>> good evening, everybody, and welcome to tonight program hosted by the commonwealth club of california. my name is maria lazzarini and i am a market president for the northern california division. we are delighted to support tonight program. the commonwealth club -- can hear me? the commonwealth club convene some of the most informative and thought-provoking conversations from world affairs to the workplace. these forums support learning and engagement in our communities, and a raise awareness of today's critical issues. right now if you turn on the news or check your twitter feed, you'll see there is no conversation more timely than to nights discussion on gender equity and fostering work environments were egeland has

the opportunity to thrive. i've been with bank of the west for over 35 years. so it's quite fair to say that i see many changes in the financial services industry. one shift is the increased role of women leaders in banking for instance, bank of the west ceo was named one of the most powerful women in banking by the american banker. other executives at our bank our head of small and medium enterprises, michelle, our general counsel, vanessa, and our head of community and csr, ginny florez, have been named as influencers in the areas of specialty. our parent company is committed to gender equity, and half of its board members are women. so i'm very proud to represent a

company that supports a culture of respect for all of its employees, one that is focused on ideas and business so that we do what is right for our customers and our community. and it is my hope that the conversations we have tonight inspire all of us to support each other and have a safe environment for women. and now it's my pleasure to introduce emily chang, author of "brotopia: breaking up the boys' club of silicon valley." emily is a well-known anchor and executive producer of bloomberg technology, and regularly speaks with top tech executives, investors, and entrepreneurs, as the host of bloomberg studios 1.0 series.

she began her career as a news producer at nbc in new york, then moved to nbc's affiliate in san diego where her reporting for msnbc won her five emmy awards. she spent several years in beijing and london before joining bloomberg. emily is a link in influencer and the number of the lien in community. she was named one of the top 100 influential tech people on twitter by business insider and 100 most influential tech women. emily is a graduate of harvard university and sits on the board of the nonprofit organization build. moderating tonight program is

gina bianchini, founder and ceo of mighty networks. pixie was previously the ceo of ning. ladies and ladies and gentlemene join me in welcoming emily chang and gina bianchini. [applause] >> hi, everyone. hello. you can tell she is a journalist used to doing the interview, but tonight i get to do the asking of the questions and i'm pretty excited about it. >> have also interviewed jean about five times so she is excited to the tables on me, put me in my place. >> thank you all for being here

tonight. i think this'll be a wonderful conversation. i don't know if you guys know this but emily just wrote a book, and it's called "brotopia." it is wonderful and it's about women in silicon valley and technology. so i thought we could start tonight with a question, that's so important that most startup founders, most people who are going to be raising money get asked, which is what important truth do you believe on which very few people agree with you? >> well -- >> i'm not done. given some of the jaw-dropping research and statistics that you found in your book, really around this radical idea that

women should actually have equal opportunity and could contribute to silicon valleys success, success in the technology industry, not just women, people of color, women of color as well. i was just curious where did you get such a radical idea? >> you know, it was quite radical at the time pick i started doing this two years ago, so this was before trump, before me too, and people would whisper about it. we would talk about off-camera and then when you get people in the chernobyl was hit with a really had to say. because it's scary to speak up. nobody wants to be the whistleblower. what he wants to be the complainer. a woman who is raising money doesn't want to risk not being able to raise money because she is calling out investors who are 93% male, and yet everybody had the sort of ideas about why

women have been left out of the greatest wealth creation in the history of the world. just a few numbers. women account for 25% of computing jobs, 7% of investors% of investors. women led companies get 2% of funding. 2%. let's just marinate that for a second. people would have just about why this is happened, like it's a pipeline problem, everybody deserves to be where they are women just don't want to work in tech. they think it's boring. and then when i i went back ani started doing some research i realized, in fact, women were part of the computing industry in the early days. women were actually not the hardware makers but they were very involved in the software of the early computers. because educated women were encouraged to study math. there were plenty of female

programs to go around. they programmed computers for the military. they programmed computers for nasa. think hidden figures, but industrywide literally. in the '60s and 70s as industry started to explode, , a job speaking higher status and higher-paying and, quite frankly, man one of those jobs. so the industry was so desperate for new talent that they hired to psychologists to develop a personality test to identify good programmers. they decided that good programmers, quote, don't like people, which is interesting. there is evidence to suggest that people don't like people are better a computer than anybody else. there's also no evidence to suggest men are better at computers than women. but you look for people who don't like people you will hire more men than women. that's what the research tells us. these personality test were widely influential and used by tech companies for decades, talk about companies as big as ibm, and it perpetuated and

solidified this idea of the antisocial mostly white male nerd stereotype. that has existed for decades when it comes to engineers, entrepreneurs. they are looking for people look like mark zuckerberg, and executives. unfortunately, that has shut out more than half the population. .. it is not just the right thing to do. it is the smart thing to do. silicon valley is controlling obesity and what we read, how we get around, how we communicate, we shop and for an industry that is transforming our lives nearly every day the people making of products should not be 95% male.

