I’m not much for the “women in tech” stuff — preferring to prove equality rather than beg for it — but sometimes the gender imbalance in this industry is so damaging that it would be unethical for me to not call it out.

About a year ago, I wrote a blog post titled The Plain Numbers About Women in Tech, presenting the raw data to prove that the highest profile startups employ very few women, and moreover that the vast majority of women who do work for startups are in roles that involve selling the product, not making it.

Some people shared in my dismay. Some people offered up the names of startups that have a more gender-balanced staff. Some people simply defended the places they work saying, “We’ve tried!” or “Does it really matter?”

A year has passed, and in a future post I’ll go back through those companies and check to see if their ratios have changed. But there’s something deeper here that I’d like to explore first.

On Twitter the other day, I saw some investor friends congratulate a fellow VC on being promoted at his firm. I clicked through to the firm’s website and navigated over to their team page. I immediately noticed something — all men. So I checked out some other hotshot VC firms off the top of my head — all men, almost all of them. I’d always suspected it I guess, but here they all were staring back at me.

As a user experience strategist, I have spent the entirety of my career devising ways to get companies to better understand the needs of their target audiences. Building a culture of empathy within the business is my most fundamental goal, and the greatest obstacle I face is convincing upper management that their customers are nothing like them, that they have to think outside of themselves in order to succeed.

So here’s my question: if all-male venture capital firms are investing in all-male startups, where is the female influence coming from? Who is guiding these companies on when and how to target women? With women making 85% of purchasing decisions and far surpassing men in their Internet usage, doesn’t it seem wrong that hardly any women are involved in controlling which companies create our future?

I thought it was time to take an empirical look at the gender ratio of some popular venture capital firms by looking at their team pages, as I previously did with the startups. I limited my research to firms that have a focus in early-stage funding, have funded > 5 brand name startups, and have funds worth > $100 million. Again, this is by no means a comprehensive study, but this is what I found.

Take a look for yourself…and let me know what you see.

NOTE: I excluded female staff NOT in investment positions (e.g., accounting, legal, biz dev, operations, admin) from the counts below. Yes, I did this all by hand.

High Profile Early-Stage Venture Capital Firms

Accel Partners

Team Page: http://www.accel.com/people/index.php
Women Investors: 4/40
Fund Size: ~$6 Billion [source]
Portfolio: comScore, 99 Designs, Birchbox, Diapers.com, Etsy, Kayak, Trulia, Groupon, LearnVest
Location: Palo Alto, CA; New York, NY; London, UK; Beijing, China; Shanghai, China; Bangalore, India; New Delhi, India

Andreessen Horowitz

Team Page: http://a16z.com
Women Investors: 0/6
Fund Size: $1.5 Billion [source]
Portfolio: Airbnb, Fab, Facebook, Groupon, Pinterest, Zynga, Skype
Location: Menlo Park, CA

August Capital

Team Page: http://www.augustcap.com/team/
Women Investors: 0/8
Fund Size: ~$1.3 Billion [source]
Portfolio: Six Apart, Aardvark, Evite, RelayRides, Blippy, Visio, Livemocha
Location: Menlo Park, CA

Bain Capital Ventures

Team Page: http://www.baincapitalventures.com/your-team/
Women Investors: 1/31
Fund Size: ~$1.5 Billion [source]
Portfolio: Blip.tv, Jott Networks, Lala, Rent The Runway, Color
Location: Boston, MA; New York, NY; Palo Alto, CA

Benchmark Capital

Team Page: http://www.benchmark.com/people/#
Women Investors: 0/9
Fund Size: ~$3 Billion [source]
Portfolio: 1-800-Flowers, eBags, Dropbox, Zipcar, Instagram, Twitter
Location: Menlo Park, CA; Herzliya, Israel

Bessemer Venture Partners

Team Page: http://www.bvp.com/Team/
Women Investors: 1/39
Fund Size: ~$2 Billion [source]
Portfolio: Pinterest, Shopify, Knewton, Twilio, Diapers.com, Soap.com, LinkedIn
Location: Menlo Park, CA; Larchmont, NY; Cambridge, MA; Herzliya, Israel; Mumbai, India

Charles River Ventures

Team Page: http://www.crv.com/team
Women Investors: 0/10
Fund Size: ~$2.1 Billion [source]
Portfolio: Yammer, HubSpot, Scribd, Wanderfly, Zendesk, Geni, Twitter
Location: Cambridge, MA; Menlo Park, CA

