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The Founders Forum is one of those clubs that annoys me to no end. Note that the club itself doesn’t annoy me, the fact that I’m not a member annoys me. Your company has to be valued at more than $500M to join. Next year, I’m sure. I get annoyed by most such clubs. Like Davos. Where’s my invite to Davos?
Anyway, Guardian tech journalist Jemima Kiss attended one of the Founder’s Forum events recently and started tweeting about how male dominated the panels were. The above shows an all male panel discussing wearables. Wearables. All male.
(In case you’re wondering, half of the wearables market is female).
“Wearables” is a funny MBA-type word by the way. It reminds me of how offended Radio Head’s Tom Yorke was when someone referred to his music as “content”. I can see myself representing, say, Yahoo at the HQ of some ancient Swiss watchmaker trying to convince them to play ball. Watches? You’re in the wearables business, buddy.
But filling tech panels with women is impossible, I hear you say. No it isn’t. Mike Butcher and the Europas folks managed a 40% ratio of women in their list of speakers and panelists. There’s tons of women in tech from VCs to founders. And wearables? Let me Google that for you. Aha, the first result leads me to three high powered women with an opinion of the wearables business: Laura Michelle Berman (Melon), Mari Kussman and Thiel Fellow Maddy Maxey (The Crated). The next few results reveal more women in wearables such as Christina Mercando (Ringly), Leslie Simmons Pierson (Memi) and Liz Salcedo (Everpurse). Maybe they were busy.
So what’s the trick? Butcher explained in a Facebook comment: “Actually all I had to do was open my eyes…”
Let’s.
Today marks the 100 year anniversary of women’s right to vote in Iceland. Congratulations!
