Sifted Podcast: Eileen Burbidge on crisis talks at Monzo and building a reproductive healthtech

Thank you so much for having me.

Very happy hazard. I never had a plan in mind, and I think I'm just very, very lucky. After university, I went to Illinois, then to Texas first, and then ended up in California working for a telecoms company. Once I was in the Bay Area, I found the tech sector. I knew Apple was there, Intel was there, Silicon Graphics was big, and I really fell in love with the tech sector and decided to join Apple. I got lucky enough to get a job at Apple in 1995. So I was in the Valley for 10 years, which was much of the dot-com boom. The more instructive life lessons were the two or three years of the bust that I witnessed as well. In 2004, after being at Apple, Sun Microsystems, an incubator, and a company that went public in 1999, I thought I was going to stay in Silicon Valley forever. But I thought it would help my experiences as a contributor to have a slightly more global outlook and get international experience for the CV. I thought London or Amsterdam, based on language, and thought a year or two and I'd be back. Here I am now, 20 years on, with an additional passport, kids, a stepdaughter, a family with five children. I've just been incredibly lucky to have different opportunities and chances to try things.

It's funny to think back on because it's such a long time ago. It was so different to what it is now. I still think there's a huge distinction between the culture of Silicon Valley and here in and around Old Street. In Silicon Valley, if you go into any Starbucks or cafe, 99% of the people work at a tech company. You speak in hushed tones because everyone knows somebody, and there are very few degrees of separation. Here in London, you get in a cab, queue up in a Starbucks, and you can assume most people aren't in tech. 20 years ago, I remember chatty black cab drivers asking what I did for work. Saying 'tech' meant absolutely nothing, so I started to adapt and say 'IT', and they understood that. That's where we were in 2004. There wasn't really a tech sector. When we first started to hire additional product people for Skype, the job titles 'software development manager' or 'software product manager' did not exist with recruiters and headhunters here. It was very different. I really liked going from the Silicon Valley insular mindset to one where there's a whole lot more going on in the world, and what we do should be enabling and improve outcomes, but it isn't the end-all be-all. I was self-conscious about being from the States, but I think I benefited from it. I probably got more credit than I was worth because I'd come from Silicon Valley. People thought I had that DNA or mindset, or had witnessed what works and doesn't work. I could have had any role, and they wanted to transplant that over. I recognize now that sometimes seeing what doesn't work is as valuable as being part of a hugely successful journey.

That wasn't that long ago, that was 2015. That conference still takes place, but I don't think that practice takes place anymore. I'm no longer invited to that conference. There was a very different vibe, not just because the tech ecosystem was relatively nascent, but there have been so many shifts in the last seven or eight years that have helped us all and the sector move along considerably. The #MeToo movement, or at least the time when women felt there was a safe place or infrastructure to support them if they were to call out bad behavior, forced lots of people and organizations to recognize that for too long there was an imbalance, mistreatment, and bad behavior. 20 years ago, if you talked about diversity and gender diversity, someone would have rolled their eyes or said 'yeah, yeah, but anyway,' as if it was an afterthought. There's a great photograph of the early Skype team at a board meeting in Tallinn. I didn't clock it for years until somebody posted it on Facebook and people started tagging names. My former sister-in-law saw it and recognized that I was the only woman in that room. I hadn't even clocked it because I was so used to it. We would have talked about diversity then, but I don't know that we would have done anything about it. Certainly 2016, 2017, #MeToo forced that to be part of the conversation for good. Then what's just as impactful, though on a different lens, is in 2020 what happened in America with George Floyd. That forced a conversation about race and ethnicity and inclusion on an entirely different sphere, which was fantastic. That probably accelerated what would have naturally happened anyway. Then we roll into COVID and the backlash from the pandemic, with anti-East Asian sentiment and hate crime. So many things have happened one right after another. Where we sit today in 2023 is such a better place where these conversations happen. We're still waiting for the right outcomes or the right balance, but we can at least have these conversations and do the work. It's no longer an afterthought or a tick box exercise. Comparing where we are now to 2004 is almost impossible. The change we've seen is more recent, in the last six or seven years.

