Businesswoman

Seed stage is an investment area that is really important for early stage startups. It feels like there is a need for trusted, experienced people to work with and to guide startups at this level.

There are a lot of benefits to having a team of young people, but there are many benefits to having people who've made a lot of mistakes.

I did not grow up thinking that I wanted to be an engineer. I had read some articles about girls becoming increasingly scientifically illiterate and that girls lacked confidence in their capabilities when it came to quantitative skills. And I just thought that was kind of wrong.

I work with tiny companies, so I don't really live in unicorn world, to be honest.

The reality is that in a tech environment that is 90 percent to 100 percent male, it's not super-encouraging for females to be successful. It's just a lot of things that contribute to that: things that people do or things that people say that they may not realize have unintended consequences.

Female users are the unsung heroines behind the most engaging, fastest growing, and most valuable consumer Internet and e-commerce companies.

History suggests the 2010s will give rise to a super-unicorn or two that reflect the key tech wave of the decade, the mobile web.

From a pretty early age, I developed an interest in travel. I told my parents I wanted to live abroad, and they said, 'Well, you have to have money to do those things.'

There is very little diversity among founders in the Unicorn Club.

Most VC firms are looking to bring in women because of the great consumer cycle.

Consider the social proof of a line of people standing behind a velvet rope, waiting to get into a club. The line makes most people walking by want to find out what's worth the wait. The digital equivalent of the velvet rope helped build viral growth for initially invite-only launches like Gmail, Gilt Groupe, Spotify, and Turntable.fm.

I've learned that you really cannot judge a book by its cover.

It's not that I am saying that women and men are completely different. But I do think that if you are one of the only people around the table who is a woman, by definition, you're different.

The role and importance of females in companies can make a big difference.

If you're a digital startup, building and highlighting your social proof is the best way for new users to learn about you.

I'm a huge believer in power of women on the web.

My dad was a dentist; my mom managed his office.

If you're looking to grow your user base, is there a best way to cost-effectively attract valuable users? I'm increasingly convinced the best way is by harnessing a concept called social proof, a relatively untapped gold mine in the age of the social web.

I think, from a woman's perspective, that my interest as an investor and the way that I relate to entrepreneurs is a little bit different.

Many entrepreneurs, and the venture investors who back them, seek to build billion-dollar companies.