Ep. 10- VC Moneyball - How Funding Undervalued (Women + Diverse) Founders May Yield Outsized Returns
"We need to communicate the magnitude of the issue to communicate the magnitude of what we need to do."
In this episode, Kate Brodock, General Partner of W Fund and CEO of Switch, is blunt when she tells us what she really thinks: We have a problem.
VC funding for women-led teams is going down — not up. In this moment, with so much energy around DEI and bringing more representation to the workplace, how is this possible?
In this illuminating conversation, Kate Brodock and Kate Purmal get down to business, exploring the root of our capital allocation problem, and, more importantly, what women can do about it:
The quality and caliber of women and underrepresented founders - the pipeline - is not the issue. The issue is systemic, and it’s the VC system itself that needs to change to solve the problem.
This is precisely what Kate is doing - and she implores other women to become investors to make funding for this underutilized founder talent pool a reality.
Below is a transcript of the episode, edited for clarity.
Drew Tweedy
Hey everyone, and welcome back to the Composure podcast. I'm your host Drew Tweedy, joined as always by Composure author Kate Purmal. Today we are doing our best to keep all of you on your toes by inviting another Kate as our special guest. Her name is Kate Brodock and she is amazing, just like my co-host. So Kate, thank you so much for joining us and welcome to the show.
Kate Brodock
Thank you. I'm so excited to be here.
Drew Tweedy
For all you listeners, Kate is General Partner of W fund and CEO of Switch, formerly Women 2.0, which is a global ecosystem working to transform the innovation economy into one built and run by a truly representative set of founders, capital allocators, and ecosystem builders. She has lived in the tech startup world for almost 20 years now, and has played an active leadership role in the women in tech and entrepreneurship ecosystem for 15 of them. All this operational experience Kate has had in startups, coupled with her deep expertise and commitment to gender and representation has positioned her as an expert and leader on the creation and cultivation of a more equitable future for innovation everywhere. In addition to this podcast, Kate has also spoken at and been featured in many places you may have heard of, including South by Southwest, Fast Company, Microsoft, MSNBC, TechCrunch, and many more. Kate, we're so excited you're joining us today, especially because you and the rest of the team at Switch are actually coming off of a really big day just a few hours ago. Can you tell us a little bit about that?
Kate Brodock
Yes, we did have a good day, big day. And essentially what we did a couple of hours ago is released the new sort of future forward face of Women 2.0, so new branding, and it's now called Switch. I took over the brand in 2016 and sort of knew at that time that you know we'd be looking at a rebrand at some point. And so the day is here, and I'm so, so excited about it. So honestly, the brand sort of caught up to what we've already been doing.
Kate Purmal
Yeah and Kate, I love the name Switch because it has so much energy to it. And it's got a lot of really cool meaning. Can you talk about why Switch is the one you landed on? And what is it about that really resonates?
Kate Brodock
Yeah, so I've been doing this work and just, you know, high level overview, essentially, we have programming that focuses on both the founder side. So we have accelerator programs, pitch sessions, capital access, all that stuff for these amazing women and underrepresented founders, startup founders. And then we also do a good deal of work on what we call the system and the structure. So basically, you know, we could do all the work we want with these individuals. But if we're not also, you know, changing the structure, they have to exist within, we're not going to get where we need to go. And so that work, having done it for 15 years, first of all, it's a social movement, these things are going to take a long time, nothing's going to happen overnight. But the past, I've had this real dissatisfaction, especially the past several years, when it just seems like nothing is moving. VC funding for the second year in a row went down into all women teams. I really wanted to think about something that wasn't gentle, because the industry needs to really understand the magnitude of the problem right now and therefore the magnitude of what we need to do. And so, you know, the word "switch" really does, like there's urgency to it. There is a complete flip. You know, all of that sort of baked into that word, really. I was really looking for like a heavy assertive action word for it. So that's where a lot of the reason that we came and landed on Switch.
Drew Tweedy
You nailed it. Kate, I want to hold on something that you said about the structure of the system, that everybody is playing into an investment. Can you tell us a little bit about what the current state of the investment industry is? That system that you're talking about? And then where do women fit into that system now, and what needs to change in order to, to materialize this vision that you see?
