hello my name's Scott Carey and I'm an editor over at tech world I'm joined
today by Lillian Lee Lillian is an investor Eight Roads Ventures but she is
also the co-founder of diversity VC thanks for joining me today Lynn thank
you Scott very welcome so I think the best place to start is to get a little
bit of an idea of your kind of career in VC or how you ended up in VC so where
did that part of your career start so I think like most VC as I kind of fell in
DC everyone says everyone says that and I feel like if you say you didn't for
him to be saying I was I'm a bit suspicious yeah I wonder where exactly
exactly so um I'll sort of jump into kind of three years into management
consulting at that point I had done a bunch of private equity cases and was
semi convinced that I actually had no skill set like private equity and was
like okay so this at least I know how to do so let me go and try to get a job in
private equity and like any any good consultant I've you know tried to get
into a role repeatedly actually ended up going for seven or eight different
interviews with different PE funds and all of them very wisely said no to me
and I think that was actually a great decision on their part but back in back
at that point I was like oh my god I don't think that's gonna work out but
maybe before I quit let's try this one last thing that the headhunt had put me
up for and I went in and the experience was completely different to all the
other interviews you know they just wanted to get to know me get my thoughts
on technology and then after two weeks I got an offer and at that point I was
like you know this is great they had no idea what they got themselves into and I
very happily rocked up on my first day and sat in their management meeting
their Monday morning meeting where you never sits down and sort of discuss the
deals are on progress and then I had all these terms like liquidation preferences
and cap table and you know at that point I was like okay so these are terms I've
never heard before I have a sneaking suspicion I'm not really in private
equity and that was a day I discovered that I
actually landed OBC instead excellent so you landed in BC I think you went and
then it is still over Salesforce ventures it is yes and now as I
mentioned earlier eight roads so how did you end up at eight roads and kind of
what is your focus at that fund yeah good question so I ended up eight rows I
think as a part of evolution of having had a really great SAS enterprise focus
when I was at Salesforce doing just that across Europe I wanted potentially to
widen my scope of investments but he is a bit more and after talking to you you
know after being the industry and talking to a few more VC funds I felt
like there was a really great connection with the arrows team and I think this is
a bit more about kind of the acros mentality there very thought for the
very analytical which sounds a bit different to kind of the general BC type
and I think that's what I kind of very much appreciated about on the team they
think very deeply and they're very humble and they would invest at the
series B level but across every single sector as long as they think there is
you know defense ability and there's proven product market fit and also
ability to scale from a sales and marketing perspective then again we get
very excited so I was so just very much loved the people that you know you sort
of just sit exactly exactly I meant you know life is life is short so spend it
with people that you like working with and after talking with everyone I just
felt like it was a place that I could really learn a lot from yeah great and
in 2016 you got involved in what is now called diversity BC can you tell me how
you kind of got involved with that project and what work you have done
there in the last two years right so this started off quite organically I
don't want to make my left sounds haphazard again it was something I fell
into my approach to life is usually to say yes when when people come along with
with something interesting started off when I took over organising
these ladies and VC's dinner because there some
like I should need help organizing and I was like okay yeah sure I'll definitely
help and at one of these dinners I'm at check who is my co-founder and check
loved the dinner and the dinner format was kind of very kind of these small ten
to twelve women having a very kind of informal chat you know what will be
seized and but the topic wasn't about deal flow it wasn't very much just like
let's just connect as people and afterwards check came to me and we had a
discussion about actually you know this is kind of what we felt was missing in
the industry we kept on going to all these industry events so kind of
standing around you know sipping wine and then discussing how busy we all were
and how you know the deal flow was was these days and felt like you know there
was actually a lack of diversity in the in the VC market and it would be great
if some some organization could do further to promote that from a more
holistic way rather than just doing these dinners and so at the time the
vision was them kind of all sort of haphazardly from a few of us just like
split bowling and then we again the more we kind of reiterated this message with
the market and also it appears the more resonated and people drawn and put their
hands up and say Ashley have you thought about internships have you thought about
entrepreneurs have you thought about all these other components that we had never
even thought about before and so currently the focus has evolved and has
shifted but very much focuses on kind of building up the VC community building up
you know connecting entrepreneurs of diverse backgrounds to the VC network
and also encouraging students to hear about VC and jointly see as a potential
career option as well as actually fundamentally providing data on what has
happened and I think that wasn't a key focus for as the beginning that's
actually really become a very big focal point and sort of where I've been sort
of slightly involved from a distance and and more so this year which is the data
gathering for what does the VC landscape look like
the UK initially we came out with a report about two years ago on what is at
random makeup of male to female we sees in the UK and this year we're gonna
release a follow-up report which we'll be looking at not just the gender ratio
but also split across additional factors such as educational background
employment ethnicity to sort of really think about holistically about the issue
of diversity and that's something you know I've been working quite a lot on as
well as my fellow co-founder Travis as well so giving Travis a big shout out
for the great work he's done that's yeah I think it's interesting that VC has
traditionally been a very opaque business people don't really know how
what the inner workings are and I think there has always been that kind of gut
feel that it's not the most diverse industry and what the reason I came
across diversity VC is because of this data gathering we now have some insight
into the actual numbers behind what we felt was the makeup of the industry and
I think that really helps increase the transparency of the industry which again
will help boost that diversity and inclusion piece there in terms of the
work that you do in your day job over over at 8 roads how do you as a fund
think about diversity they're not just your internal makeup and how to you know
watch each other's bright spots and things i but also who you invest in and
and and maybe diversify your portfolio as well because we've seen more from the