DFJ Gotham

Team Page: http://dfjgotham.com/team.html
Women Investors: 1/5
Fund Size: ~$6 Billion [source]
Portfolio: ADstruc, Drop.io, Medialets, Mimeo, Solvate, Totsy, Yipit
Location: New York, NY

First Round Capital

Team Page: http://www.firstround.com/team/
Women Investors: 0/6
Fund Size: ~$126 Million [source]
Portfolio: Fab, Get Satisfaction, GroupMe, ModCloth, Path, Taskrabbit
Location: San Francisco, CA; New York, NY; Philadelphia, PA

Foundry Group

Team Page: http://www.foundrygroup.com/team/
Women Investors: 0/4
Fund Size: ~$225 Million [source]
Portfolio: Fitbit, CrowdTap, Makerbot Industries, Gist, Cheezburger, Zynga, Medialets
Location: Boulder, CO

General Catalyst Partners

Team Page: http://www.generalcatalyst.com/team
Women Investors: 1/19 (early-stage)
Fund Size: ~$500 Million [source]
Portfolio: Airbnb, GroupMe, Hunch, Kayak, Rue La La, Chloe + Isabel, Upromise
Location: Cambridge, MA; Palo Alto, CA

Google Ventures

Team Page: http://www.googleventures.com/team
Women Investors: 2/13
Fund Size: ~$200 Million (annually) [source]
Portfolio: HomeAway, Nest, Read It Later, 23AndMe, Signpost, ThinkNear, RelayRides
Location: Mountain View, CA; Cambridge, MA; Seattle, WA; New York, NY

Greycroft Partners

Team Page: http://www.greycroftpartners.com/team/
Women Investors: 2/6
Fund Size: ~$200 Million [source]
Portfolio: Buddy Media, Klout, Pulse, Joyent, Crowd Fusion, The Huffington Post, Babble
Location: New York, NY; Los Angeles, CA

Greylock Partners

Team Page: http://greylock.com/teams
Women Investors: 1/16
Fund Size: ~$2 Billion [source]
Portfolio: Airbnb, Constant Contact, Coupons.com, Facebook, Groupon, Pandora
Location: Menlo Park, CA; Cambridge, MA; London, UK; Beijing, China; Bangalore, India

Highland Capital Partners

Team Page: http://www.hcp.com/highland_team
Women Investors: 2/27
Fund Size: ~$3 Billion [source]
Portfolio: CafeMom, Gemvara, Digg, Pixable, Rent The Runway, Paper.li, Yipit
Location: Cambridge, MA; Menlo Park, CA; Geneva, Switzerland, London, UK; Shanghai, China

Khosla Ventures

Team Page: http://www.khoslaventures.com/khosla/people.html
Women Investors: 0/8
Fund Size: ~$1.05 Billion [source]
Portfolio: HowAboutWe, RockMelt, Xobni, Square, AppNexus, ZocDoc
Location: Menlo Park, CA

Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers

Team Page: http://kpcb.com/teams
Women Investors: 10/44
Fund Size: ~$900 Million (early-stage) [source]
Portfolio: Blue Nile, Zaarly, Flipboard, Groupon, Klout, Spotify, Path, Square, Nest
Location: Menlo Park, NY; Beijing, China; Shanghai, China

Matrix Partners

Team Page: http://www.matrixpartners.com/site/team_landing/
Women Investors: 0/9
Fund Size: ~$1.25 Billion [source]
Portfolio: Gilt Groupe, HubSpot, Care.com, Airvana, Apple (once upon a time)
Location: Palo Alto, CA; Cambridge, MA; New York, NY; Mumbai, India; Beijing, China; Shanghai, China

Polaris Venture Partners

Team Page: http://www.polarisventures.com/WhoWeAre/OurTeam.asp
Women Investors: 2/18
Fund Size: ~$3.5 Billion [source]
Portfolio: Automattic, Confluence, Formspring, JibJab, Turntable,
Location: Waltham, MA; Cambridge, MA; Palo Alto, CA; New York, NY; Dublin, Ireland

Rho Ventures

Team Page: http://kpcb.com/teams
Women Investors: 10/44
Fund Size: ~$510 Million [source]
Portfolio: Bluefly, GetGlue, OMGPOP, iVillage, Tapjoy, TACODA, Everyday Health
Location: New York, NY; Palo Alta, CA; Montreal, Cananda

