1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Deb Kemper of Golden Seeds (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: Let me ask you something much more blatant. When people look at young women entrepreneurs, there is this question about how this person manages children and family. What is your current investigation is reporting?

Deb Kemper: They’re doing it. No one ever asks their male peers these questions.

Sramana Mitra: Definitely not. Are they asking this question because there’s a lot of sensitivity around this right now?

Deb Kemper: It is latent. In our group, we have 80% women, most of whom have successful careers. I do have entrepreneurs who say they’ve been asked those questions. They’re always a little surprised. If they’re confident enough, some of them will say, “Do you ask male entrepreneurs that?” That’s how I coach them. They would never ask a male that. No one really needs to know what their plan is, but just say you have a plan in place.

I have a CEO in my portfolio who had a baby two years after funding. She’s figured it out. As a Board, we thought about it because we had to have contingency plans. That’s a bigger discussion in society that we have to have. It gets to that unconscious bias that it’s the woman versus the man.

Sramana Mitra: The bias comes from history and anthropology. Women have been taking care of children. Men have not been taking care of children and families. It’s that shift of men participating more and taking care of children is a newer phenomenon. It’s not even pervasive. In certain societies, it’s still not the case.

Deb Kemper: I’ve lived in both South America and Asia. It’s very different in every area. I can imagine for your community, it would be very different depending on where they are.

Sramana Mitra: I’m Indian even though I’ve been in the US now for a long time. In the Indian society, there is a lot of help. Even lower middle class families have servants. There’re nannies and lots of domestic helps. That covers a piece of the puzzle. There’s also this phenomenon of extended family. I wrote an article at some point with a case study. The title was, “Make your Mother-in-Law Your First VC.”

Deb Kemper: That’s absolutely true.

Sramana Mitra: Some of those cultures are living similar phenomena out here. Mothers-in-law come and move in and provide a lot of that childcare support. It’s very common in the Indian community for the mother-in-law living for a better part of the year.

Deb Kemper: A key part to remember is being an entrepreneur and founding a company is incredibly stressful. It puts a lot of strain in the family whether there’s children or not. I see that across the board with males and females. Among some couples, one has the steady job and the other is the entrepreneur. We have some companies where both spouses have gone into the enterprise. You know they’re all in. It’s all about risk tolerance. It’s very stressful. I try to make sure that my entrepreneurs have an outlet. People who do this do this, because it’s their passion. It has lots of ups and downs along the way.

Sramana Mitra: Absolutely. The shock absorbers are very important. How you create those shock absorbers in your life is really a part of the success of an entrepreneur’s journey.

Deb Kemper: I love that phrase shock absorbers.

Sramana Mitra: It was a great conversation. Thank you for your time.

This segment is part 5 in the series : 1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Deb Kemper of Golden Seeds
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