I do think I know what you're saying. It is an interesting cultural difference. If we think about the US and the UK, they're somewhat different. You talk about things like Asian American struggles or issues in the US, which is very US-specific and very different from the East Asian, Southeast Asian, or South Asian experience here in the UK. The response to what happened after George Floyd is also very different in the UK. Gender diversity is very different. When I first got here, I thought British and European counterparts had gender diversity much better sorted than in the US. It felt like there wasn't such an explicit glass ceiling. You had people like Angela Merkel, Thatcher before, very powerful women in certain positions. Yet there's the other side of the same coin, where men holding the door open in America was very annoying and patronizing. Most of my colleagues and peers stopped doing that in the US. Here, it was very much the thing to do, but you knew not to take offense because it wasn't framed in the same historical tone as in America. I do know what you mean, they're not directly correlated or parallel at all.

Again, if there's anything that becomes a consistent theme through our conversation, hopefully it's luck. I'm a big believer in luck, privilege, access. I also believe that sometimes the luckiest ones might be the hardest working. You can help manifest luck or create circumstances where you're recognized as lucky. There's no question that we've been very lucky and fortunate, and it's been a privilege to work with all the founders we've worked with, not all of whom end up becoming a Monzo. Everything feeds into an experience and a decision about whether to invest in a certain company. Everything that came before helps inform that. For GoCardless, chronologically that was first. We had an ethos when we set up Passion, which in the most basic form was bringing over the American founder-friendly way of investing in startups. That hadn't existed because the market didn't necessitate it. There weren't enough competitive factors to lead with being founder-friendly because there was such a limited pool of capital. Passion was the first seed stage specific tech fund in London. When we set up, there were only multi-stage funds and some business angel groups. We were part of a cohort with Seedcamp and others. It was about bringing founder-friendly principles, which led to having a co-working space, working alongside our teams instead of being based in Mayfair, being based somewhere further east like Clerkenwell, where founders wanted to be. We selfishly wanted other people around the office to make it a dynamic place to come every day. As a consequence, a team of British founders who went to Y Combinator came back needing office space. They couldn't find an office open over the weekend, so somebody connected us. I said, 'Sure, come see the space,' and that's how GoCardless was introduced to us. We didn't invest that day, but we had them sitting in the office for a few months. We noticed from their KPI graphs and whiteboards that things were going pretty well, and then we asked to invest. GoCardless led to investing in Monzo and Nested, given the co-founding team of Hiroki, Tom, and Matt. Everything before an investment factors into making that decision. We were very lucky to get to know those founders. The early employees at all those companies heard about how we behaved, how we negotiated with the founders, what positions we took in discussions with other investors, and that led to more deal flow opportunities. Even if it's not early employees, I think about another great business like Butternut Box or Marshmallow. They would have heard through the grapevine that those founders enjoyed working with us multiple times, so there must be something worth chatting about. The way we behave with them leads to better and better outcomes or opportunities for investment.

