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Can you fundraise in Silicon Valley while pregnant?

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Re: Can you fundraise in Silicon Valley while pregnant?

#41

Post by akud »

ergothus wrote: post #35
akud wrote: post #30

In my experience, people tend to seriously underestimate the amount of work a baby takes, and the strain it adds to relationships, work life, and emotional health. I certainly did. I think it's reasonable for investors to wonder if a person's commitment won't change when they have a baby. I would advise the authors that they really can't forsee what their priorities will be like when the baby comes. It sounds trite,…

Purely for the purposes of clarity: Is that you'd hold any founder expecting a baby to the same standard, male or female? (though it is normally easier to recognize a pregnant woman than someone with a pregnant partner) Or do you see the load you describe falling primarily upon women?

Any founder, male or female. I'm male, and having a baby has been a whole lot more strain then I expected. Granted, I try to take an active role in caring for the baby, so that's different than your typical male CEO maybe.

Re: Can you fundraise in Silicon Valley while pregnant?

#42

Post by Lawtonfogle »

ksenzee wrote: post #31

As someone who has personally been pregnant (several times!) let me assure you that when you see a pregnant woman, you have no idea whatsoever whether she is feeling - well - ill - overwhelmed - confident - anything else because every pregnancy is different, and every woman is different, and every family is different. You cannot safely assume anything about a pregnant woman. So her pregnancy can't help you reliably j…

>because every pregnancy is different, and every woman is different, and every family is different. You cannot safely assume anything about a pregnant woman. So her pregnancy can't help you reliably judge whether she can handle being CEO.

Couldn't this logic be applied to almost anything about any person and thus leave one saying that nothing can reliably be used to judge whether someone can handle being a CEO?

Re: Can you fundraise in Silicon Valley while pregnant?

#43

Post by RyanZAG »

CalRobert wrote: post #10
xiphias wrote: post #3

I thought that money raising is for people who put all their effort into making a fast-growing company and need money to make the growth even faster. It's about choosing not having a life in return for the possibility for creating a big company. I have no problem with that person being a male or female. But I can't imagine any person (mom or dad) being able to put 15 hours a day to a company with the baby after the b…

A man can conceal the fact of his expecting a child soon. A woman, usually, is unable to do so. Both will be affected by the child, but the investor may be more likely to favour the man, which is unfair.

Would I invest in a startup with the founder about to have a baby? No. Either they will be dedicating a big part of their life in the near future to raising that baby correctly, or they will be ignoring that baby and leaving someone else to raise it. I find the second outcome even worse than the first, but I'm not going to invest in either.

Now a man might be able to deceive me by simply not disclosing this while a woman is going to have a very difficult time. But I wouldn't say this is unfair: the man is simply easier able to pass off his awfulness than the woman.

It's like saying a woman is more likely to be able to shoplift and get away with it than a man and this is unfair. I don't know if that is true, but if it is, it's certainly not 'unfair'.

Re: Can you fundraise in Silicon Valley while pregnant?

#44

Post by GauntletWizard »

ergothus wrote: post #35
akud wrote: post #30

In my experience, people tend to seriously underestimate the amount of work a baby takes, and the strain it adds to relationships, work life, and emotional health. I certainly did. I think it's reasonable for investors to wonder if a person's commitment won't change when they have a baby. I would advise the authors that they really can't forsee what their priorities will be like when the baby comes. It sounds trite,…

Purely for the purposes of clarity: Is that you'd hold any founder expecting a baby to the same standard, male or female? (though it is normally easier to recognize a pregnant woman than someone with a pregnant partner) Or do you see the load you describe falling primarily upon women?

I think it's a lot easier to tell that a female founder is about to have a baby. Most VCs would probably balk if they heard from a founder "My wife is eight months pregnant", but men have the option of not bringing that up, while it would be a challenge for a pregnant woman to hide it.

Re: Can you fundraise in Silicon Valley while pregnant?

#45

Post by NTDF9 »

I recently discussed this with my girlfriend. I can only conclude that there are 2 sides to the story, let's call them 2 truths:

Truth 1: No individual (regardless of sex) can run a startup as a CEO if they are incapacitated somehow

Truth 2: Individuals (regardless of sex) need to prioritize. NOBODY can have it all.

With that in mind, women need to understand that: 1. They will be incapacitated if they get pregnant 2. They need to choose if they want to be CEO or a nurturing mother. Both cannot happen concurrently because the woman will be overwhelmed and do worse in both roles.

It is also unfair on both the child and investors to give only half of yourself. So choose one.