we're talking about a problem that is not just silicon valley or tech problem but this is the world problem. this is a cultural crisis. i also have three sons. people always say i have daughters i care about well, i have sons and i really care about them because i fully believe that their life will be better in a more equal world but yes, all the parents other sons and daughters with their daughters to succeed in this industry it will not stand a chance if the industry doesn't change. >> this is an extremely well researched book and one of the things you did was to really go into the statistics and go into the research. you mentioned one stat of men being, two steps, being 90% of venture capitalist and women getting 2% of the venture capital dollars at least in 2060

numbers and i'm not sure that it really changed in the last year. >> uber has made 20 something billion dollars. rent the runway which is run by an amazing female ceo, jennifer, has raised $200 million and she's one of the most successful female ceos. the amount and you know's in the capital you raise if you raise more money you get so many more changes to figure it out. you have so much more time and so if a woman is getting 10 million and a guy is getting 100 million will have a better shot? that system. >> yes. >> so -- >> what were some of the other statistics in your research you were like oh my god, why isn't anyone talking about this? what are some statistics not talking about? >> first of all it wasn't always this way. in the 19 by 1984 the mac perks were coming out in windows was interest world and women accounted for 37% of computer science degrees.

that has plummeted to 18% and it has remained flat for the last decade. there has been no progress in the percentage of women in computer science. that was number one. the number two statistics is how quickly women are leaving this industry. when i started writing this book a male investor said to me you don't have a book and it's very obvious women just want to be at home with the kids and its biological want to take care of their kids. that is the answer. and so i just nodded. >> what it ousted he invest in? [laughter] >> women are twice as likely to quit tech as men are but they're not leaving the workforce they're not leaving to take care of their children. they are leaving to go work in other fields. women are eight 100% more likely to be jobs in technology than in any other field. when i saw that number is 807% i

was astonished why isn't anyone talking about this? and so for an industry that loves data the data tells the story. >> what is the one thing that as you were because were talking about research and data because we are in technology and we should probably know these things but what do you think it is that makes these numbers so easy to ignore? >> i think people believe that silicon valley is a a meritocracy anyone want to change the world can do it here and the reason i call the book bro tobia is because it signifies the idea that silicon valley is a modern utopia where anyone can change the world and anyone can make their own rules they are man and if you are woman it's incomparably harder. >> as i was reading the book i felt like the name of the book or the subtitle is breaking up

the boys club and it could have been subtitled damned if you do, damned if you don't. i think that one of the things that was so fascinating is the way in which you captured not just the research and the research is pretty clear in the steps preclear but the day-to-day experiences of women working as engineers and working as executives and working as startup owners in one of the quotes is it feels like everything i do is wrong. how does that happen? what are the different ways that those stats become a reality because it's not it's not just like any women who are working in silicon valley. these are women who graduate 50% or 52%, i think it is, from ivy

league schools and come to silicon valley and are dropping out at significantly higher rates. what was -- when you did 300 interviews, 200 interviews how did that experience come into being around everything i do is wrong? >> so, one of the most impactful moments of my reporting was two weeks after susan fowler hosted her blog post that went viral and she was an engineer at uber and she had a very bad experience of sexual harassment at uber and she was proposition for sex on the first day of a job and by her male manager in which you show the screenshots to hr they said we won't let that slide because he's a high performer. she wrote about it and everyone it seemed was shocked and i had

12 women in tech over my home for dinner two weeks later most were engineers and some were from uber and they weren't shocked at all. one of the -- it so hard to describe what these women go through but the best way that i can think of describing as they are the only woman in the room over and over again all day long and it is exhausting and they are fed up and they're frustrated and they feel like they have to constantly perform this emotional labor just to prove that they deserve to be there which is a full second job and there are studies that show in a reference them in the book that women code gets a better grade than men's but if you hide the names but if you reveal the names women get worse greats. that's just one example. >> i think it was 25 more% common on their peer reviews. >> absolutely but at the same time they love their jobs. they love having their