Kate Brodock
Great. So on a couple different viewpoints. First of all, generally speaking, this startup space, and we'll kind of narrow it down to like tech startup space. So just think like Silicon Valley. You basically have an industry that right off the bat started with an incredibly low level of representation. You had people concentrated in one single area almost coming out of, you know, successful CEO positions, oftentimes with, you know, resources at the ready from various places. And so starting companies, you know, already ahead of the system, and then already within this larger tech ecosystem in Silicon Valley that was incredible. I mean, the numbers were so off and so skewed. So when you have that as a starting point, and then you don't, you go for so long, without thinking about the hurdles, or the when you're not thinking about diversity, when you're not thinking about bringing other people into the mix. Sometimes you're not even thinking about like, outside of your geographical location. So it's sort of a melting pot for getting you into to a little bit of a silo on stuff. In addition to that, the startup space, what has been told since essentially VC, you know, VC started, you know, probably two centuries ago, but like modern-day VC, a couple of decades. What you're told when you're starting a high-growth startup is like VC is the golden egg. That's the only way that you grow a company. And so then you have this flow of capital for the past several decades, that's primarily gone to a group of founders that look very, all very much the same, largely white male, coming from, you know, top 10 schools, MBAs from a certain location and background, etc. And so that then, when you put that into context, women, I mean, and I don't know why more people don't see this stat, and just are like, what the actual hell? And the amount of VC funding, U.S. VC funding that goes into all women teams, has just gone from, for 2019 it was at 2.7, 2020: 2.4, and 2021: 2. Like it just went down. And so for someone to not look at that and say, it seems like there might be a capital allocation problem in our midst, still kind of baffles me. But that is the situation. Luckily, however, there is new money coming, you know, we can kind of go into what's kind of happening. New money coming in; a lot of different types of capital opening up. But at the end of the day, that structure, the other 98%, essentially, of the structure is still not shifting, and that is, if you strictly look at VC dollars, that is such an enormous pool of money, that all the other solutions on the table are never going to make the dent that they need to until that traditional structure changes. It's just, it's just such a gap. So that's kind of, that's one sort of illustration of the structure that I'm talking about. You can kind of, you know, extend that outward, more generally.
Kate Purmal
And you know, Kate, we just ended up collaborating in a course I was teaching at University of Michigan Ross School of Business, The Psychology of Startups. You came in for one of the lectures and one of the things that's so interesting is I originally started teaching that class at Stanford with Professor Lindred Greer, and she moved to Michigan and brought it there. When you're speaking to students at Stanford to your point, they already have practically VC money lined up with startups, right? Sandhill VC money. It is a really tight and insular community that revolves a lot around Stanford and a few other really prestigious universities. And Michigan is a top five business school, but it doesn't have, it has a vastly different network around VC funding. And what I find really interesting is how different the conversation is, you know, in excess of the conversation at Stanford, it's all about—there isn't even a question as to whether you're going after VC money. You're going after VC money, and you're going after top tier VC money. But in this business school course as you probably heard when you were lecturing and they were asking questions, these students are looking at a much broader array of funding options, including bootstrapping, and others, which is interesting. So yeah, I think your point, the system by necessity is changing from the bottom up as well. But this issue of access, which I know in your whole focus on business is absolutely critical. And I think changing the paradigm of funding is critical as well.
Kate Brodock
Yeah, yep. And that access piece kind of to tie it back to the structure, that access piece is not really something that the people who are being disadvantaged can remove, at the end of the day. That is a structural thing that needs to change. That is the access problem at the end of the day.
Drew Tweedy
So what's going wrong here? Because this, frankly, is a little suprising.
Kate Brodock
I don't know. Haha how long is your podcast again, Drew?
Drew Tweedy
But the thing is, like there's so much energy around DEI efforts in every industry you look at right now, like people want to see this change happen. And this stat that you're talking about, with VC money going down to women led organizations? Like that's surprising to me. What, where's the disconnect here?