RRE Ventures

Team Page: http://www.rre.com/#team
Women Investors: 0/8
Fund Size: ~$137 Million [source]
Portfolio: Betaworks, Bit.ly, HowAboutWe, Yipit, Xobni, Kik, GetGlue, Solvate
Location: New York, NY

Sequoia Capital

Team Page: http://www.sequoiacap.com/us/early ”
Women Investors: 10*/62 (early-stage) *all women are in the India and China locations
Fund Size: ~$1.3 Billion [source]
Portfolio: Airbnb, Funny or Die, Kayak, LinkedIn, Square, Eventbrite, Dropbox
Location: Menlo Park, CA; Herzliya, Israel; Beijing, China; Shanghai, China; Hong Kong, China; Bangalore, India; Mumbai, India; New Delhi, India

Spark Capital

Team Page: http://www.sparkcapital.com/team
Women Investors: 0/7
Fund Size: ~$720 Million [source]
Startups Funded: Twitter, Tumblr, Svpply, Runkeeper, Foursquare, Boxee
Location: Boston, MA

True Ventures

Team Page: http://www.trueventures.com/team/
Women Investors: 0/5
Fund Size: ~$378 Million [source]
Portfolio: 20×200, Automattic, Fitbit, Assistly, GoodReads, Plancast, About.me, Typekit
Location: Palo Alto, CA; San Francisco, CA; Falls, VA

Union Square Ventures

Team Page: http://www.usv.com/team/
Women Investors: 1/6
Fund Size: ~$450 Million [source]
Portfolio: Etsy, Boxee, Foursquare, Kickstarter, Meetup, Zynga
Location: New York, NY

Targeted to Women

A few female-led venture firms have cropped up with the mission to finance female-led startups, but they’re all managing funds well under $100 Million and are generally recognized as angel investors:

Golden Seeds

Team Page: http://www.goldenseeds.com/Funds/our_team
Women Investors: 8/10
Fund Size: ~$26.5 Million [source]
Portfolio: Lark, Little Passports, Sweet Riot, Tikatok, DRY Soda, Dancing Deer Baking Company
Location: New York, NY; Boston, MA; Philadelphia, PA; San Francisco, CA

Women’s Venture Capital Fund

Team Page: http://www.womensvcfund.com/about/team/
Women Investors: 3/3
Fund Size: Unknown
Portfolio: Ivy Corp
Location: Palo Alto, CA; Los Angeles, CA; Portland, OR

BELLE Capital

Team Page: http://www.bellevc.com/belle-angel-investor-team.html
Women Investors: 10/11
Fund Size: Unknown
Portfolio: Current Motor Company, Michelle’s Miracle
Location: Detroit, MI

JumpThru

Team Page: http://jumpthru.net/team/
Women Investors: 1/1
Fund Size: N/A
Portfolio: N/A
Location: New York, NY

Joanne Wilson

More info: O’Reilly Radar, The Next Web
Fund Size: N/A
Portfolio: Curbed (Eater/Racked), Food52, Red Stamp, Rick’s Picks, Hot Bread Kitchen, Gotham Gym, The Moon Group, Catchafire, Loverly, Daily Worth and MOUSE
Location: New York, NY

Bucking the trend

VC firms that aren’t specifically targeting female-run startups, but who have a predominance of female investors:

StarVest Partners

Team Page: http://www.starvestpartners.com/team/investment-team/
Women Investors: 5/6
Fund Size: ~$400 Million [source]
Portfolio: iCrossing, Insurance.com, ideeli, Bluestreak, Host Analytics
Location: New York, NY

DBL Investors

Team Page: http://www.dblinvestors.com/team.php
Women Investors: 5/8
Fund Size: ~$140 Million [source]
Portfolio: Tesla Motors, Pandora, Livescribe, Ecologic
Location: San Francisco, CA

Am I missing something?

So what do these numbers tell you? Have I forgotten about a VC firm with predominantly female investors? Am I unaware of some firms for-women-by-women?

Please set the record straight! Or share your thoughts on why we’re seeing this unsettling trend, and what we can do to make it right.

Further Reading

• CNN: Where the Powerful Women Aren’t
• Forbes: How Women are Getting Left Out of the Venture Capital Game
• Boston Business Journal: Is Boston Not an Ideal Place for Female VCs?
• Techcrunch: Silicon Valley: You and Some of Your VCs Have a Gender Problem
• Techcrunch: Stop Telling Women To Do Startups
• Inc: Can’t Get Funding? It’s Not Because You’re a Woman
• Where Are The Ladies
• Women’s Entrepreneur Festival

• The plain numbers about women in tech – The Startups
• Whit Hour – Week 16
• When You Startup With UX
• NY Tech Meetup: The European Edition
• List of Firsts: Saturday, April 19, 2008

10 years ago, I was a sophomore in college. I had an assignment in my poetry class to imitate another poet’s style. How I felt then is no different than how I feel now.

