Trying to hail a cab in many areas, the chance of finding a ride are very, very low. It's absolutely a better experience to be able to - wherever I am - open up an app, hit a button, have a car come to me, and pay less than I would for a taxi.
The power dynamic that exists in venture capital is despicably unfair. The gap of influence between male venture capitalists and female entrepreneurs is frightening, and I hate that my behavior played a role in perpetrating a gender-hostile environment.
As any good entrepreneur will tell you, it's much harder to acquire a user a second time after a bad product experience than it is to acquire them the first time.
If you've had some success as a venture capitalist, you get a lot of inbound emails from entrepreneurs. But if you look back on the best deals, it's with the entrepreneurs who say, 'You show me why I should take your money.'
I'm generally not a fan of paid advertising, as it becomes a drug that is very difficult for a company to get off and have found that it can really throw off the balance of a local marketplace.
You want an investor who understands that slower revenue growth doesn't necessarily mean an unhealthy business and that it maps to the early revenue growth of successful companies such as Open Table and Grubhub.
If I am a 35-year-old woman, and I hail a cab on a Friday evening, and a cab driver picks me up, there are two people in the world that know I am in that cab. Me and the cab driver. With an app like Sidecar, there is a electronic record. I know exactly who that person is because they are screened.
The fact is, I have always enjoyed respectful relationships with female founders, business partners, and investors.
It's almost impossible for a start-up to compete on cash compensation, and it doesn't make much sense to try. A seasoned executive at a big company is going to join a start-up because he or she craves the opportunity to build something from the ground up.
