their own values and their own kind of code that they live by.
And so even these kind of KPIs that you're discussing, they're definitely specific to the industry and specific to the individual founders in terms of what they care about. I'm curious if you've kind of thought about that and if there's almost like a moral reckoning that is happening in America where we're realizing maybe it's time to reevaluate and kind of think about the implications of that in the workspace and when it comes to building your own family or whatnot. And if maybe
like social corporate governance is going to step in and kind of replace those values that maybe we would have commonly shared 50, 60 years ago? - That's a really interesting question. I mean, I actually think the pandemic could have a really big impact here and,
Community is almost coming back in a way that we didn't have before. Your local community is more important than ever before. Making sure you have your work set up
for your employees works for their work and their families more than ever before. So I actually think right now you have a lot of places reevaluating these codes of conduct. There's been some disagreement I know in the VC community about whether there should be some sort of central like
VC, like HR or kind of external organization that could handle complaints or, you know, some people don't think that is very necessarily productive and it needs to be inside each of the investment firms. Like I do think that
human resources and people management is really, really important. And building those functions into your company earlier in their life cycle is something that companies need to be thinking about more. Like, you know, I think in, I think in the book, someone says, you know, once you get to 50 people, like you should have someone who's really thinking about this, but you know, maybe it's, it's, it's even earlier. And certainly at this time, like,
where our whole way of interacting with each other is been exploded and it's changing dramatically. You know, how the sort of SOP or standards of procedure and how we proceed is really important. And it's important to be intentional about it, not to just like figure it out on the fly. Anna? Yeah. All right, Ben is moderating in the chat. We'll talk from there. Cool.
Thanks for all the great discussion so far. So I'm kind of curious about
the conversation as it is unfolding in today's climate and not necessarily with regard to coronavirus but more around this tendency that we have towards polarization in our discussion especially in online media um and i think like increasingly there's this cancel culture where people are afraid to speak up because they're worried if they even say if they use the wrong
you know, acronym or if they say something that's no longer in vogue that they'll be canceled or they'll be made an example of. And just from my own personal experience, so I was actually doing an MBA internship at Google when the James Damore memo dropped. And I was
It was literally in my last few days when Sundar canceled the town hall because it was just too contentious. And I came back to campus and, you know, everybody was talking about this in the current state. And so a lot of the professors wanted to have discussions around diversity in the workplace and sexism in the workplace.
And I found that a lot of my male colleagues were unwilling to kind of engage in a deep level in these conversations because, you know, what they said, I don't know exactly what they were thinking, but what they were saying was like, I don't have, I don't share these views. I don't have this problem. And I noticed that the only classmates I had who were willing to engage were
were saying some things that might have offended their female classmates, but they were engaging in an open manner because they wanted to learn. And like one classmate in particular that I'm thinking about, he did, he was willing to engage and he had many conversations and changed his views and now is like one of the greatest proponents for like advancing this conversation in the workplace.
And so I just wonder if like this fear of speaking out because you don't want to be labeled by accident as, you know, something that you're not is damaging to the conversation that we're having today. Yeah, absolutely. I, I definitely agree that first of all, we're not going to change things if it's a bunch of us like-minded in a room talking to each other about it, right? We have to be willing to engage with people who have different views and
maybe don't believe this is as important as we believe this is important. I mean, you're all here, so maybe you're here for a reason. I assume probably most of the people on this call, like, believe this is important. We also can't, you know, men and women need to be part of these conversations. And I also think that we have to create safe spaces to have these conversations.
I was very careful about not, especially in the book, not like stringing someone up on a stick who maybe said the wrong thing. With Mike Moritz, I caught up with him a few times and he doubled down. And so to me, that was like, all right, this is what you truly believe. I realized these are people, many of these, like the Indian, for example, the
the like bad guys who've been exposed as hard as it is, like understanding these are people, they have families, they have careers. I think one of the really interesting things that's happening now is what's going on with which, you know, Coinbase and Brian Armstrong have revealed this kind of potentially like great divide. Like, are you going to be a company where you are,
allow your employees to address these issues and debate these issues in the open or are you not? And, you know,
who's going to be on the right or wrong side of history? Is there really a right or a wrong way? And I think it's an interesting debate that's worth having. Like should, you know, Google, I believe, you know, they have so many different like little groups and organizations where you can meet with like-minded people or debate things. But should it be at a town hall with Sundar? I think in that situation, I mean, that was like...
super content I think it's really important to hear from the CEO in that moment and to hear I think part of the reason they shut it down is because there are a lot of leaks and Google wasn't confident that like things that were said in what was supposed to be the privacy of Google wouldn't end up in the press and you know it's such a huge company that it is it's really difficult to do that and I think when you're creating like like we've seen a lot of leaks out of Facebook and Facebook employees recently that didn't happen before and I think that's because
their culture is having, is struggling more. And so you have people who are discontent and want, like, don't feel like the loyalty that would have necessarily prevented them from sharing that stuff with the press. You know, and I think, you know, what people, people, you will decide like whether or not you want to work at these places and what, you know, plenty of employees left Coinbase, but a lot of people stay.