opportunity to change the world and so the industry just has so much work to do to keep them here. at that dinner people were sharing their stories and some of them really powerful and shocking stories but it goes to the level of bad behavior, not just been tolerated, but normalize. at uber, for example, women would be invited to strip clubs in the middle of the day by their milk managers. there to position that weight, do i go where work will be done there and they decide to get this project for that project but i'm also put in is incredibly uncomfortable position or do i not go in that i'm the untold kid that doesn't get the next hot thing? >> damned if you do, damned if you don't. >> exactly. >> whether it was at the dinner or as you talk to other women in the course of reporting on the book what has struck you as the most insidious way women are

kicked out of the arena? >> i think it is just so systemic that the level to which women are outnumbered i also think that a huge part of the problem is that many men believe they have to lower their standards in order to higher women. and they don't say that out loud except in one instance which is the reason i decided to write this book. i was interviewing a venture capitalist name michael moore it, chairman of sequoia and perhaps the most successful venture capitalists ever pretty invested in google and he has had a storied career. he's had some failures as well. i actually think he still around because he's trying to make up for that. and at the time sequoia had no female partners. this was in november 2015 that i interviewed him. he said to me you know, he is talking about how i asked him

which was interesting how do you identify a good venture capitalist and he said i think it's very difficult to sell from someone's background if they're good at investing which is interesting to say of all these permits. he himself started his career as a journalist and then got a chance to do investing and he ended up being an incredible success. he no female partners in his business and i said what is responsible the tire women? i was expecting some sort of can't answer because he's very well spoken and he said to me well, we are looking very hard and were completely blind to gender, race, sexuality and we think it's not enough women are studying computer science and they need science degree to start but what were not prepared to do is to lower our standards. i was like did he just say that? because to me it was this moment of truth where he said what

probably a lot of people unfortunately believe but no one is willing to say it. and that is part of the proble problem -- at least not on television. i think that's where the problem. everywhere i went the next three months people wanted to talk about what he had said. those people were horrified and some people understood he was coming from and but unfortunately it is that attitude. if that is what people think then of course women will not catch a break. >> you made a lot of friends. you made a lot of friends there. [laughter] >> if you judge sequoia only on infections they didn't hire a woman for 44 years but you can't tell me that in 44 years the best venture capital firm couldn't find a single woman to. >> yeah, you're right. [laughter]

actually, when i was coming up as a school in 2000 i was incubated at the country sequoia and when they were interviewing me and i was reading the partners i think one of the partners i think it was mike moore it said he said we once hired woman and it didn't and did very well for us. this was 2000. they had a long time to look. >> so, in addition to your great relationship with sequoia capital, you have also got a bit of attention for an excerpt from the book that was published in vanity fair about silicon valley sex parties. i was curious as i was reading the book at which first of all if you read the excerpt and have read the book the book is really

nuanced and very thoughtful about the topic of sex parties and the topic of getting invited to -- i thank you described as conference room g or a strip club around the corner back the club selma which is the center start up land and they have a plate. it is the cheapest lunch in san francisco, 5-dollar all-you-can-eat buffet. at 11:45 it's a hot lunch spot and employees called conference room g. 11:45 a.m. on a friday i show up with a female colleague who has agreed to accompany me on this very dangerous reporting mission. there's a line out the door of tech workers for lunch at a strip club. >> in that context what was the

most jaw-dropping story that was shared with you? >> i mean, there are so many. >> i mean, that made it into the book. >> staying on the strip club example i immediately confessed this came to our table and i said i'm a journalist and i'm just asking some questions and you mind and she was super helpful. she was like yeah, tech people all these copies are here all the time and the common groups of mostly guys and sometimes there is a woman tagging along for whatever reason and they talk about work and they will be with her boss after the big tech conferences the executives will walk in the door with their special badges and people flock to them and they make go to a private room together in business is getting done in the middle of the day in the heart of san francisco at a strip club. we are talking about -- sexism exist in every industry but in

silicon valley this is supposed to be the most progressive industry in the world. it certainly is the most powerful industry in the world. and yet, the people who have connected the world and organize the world information in our building sometime in cars and trying to take us to mars when you ask them what can we do about hiring more women in diversity they say it so hard. i don't know how we will solve. and so one of the really important reasons i wanted to write is simply the hypocrisy of it but on top of that i fully believe that the people who are taking us to mars and connecting the world have given us rise at the push of a button they can hire women and pay them fairly. another step for you the pay gap in silicon valley is five times the national average. if you control job title experience in geographical location in the pay gap is 5%.