Kate Brodock
Yeah. So the last two years, I personally attribute a lot of it to two things. The last two years were a pandemic and once a pandemic hits, you, you both felt it in every aspect of your life. But people retract, they are risk averse. And when that happens, you probably, frankly, mostly unconsciously revert back to the things that you know, and the decisions that you've made in the past. And so at least for 2020, I kind of attribute it to unfortunately, that is what happens when we are left to backs against the wall, trying to do risk management, and then falling back on old ways. Right? Now, the following year, you know, when I look at some of these numbers, one of the things I see is okay, VC funding actually skyrocketed in 2021, which theoretically means that, at a minimum, the funding, the percentage of funding towards women, you would think would at least stay the same, right? They're just going to get, we're gonna get more dollars. They actually did get more dollars, but the actual percentage of the overall dollars went away. Now, what happened in 2021, is all of a sudden the VC markets exploded. I mean, people were investing, they were back in the game, they were doing deals, they were making big deals. And again, I think that we are, at least part of the problem we're left with is that they again, started to invest in the exact same ways and the exact same patterns that they had before. So it's, it's like almost doubly bad, you have a huge influx of capital. Still somehow that percentage goes down. And that's kind of remarkable. So the past two years are an interesting case study. What I would say overall is two things. Number one, there are some people that just, frankly, are consciously biased, okay, we're going to take them out of the equation for the purposes because that just happens. There is still a lot of unconscious bias. There are still old processes, you know, using data to make decisions when the data is two decades old. Where are the patterns? Like you're going to be brought to the same end result, right? And so all these processes haven't been updated. VCs don't really function like a corporation, it's like, you know, it's a firm, you've got all these separate partners, and the accountability structure is different, and all that stuff. So really tweaking that, when you have a lot of individual decision makers on things is, is a beast. And then I think the last thing, honestly, is, and this is something that I find to be prohibitive in all of these discussions, even outside startups, is honestly there is still just a lot of box checking. And what we call "diversity theater", is I think people either think, a little effort in the right direction is enough, or they are actually trying to communicate to the world that they're making changes when the changes aren't really happening. There have been a couple of large, well-known reputable funds who've come out with, with funds, specifically to invest in this founder class. And, you know, they're either an absolute, you know, decimal point of a percentage of their overall assets under management, or they've got this, honestly, just a sort of a fluke of a decision-making practice where it all just kicked back internally. It's like, it's not a genuine effort to be put down, and actually make an impact. It's just kind of a, it's a box checking thing. So that I find to be very dangerous, because it also signals to the world that, that possibly things are changing if you don't look deeper, and they really aren't. So, those are a couple things.
Kate Purmal
Yeah, you know Kate I want to, I want to expand on this and it's related to the research that's at the core of our book, Composure, which is a research piece by Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, who talks about people confusing confidence with competence. My experience in the VC world is, look, let's just recognize that making a funding decision is a big deal, right? There's a lot of gut in it, where even though there's boxes to check, there's a lot of gut in it. The VCs have to sell it to themselves, they have to sell it to their senior partners, they have to sell it to their limited partners. And not only that, it's not enough to have a modest success, they have to be shooting for the fences, right? They've got now...finding, you know, 10x 100x returns on their 1,000x returns on their investments. And so the problem with that is that it creates an attraction to big, visionary, charismatic confidence. Generally, what we know is women tend to be less that way than men. It's just a fact of the matter. Yeah. I think that's one of the big issues. I also think that you know, with the VCs pulling back, when they get back in the market, a lot of times what they're funding is their existing portfolio companies, as well. And that's one of the other issues is that so much of the funding goes...when you're talking about percentages, and the same thing is true as those women in the boardroom. When you talk on a percentage basis, in order to raise that percentage, you have to disproportionately hire women to get into the boardroom to make that percentage rise. And I think we have a little bit of that going on. So I wonder whether those decimal point drops are significant or not. But whether they are or not, it still gets to this point that the whole system needs to change in order for the way investments are made, in order for them to change. And I'm super curious how you think about that. I mean, do you think about VC investment in your fund from this same perspective of looking for the unicorn and trying to fund the unicorn? Is that your philosophical framework for investing?
Kate Brodock
Yeah, great question. We don't. Of course, we would love to have a unicorn. But the way that we actually think about...so most firms, you were sort of in this area, Kate, and I love the point too about, essentially follow-on, some funds have like 50% of their fund is, is set aside for follow-on. So you're putting all that money right back into the same founder set, right? And that absolutely matters. But it's hard to change that math, it's hard to make a justification to change the math behind your fund structure. So for our fund, many funds essentially look at if they could get 20% of their, or sometimes less of their portfolio, way up in, you know you've got a unicorn, and then you've got, you know, hundred millions of dollars of exits, that type of thing. Basically 20% of the fund ends up holding the fund, essentially. That's the way a lot of VCs look at their portfolio. The way that we look at it is, you know, roughly speaking, really kind of just flip that. And so if we can feel really great about companies that, again, we'll take a unicorn. But if we can feel great that we have actually more companies that are going to come in...that are going to exit in a really fantastic range of returns. That may, again, not include a unicorn, but some very strong companies. That to us is actually a better way of looking at it. It does allow you to have a different perspective on the type of companies coming in and getting in front of you. It really kind of expands your viewpoint on what success looks like, as well. And so we kind of prefer to do to break down a little closer to that.