Elegy for Capitalism

By Whitney Hess
Imitating Larry Levis
Written 11/01/2001

It’s a new love outside
A love you’ll never see.
As I saw you leap to freedom
Your work shoes reminded me
Of your death sentence.

I saw you on the TV,
Knew who you were,
But didn’t recognize your face.
Was it just too hot inside?
What was wrong with the stairs?

I am an ocean,
Neither here nor there,
But everywhere.
A reflection of you: hot and cold,
Wet and new, but I’ve been here forever.

I met you in my dreams,
Shook your hand,
Signed the contract,
Sealed the deal.
Life is a job that kills us.

9/11. We will never forget.

• NY Tech Meetup – March 2008
• The Locks on My Front Door
• Please help me feed hungry New Yorkers #tenbuckthursday
• Photo of the day: Yes if no
• To gather together

A year ago March 28, my close friend Samantha LeVan sent me a fairly routine email asking me if she could pass my info along to a young web designer looking for a mentor. It was so nondescript that I might have put it off for a few days, busy with other things. I’m glad I didn’t.

Hidden in the middle of the only paragraph was a sole sentence explaining the reason for her request: “Unfortunately, I just found out I have cancer (sucks I’m telling you this by email – so sorry!) so I need to stay focused on health and trying to keep my job going, and caring for Penny.”

I was stunned. Samantha, 33 years old at the time, had given birth to her beautiful daughter Penelope just four months earlier. After having what she thought was a terrible stomach flu and a persistent bacterial infection, some additional testing by her doctor revealed that she had cancer of the large intestine. It had to be removed. I was in shock, but Samantha was optimistic and had a CaringBridge blog set up immediately to share updates with family and friends.

The cancer was diagnosed as Stage III and required chemotherapy. She wouldn’t be able to lift her infant daughter for eight weeks. Luckily she was accepted at the world-renowned Mayo Clinic as a special case due to her age. While the initial 4.5-hour surgery was a success, Sam has had a slew of complications in the year since.

Problems eating. A clot in her liver intake vein. Chemo delays because her platelet count was too low. They put in a port so they could stop pricking her veins. Nausea from chemo brought her down to under 100 pounds. Meanwhile during all of this, little Penny kept getting colds and ear infections, and needed to have tubes implanted in her ears.

Her employer was wonderful about giving her time off and allowing her to work from home as often as she needed. In Samantha’s words:

“I’ve been working my ass off alternate weeks to show people that just because I go through chemo, I’m not sick. I’m totally capable of being a real force at work. I don’t want to be considered “special”. I can handle anything you throw on my plate as long as I have the freedom to have some flexibility with my hours. I worked nearly 50 hours last week. Proof positive that I’m just fine.”

By the end of September, Samantha declared herself healed and we all rejoiced! She has been spending time with her wonderful husband Craig and together they’ve been watching their daughter grow. Sam was 100% cancer free for Penny’s first birthday in November. Fate even had a special twist in store: In January, Samantha became a Senior User Experience Designer at the Mayo Clinic, the place that took such exceptional care of her for all those months prior.

I wish I could say it’s been smooth sailing, but sadly it hasn’t.

In February, Samantha was experiencing stomach pain again and, after a few days, checked herself into the ER. Due to complications from all the surgeries, there was a small tear in her intestine. If she hadn’t gone to the hospital that day, the doctors said she might have died. After an emergency surgery, she was left with 30 staples across her abdomen.

While she was healing, she caught a respiratory infection where fluid built up around her lungs and caused difficult breathing. She also contracted yet another bout of Clostridium difficile (C. diff) in addition to E. coli. And to make matters even worse, she continually blew her IV lines.

After three weeks in the hospital, she was finally released. The pain of missing her daughter was worse than everything else she had gone through. She’s just so happy to be home.

I’m telling you Samantha’s story because she can’t fight this alone. She needs emotional support and financial support. There are hospital costs, medications, tons of supplies, gas to and from the hospitals, at least two upcoming surgeries.