It's really interesting. There's been so much said about it, and I love and hugely respect Tom for being so open about his journey and what he was going through. Much of it is his story to tell. In terms of how it feels to go in, one of the ethos points of setting up Passion was to be founder-friendly. Another big distinction between us and other firms was that we were former operators and entrepreneurs ourselves, not from asset management, fund management, or investment banking backgrounds. We were pitching to founders that our value would be thinking more about building up the team and the business rather than IRR or profit margin from month to month. It would seem that we should be able to be hands-on, but we spent quite a number of years deprogramming our brains and teaching ourselves to be investors, which is to be hands-off but still add value and perspective, and let the teams run the businesses. We are investing in teams, not ideas or propositions that we're going to run. It's rare to have the opportunity to get involved on an operational basis. I first did it for Tide Banking, a fantastically performing digital challenger for SME banking in the UK. In 2018, it was a mutual agreement with George Bevis, the original founder, and the rest of the board that it would be a great time to bring in a scaling CEO pre-Series B. I had negotiated and worked with George and the team to bring in a candidate we were all excited about, but for different reasons it didn't work out. We had already announced it at the company all-hands, thanked George, and said this is the next stage. When it didn't work out, we decided it felt regressive to say George would stay on, so I went in as interim CEO for about four months. I brought in Oliver Pearl with the team and Up Group helping us. That was my first reminder of being operational again. It was about a 50-person team, a great team, so I didn't have to do too much on my own. It was quite intensive for four months and took me a while to recover and adjust. It's probably why I was in an open mindset when, in very early 2020, Tom said he didn't want to be doing his job in six months time. I didn't go in to do his job, so it's not analogous to Tide. I initially went in and said, 'Understood.' With the board and the chair, we talked about the best way to support Tom through a succession and transition. It felt useful if I could spend a couple days a week dealing with some of the people or admin he didn't want to deal with, so he could focus on product. The chair was also spending more time speaking with the regulator. None of us expected the pandemic, which came about three or four weeks after I started. Monzo drastically cut costs, closed the Las Vegas service center, did redundancies, salary sacrifices, and reshaped the cost basis to extend runway and become more efficient. Tom had already hired a US CEO, but we also ran a process with him and other candidates to identify the best group CEO, which was TS. Tom had also started interviewing for CEOs. It ended up being nine to ten months that I stayed in a loose people role. We brought in TS's CEO Sujata as CEO, a new Chief Risk Officer, new CFO, new Chief Product Officer, new General Counsel, pretty much the whole C-suite. It was a whole team effort. Hopefully I was able to provide some continuity for the executive team and some mental space for Tom, assuring him we would work on a succession plan. We also had to give support to the people team implementing a lot of changes through a pandemic.

It's interesting thinking about it now. A lot of it came about because of the pandemic, and because we were in lockdown, everyone was working remotely. That made a huge difference. When I did it at Tide, Tide and Passion were in the same office building but different floors, so I could go up and down stairs. Monzo was all Google Meet calls, so that's how I shifted between the two. I had the support of my Passion partners, recognizing the importance and the value that represents to Passion as a fund. There probably wasn't a question that this was a priority. I had always had the pleasure of being on the board, so if there was something we could do to help, there was no question I would be doing that. We didn't know it would last as long as it did, but I had the support of my partners. I'm sure some of our other portfolio company founders were like, 'Okay, you were a little bit hard to get a hold of or took a couple of days longer to get back to us.' Hopefully I didn't drop too many balls. More than 50% of my time was with Monzo. It was an everyday role for a good nine months without question.

