ForbesAsia-April2018

APRIL 2018 FORBES ASIA | 59

there are no female investors at all. If Lee’s

group could ind a way to efect long-term

change in this old boy network, it could

serve as a model for hidebound industries

around the world.

She had one thing going for her. Four

women on her initial email blast rank

among the world’s most powerful venture

capitalists: Ann Miura-Ko (No. 55 on this

year’s Midas List), Kirsten Green (No. 77),

heresia Gouw (No. 89) and herself. And

there were also up-and-comers like Sequoia’s

Jess Lee, Union Square’s Rebecca Kaden and

Sarah Tavel from Benchmark. As champions

of entrepreneurial capitalism and free enter-

prise, these women knew that if they seized

the commanding heights—by funding more

female founders and mentoring more fe-

male investors—they would be impossi-

ble to ignore. Protesting the power structure

might generate one-day headlines. To cata-

lyze change over a period of decades, they

needed to become the power structure.

Called All Raise, the group, now with

3 6 women, granted Forbes exclusive access

as they try to rewrite their industry’s play-

book. he stated mission is to double the

percentage of women in VC partner roles

over the next ten years and increase total

VC funding to female founders from 15%

to 25% in ive years. All Raise was already

the invisible hand behind two of tech’s big-

gest diversity eforts in recent months: the

mentoring series Female Founder Oce

Hours and a 700-startup pledge for diversity

called Founders for Change, featuring tech

billionaires like Instagram founder Kevin

Systrom and Dropbox CEO Drew Houston.

Two startups have already secured fund-

ing because of All Raise. Education-sav-

ings service CollegeBacker raised $75,000

toward its seed inancing thanks to a meet-

ing at the Female Founder event. Agentolo-

gy, a fast-growing maker of real estate sot-

ware, raised a $12 million round led by an

All Raise member acting on a tip from an-

other. And through a private database of in-

terested female tech leaders—dozens strong

and growing—these groups are not just re-

butting irms that say they can’t ind women;

they’re acting as part of the change.

Ater months of secrecy, All Raise’s

members are going public. When Melin-

da Gates surveyed the industry to see who

had the most promising plans for diversi-

ty and inclusion, All Raise caught her eye.

he group is in talks with her personal of-

ice, Pivotal Ventures, to formalize its sup-

port. All Raise has commitments of $2 mil-

lion from such supporters as Silicon Valley

Bank.

Like a startup itself, All Raise faces risk

as it builds on early success. Its volunteer

members will have to scale carefully and

avoid burnout while working within an in-

dustry known for its resistance to change.

Should they succeed, All Raise’s members

have the chance not just to open the eyes of

an industry but also to kickstart a transfor-

mation of American business, where shock-

ingly only 6% of the biggest publicly traded

companies are led by women.

AT THE ALL RAISE February meetup in San
Francisco, Medha Agarwal rushes to thank
her cohost and fellow venture capitalist
Maha Ibrahim, a partner at Canaan who in-
vests out of an $800 million fund.
For more than four hours, Agar wal and
92 other women hear stories from Ibrahim,
Aileen Lee, Miura-Ko and others, covering
everything from how to speak up in partner
meetings to when to switch irms. Agarwal,
a midlevel principal at Redpoint Ventures,
PORTRAIT ILLUSTRATIONS BY LOUISE POMEROY FOR FORBES a $4 billion-in-assets shop in Menlo Park,

1 Neil Shen /11

SEQUOIA CAPITAL CHINA

Alibaba

2 Bill Gurley /7

BENCHMARK

Uber

3 Jim Goetz /1

SEQUOIA CAPITAL

WhatsApp

4 Carl Gordon /8

ORBIMED

Acerta

5 Robert Nelsen /16

ARCH VENTURE PARTNERS

Juno Therapeutics

6 Mary Meeker /6

KLEINER PERKINS CAUFIELD & BYERS

Airbnb

7 Peter Fenton /3

BENCHMARK

Docker

8 J.P. Gan /30

QIMING VENTURE PARTNERS

Meitu

9 Douglas Leone /9

SEQUOIA CAPITAL

ServiceNow

10 Brian Singerman /5

FOUNDERS FUND

Stemcentrx

11 Eric Paley /31

FOUNDER COLLECTIVE

Uber

12 Mike Maples Jr. /20

FLOODGATE

Okta

13 Kui Zhou /25

SEQUOIA CAPITAL CHINA

New Dada

14 Roelof Botha /34

SEQUOIA CAPITAL

Square

15 Byron Deeter /39

BESSEMER VENTURE PARTNERS

Twilio

16 Scott Sandell /24

NEW ENTERPRISE ASSOCIATES

MuleSoft

17 Rob Hayes /21

FIRST ROUND CAPITAL

Uber

18 Dennis Phelps /4 5

INSTITUTIONAL VENTURE PARTNERS

Snap

19 Josh Kopelman /35

FIRST ROUND CAPITAL

Flatiron Health

20 Hans Tung /19

GGV CAPITAL

Musical.ly

21 Neeraj Agrawal /17

BATTERY VENTURES

Coupa

22 Joe Lonsdale /88

8VC

Wish

23 Xiaojun Li /13

IDG CAPITAL

Xiaomi

24 Xiao Ping Xu /72

ZHENFUND

Meicai

25 Jerey Jordan /18

ANDREESSEN HOROWITZ

Airbnb

J.P. GAN

Picture

Perfect

His rapid rise to the

Midas List’s Top 10

comes from invest-

ments in picture-

editing app Meitu

and e-commerce

platform Meituan-

Dianping. —A. Knapp

RANK Name /2017 RANK

FIRM

Notable Deal

THE LIST

The Forbes Midas List ranks the top 100 tech in-

vestors in the world. We pick VCs on the num-

ber and size of exits over the past five years.

We count only exits above $200 million or pri-

vate rounds valuing companies at $400 mil-

lion or more. Neil Shen, seen on our 2014 Forbes

Asia cover (right), is

No. 1, thanks to invest-

ments that include Ali-

baba, Meituan Dianping,

JD.com and, recently,

an exit through online

lending platform Ppdai

Group, which raised $221

million in an IPO on the

NYSE in November 2017.