We have a goal of raising $5,000 for Sam and her family, but I want to blow that out of the water. Please give whatever you can to this tremendously courageous and resilient woman. Her disease has been a terrible financial burden that no family should have to bear. We can help. Please find it in your heart to help.

Thank you for your generosity and caring to read about my dear friend Samantha. And thank you to Sam for showing me what it means to have strength of character, compassion, and more hope than I ever thought possible. We love you, and we wish you well.

[http://fuckcancer.uxsters.com/samantha-levan]

• Being a godmother is like being a user experience designer
• Randy Pausch loses battle with pancreatic cancer at 47
• Why I detest the term “Lean UX”
• The outpouring of love for Randy Pausch
• Pleasure and Pain on Blog Talk Radio

Last week, Caterina Fake wrote about the a social observation she made at SXSW which she called FOMO — Fear Of Missing Out: people checking their Twitter and Foursquare feeds to see who was where, doing what, to make sure that they were in the right place at the right time with the right people. And if they weren’t, quickly switching locations.

I’ve never been much of a joiner, so I’ve rarely suffered from this condition. I’m usually not wherever is trending — a disdain for long lines, overcrowded rooms, and inaudible conversation attempts. Just being somewhere, standing there in the place I’m “supposed” to be, to see and be seen, has never been my bag. That’s because I suffer from something far worse:

FONC — Fear Of Not Contributing

I’m a giver, not a taker. My whole life it’s been difficult for me to accept the offerings of others and feel self-worth from what I have and who I’m surrounded by. The only way I feel whole is when I’m contributing to the universe in some way — building something, helping someone, improving somewhere. I think in a lot of ways I became a consultant because I didn’t feel I was contributing enough at a full-time job. I wanted to contribute more and I was being held back. I was told outright that I was overshadowing the contributions of my teammates.

My need to contribute is a compulsion. Every day that I don’t create something is a day I feel I’m worth less. String together a few days of feeling worth less and eventually you’ll feel worthless. Of course by “you” I really mean “I.”

I burn out after working myself to the bone, and then give myself the day off to relax. But while I enjoy the respite, by nightfall I’m in a panic that the Earth has continued spinning and I didn’t actually have to do anything to help it.

It’s here that my Impostor Syndrome rears its ugly head. If the Earth keeps spinning without me, if companies keep making money and employees keep getting paid, and customers keep buying things they don’t need and figuring out what they do, and people keep learning and getting inspired by the work of others, and User Experience keeps making the rounds in conversations over lunch tables and boardroom tables, well then what the heck am I here for?

Despite external evidence of their competence, those with the syndrome remain convinced that they are frauds and do not deserve the success they have achieved. Proof of success is dismissed as luck, timing, or as a result of deceiving others into thinking they are more intelligent and competent than they believe themselves to be.

My FONC, aptly named, puts me in a funk on a regular basis. It comes and goes, but it mostly creeps up when I’m alone, at home, choosing to sleep or read or watch TV instead of crossing off something on my to-do list. My to-do list symbolizes the areas in which I believe I can contribute. Whether it’s crafting a proposal for a prospective client, producing for an existing client, drafting a blog post, or answering emails, when information and insight flows out of me, I can prove that I belong.

Just knowing where to be and being there, the goal of someone inflicted with FOMO, isn’t nearly enough to sustain me. I need the constant feedback and praise and criticism of a soul who knows she doesn’t belong at all. Because in those brief moments, I know my voice is heard. I know I’m noticed and I matter. And I know I’m there, wherever I am, for you.

• Darlin’ Do Not Fear
• What are you worth?
• A Brief Recap on Year 4
• To gather together
• Who is Gabby Hon’s hero?

I don’t often think of myself as a woman. As I approach public restrooms, I have to remind myself: “Whitney, you are a woman, use the women’s room.”

Being a woman doesn’t actively, consciously factor into my every day life, especially not professionally. While my gender must have a partial effect on everything I do — the way I interview users, draw wireframes, bill my clients — I am far from overtly feminine, nor do I consider myself to be traditionally female.

I have always wanted to be judged against all other people — male and female — and as a result, try not to play the woman card. I’ve also avoided most discussions about women in tech, women in business, women speakers, women organizations, women investors, women anything. A couple years ago I even insisted that I’m not a woman blogger.

