00:00Well, I started Serena Ventures about five and a half years ago, and my goal was to invest in women.
00:10I was, at the time, this was a while ago, at the time I learned, I was at this huge conference,
00:16and there was all these people speaking, and the CEO of JPMorgan Chase was on the stage,
00:22and he was interviewing the CEO of Clear, and they were talking about, and her name is Karen,
00:28and Karen had said that less than 2% of all VC money went to women, and I thought that she was mistaken,
00:35or I thought that she had misspoke, but it turns out she didn't, and that was at the time,
00:39that was about seven years ago, or maybe eight years ago.
00:42The number hasn't drastically changed, but it is moving up, but I wanted, I felt like the only reason,
00:48the only way to change that number is to be the person writing the checks, and so I think that,
00:54yeah, I think that we can make such a big difference for me, is like, if people writing the checks
01:00look different on their skin, and they, you know, correct, are different, then they're obviously
01:07going to write to people that look like them, so I think it wasn't anything negative for me,
01:11it was just like, changing the narrative, changing who are actually distributing funds,
01:16and with our fund, we invest in everyone, I really truly believe in diversity, of everyone
01:21having a seat at the table, but it's who you hire at the table, the people that you hire are,
01:26they look at, they look at companies different, women tend to look at companies different,
01:30we tend to invest differently, and so, yeah, we have a few people on our team, and it's been
01:36really fun to invest in other women, to invest in men, to invest in people of color, it's been
01:41something that, you know, just embracing, to invest in everyone, we really don't care
01:46what we like, we invest in great companies, and so, it's been really fun.
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