Picture a classroom-style conference room with 50 angel and venture capital investors. A young woman of color pitches her startup: a promising team with great traction in a sector that’s poised to explode. When she’s done, hands shoot up into the air for questions. She points to the first one she sees. And this is what he asks:
“Are you married?”
As absurd as it might sound, this is a true story. I was there. In fact it was at our own demo day years back, the conclusion of the Female Founders Alliance accelerator for women and nonbinary founders. The investors in the audience were mostly men. In fact they were mostly good men.
Every day, women and nonbinary founders raising capital for their startups have to pitch rooms just like this. Rooms where, at best, they are lonely and uncomfortable, and at worst, they’re judged, belittled, and dismissed. Tess Gadwa, the founder of data visualization startup Lotus.fm, shared a far more common but also more insidious story. “I had a…
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Source : fastcompany.com
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