'diversity' Tag
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Our Sprout program in review
June 15, 2024One year ago we announced the Sprout initiative at Shizen Capital. Sprout is a GP-in-Training program for ambitious women in Japan who aspire to manage their own VC fund. The Sprout participant is first employed by Shizen Capital as Investment Director, during which she is exposed to all aspects of VC fund operations in a […]
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A new opportunity for future female VC leaders in Japan
May 21, 2023Lack of diversity in the venture capital business is a problem worldwide. As readers of my blog know from my past tirades, I believe that this pernicious issue negatively impacts VC fund returns, impedes female and other under-represented entrepreneurs, stifles the health of a region’s startup ecosystem, and deprives society as a whole of innovation. […]
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Startup boards – The Culture Map
November 2, 2018One of the aspects I appreciated most about being a VC in Europe for so many years didn’t occur to me until after I shifted the balance of my portfolio to Japan. Specifically, the cultural diversity of the startup boardroom in Europe is broader and more heterogeneous than I’ve ever experienced in ecosystems like Japan, […]
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State of European Tech 2017 (spoiler: it’s male)
December 5, 2017If you haven’t had an opportunity to review Atomico’s annual report on the State of European Tech, I encourage you to take a look. The brief is loaded with valuable insight into Europe’s innovation ecosystem, a sector no longer overlooked by entrepreneurs and investors globally. Two incontrovertible conclusions leapt out at me from this analysis: […]
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French VC sector brain vastly under-illuminated
September 7, 2016Remember International Women’s Day back in March ? Oh, so you’ve forgotten already… Since apparently women in France are only slightly less attracted to entrepreneurship than men (and by slightly, I mean 0.1%), it feels like the French VC industry stands at a mere fraction of total brain capacity. What do YOU think? [graphic credit: […]