Event: 5 Takeaways from the Women in Agri-FoodTech Roundtable at World AgriTech

Louisa led a roundtable discussion at the World AgriTech Investment Summit in San Francisco in March 2019. Surprisingly, and unsurprisingly, the table massively overflowed with women wanting to discuss the challenges they face in this industry and venture capital more broadly. Interestingly, a roundtable I later hosted in New York was far less well attended — someone commented that there’s more bias on the West Coast? Or maybe was coincidental. In any case, here are the 5 key takeaways I shared with the 30 or-so participants to that roundtable discussion afterwards.

1. Several of the women at the roundtable said they have been told to act more like men if they want to succeed. The "pound the table" culture that men can promote is out of the comfort zone of many women and women feel they need to be twice as smart as men to get recognition. The roundtable also believe there's a credibility issue for women working in STEM.

2. Hiring women is hard. You have to look a lot harder and be very intentional to find them for job roles but also for board members. Government policies in some countries like Norway (where you need to have equal sex boards) are often ignored and are only so helpful, especially as it's still hard to recruit. Legislation is just the first step, although of course welcome, but it needs to be enforced and supported.

3. The funding environment for women-led startups can differ depending on geography. We heard that in Israel it can be a benefit to be a female entrepreneur in raising funding as it's novel and the country is forward-thinking in this way.

4. What's the solution? Raising awareness is important to create role models for women from a young age. Much of the bias is structural and dates back to early education. Numbers of women studying STEM are improving which is positive. Strong female networks also help and more mentorship in the community would be beneficial. It would also be good to see more intentional action from the investment community, although quotas are not necessarily the answer.

5. The key thing is ensuring diversity of thought on your teams - if you don't have that, you're leaving so much potential on the table. Women are part of that diversity.