And I also, I do see Brian's point, like these things take a lot of energy and they're exhausting to talk about. But he also has to understand, like I'm sure you saw Jack Dorsey's tweet, like cryptocurrency in itself has major societal implications. There are huge groups of people that could be left out of this movement. Like you have a responsibility if this is the product that you're building to talk about these issues.
And so this is like all happening in real time. And you see like, I mean, I interviewed a few CEOs and asked them about this and I'm getting both sides of the issue.
You might be able to guess what they might say based on who they are. That's the craziest thing right now is that you can guess. Basically, if someone were to toss out an issue right now, I could tell you where everybody's going to come down. There's no undecided voters in this world. I don't know. Look, that's a problem. It's the polarization. It's hard.
I can sort of see Brian's point if he's gonna take on cryptocurrency related activism, I can sort of see that and accept that. And if you don't wanna work in that environment or you don't feel welcome, like go work somewhere else like Slack. It's a war for talent. I mean, everybody needs good people, wants good people. And so,
you know, you can make a decision based on your values and the values you believe your company holds. I think the Brian Armstrong example is actually goes even further towards the polarization, like the fact that he felt a need to draw that line and he couldn't just internally handle. I'm assuming there was some pressure internally from employees to publicly support some causes that they care about. And I think the fact that
Instead of explaining, you know, the checks and balances or the weights of like spending your resources and your energy in one area versus another internally that he had to like draw this line in the sand is just another example of the extreme polarization that we have right now. Yeah.
Absolutely. You're totally right. And I see the comment in the chat that yes, some people just took the money and ran. Like maybe they wanted to leave anyway. Maybe they were taking a personal stand. Like we can't necessarily assume that all the people were leaving because they disagreed with the direction that the company was taking. But, you know, I don't have all the answers. Like people and companies and CEOs are struggling in real time. I met, I mean, he was probably, he's probably been struggling with that one for a while. And I was just kind of like, I'm,
I'm taking a stand on this and we'll see who sticks around. Let's do Lucy. You have next. And then also Emily, I want to be, if you, if you have a hard stop at, at 12, we'll, we'll let you have a hard stop at 12. Cause I have a show at two. I'm sorry. Fair enough. You have a good excuse. Lucy, what are you, what are you closing this out here?
Yeah, so I just was curious if prior to writing or the book writing process, if you had, I guess at the time, unknowingly held any gendered views that I guess throughout the writing process, you realized that that view changed for you following publishing Brotopia. Oh my gosh, absolutely. So first of all, like, I'm not perfect. Like, I'm not unbiased. Like, we all have unconscious bias.
And like even me, who's like a super hardworking mom with four kids, like I'm constantly amazed by the things other women pull off. Like, you know, I was interviewing the CEO and founder of this smart breast pump company, which unfortunately is not around anymore. They had three kids. They were like,
living in a rental, they like gave up their rent so that they could put more money into the company and she, you know, went on a road trip and basically lived out of their van so they could keep their company going. And I was just like amazed. And, you know, I'm sure there's plenty of guys who do that, but like, you know, I just, for me, it was like even more impressed. Like why, why wouldn't women do this?
Like, certainly. And, you know, I think we all have to sort of fight our internal biases. And in terms of, like, company building,
You know, if you just focus on unconscious bias training and trying to make people aware of bias, you're not going to have a huge impact. You have to give people the tools to combat their bias, which is why you need, like, you know, standard questions for every interview candidate so that you're not, you know, giving some person a hard interview just because they don't look the part and some person an easy interview because they, like, went to Stanford and majored in commuter science and came in wearing a hoodie.
We all have to fight that and I think the best way, especially within a company is to make sure that you have all of the right processes and standards in place to make sure that those things don't happen. I have to constantly think about it as I tell stories and decide who to interview and who am I giving my platform to. And we often at Bloomberg, we want the CEO, like when we're doing an interview, we want the CEO, but CEOs are mostly men.
So, are we willing to interview the female head of sales or something like that? And it's always like, okay, often like, well, I'm giving this woman an opportunity. I'm telling this woman's story. And to me, that's worth it. Because our representation of the industry is also going to impact whether or not there's change. Yeah.
Thank you, Emily. This has been a awesome, well, thrilled for me, for me and Ben and all of us, but, um, yeah, it's such a, um, well, we're just so glad to be able to do this and, you know, and, um, hopefully, yeah, this probably is an echo chamber of like-minded people who believe in this already, but, uh,
It's just a good reminder, like, to take it back and, you know, fight in our own organizations. And just so folks know, it's not totally an isolated echo chamber. David and I have taken some heat on Twitter for some comments we've made recently, you know, supporting Black Lives Matter, saying that there's too many white men in the stories that we're interviewing, things that we think are kind of no-brainers. And we've, I mean, we've had our first blowback tweets and, you know...
Proud to get them, but I guess the community is now large enough for these are not universally held. So don't be dissuaded by the fact that everyone here might be too like-minded and it's not worth your time because I think it is. Absolutely. And nothing's going to change if we don't keep fighting the good fight and sometimes it'll be hard and sometimes you maybe you'll be surprised by the things that you can change. Yeah.
Emily, thank you. Thank you. Good luck with the show today. Thank you all for coming and reading and caring and believing, even if we're all believing the same thing or share the same values. I think that's great. And I'm grateful for it.