it's 28.5% in silicon valley. at the very least you can look at the data and we love data and pay women what you're paying them in. it seems pretty simple. and to be fair -- >> some tech executives have said i will make up for and were going to make up for the. >> yes, there are good people in the book. i was that was really the best part. there are some amazing founders, female funders, and i talk about katrina lake founded do to fix, on a personal style and service in the first 50 investors she talked to said no and ultimately one said yes and she just took the company public at like a $2 billion market cap. nobody believed in her and when you're pitching to mostly female

investors it can be hard to understand it. there are great men in the book many of these men are on the third of company have really changed their ways and willing to admit it so i interviewed the cofounder of paypal who admitted to me early on that he only had people he knew which were other mail students from university of illinois. as a result the paypal via became this popular works in the world but all men, not a single woman. at is that company he did the same sort of thing and it became pretty froze and unify the people and double down on culture and by the time he got his third company and not everyone has a chance to do, as

we know men get more challenges but it affirmed that he's focused on hiring and prioritizing and promoting women. he's willing to talk about this. i made mistakes and i'm doing things that really now. drew butterfield the founder of slack, he has made this and he will treat about it and every time he treats he gets a spike in impulse interest from venture capitalists. by the way telling people you care about diversity matters to the people who care about diversity. and, you know, he now has 43 and half% women at the company which is far better than industry average. it is not perfect. peter ceo dick costello at his latest company he decided not to hire another man until he hired a woman and vice versa. he knows that if you go too far in way too long for trying to focus on diversity it's too late. in fact, it may be slower in the

beginning but as you go on if you can move quickly because you don't have to go estimate on the streets if they like your product. just as women in the room. there's a lot a reason to make sense. >> another one that was not in the book? from sales force. >> it's a long time and they did it conference of pay review but they have equalize the salaries and company because salesforce can do it everyone can do it. >> how do you feel, again, and reporting the book, how did we get to the latest culture of bros customer one of the things that i would observe having started my career on wall street and then coming into silicon valley really pretty early on having also grown up here it wasn't always like this.

even the latest series of bad behaviors it wasn't always like this and what seems to be the case is also one from a number of venture capital firms that have come out explicitly saying we only want to invest in essentially men who looked like bill gates and mark zuckerberg. you have a tremendous amount of first-time founders ceos who are also getting a significant amount of money in the term unicorn coined by eileen lee did not exist as a term in a thing for six years ago, five years ago. and then there has been a number of different trends and things that happened where you say this in the book is fantastic which the social network was supposed to be a cautionary tale not like

a guidebook and it wasn't like a how to movie and so i'm just curious if as you looked at either in the course of reporting that have gotten worse and some things that have gotten better and how has that progressed especially given the last nine months where in another way that silicon valley has led the charge and been innovative and pioneering really pioneered in part because of reporting and others stories of sexual harassment and assault? >> by the way, the #metoo movement started in silicon valley with ellen, doing her venture capital film and susan fowler and then you seen since the cascade of allegations which

have been month for harvey weinstein. the company i want to talk about is in reference to the first part of your question is google. google's numbers are much like the industry average. 30% overall women, 20% women in technical roles. in the early days larry page and the founders of google focused on hiring strong women and they hired some amazing women like susan to build their ad business and is now the ceo of youtube and convince google to buy youtube. marissa mayer who developed the user interface with the birchbark that we all use many, many times every day and sheryl sandberg who scaled the ad business and when on to do the exact thing and facebook. and as google grew and went public and exploded over the first decade of 2000 they simply lost focus.

they weren't focused on diversity and they were focused on filling the seats in their focused on getting through the financial crisis and in 2012 they lifted their heads up and they were like oh my god, where are the women? in the numbers have plummeted to the average of everybody else. i think that is a perfect example of what can be done when you make it a priority and again not just the right thing to do but the smart thing to do. look at these amazing women and what they did for google and i don't think they got enough credit for it. this needs to be a top priority, one, two or three. this can be something that is number 15, well, we care about that. there is too much talk and not enough action at all but it certainly goes to show that not only is a possible but it makes business sense and there are plenty of studies to show that companies with diverse

leadership have better financial returns and again, for an industry that lost data to the data. so, we have spent our first 30 minutes here together talking about the dark topics. dark data and dark topics and what is the triumph that you found in reporting your book? i actually think susan, cheryl, marissa are great triumphs. what are the other times he found? >> people like trina lake, jennifer hyman who is the ceo of rent the runway and [inaudible] who has been talking to gina about this she lived it. so, you know, i'm humbled that you feel like i've done the subject justice. at the end of the book i am playing six teenage girls we've all learned how to code and they