It hasn’t ever really bothered me that there are so few women in my professional universe. I’ve always had more guy friends, went to a predominantly male university, and have worked mostly with men. But two things happened recently that rubbed me the wrong way:

Firstly, at the NY Tech Meetup a couple months ago, there were two products demoed by women. When a question from the audience was directed at one of the women-run companies, the other (male) presenters on stage started passing the mic to the wrong set of women. I’m not sure if anyone else noticed it, but it made me extremely uncomfortable. These guys couldn’t even remember which woman had demoed that product — just that it was a woman. The important detail of who didn’t seem to register.

Secondly, I was at the Boxee Box launch at Irving Plaza last month and, before the presentation started, Boxee’s team photos were projected onto the screen in a loop. I was proud to see how much the company has grown since I had worked with them in early 2009 — at the time, I had been the only woman among 10 men. But seeing the photos, I noticed that out of their 20 or so employees, practically all of the women working for them are in marketing.

It finally hit me: not only are women in tech mostly invisible, the vast majority of those who on display are selling, not making.

This is a problem. This is a big problem. At least according to ComScore [whitepaper], women are significantly more active social media and e-commerce users than men. So if the primary target audiences of most high traffic sites are women, why are only men designing and developing these systems?

I decided to take an empirical look at the gender ratio of some popular startups, just by looking at their team pages. I defined startups as < 50 employees and < 6 years old. This is by no means a comprehensive study, but I'm amazed by what I found.

Take a look for yourself...and let me know what you see.

High Profile Startups

Foursquare

Team Page: http://foursquare.com/about#
Women Employed: 6/40
Women’s Positions: Community Manager; Lead Designer; Marketing Manager; Head of Recruiting; Community Support Coordinator
Location: New York City

Kickstarter

Team Page: http://www.kickstarter.com/team
Women Employed: 4/14
Women’s Positions: Customer Service; Marketing; Community
Location: New York City

Squarespace

Team Page: http://www.squarespace.com/about/
Women Employed: 6/32
Women’s Positions: Support Team; Senior Designer; Marketing Director; Chief Marketing Officer
Location: New York City

Dropbox

Team Page: https://www.dropbox.com/about
Women Employed: 3/35
Women’s Positions: CFO; Support Lead; Office Manager
Location: San Francisco

Aviary

Team Page: http://www.aviary.com/about
Women Employed: ~5/30
Location: New York City

Square

Team Page: https://squareup.com/about
Women Employed: 10/54
Women’s Positions: Customer Support; Server Engineer; Recruiter; Financial Manager
Location: San Francisco

Tumblr

Team Page: http://www.tumblr.com/about
Women Employed: 1/16
Women’s Positions: Director of Outreach
Location: New York City

Vimeo

Team Page: http://www.vimeo.com/about
Women Employed: 4/31
Women’s Positions: Analytics and Marketing; Marketing Communications Director; General Manager; Community Manager
Location: New York City

Path

Team Page: https://www.path.com/about
Women Employed: 2/14
Women’s Positions: Executive Assistant; Recruiter
Location: San Francisco

Blip.tv

Team Page: http://blip.tv/about/people/
Women Employed: 7/31
Women’s Positions: Co-founder; Ad Operations; Office Manager
Location: New York City

Disqus

Team Page: http://disqus.com/about/
Women Employed: 1/13
Women’s Positions: Office Manager
Location: San Francisco

Hashable

Team Page: http://hashable.com/aboutus
Women Employed: 2/8
Women’s Positions: Chief Marketing Officer; Director of Business Development
Location: New York City

Venmo

Team Page: https://venmo.com/info/about-venmo
Women Employed: 0/7
Women’s Positions: None
Location: New York City and Philadelphia

BankSimple

Team Page: https://banksimple.com/#team
Women Employed: 0/9
Women’s Positions: None
Location: New York City and Portland

Targeted to Women

The only startups that seem to have a higher percentage of women are products or services that are oriented towards women:

Learnvest

Team Page: http://about.learnvest.com/company/team/
Women Employed: 7/11
Women’s Positions: Founder and CEO; CMO; Director of Product; Creative Director; Chief Content Officer; Editor; Financial Planner
Location: New York City

PlumWillow

Team Page: http://www.plumwillow.com/plum/team
Women Employed: 11/21
Women’s Positions: Director of Marketing; Community Leaders
Location: New York City

food52

Team Page: http://www.food52.com/blog/about_food52
Women Employed: 6/8
Women’s Positions: Co-founders; Editors; Recipe Testers
Location: New York City

Birchbox

Team Page: http://www.birchbox.com/about-birchbox/what-is-birchbox/
Women Employed: 4/4
Women’s Positions: Co-founders; Director of Interactive; Director of Content
Location: New York City