I always thought the company would get through it. With Tide, when I got involved, it was very obvious to us as investor shareholders that there was massive value creation. I don't mean to sound too capitalistic, but it was the right thing to do. What makes Monzo very special is its founding principles, its ambition, and how much we believed in that. It's public record that we are significant shareholders; we still own 20% of that bank, which is extraordinary. The only reason we have that position is because nobody else would co-invest with us for the first three rounds. We had strong conviction and backed it up time and time again. This was a very special company to us. We genuinely believe the mission. I have said countless times in all-hands, from when the team was five founders to 11 people to 20 to 50 to 500 to a couple thousand, that there is no secret sauce to building a digital challenger bank. We've seen plenty come and go. What's special about that team is they believed in doing things not just like freezing your card when you lose it, which every UK bank now does, but also being the first to offer people without a fixed address a bank account, the first to put on a gambling block, the first to think about what's possible when talking about people's relationship with money, not how to become a digital challenger bank. That's credit to Tom and all the co-founders from day one. In 2020, there was no doubt in my mind. There would be concern, a non-zero possibility that maybe this doesn't go well, but all the ingredients of a genuinely successful, scalable, sustainable business existed in Monzo. By that time, it must have had at least three or four million customers, making it a top 15 UK bank. Nothing is too big to fail, but we had a customer base, asset-based IP, and a tech stack developed solely in-house. Even in the worst case, we had asset value worth continuing. There isn't a specific meeting I can think of, but there are lots of moments I hope I won't forget. I'll never forget the call where we had to communicate to the Las Vegas service team that we were going to close that down. I hope people on that call could see how genuinely disheartened we were to deliver that news, not because we were worried about the business, but because we cared about them as colleagues and humans. What I loved about that call was that there were tears, but the number of people who said, 'If you're going to hire again in the US, please let me know,' or 'If I were to move to London, could I get a job in Cardiff?' was heartwarming and validates what I'm saying about how special that company is. I also remember speaking to investors in the days before announcing the appointment of TS as CEO and how Tom would be transitioning. Some investors said, 'You can't let this happen.' Their point was they invested because they believed in Tom. The founder had become the investment thesis. They said, 'I don't care what he's doing, let him go on holiday, let him go on a sabbatical, but he's still got to have that title CEO.' There was no other option. It was about Tom's health and well-being. For me, Tom was going to step away. What is the best way to manage that for him and support him while not making the company vulnerable? We believed we had a great successor. I won't forget those 24 to 36 hours beforehand doing those calls. It was a pleasure and a privilege to have been part of that in a more hands-on way. My family will tell you I was a bit less present for a few months. I burnt out a bit. After I stepped away in August or September, I remember being a bit fried, realizing I didn't have to do all those calls. But it was amazing to be part of.

Hopefully, given I've done it before, it is possible that I would never let them down and I'm still trying to do right by them, looking after the Passion value drivers and portfolio companies as much as I can. Hopefully it's also somewhat reassuring that Fertifa is a Passion Fund Three company, so that's how it started. You asked earlier about doing the dual hat of Monzo and Passion in 2020. We invested in Fertifa in October 2020, during lockdown and the pandemic. We were still making new investments. We closed the fund first in August 2019, with a second closing in August 2020. We came across Fertifa, made that investment, and really believed in the vision, purpose, and market. That's a whole other podcast, but I have talked about why my personal journey has me gravitating towards supporting reproductive health and investing in areas that have been historically under-invested. It's a great shame. I had been keeping an eye out, surveyed the market, talked to most startups that are still around. We came across Fertifa and liked the proposition. I'm also a personal angel investor in US-based Maven Clinic. I love Kate Ryder, who had been based in London before going to New York. I've seen what she and Kindbody have done in the US for this category. In my research, I realized that eight times as much money is spent today across Europe in assisted reproductive technology than in the US, yet there are three unicorns in the US in this category and there isn't a category leader yet in Europe. As an investor, this seems to be a very big market. It makes a lot of sense. Because I was born and raised in America, I am used to non-public funded healthcare or private pay healthcare. I'm also hugely sensitive to the rollback of reproductive healthcare rights in America and in certain states. I'm very concerned about future access. I've had 20 years benefiting from the NHS here, but I think culturally we've developed a false sense of comfort that the NHS or public healthcare across Europe will look after us. It hasn't ever always been completely inclusive. It's always had cost constraints or budget constraints, so restrictions. You might have qualified for three rounds of IVF on the NHS if you were of a certain age, under a certain BMI, didn't have children from a previous relationship, were married, and not in a same-sex relationship. That hasn't been the case. Coming off the pandemic, it was clear the NHS was on its knees with record wait times. There's an obvious case that we will need different types of privately funded healthcare throughout the UK and Europe. That's not where we started with Fertifa. We started with companies finally recognizing a duty to employee well-being during the pandemic. We no longer pretend we don't have children, families, dogs, or pets because everyone's seeing it on Zoom calls. We have to look after well-being. Reproductive health matters are hugely distracting and debilitating for productivity. If employers really want to look after people, they need to start covering these topics, which have never been covered under private medical insurance and which we weren't getting enough of through the public healthcare system. When Fertifa came along, it seemed an obvious investment thesis for a pre-seed deal. When the team said there was a bit of a shuffle needed, execution was going well, traction was going well, inbound demand was going really well, but we might need a slight rejig of the leadership team, I went in January 2022 thinking, 'No problem, I've done the Tide thing, I've done the Monzo thing. The company is seven people, that's the size of my dinner table. I can go in on internet, it'll take me three months, I'll hire somebody to be CEO like I did at Tide.' That was the original idea a year and a half ago. The team hasn't been able to get rid of me because I fell even more in love with the proposition. I saw how much demand there was. I felt it was a largely executional play but should be delivered by someone who really believes in the mission, which I really am. If somebody were to say there's a better person to run this business than me, I've had that conversation the other way, so I'm ready for that. For the moment, I feel like building this up and proving out the thesis that there should be a category leader here in Europe. We shouldn't just wait for Maven or Kindbody to come service us in the UK and Europe. We should build our own. We have the ability, capability, and talent to do that. That's what I'm really excited about doing now. There have been Fertifa babies, lots of them. We had a new Fertifa baby born three weeks ago.

