Women in venture capital are writing the rules of maternity leave and bending the male-dominated culture to their will
Sitting in her Bay Area home office, Anarghya Vardhana, a venture capitalist, cradled her one-week-old baby at her breast and logged on to a Zoom video call.
Anarghya Vardhana, a partner at Maveron, clutches her youngest child to her chest while at her computer at home in the San Francisco Bay Area.Being a mother is an around-the-clock job, but many venture capitalist-mothers are finding that it's hard to draw a firm line to focus on being a parent when on maternity leave.entering the male-dominated venture industry, firms are being forced to craft maternity leave policies on the fly to accommodate new mothers.
"The amount of women in venture, particularly on the investing side, is only starting to increase and we still have a long ways to go," Allison Baum Gates, a general partner at SemperVirens Venture Capital, touches noses with her newborn baby at her home in the San Francisco Bay Area.Rebecca Kaden, a partner at Union Square Ventures
The reasons a venture firm crafts a generous leave policy aren't entirely altruistic. It can be used as a lever to hire and retain more women in venture, several investors said.was eight months pregnant when she got hired by Redpoint Ventures as a managing director. The firm typically offers 12 weeks of maternity leave, according to a spokesperson, and offered her a full leave even though she had just joined.
"I believe their reputation is somewhat tied to making sure I know and that everyone knows that they're being generous with leave," Baum Gates said."I'm like, I want to get back in there." "I took a board seat right before I went on leave," Baum Gates, who now has a two-month-old baby, said."I don't want this founder to be like, 'Allison disappeared'" when they needed her.
Before her four-month leave, she assigned each of her portfolio companies to another partner at the firm. In one case, the firm's chief finance officer stepped in to counsel a founder looking at an acquisition offer. Other partners called founders and warmed up deals for her upon her return.
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