are so excited about coming to this amazing industry and winter park to change the world but they read the news and they know what is going on it over and they heard about what they did about going to the strip club. >> i learned something is her seat about him as wellin your book. he asked his girlfriend at the time if she could find other women to bring in to threesomes which i don't feel has been reported in terms of yet another way in which that company really seems to have led or built a great culture from the top. [laughter] >> the reason that i included that and i really wanted to make sure that i was focused on things that affect work. if you dig too much into people's personal life it may

not necessarily be relevant to the culture that is created. travis, at the same time that susan fowler was getting harassed by her manager, went to a strip club with several other uber executives in seal and as i spoke with his ex-girlfriend she talked about how it was easier for executives to get close to him as a shared his lifestyle. again, that lifestyle might shut out some more but if you are the uber hr and you get a complaint from an engineer named susan fowler and at the same time you find out that your executive went to a strip club in seoul you might not be so focused on season dollars. you have way bigger you know what to deal with. at the end of the day when they did that comprehensive they hired eric wooldridge to do an

investigation of sexual harassment, overhead 47 cases of sexual harassment. i talked to other ceos and is not common, 27 cases? there should be like one. eighty-two at a company of that size? that is a culture gone really wrong. but we talk about bright spots. i really -- i feel optimistic about the new uber ceo and i have met him and when i told her i was writing this book and there's stuff you may not like in it they were wholeheartedly like we are grateful for what susan did everything is brought about very important cultural change and i do talk to cooper employees and they say that it is different. i believe that with the right leadership in the right compass companies can change even a company of that. >> i agree. i think that we've seen it and reducing cultures change.

you mentioned this in the book that facebook in its early days versus facebook after cheryl joined in as a skilled up the skilled up in a different way and google skilled up and it's been fantastic. one of the questions we got from the audience is what advice would you give a woman graduating from college entering technology wanting to be an engineer? i would say look for a place that will support you. you don't need to take the hottest job on the block. look for a place where you feel shares or values and where you thank you can find your team because having your team within an organization is important and people who will support you and people who advocate the. it was interesting when i had those women over for dinner i had that startups must be worse culturally because they are

crazy and there are no systems in place and it really depends on your manager. it is like playing russian roulette. if you get a bad manager you are screwed. if you get a good manager can make all the difference in the world the matter what is going on around you. two women its first fall persist but there are good companies out there who are thinking about these things a lot and find those places. in the story -- >> in the stories you have done but also beyond we have talked about some of the bright spots, give us three more. >> you know, jack dorsey at twitter is the ceo of square as wellin his doing interesting

things about hiring and promoting women where the new woman is hired onto the engineering team he will put her on a team that already has women she's not alone on the team with men and there is a second there because there will be more teams that are all men but she's able to then build that network and once she has it never can go to other parts of the company. speaking of twitter one of my favorite chapters of the book that we haven't talked about very much is the eighth chapter where i pose this question what if women build the internet and what if they had had an equal seat at the table from the beginning and what might be different. i interviewed ed williams was the cofounder of twitter and i asked him if women had been involved in the founding of twitter with that online harassment be a problem and he was like, yeah.

we weren't thinking about that and we weren't thinking about how our product be used to send deference. we were thinking about amazing and wonderful interval things that can be done with our product. when cheryl got to facebook they had only 66 million users and she started asking questions about the content that left him aside and said why would we leave this racist joke up or something that's violent with women and these are questions that literally no one had asked for in mark approached it from more of a platform perspective and she approached it from an individual perspective. she was like what is this person going to be like in their dorm room if they see this online? as a result she had a dramatic impact on the content policies and i think that is why facebook is not perfect. they have a lot to work on. it's just a much more friendly

place than twitter is. i think there's an interesting lesson there because mark made as much space for cheryl she made for him and it is resulted in a really partnership that really works. i think that might have been to. do you want more? >> i mean, you've got -- we need a couple. >> actually, this is a great question from the audience and i think it's relevant to one half hats off to you because all the questions for coming in are great, great, great. how will we solve this? what will we do about this? this is also really indicative of the fact that we work in an industry in this room where we solve problems every single day and you've done a normal job of documenting the problems and keeping the data in the research front and center.