Kate Purmal
There's another huge benefit to founders for that that I want to just discuss. Because I've seen it, you know, I've worked in the startup space for the last two decades, three decades, really. And I've been an advisor to many startups on the boards and advising the CEOs and entrepreneurs. And the most heartbreaking moment in the life of a startup is the moment when they need a new round of financing and their current investors are not willing to react. Because that is the breaking moment for the venture. And you know, one example, I have one client that, you know, had top tier VCs they needed. They were entering a market with a product that had product market fit, but it's a very difficult market to penetrate from a sales perspective. And it was really clear to me they needed runway, they probably needed their sales team. But what happened was that the VCs, just, it's a spreadsheet decision for them. They basically were going to write this one off. The result is that unfortunately, this founder team, like basically liquidated IRAs, from family members and everything, and they leave the company. And they were able to direct it and support it as a slower growing, but profitable venture that found money in partnerships and stuff. But it was absolutely devastating. It almost killed the founder. So I actually believe this part of the move towards women in investing and women backed funds is that it's not just about the, you know, you're more likely to fund women if you have more women who, theoretically, if you have more women who are VIPs in your firm. But you're also likely to handle those if you're trying to— if your investment thesis isn't quite so steep. In other words, it has a more moderate growth curve is still an acceptable growth curve. It's better for innovation too. I think of the lost innovation when a founder and a company gets shut down, because it's not going to be a unicorn.
Kate Brodock
Yep. Yeah. And Kate, this is why I love talking to you because like we can actually dig into the qualitative stuff that's behind all this, it's like really awesome. And I do at the end of the day, like if you kind of just take a broad sweep of the VC industry, it really is at the end of the day, just like cold calculation, and having the humanity and the empathy in there. You know, part of the reason I also get excited about women getting in on the investing side is because just like you said, like they naturally roll up their sleeves. I see all these women who advise, and they're working. Now a whole other issue on getting paid for that. You know, that's another issue because they should be compensated, incentivized, whatever. But the willingness to step in and really actually support the founders, aside from what a lot of these firms are, you know, they're "founder friendly firms" is really promising. I have a network of women fund managers who like when they talk about supporting their founders, even ones that are failing, like there is a lot of thought that goes into that. That too, I think is going to be such a positive addition, growing, hopefully addition to the space.
Kate Purmal
Yeah, and if I want to put on my optimistic hat, which I've been accused of being a pathological optimist, which is probably true. Right now, in the last maybe two or three years, maybe, and particularly now, there are a lot of new funds that are emerging, that are taking a different investment philosophy and strategy, that are led by women and represented investors, and that are bringing funds to the market that will start to mature, yeah, three to five to 10 years now. Right? So it theoretically, if these fund managers can in some ways outperform and by outperform, I'm actually going to say, the metric might be different, right? Like the traditional limited partner in a VC fund looks for a huge return on their investment with one in 10 surviving, yeah. But if you're actually getting up at the 20, or 30, or 50%, surviving, 30% or 40%, suddenly, your income stream can look really different. So long as there is exit, so long as there's a monetize on the back end, so long as there's liquidity on the back end, which is another one of these interesting questions, because what we're talking about may be a little bit of nontraditional liquidity. You know, it seems to me that we're gonna look at the entire funding ecosystem throughout the lifecycle of a company. And so I'm sure that's on your horizon, too. But anyway, I don't need to geek out.
Kate Brodock
I'll add one more too to that, but like, the LPs as well into these funds. So for example, 75% of our LPs in our fund are women. And so there is also, they are naturally also, I think, viewing their contribution to a VC fund in a fundamentally different way as well, right? There is a return plus element to many of the LPs that come into our fund. They want to get involved, again, like they want to get involved and raise their hand and help the companies and all this stuff. And I think their propensity to see out the success of these companies, to your point, Kate, like whatever that looks like, is baked into their investment decisions. And that's really cool.