Rent the Runway

Team Page: http://www.renttherunway.com/team
Women Employed: 30/38
Women’s Positions: Co-founder and CEO; Co-founder and President; PR; Operations; Marketing; Merchandising; Creative Director; Customer Insights; Director of Finance; Director of Business Development; Visual Designer; Developer; Stylists
Location: New York City

Bucking the trend

Startups that aren’t specifically targeting female customers, but that appear to have higher percentages of female employees:

NabeWise

Team Page: http://nabewise.com/pages/team
Women Employed: 3/5
Women’s Positions: Founder and CEO; Creative Director; Director of Business Development
Location: New York City

Yipit

Team Page: http://yipit.com/about/
Women Employed: 3/8
Women’s Positions: Product and Operations Manager; Developer; Content Manager
Location: New York City

AdaptiveBlue

Team Page: http://getglue.com/about
Women Employed: 6/17
Women’s Positions: VP of Engineering; Developer; Editor; Community/Marketing Analyst
Location: New York City

Perhaps not incidentally, I am currently working with a startup that employs more women than men, and its product isn’t explicitly for women:

Loosecubes

Team Page: None yet
Women Employed: 7/9
Women’s Positions: Founder and CEO; Product Lead; Community Manager; Designer; Content Strategist; Street Team
Location: New York City

Am I missing something?

So what do these numbers tell you? Have I forgotten about several startups with predominantly female staff? Am I unaware of some startups with more women in the “making” positions than in the “selling” ones?

Please set the record straight! Or share your thoughts on why we’re seeing this unsettling trend.

• The plain numbers about women in tech – The VCs
• The Experience of Being a Woman
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There’s something I have to metaphorically get off my chest. You literally don’t have a clue what “literally” actually means.

Literal is defined as: actual; absolute. Literally is defined as: in the explicit meaning of the word; without embellishment or exaggeration; not as an idiom or metaphor.

I’m not the first person to plead this case, and I doubt I’ll be the last. Complaints of the misuse of the word are rampant. But despite the growing reeducation and the obvious satire, the abuse seems to be spreading more aggressively than ever.

And I think I’ve figured out why.

We are in an era of virtualization — our work, our leisure, our relationships and education all being served and maintained via intangible technologies — and at this stage in our transformation, people have started to crave the physical.

When our lives are largely lived out in the ether, we struggle to give emphasis to our intentions, our desires, and our goals. We struggle to give emphasis to just about anything, due entirely to the constraints of our communication vehicles: email, text message, IM, Twitter, phone, Skype. Their affordances for emphasis are severely limited. WE WANT YOU TO KNOW HOW WE REALLY FEEL. Did that do the job?

I’m in pain. I’m happy. I’m scared. I’m excited. I’m in trouble. I’m in love. And I’m much, much more than pixels on a screen.

To say you’re “literally dying” about the news you just heard, or are “literally falling off my chair” from the video you just watched, or are “literally over the moon” in love with the man you just met is just your way of expressing that you really, really mean it. But you aren’t actually dying, or falling, or flying in outer space. You just feel like you are. And you’re desperate for everyone else to understand.

We are more disconnected than ever before. The more we learn about each other second-hand (in status messages and blog posts and tagged photos), the less we feel the need to ask and the harder it is to tell. The less we literally connect eyes and hands, the less we figuratively connect our minds.

I try not to be a language Nazi (see what I did there?), but this is one case in which I think it’s crucial that we start paying attention. When we fall back on the incorrect usage of a word, we’re implying that we haven’t found a better way to express ourselves.

I don’t think it’s poor word choice. I think our virtualization is eroding our ability to intonate. Perhaps our ever-growing modes of communication are so devoid of pitch and tonality that we’re losing our grasp of them in meatspace.

What can I, as a user experience designer, do to reverse this trend? What can we all, as contributors to and creators of technology, do to imbue our input devices with the subtleties of tone and allow for the necessary expression of emphasis? Or is the pollution of language an omnipresent and unavoidable reality of evolution?

I can’t wait to hear your thoughts, so please share in the comments. I’m literally on the edge of my seat.

[Update: Thanks to @devintrix for this appropriate cartoon]

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Hotel alarm clocks are usually a big pain in the butt. Hampton Inn aims to fix all that — and takes simplicity to inconceivable levels.

They go so far past easy to use and intuitive that they come back around to obscure and pointless.