what was so cool to me is that we all get to solve this and it really does have all the characteristics of not only something solvable but a tremendous opportunity and those are cultural values that we have as an industry that we can tap into and take advantage of. along those lines i think this is a fantastic question which is what our shared characteristics of women who don't leave the industry -- who are staying in the game and who are seeking to check this culture and challenge this culture, call this culture and look for solutions based on this culture? >> so, i thank you are a living testament to that. >> was not looking for that but i will take it. >> confidence, vision, motivation and these are all

characteristics that they like to see in mail on viewers and if they see it in women they doubt it. that is what the research says. i think number one we need to fund more women but i think about all the women who never got to start the next facebook. if women -- maybe we do have another facebook or google or apple maybe the internet would be completely different and maybe we wouldn't be all voyeurs and other work world. we need to fund more women and we need to fund more money so there companies stand a better chance and we need more women to be hired in venture capital firms to go out and start their own funds and we need the lps from the venture capitalist to start caring about this issue and historically of these limited partners to fund venture firms they care about returns and so i have put in here from an lp who says some of the best

investors aren't the best people but they have the best returns. therefore, we invest in them. >> and he pointed out that the majority of lps are actually women. >> that was really interesting. i expected that the lp community would be is not first as the other community but there are more women around than the lp community which i thought was interesting and they often say they don't have power because at sequoia they would have the power to get into those and they do have some power. they do have it to change it. buying all of that and it's all of this and. right? it comes down to ceo. first of all, the female ceos that i mentioned like katrina and i think her workforce is close to 50, 60, rent the one way is 70% women and minorities such as having women in leadership position it repeats itself. the attract other women in the attract first talent but since

of the people in power are meant i think it is incumbent on ceos to make this a priority and some of the things that they have done it slack for example, if you focus on raising awareness that that is the issue are trying to combat a subconscious bias by reminding people of what, you're much more likely to sell woman short that will not have impact. if you give them tools on actions that they can take to combat their own bias that can have an impact. for example if you are doing interviews maybe you don't start the interview until you get a qualified female candidate or candidate of color. you are doing more structure review and feedback and simply the way it can be -- you are asking your employees to source diverse candidates and referrals are really the lifeblood of an industry and in some companies they pay their employees for referrals. if you're for someone you're

more likely to for people who look like you but asked people to for the first candidates generally they can find the. >> i want to come back to the characteristics for a second and then i have a comment about a due and a don't in the referral model -- actually, let me start that. how many people he audience, male or female, love when someone calls you up and is like hey, would you be interested in this opportunity, we totally need a woman? [laughter] for we totally need a guide for this, do you thank you could just do us a favor and come interview for this thing because we just totally need somebody like you question i have heard that times then one should. >> i will come back to the shared characteristics because, you you know, he painted a pretty bleak picture and so as

you have been talking and certainly in reading the book and thinking about the fact that almost down to a question every question that is common so far has been what to do about it and how can we solve it? i know when i look at the statistics in a look at my access to capital will be 1.5 million versus 60 billion as a female ceo and female founder i have to come back to mission. i have to come back to mission. when i think about not just the mission of my company in terms of unlocking opportunity and unlocking ways for more people to access entrepreneurship but what i also think about the fact that i know that i can have a unique impact because of my point of view and because of my experience there were a fair

number of women in the early days of social building amazing product and building amazing services and it wasn't just cheryl and facebook. naomi, for example, it was like the first head of growth and been incredible things in that culture along with a lot of other incredibly talented women in that organization. when i look around this amazing audience i think about passion and i think about resilience and i think about mission. the mission to build amazing things and the mission to do it in large part because if we do it it also means that other people are going to come in and see and say oh, wait, this could happen. we could have more people don't look like this guy. no offense. [laughter] i'm kidding around. he's wearing a tie and it's, you

know. i think it is really, i think that that is something that fundamentally we have an opportunity to do differently and leave tonight and reinvigorated. >> just a little bit more data on that point. >> as it good data or bad data. >> it's important data. when investors are looking at -- say a man and woman boys the exact same presentation the man is more likely to get the funding and more funding. the same characteristics that are viewed as positive for men are negative for women. the man is young, he get has potential but if a woman is young they think she's in expense. plan is cautious, they think it's great. woman is cautious, she can never do it. when investors are looking at men and women they are looking at a man and they are simply thinking of it, to like this idea, can he execute them when they look at women they think that she have what it takes?

some of the qualifications that we need more women like you to have in order to start these companies and start breaking down walls brick by brick investors see those in the delta. if you come to the table and i can't tell you how many women say i gave a visionary and they didn't believe me but if i was a guy they would and so these are, again, the biases that investors need to be aware of. and that women need to break. >> you even said this, though. one of the things that i thought was interesting about that number is then and you said even the stitch revenue growth is promising but the vps passed on him. and in the next chapter the author sharon closely studied