Kate Purmal
Yeah, I made an investment many years ago, a decade or so ago, that, and I made several investments. But I'm contrasting this to your point, which is, you know, you can go put in, you know, money into a traditional, more traditional VC fund, and you're not going to have access to any of that. You might get, you know, reports now and then, but basically you're completely on the sidelines, and you're not learning anything, you know, and then I look at the notes I made where I've been a more active investor, and more involved investor, and whether or not those investments paid off, it didn't matter to me as much to your point, because I was able to be involved in learning and at least I was able to become a better investor. Right? So I mean, I think that's like your thing. This is again, a difference here. We are women; the other side of the confidence gap issue is a lack of tolerance for risk around money, because again, that's a competence issue. So I think we're talking about here, two things. Number one is getting more women in, in the investment world to begin to put money into it so we can fund more women and underrepresented groups and two, to increase and expand their experience and expertise so they can become really good investors.
Kate Brodock
Yeah, exactly. So like the LPs and our fund, we actually give them free access to our angel investing courses. And the entire reason is like if they are going out and investing even, well, this is even cooler if they're out there investing into white male led startups, like they're getting on cap tables, they're putting their money and they're getting the money out into the ecosystem. And they are bringing our ethos and mission with them when they do that, and that is powerful. So like, if we can equip them to just inform...I like to pretend we're gonna just take it all over. And so if we could just equip them to infiltrate effectively, the system, like that, you know, that's where it is.
Kate Purmal
Yeah, love it.
Drew Tweedy
Kate, I want to go back to that point you made about risk aversion. So I think it's really interesting. If that's true, which I think it definitely is that women have a higher aversion to risk around their money and that's part of what's keeping them out of the investment world, how do you get over that hump?
Kate Purmal
Let me just talk about first and just contextualize that a little bit. I guess, for me what we know, not all women have risk aversion to money, right. Risk aversion is broader. I just want to contextualize it by saying that, it's women tend to be confident in things they've done before. This is studies around confidence is that men, if other they can use their global sense of self esteem, to derive confidence in their ability to do something by virtue of looking around going, "Well, Joe can do that, I can do it." Women don't have that luxury, there aren't enough to look around and see and say, "Oh, well, if Sue and Jane could do that, well, I can do that." So we tend to be...look at our expertise, I'm sorry, our performance and experience as what makes us capable of doing something and gives us confidence in it. So that's, it's really not that they're risk averse. But they're risk averse in things they're not confident in. And again, we have that confidence gap problem. So go ahead, sorry Kate.
Kate Brodock
Yeah, no that's like, perfect segway into answering Drew's question, which is what we've found, the two biggest things are education. And all the way through the process is like, what is investing? What does this mean for your money? How do you think about your money when you're investing? And then also the act of choosing deals. So that is very important. And the other pillar, again, straight to Kate's point is investing in groups. And so when you are a solo woman making individual decisions, into investing into a startup that is vastly different than when you get to sit next to 10 other women, talk about the deal, you know, maybe three or four of them have done, you know, a handful of deals more or are super experienced. And that is a huge catalyst for them starting to write out those checks.
Kate Purmal
And hopefully, I would imagine a huge catalyst for success. In startups, right? I mean, imagine that, and you know, because I know that the women you're talking about are seasoned senior business people. And who have a ton of experience. It's that pool of women that's utterly underutilized in our society. So let's outperform! Let's do that.
Kate Brodock
I'll tell you too like, not just on angel investments, but like, I'm in groups of women fund managers. And I love it, we all share, like we've had, we've had several, like unicorn exits from some of our, not me, but from some of the women in that group who have been doing this for a couple of years and it's like showing, right? Now, it's like, now we actually do have the unicorns under our belt. So that picking and choosing and being able to make the "right decisions" is being demonstrated. And so yes, and I think talking about that more is really important. And then coming full circle and showing other women too that yes, this is possible. We're doing it. And, you know, come along with us.
Kate Purmal
Well, and to just close the loop on this, to Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic's point, we are overlooking brilliant leaders in favor of...by virtue of looking at competence over competence. And that's happening. And so what's interesting is, if you're a fund who's solely looking in these underrepresented groups, what you're going to get are people who are highly competent who've been overlooked. Yeah. And if you look at Moneyball, that was the strategy, right?