I haven't met any of the Fertifa babies, but we do get their photographs. There's no team call like a team call when you get to share the photo of a Fertifa baby. It makes you realize that the work you're doing to support people through these journeys, people who have had three and a half year fertility challenges, some 11 year challenges, to realize their dream of becoming parents, which should be everybody's right and option. They may just need a helping hand, someone who's got their back, someone to explain why this clinic and not that clinic. To support them however we can is a huge gift. It's fantastic. We started with infertility, hence the company name Fertifa, but we now support all of reproductive, hormonal, and sexual health. It's not just for women. When we're talking about family forming and becoming parents, every LGBT individual needs support to become a parent. We're also talking about adoption, surrogacy. One in eight men in the UK will be diagnosed with prostate cancer. 25% of working age men will die before retirement due to a health related issue. We don't think men are talking or thinking about their well-being and health as much as women are in the workplace. We know women aren't being served enough. This is about men, women, everyone. It's not about people just wanting to start families or reproducing. It's about anyone who has a reproductive health system. It's STIs, erectile dysfunction, vasectomy, reverse vasectomy, egg freezing, sperm freezing, fertility, and menopause. 13 million women in the UK today are going through perimenopause or menopause, and 42% of them are thinking about leaving work because of their symptoms. This is becoming commercially relevant for any business thinking about retaining its best talent or attracting great talent.

I know that's been an objection. I haven't heard it much recently, but absolutely when tech companies in Silicon Valley introduced this close to 10 years ago, there was that backlash and sentiment that companies must be doing this so people will stay working longer and put off having children. Now we have enough data to show that respondents and people who tell us why they freeze their eggs do it not because they want to focus on their careers, but because they haven't met their life partner yet and don't want to be forced into a decision that affects their personal life. Companies offering the benefit may some be doing it selfishly, but I don't think so. I think they simply want to help alleviate the stresses, concerns, and anxiety people might have about whether it might be too late, whether they are looking after their optionality. Most companies that have a fertility benefit covering egg freezing or sperm freezing will also cover IVF. It is about helping people no matter where they are in their journey. From the Fertifa point of view, we would suggest you should also be covering menopause, all of women's reproductive health, and all of men's reproductive health. I don't know any company that only has an allowance for egg freezing, because then maybe I could see that argument or concern. It's typically just one piece of reproductive health well-being and support.