authorship and men tend to set bigger gross but women focus on making their business sustainable. no kidding. women aren't dumb. i have for this over and over again that women lack vision. they don't lack vision when you do not going to meeting assuming you will be pleased. or that you will be even heard the first type. that is why i say we need resilience weaning mission because you going to the next room when you have mission in the next room in the next room. >> a female entrepreneurship danica is a smart press company called smart health and she started with her husband and they have some horrified stories but i will tell you a good one. she has three sons and she was

having trouble raising money and they give up their apartment and moved into a minivan for a month and drove across country to save money and buy some extra runway and worked on the road. that got them to the next round. i posed this question and she said if anyone doubts i can do this i will punch them in the face. there are women who are willing to sacrifice to those walls we need to believe they can because they can. >> they have to believe they can. i actually think that was things. again, you're damned if you do in your damned if you don't, you might as well be yourself. [applause] >> i mean, absolutely. >> this seems reasonable.

another question which is test, what is something that you used to believe that you have since changed your mind about after writing this book? >> you know, i wanted to believe that silicon valley was a meritocracy and that many of these people had gotten to where they are and they had worked hard but more than anything i now realize that luck has a lot to do with it and silicon valley is not in a meritocracy and it is in fact possible to achieve because it completely ignores the privilege at place the winners and discrimination in a larger systemic factor than anyone else. the escalator is moving faster for some than it is for others. i would love to believe that everything happened here that it

is fair but it is not. in fact when you believe you're operating in a meritocracy you can ask more anti- america attic because you believe everything is working directly with people are in the right spot and you ignore and lose sight of the fact that it is not. at this point after writing this ignorance can only be. lots needs to change. one thing coming back to our how to resolve this question -- >> i feel at this point it's an open question that we can come back to in my experience trying to remember that all the time is like carrying the extra pounds on your shoulders and it's not particularly constructive. there's this great gloria stein" that the court to impose set you

free but it first it will pick you up. that is where we are right now. i think there is a human element to this which is one everybody loves a winner and two, that the reason why mission is so important in the startups and in your job and in your company and believing in it is mission can trump that 50-pound weight that just feels heavier and heavier with every dismissal or every meeting that you're in that you don't feel heard and you don't feel believed. in that is what we all have to do and help each other so as long as you have a friend that you can call and say i cannot believe this is happened and let it go otherwise that rate of dropping out will get higher. >> look, the real solution is

50% women and venture capital firms and 50% women entrepreneurs and these things would happen if we had more equality. it will not happen overnight but when we can stop talking about this that's success. >> yes. speaking of talking we have a question about family-friendly and how amazingly family friendly silicon valley is. [laughter] >> chapter seven. [laughter] >> i want to point out that the person who wrote this question flagged this is an issue for both men and women. >> absolutely. >> last time i checked everybody play their part. [laughter] >> so, silicon valley had some of the most amazing parts of the world and go to facebook or google it's like a college dorm into the land, free food,

breakfast lunch and dinner, you can bring your pets to work you can get a haircut, you can get a massage, oh my god, it's amazing. you can get a ride and they have these buses going back and forth to the city and menlo park and mountain view but, you know, if you have kids you're on your own. there's not a lot of childcare options and there is this work hard, play hard, work late dynamic and facebook has had 50 overnight tech of sons and i interviewed bret taylor who is a dad and he was the ceo of facebook and he said to me if mark zuckerberg asked me to dinner meeting i couldn't say no. if he was 25. bret was just a few years older but having his first child.

he said when people went on maternity leave it was like 25th or whether they would come back. when bret started his next company he said we are leaving at 530 i will go home and i will work but i'm not going to send e-mail and i'm not going to make other people feel like they have to respond to me and guess what, it attracted i diverse workforce. i think they were to 40% women but it is an issue for moms and dads and, you know, coming back to my mike, he wrote an op-ed in the finest times where he compared the united states to china and talked about how everyone in china works harder than in the us and we need to be afraid of china surpassing the united states and used an example of even women in china. they were going to strip not see their kids. their husbands will meet them and bring them their child. doesn't that sound amazing. i've lived in china and i don't

know if you lived in china but the longer you live in china you realize you don't know it's a complex and nuanced culture but i that women in china have more freedom to pursue their careers than they do in the united states is completely ridiculous and misleading. this is a country that had the one child policy a few years ago women had forced abortions to avoid making the law. being a hard worker is not at odds having a family and being at the [inaudible] and wanting to see people outside the office. we need people to be well-rounded and leading balance life so that they can sustain their work ethic over a long career because contrary to popular belief nothing in silicon valley happens overnight. it took eight years for facebook to go public, cooper has been around for nine years and still not. this is a long haul. we need people of all backgrounds and a culture that supports people all beckons in