Kate Brodock
We literally have this in our fundraising deck is arbitrage. And like, that's almost what you're looking at, which is just like, yo, at some point you sort of want to be like, "Duh people." Like, how could you actually think that there are full, well-experienced entire brains of humans here that you are just making an assumption don't have reasonable, especially when you get into the case when the solutions are actually matching the background. And so really, that set of knowledge on marketplaces that also haven't been served is actually really a lot better than if another founder had made the solution. Like, these are the types of things that like, this is what started getting me to like the "Duh, you idiot." You know what I mean? But I'll be laughing later. So that's fine.
Kate Purmal
So Kate, I just want to also make sure that we're clear with the people listening, because we have a lot of very senior women. So what is sort of the minimum investment for your fund? What can people invest?
Kate Brodock
Yeah, so we have our fund is set up on what's called the rolling fund model. And so what that is, is it's essentially you subscribe on a quarterly basis. We actually set that up. So one of the reasons we chose that model for our first fund was so that it could be accessible to you know, you don't have to write out a 250k check. You can actually come join us for 10 to 15k a quarter, for four quarters, you can extend after that. And so it's really accessible for women, especially women who this is often times what may be their first foray into VC, or into this asset class or anything like that. And so we were really intentional about that and making sure that it was open. As you can imagine, myself and my partner at the fund, Allison Capen, she has a similar background as myself as decade plus of working with women tech founders and on women's issues. We all have these women who have come with us and supported our mission. And in that time period, they have also become successful themselves. They have assets in their hands, they want to put those assets to work. But oftentimes, they also like to put those assets to work, while also fulfilling some level of mission, which is cool, right? So that's where we love it, like, yeah, you can follow your mission and also make money, which is important. And so yes, quarterly, we have a four quarter minimum subscription. And that's for the LPS so that they get the diversification they expect out of the fund. And they can go all the way up to 12. And then 10 to 15k minimum. And, you know, we have, you know, everybody from 10k, all the way up to, you know, 50k a quarter. And then we have, and then we're into like family office stuff after that.
Kate Purmal
Awesome. So glad you're doing that, thank you.
Kate Brodock
Thank you.
Drew Tweedy
Can I zoom out real quick here?
Kate Brodock
Yeah, zoom out Drew. You've been so wonderful while Kate and I have been going back and forth.
Drew Tweedy
I think the nitty gritty is very interesting. I think it's done a good job of leading us down more specific roads of sort of like where we're at now and what needs to change in order to get to a better future. But I want to zoom out to that broader world that we're talking about here. As part of your launch of Switch today you released a letter from the CEO, and I really loved one of the lines in there that you wrote. And I want to ask about the details behind that. You said, "I've absolute clarity about the world in which I want to live and the world I want to see in front of me and us in two decades." Wow. What does that world look like?
Kate Brodock
Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, it really encompasses if I were to take a sort of job viewpoint on that, and I'll I'll give you the non-job viewpoint as well, but jobs viewpoint my what I'm actually working on. What that looks like is that the tech giants in 20 years, the future Googles and Facebooks, are led by a significantly more representative leader. That means that they need to be funded now, that means that the structure needs to be supported in order to fund them. Those tech giants are serving have built products that are able to serve the people, the full breadth of people that should be served. And that is, again because they have the right teams in place. And via that process, we're also accomplishing things like building generational wealth for a lot of people that haven't been able to build generational wealth, whether it's through a successful company exit, or by being an investor, or something like that. And so it's really again, comes down to that access piece. That these things that so many—so few people now end up taking up so much, a large piece of the success pie. That there are more people that are able to take part in that success story. And they look representative. So then if you broaden that out into the world. I mean, honestly, it's so simple for me is just everything, that again a small set of people have ever been able to do with no problem. I want that for every person in the world. I want that utopia. I want the world to actually be colorblind, "colorblind". Now, I don't use that term, because you can't use it now. Because it's utopian. But that is kind of what I mean. It's like actually, that is not an issue or gender blind or whatever it is. So that is kind of the larger.