There are a few things. Another part of the Fertifa mission is not just helping people have babies or feel gratified about helping them with their biggest life journeys. I look forward to when the business is sustainable enough that through our corporate clients, because of what they're paying us commercially to support their employees, we can subsidize, underwrite, and offer support at a different cost structure to people who are teachers, work in the public sector, or don't have access to those corporations. That is absolutely part of the mission: increasing access and support for everybody, irrespective of demographic, socio-economic class, and where you work. Some of the clients we're proudest of include Lululemon, because they offer Fertifa across all of their employees in Europe, not just those at the head office but also those in the retail stores. That's what we love: the equity and availability of our resources and support to everyone. The second piece is that I think we are moving towards a place in the UK and Europe where there will be more privately funded healthcare full stop. What I don't know is what that balance will be between employer and self-pay or some other form. I'm going to tie some things together from what we've seen in fintech to what I'm doing today with Fertifa. I've only come up with this hypothesis since I've been in this role. The more I sit in this role, the more we hear from clients, prospects, private medical insurance providers, and patients. While you've got really big players like Aviva, AXA, Vitality, Bupa, in eight to ten years maybe they are still as big and formidable as they are now, but I believe there's an opportunity for a challenger, just like in banking. We thought Barclays and NatWest aren't going to go away, but because we thought there could be an Alibaba, Amazon, or Apple challenging banking, there should also be that opportunity for someone like a Monzo in the private medical insurance space, or let's just call it privately funded healthcare space. I don't think it's going to be the insurance model necessarily, but I don't think it'll just be Aviva, AXA, Vitality, Bupa. I would love to see what Fertifa can become in terms of providing people with personalized healthcare stemming from reproductive healthcare. We get asked today by clients using our services for reproductive healthcare, 'Can you also support neurodiversity?' That's not even tangentially related to the reproductive health system. We get asked for other things like financing. I realize it's because they don't want to go to Aviva, AXA, Vitality, Bupa to ask for something else. They don't want to pay them for something else. They know their employees don't enjoy going through a claims process, yet they're getting specialized, empathetic, compassionate, high quality support and healthcare from us on certain topics. They ask if we can add to that. Over time, I can't wait to keep adding to our suite of services. If I think about where that vector goes, I would like to think that in eight to ten years time, we are a new model of privately funded healthcare for people that's different from private medical insurance and an option to people outside of public healthcare systems too.

I think I would probably still choose the UK, but that's probably not fair because I've never spent that much time in Amsterdam. I'm now so in love with the UK. I'm a British citizen, my children are here. I still think the UK is a fantastic place to be. I think that Brexit has not helped. Even if one wanted to argue the specific points and consequences of Brexit, whether it was digital single market, visas, export import duties, I think even the narrative and dialogue around Brexit was unhelpful. It felt for a time to be unwelcoming, not open for immigration, and very insular, wanting to be quite isolated. That wasn't helpful because there was a vibe and tone very different to the years leading up to it. I think we're still suffering from that a little bit. Then there are the real world consequences and practicalities that don't help either. But I do believe we've got such a concentration and density of talent that we're lucky to have, that we're able to keep thriving as a tech sector. I hope it'll continue to improve. I don't think it's going to go away. When we talk about the tech sector, or when the government wants to say it's still the tech hub of Europe, it's looking to increase productivity figures, see employment levels, attract FDI. None of that should really matter for an entrepreneur thinking about starting their company. That should just be where their market is, where they think they can get their talent from. Post-COVID, there have been lots of successes where you don't have to have everyone in the same place, so you may not have to choose London or Amsterdam. We'll benefit from the density of talent, experiences, track record, and all the successes we've had.

I should probably change that because I thought I was recovering when I got on Twitter in 2007. I was a little bit late to it. At that time, I was making the transition to being an investor. I definitely think I was a bit of a workaholic when I was in California, certainly when we were at Skype. I remember pulling an average of one to two all-nighters a week. I thought in 2007 I was going to be stepping back a little bit or getting more time for other things by becoming an investor. Maybe it's time to change that because I've given up on the recovery point. I think I'm probably working as much as ever, but I am enjoying it and I do think I'm lucky to be in this position.

I think both, and I think each makes me better at the other. So definitely both.

I rambled for lots of times without breaks. I'm sorry.