ages and ages totally unreported. p the siegel? >> i couldn't find the data but there's not a lot of good data on ageism when i get that but yes, again, it is common sense. i think. >> this next question is interesting in light of the fact that you can have somebody with a lot of power and with a lot of success write something about how great somebody company different culture is and as you are just doing right here dispelling those myths and this question is how do you companies and managers can help dispel myths and like the biplane problem that undermine inclusion in diversity and tech in over? it such a great question but were already in this together and this is so good because it sometimes feels like when you are talking about the stuff that

there are so many different parts of it that somebody tries to capture it in one thing and it's like walking in and. >> by the book and give it to your manager. solid recommendation. [laughter] this is why i think it is not only leading from the top but communicating to your workforce about why this is a priority. raising awareness about why we need to combat our unconscious biases. i mean some of you heard about james the more the engineer a google who recently wrote a memo to the company that went viral in which he claimed that men are biologically more suited to this job than women. understandably that just a few people off. the 1960s

to justify why they were hiring people in it is simply not true there is mor no evidence to supt that. girls and boys perform exactly the same in math and they perform the same in computer science. any differences are cultural or social and not gendered and so overall i think we need to expand our idea of who can do this job. expand our idea can be a good investor. expand the idea and start a company. they don't all look like mark zuckerberg. in fact, they look like gina. >> i will take it. last question. if yo as you look out over the t 12-24 months what are you the most excited about right now?

>> i'm most excited about starting a meaningful conversation about this. i know that it might upset some people like you said and the truth can present some people off and some of this is new territory particularly guards to the social scene but no change comes about some people feeling a little uncomfortable. i came into this without an agenda and i'm a journalist and i am simply reporting what i see. i am an optimist and i believe that the same people who are changing the world everyday can do this. and i think they need to believe that they can do this and that they should. i am really excited to start the conversation and i know this topic expires visceral and emotional debate and it's a personal topic but i hope people will listen. i am excited to share my message and hope people listen. >> you used the data. of course, they will listen. >> i hope so. >> we've got a few in the room for listening.

>> thank you guys so much. thank you for coming. [applause] >> i hope you enjoy this evenings program brought to you by the commonwealth club in silicon valley. would like to thank emily and we would like to thank gina. of course, i want to add emily, anger and executive producer of bloomberg technologies and gina, founder and ceo. i like to think the audience here in santa clara and those of you joining us on the radio and the web. and now this meeting of the commonwealth club is adjourned. [inaudible conversations] what you have been looking forward to the signing of the book by emily. she will be on my left here at the table and please form a line here in the center and then

proceed for your signatures. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] booktv has recently covered several books on technology which include talks by former world chest cherry champion. software engineer on her 20 year career and tech entrepreneur on the precursor to today's online communities. this is a topic that interests you, visit tv .org and type technology book in the search bar. several programs will appear and

can all be watched in their entirety online. >> here is data point number one. in 1952, mit be the first computer-controlled manufacturing machine. it was based on an offshoot of the whirlwind with first real-time computer. plenty of room off to the right in here. as an offshoot of the whirlwind, the first real-time computer that led to modern computing architecture and jet aircraft for emerging and the parts were too hard to make by hand and there was this idea of connecting a computer to a machine. that was the birth of monitored manufacturing. the lab i run it mit are a descendents of how to look digital data physical include things like the first point of computers in the first part of collaborations to make the first synthetic organisms in the first things in architecture how to put it into everyday devices and that is research to do.

and to teach students to do that i started the class how to make almost anything aimed at research students and every year hundreds show up begging to get in. they do projects and once we made a web browser for [inaudible] to surf the net and another made an alarm clock to make sure your wake. here is her project, she was a sculpture with no technical background. >> this is my scream body. ever find yourself in a situation where you really have to scream but you can't because you are at work or you're in a classroom we watching your children or your any number of situations where it is just not considered plight. scream body is portable space for screaming. when you scream into scream body it is silent but it also recorded for later release where, when and how to use it.

[background noises] >> what that has to do with what we are here for today is that whirlwind was consist rise as the dx and it was commercialized as the pdp created the internet and it created the whole industry and the founder can said no one needs a computer at home in the field when pcs came.

this happened so consistently i realized that i was asking how to do digital publication turning data into things but not why and they were showing that the killer app of digital fabrication like digital computing is personal fabrication. it is products not for massmarketing but she didn't do this to start a business but she wanted a device for screaming. ... with help from our partners at vyve cable in the next hour and 15 minutes we will explore the cities literary life. we'll hear from arial writers including author and historian carol sue humphries who explores the importance and impact of the press during the american revolution.