Kate Purmal
We know gender and color go away when people are at representative levels in the context of bias, like an entitlement. The research shows that it takes about 25% of any underrepresented group, 20 to 25% representation to eliminate a tremendous amount of bias in an organization. One of the things, Kate that I hear here, and I really want to amplify this point. It's why I wake up in the morning, it's why you wake up in the mornings, it's why we're talking, is that I fundamentally believe that what we've seen is that those with money have power period full stop, whether you're organizations and companies or whether you have personal assets, you have power, you can decide where to put it, influence the things that matter to you. And I know we would be in a vastly different situation right now.
Kate Brodock
Yeah, I know exactly what you're gonna say, say it.
Kate Purmal
More women power, right? If there were women in power and more people that are representative of our communities. But there's no question to me. Oh, and you're tackling it from this way and Jocelyn Mangan, who we've had as well, is tackling it from the board, one boardroom at a time. It's all tackling this from different angles, but trying to get to the same thing, which is to get women into positions of...women and those who are underrepresented into positions of power and influence, so they can change the world.
Kate Brodock
And Kate, thank you for pulling me there. That is probably honestly, that is the really core thing. And I just seriously thank you for pulling me there. And I just can't even agree more. If I were to look at the world. Even if you break it down by leaders, country leaders, large corporate CEOs, everything would function differently. If we had more women in power, hands down.
Drew Tweedy
Okay, should we wrap up with the joy question?
Kate Purmal
Yeah, we should definitely do that. I love it. So, Kate, you know, well, you've been through our 12 week program. We've worked a lot together. And so you've experienced the kind of work that we do and what's in the book. And one of the things that you know, is that we believe that joy, this high energy emotions, are actually what really fuels impact in changing the world because they do create energy reserves and resources that enable people to take heroic leaps and to do big things. It's this idea of pursuing joy, of being in flow, of having being pulled by something greater than you, of having a mission and purpose that's bigger than we are, of having the kind of visual we just talked about that keeps you up and keeps you moving. But specifically, and it's particularly hard right now, being in joy is something that we believe is vitally important. So the question is, where's your joy in your life?
Kate Brodock
Yeah, that's an easy one. And it's, we've been talking about it the entire time is I get an immense amount of joy around positive human interactions. So when humans are showing each other empathy and supporting each other, even the littlest tiniest acts of smile down the street, that brings me so much joy. It erases the, you know, Kate, this work can be gutting, sometimes, and hard and exhausting. And so that human connection brings me a great, great deal of joy.
Kate Purmal
And what about the land you live on?
Kate Brodock
The land I live on? It's a lot of land. That brings me—we have a little sanctuary here. And that brings me also a significant amount of joy.
Kate Purmal
Yeah, I would imagine.
Drew Tweedy
I love that. I think that's a wonderful place to wrap up our conversation. Before we go, Kate Bradock, thank you so much for coming onto the show. And can you tell our listeners real quick where they can learn more about your work and how they can support you?
Kate Brodock
Awesome, amazing. You can pop over to our brand spanking new, as of a couple of hours ago, website @switchthefuture.com. And then in there, too, you can get over to our fund, but our fund is also wrule.vc. So come find me. And yeah.
Kate Purmal
How can you not invest in a fund called wrule.vc? Come on, do this!
Kate Brodock
I love it. And as always, Drew this is delightful. And as always, Kate, just love these sessions. So thank you for having me.
Kate Purmal
Thank you, beautiful.
Drew Tweedy
Before we go, a quick note. There was a ton of content in this episode about the confidence gap and how lower levels of self-confidence disproportionately affect women and underrepresented groups in the workplace. If that dialogue resonated at all with you, we highly encourage you to take the imposter behaviors assessment available for free at composurethebook.com. After taking the assessment, you'll receive instant results that will help you not only learn more about any imposter behaviors you may have. And trust me, most of us have them, I know I do. But you'll also get concrete steps and advice for how to overcome those behaviors and step into your full potential. Again, visit composurethebook.com or find the link to the assessment in the show notes.
And that's the show. If you enjoyed it, there are a few ways you can help us out or shape our future episodes. You can rate the podcast on whichever player you're listening on now, or send this episode to someone you think might enjoy it. Or you can let us know who you think we should have on the show next. We always love hearing from listeners. So please do reach out by emailing us at support@composurethebook.com. The Composure podcast accompanies the new book, Composure: The Art of Executive Presence, written by Kate Purmall, along with co-authors, Lee Epting and Joshua Isaac Smith. Learn more at composurethebook.com. And a special thank you to Gretchen Yanover for creating the beautiful music you hear on the show.
