Thread by @ginab

1/ So, about “The Investor Rebuilding Kleiner Perkins” (which is unfortunately behind a paywall, @jessicalessin). I read it today with a feeling of deja vu.
theinformation.com/articles/the-i…

2/ Let’s start here: "Under Mr. Hamid’s leadership, the firm pledged to improve the diversity of the firm, adding two women to its investment team last fall: Monica Desai, who is focusing on financial investments, and Annie Case, who supports investments in the consumer sector."

3/ Join me for a trip back to 2004. 👇

4/ When I was coming up, @kleinerperkins had more amazing women than any other VC firm. @aileenlee, @trae, @ekp, @JulietdeB1 + Beth Seidenberg and Mary Meeker (who were intimidating in all the right ways) represented some of my most talented and ambitious peers–women or men.

5/ They were the future. And the future looked pretty damn bright.

6/ 15 years later, KPCB just raised $600M and found a way to avoid adding a single female GP. General partners (GPs) make all the money in VC. Instead, they dusted off their same excuse from 2004 and pointed to two new female associates as their commitment to diversity.

7/ Let’s put aside being sued for sexual harassment (which could happen to anyone). Despite marketing themselves as experts in growing “world class teams,” from 2004 to 2019, this firm didn’t grow a SINGLE associate into a GP who could take their firm into the future.

8/ I hope the best entrepreneurs of tomorrow’s generation are paying attention (and I think they are).

9/ Instead, to find the right person who would be “completely unassailable in the community” in a moment when they “could not afford to screw it up,” they turned to a guy from a firm well-known for its dysfunctional partnership to take them into the future. Interesting.

10/ If @AllRaise shows us anything, it’s that there have always been amazing women investing. And there are more of them than any of us actually knew. Now the ones who have been delivering great returns quietly for a decade are more visible.

11/ Even better? They are bringing with them the next generation of women in a smarter, savvier, and more public community of fellow investors.

12/ What’s sad is that KPCB was the firm in the best position to show the killer returns possible when you value different voices, especially when trying to predict the future. Instead, they offer a cautionary tale of the decline that comes with choosing the status quo.

13/ Fortunately for us (less so for KP's limited partners), every one of those associates I admired back in 2004 has gone on to do incredible things. They are all making money for other people.

14/ They powered through some truly challenging times and today are thriving. Imagine what heights they’d be climbing today without the obstacles that were thrown in their way?

15/ The worst part of this KPCB victory lap is the missed opportunity they had to do something different. I think about the lost opportunity they had to leapfrog the competition by pushing themselves to reimagine the venture firm of 2030.

16/ A firm that more closely mirrors the population, chooses non-traditional brainiacs with expertise in emerging categories (like @a16z has done), or even just shows a glimmer of the courage that’s going to be needed to build the fantastic future we need to survive.

17/ And rather take a page out of @a16z's playbook a decade ago that turned the industry on its head (and delivered monster returns), KPCB hired a team for today, not tomorrow.

18/ In the world that’s coming, visionaries and brainiacs are going to come from anywhere and look very different than the last generation of game changing founders. Focusing on today is insufficient.

19/ In a business that seeks out massive returns over 10, 20 or even 40-year cycles, KPCB may not lose tomorrow or the next day, but there’s no question that they have chosen a losing strategy.

20/ In this new world, we are all on notice. Posting empty diversity pledges, pointing to female associates, and taking a victory lap for not sexually harassing anyone this year does not get you a badge.

21/ And it’s certainly not going to get you the returns your limited partners (LPs) expect.

22/ But there’s a silver lining to this story. I’m more optimistic today that change is here. This is a 60-year-old industry built on 600-year-old power dynamics. I'm okay giving ourselves–women and men–more than a year to shift.

23/ The future is too bright to give up now. But let there to be no doubt. The ones who shift now are the ones who are going to win. Everyone else just looks increasingly sad.