They visualize musical genres.

Columns for Classical
Stream for Soft Rock
Cows for Country
Cadillac for Oldies
Bleachers for Sports

Now you tell me: if a hotel guest has somehow never heard of these genres, will they be able to deduce their sound via the associated imagery? My guess is not likely. If you can’t read English, I can see how the bleachers and the cows might point you in the right direction…but a stream for Soft Rock?! First of all, a stream doesn’t make rocks soft, it makes them smooth. Second of all, just because “rock” is a homonym in English (meaning both a mineral and a category of music) doesn’t mean it’s a homonym in any other language — so it could easily be mistaken for sounds of water.

What I’m getting at is why would they ever spend the money on this? They had to produce or purchase the photography. They had to custom design and manufacture the devices. What in their minds could possibly be the benefit of all of this cost and effort?

Hampton Inn is so proud of their radios, they even have them for sale on their Home Collection website for a mere 60 bucks.

If any of you have a different perspective on this, I’d love to hear it. I’m simply stumped.

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For anyone who’s ever been to Manhattan, or perhaps even heard of Manhattan, chances are you know that our roads are based on a grid — Streets are east-west and are numbered, Avenues are north-south and are numbered or named.

62nd Street and 2nd Avenue
106th Street and Park Avenue
1st Street and 1st Avenue

You get the picture. It’s easy to learn, and directions are never needed. It’s probably the most famous grid plan in history.

Then you go to the West Village. Shit’s crazy over there.

It’s roads were paved and named in the mid-18th century, long before the New York State Legislature’s Commissioners’ Plan of 1811 went into effect. The entire neighborhood has a grid that’s offset about 50 degrees from the rest of the island.

West of 6th Avenue, 4th Street and Bleecker Street swing north and essentially become avenues. That’s how it’s possible to find yourself at the intersection of W 13th St and W 4th St. But it’s certainly a usability problem. Even the natives get confused (including me), walking in circles, consulting their smartphones.

But it’s redesign is, shall we say, out of scope.

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• Photo of the day: MAYDAY MAYDAY MAYDAY

Time has always bothered me; I don’t really believe in it. It’s a human invention, a representation of reality. Now the passage of time, that’s something I can believe in. You can feel it. You can measure it. But it’s always, ALWAYS, relative to something else. Like when you’re in the train station waiting for the train to leave and you don’t know if your train has started moving or if the train next to you is moving — you don’t always have a constant to base it on.

I was at Philly’s 30th Street Station recently, and I was hungry, but I only had 5 minutes before I had to get on the train. I saw the sign for Ben & Jerry’s — perfect, quick.

As I approached the counter, I saw this sign:

Be Back in
30 minutes.
Just milking
the cows and
churning the
butter!!!
:)

While I am a big fan of their ice cream, and their determination to stay on brand, this sign was completely useless.

When did the sign go up? Would the cashier be back in a few seconds, or in the full 30 minutes? Should I stand there patiently, or walk away to find other food?

Ben & Jerry’s signage might be cute, but it certainly isn’t informative.

Social activity streams use a combination of relative time (30 minutes ago) and absolute time (12:20pm). Relative time can be very useful, particularly with short intervals, because it helps us to understand the recency of an event without having to do the mental calculation. But it only works when the system is able to continuously update the indicator with the passage of time.

Unfortunately, a piece of paper taped to a sign does not have this capability.

The jars of toppings on the back counter taunted me, and I stood for a minute or two furiously looking around for someone in a smock and visor. Then my train number was called over the loud speaker, and I sulked onto the train, ever hungrier for a delicious scoop.

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…or a Kindle, or a nook.

I recently spotted this man at a Starbucks in SoHo.

He was clearly settled in for the day, his keyboard propped up against the wall behind him, feet kicked up, book in hand…and in the other hand, a magnifying glass to help him read the damn thing.

That very same day, I wrote my first blog post from my brand new iPad (the day I discovered the new frappuccinos). As I was writing it, pinching the screen to zoom into a webpage, I was reminded of the Zoom functionality in iBooks (represented by none else than a magnifying glass), that allows the user to instantly increase the font size of the book’s text without altering the design or layout of the book itself.

Seeing this man, I felt an urge to start doing user research, as though I were a designer of some e-Reader, aiming to identify his needs, uncover his pain points. But I let him be — surely he loves the feel of the pages between his fingers, and a magnifying glass will never run out of batteries or lose its signal. I think he’s just fine the way he is.

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