This also applies to men. A man cannot go become a CEO if he's broke and needs to feed his family. Go get a job and get rid of immediate concerns first so that you can give your best to both your family and investors.

Re: Can you fundraise in Silicon Valley while pregnant?

#46

Post by ergothus »

GauntletWizard wrote: post #44
ergothus wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Purely for the purposes of clarity: Is that you'd hold any founder expecting a baby to the same standard, male or female? (though it is normally easier to recognize a pregnant woman than someone with a pregnant partner) Or do you see the load you describe falling primarily upon women?

I think it's a lot easier to tell that a female founder is about to have a baby. Most VCs would probably balk if they heard from a founder "My wife is eight months pregnant", but men have the option of not bringing that up, while it would be a challenge for a pregnant woman to hide it.

Completely true, and I alluded to that in my question.

I was simply trying to understand if the above poster was saying "I consider any founder about to have a child as more risky" or if the above poster was saying "I consider any WOMAN about to have a child as more risky". In the latter case it doesn't matter how easy/hard it is to determine if someone has a pregnant partner.

As that poster has indicated it's the former, this difficulty of detection does become an issue: One that I have no good solution to. As it happens, I fully believe in the difficulty of raising young children, for any gender, so I think it's a legit concern, but it raises an automatic advantage to men over women even when they're otherwise in the same situation.

Re: Can you fundraise in Silicon Valley while pregnant?

#48

Post by CalRobert »

Lawtonfogle wrote: post #37
CalRobert wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A man can conceal the fact of his expecting a child soon. A woman, usually, is unable to do so. Both will be affected by the child, but the investor may be more likely to favour the man, which is unfair.

At the same time, a single man has less options for having a baby than a single woman, thus there is still inequality in the risk.

I don't quite follow - you're saying it's easier for a woman to have a child than a man?

From a purely biological perspective this seems backwards to me. A desirable man could conceivably produce many children over the course of nine months, while a woman can have only one pregnancy.

Edit - I do recognize that in many species (humans included) females are more likely to reproduce than males. Given that the sorts of males who found companies are probably relatively high-status individuals, though, I would suggest that the likelihood of either being able to reproduce is pretty decent, and relates to choice rather than mate availability.

Re: Can you fundraise in Silicon Valley while pregnant?

#49

Post by x0x0 »

CalRobert wrote: post #10
xiphias wrote: post #3

I thought that money raising is for people who put all their effort into making a fast-growing company and need money to make the growth even faster. It's about choosing not having a life in return for the possibility for creating a big company. I have no problem with that person being a male or female. But I can't imagine any person (mom or dad) being able to put 15 hours a day to a company with the baby after the b…

A man can conceal the fact of his expecting a child soon. A woman, usually, is unable to do so. Both will be affected by the child, but the investor may be more likely to favour the man, which is unfair.

Bluntly, I assume a woman will be far more involved in childcare than a man. This is backed up by the fact that it's often true, and is a reasonable prior. A male ceo -- and I've worked for several of these -- can / often does have a housewife, and is able to dump virtually all childcare off onto her. Crucially including getting up all night to breastfeed. Women often don't have that and/or don't want that. Not to mention pregnancy can cause severe medical complications (physical injury, post partum depression, etc). I've also seen several ambitious women in my personal life have a baby then decide to transition to a more relaxed career track to focus on the child / have more children.

If I were working for any ceo who decided to have a baby, but particularly a woman, I'd want to know about his or her commitment to the business that I'm investing my time, life, and money into. Being a ceo is generally not a 9-5 M-F job, so explaining how you're going to juggle that with the demands of childcare, breastfeeding should you chose to do so, business travel, business needs, etc is fair game when my personal financial results are entangled with the business outcome.

If you're planning on doing what Marissa did and installing a nanny next to your office, great. If you're planning on taking 4 months off for your personal project, I'm going to re-evaluate my dedication to the business if the ceo isn't more dedicated than me.

NB: I currently work for a female ceo; she and her partner have an au pair but he has damaged his career to provide more childcare than her.

Re: Can you fundraise in Silicon Valley while pregnant?

#50

Post by Alex3917 »

web007 wrote: post #38
drpp wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some have tried to hide this, and there are links to such accounts. But, "Na’ama is direct. She’s not the kind of person to pretend about anything. In the third trimester, her condition is nearly impossible to hide anyway. And yet surprisingly, most investors have scrupulously avoided discussing the fact."

They may have avoided any mention for legal reasons. Pregnancy is one of the protected classes. If they talk about it and then don't give you funding, there are potential repercussions, just as if they discussed religion, race, etc.

> Pregnancy is one of the protected classes.

AFAIK protected classes don't apply to investors.

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