In the UK, it's a tough one. Where do I start? American healthcare is so messed up, it's not even funny. It's horrific. I don't want to go back. I hope we won't go to that extreme, but we're clearly moving in that direction. There's no way I can say to my children, the oldest who's 17, 'Don't worry, when you're an adult and have a family, you'll have a shorter wait time at the NHS.' We're going one direction. If the NHS is going to continue to contract, and I feel so bad for nurses and doctors, it is abhorrent that they haven't gotten real wages for so long. It's ridiculous, and we're not investing in it in the right way. I hate that, but I can't do anything to change that. I feel like let's introduce new models to support people and avoid what's happening in the US, because that is just a nightmare. Let's put the burden of paying that on corporates and companies that have the ability to pay. It makes 100% sense. The only problem with that, which I anticipate, is if you're a teacher, a social worker, or work at your local corner store, do you then not have access? I'm hoping we will definitely commit ourselves to that. I've made a commitment to investors that there will be a certain portion of our patient population paying at a different rate. I absolutely want the corpus to subsidize that. It's bad enough for the public system anyway if those people are being taken out as well.

Yes. We didn't talk about it, but we've processed a million and a half pounds worth of reimbursements paid for by Meta, Bank, Capital, Osborne Clarke, Roth, which used to be a Goldman Sachs division. Those companies are paying for treatment cycles for their employees. Over the last 12 months, it's a million and a half pounds that those employees didn't have to write their own check for, and those were cycles that weren't taking up wait slots on the NHS. That's actually the right thing to do.

I did unapologetically when I looked for someone to run it. I spent five weeks talking to more than 50 candidates for the role. I was unapologetic that I only wanted to talk to women. I realized that is discrimination at one level, but my belief was that a woman would represent and be the face of the business in a stronger way than a man could, especially if we're going to talk about menopause and fertility. Also, if I have an opportunity to decide and influence who's going to come in to run the business, I think it's okay for me to have a preference for a woman to run this business. If I can't place a female CEO in this business, what the hell am I doing? That was a concerted effort of mine. I only talked to women. It was a fascinating and somewhat exasperating exercise. I've also interviewed my fair share of men for other roles. I love my husband, I have sons, I'm not bashing on men. But when I interview men, no joke, a guy will talk about certain things and say, 'Oh yeah, I listened to a podcast last week about that, no problem, got it, I can do it.' Men jump at an opportunity; they're not put off by something they haven't done before. Every single woman I spoke to, very credible, accomplished women, started the conversation by saying what they hadn't done. They'd say, 'Just so you know, I've never raised from VCs, just so you know, I've never done enterprise sales, just so you know, I haven't done it at this stage.' I get it, they were wanting to be transparent, save your time, manage expectations. But no man starts by saying, 'Just so you know, I've not done that before.' No, they don't.

We qualify everything. The other word that I always take out with my girlfriends is 'just.' 'I just need a little time.' No, I need time. There are so many of those little things that we hold ourselves back with that we aren't even aware of. I think it starts really young, at two or three years old. I don't know how we fix it or change it, but hopefully over generations we will. I've thought about it a lot because I have three boys and two girls. Even random things like friendly neighbors stopping to say hi to the kids. Everyone will say to the girls, 'Is your hair pretty? That's such a pretty dress, such a pretty jumper, oh you look really cute, aren't those cute shoes?' Something about their appearance. What they'll say to the boys: 'Did you play football this morning? Have you just been back from whatever sport? What team are you following? How'd your team do? Who won the match?' For the girls, it's all about appearance. These are people trying to be friendly, not to marginalize girls. They think the girls will be more chuffed by hearing something like that, and they think the boys will be able to relate if they're talking about an activity. But they should talk about activities with the girls as well, not just what their hair or clothes look like. I've seen it, and you don't want to yell at somebody because they're just being friendly to the kids. But it starts that early. When the first person says that to a girl, they think, 'Oh, I got praise for something,' and they just think they look better and start thinking about that. Nobody asks them about gymnastics or football, because they should be playing football too. It starts really early.