Especially when it comes to social and shopping, women rule the Internet.
Women are the routers and amplifiers of the social web. And they are the rocket fuel of ecommerce.
Starbucks did this magical thing where it took a product that people didn't really care that much about and made it this treat. It makes you feel better about your day and gives you a chance to reflect, makes you feel a little special.
There's an opportunity to make your board - and your company - smarter by adding diversity, especially of gender.
Starting a company and being a founder is really hard, and most companies fail. You really have to have a deep commitment and belief in it and be willing to see it through many ups and downs.
Female users are the unsung heroines behind the most engaging, fastest growing, and most valuable consumer Internet and e-commerce companies.
My dad was a dentist; my mom managed his office.
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.
If you're a digital startup, building and highlighting your social proof is the best way for new users to learn about you.
The role and importance of females in companies can make a big difference.
You have to get under the hood and spend some quality time with someone to understand what they're really good at.
I grew up in New Jersey and played sports and rode my bike around. It was a really nice time - kids didn't have cellphones then - and you knew everyone in the town.
If a firm hasn't hired a single female partner in its history, I don't think it will finally happen by accident.
Sequoia is a firm that a lot of people across tech and the Valley look to, and I think they're setting an important example in adding new diversity to their team.
When I go visit my mom in the retirement community where my parents live, she has a bunch of friends, and she will say, 'These neighbors I play bridge with have a son with an idea,' and it goes from there.
Comscore, Nielsen, MediaMetrix and Quantcast studies all show women are the driving force of the most important net trend of the decade, the social web.
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.
The question for Dropbox is whether, when they run out of private sources for funding, they will be able to maintain that valuation when they go to public sources for funding and their valuation is set on the public markets.
Each major wave of technology innovation has given rise to one or more super-unicorns - companies that could change your life to work at or invest in if you're not lucky/genius enough to be a co-founder.
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.