u.s. that that is a good business practice as well as a good thing to do
yeah I mean I think is a great great question and I think there's many
different ways to think about diversity as I've kind of alluded to you and us
follow up reports and we think you know that needs to be considered holistic in
their portfolio often it's a bit constrained by the stage where investing
where seriously is a slightly later stage so unfortunately we're a bit more
cat with the company that's already coming through the funnel but for sure
it is something that we definitely look forward encouraging of and we have found
that one of the few best before income you tend to have very diverse teams and
it is something that we would actively try to be helpful with especially when
the topic of recruitment comes up but for a senior management team is you know
well we can as we sees can be very very helpful with but I think it's it's
really about kind of thinking about the whole issue a bit more holistic and
nuanced way and what does that mean you know not just looking for potential
external markers of diversity but really kind of going through that person's
background they're thinking okay great what has this person gone through in
their then life that gives a good education that they could be a really
great fit for the job regardless of you know they might not look on papers as
potentially the best option I remember talking to one of our really great ex
venture partners who is one of the cofounders of ServiceNow and I asked him
you know he was a top sales lead and I asked him what do you look for when you
hire for Sales Lead firstly for a portfolio company is and you know for
yourself and he's like you know I look for this hunger to prove yourself and
that is not you know have it to any benchmarks and yeah that doesn't matter
what you know exactly and I and I think that is the fundamental this
open-mindedness is what we've sort of talked about which with my diversity is
not getting stuck and the sudden signifiers but really looking at the you
know intrinsic value underneath and trying to get to that and we definitely
truly try to bring that in all of our conversations and even in the way we
look at companies yeah I think a lot of these these kind of macro ideas are a
gray and it's great that we're talking about this a lot more now
I think the having the data having the transparency opening out those networks
so the dinners but also what comes from those dinners is you know you start
building out this network of women in BC I know that there's a big what's that
group it's true and things like that but what do you think more on the kind of
operational level I know that feeling over at Blossom who we spoke to earlier
for this series and they're very keen on focusing more on their cold intros and
opening out the ability to pitch them because that means you get more people
in the door that you wouldn't traditionally you know get from the old
boys club networks yeah such and such so what do you think
about those kind of smaller kind of more operational aspects
of trying to broaden out diversity and inclusion in the industry for sure I
think you know for us we often have a very outbound approach when we when we
get access to companies so you know for us we will be actually reaching out to
interesting companies regardless of you know where we sorry not so much
regardless but they they don't need to be referred to by a network for us to
have a conversation with them I would you have your themes your expertise will
reach exactly and a lot of the companies that I'm talking to you know I don't
even know who what the management team looks like and we reach out to them and
that does bring a really diverse field of people great and in terms of kind of
the the industry while you've been in it you've been kind of in BCU at six six
years now oh gosh four years four years now I would like to think how are the
industry changed in those four years because I think you know since 2016 in
setting up the first AC I'm sure things have changed drastically what have you
seen changed like that yeah I think that's really been both on the startup
side and on the VC side there's been huge changes I think there's been a lot
of new VC is coming through and the micro VC space new funds are being
launched every day with people from you know way more diverse backgrounds now
more so than ever more female we see setting up their own funds like Ophelia
as we mentioned and funds really making a very proactive effort to hire more
diverse intakes you know we like to think we contributed to that diversity
VC but but it's just so encouraging to see that this is a topic that everyone
is thinking about and talking about and people are taking notice to sort of
think how do I make my team and my portfolio company is more diverse
because actually that is a formula for winning in the long term and also is
just the right thing to do and eventually on the startup side I
continue just to be incredibly impressed by the quality of company that's finally
coming I was having a chat yesterday with someone else who's sort of been
doing it for a while as like sort of say like long enough to be dangerous but not
long enough to be you four and we're just still discussing now
you finally get the ecosystem going you know you have these founders who's then
you know had great exit they have the expertise and the team have now started
building the second generation or the third generation of winners and now
they're just doing everything so much faster they have all the learnings from
before and they are much more likely to take risky that's with what they're
doing and so that's so encouraging to see and the level of knowledge is just
getting higher and higher every every single day when I talk to founders you
know you really see that they understand what is possible and they really want to
go after it and they don't always want to go to the u.s. they want to build a
local business here in Europe they want to think about expansion and not just to
the US but also in Asia you know and that global mindset is also really
really encouraging to see your kind of background is in enterprise software
software as a service that's an industry that traditionally has lacked female
founder figures a lot of the companies that I cover on a day to day basis are
the sales force the Microsoft's the only ones I can think of are kind of Safra
Catz at Oracle and Diane Greene formerly of Google cloud do you see more at the
early stage now of that Enterprise SAS market do you see some female founders
coming through now that perhaps weren't there in the previous iteration I
definitely think so and I think this is again due to the growing firstly the
growing ecosystem of of kind of the big tech players coming up to Europe
training up these fantastic enterprise leaders who then sort of want to do
something of their own but that's definitely something I'm seeing as well
as it's incredibly encouraging you know two years back I would always sort of
spend 90% of my week being the only female in the room and I know it's so
great whenever I pick up the phone and there's a female out at the end and you
know it's I mean not at the end of the day still judging them on the quality of
their work but it's just nice to sort of see that you know traditionally female
founders seemly to have limits they're much more limited Enterprise more
focusing on the consumer and that's just kind of changing now and I think that's
the knowledge coming through perfect I think that's a perfect note to finish on
so thank you very much for doing yesterday Lynn thank you very much Scott
yes