July 8, 2008
The chinos that run Silicon Valley
All those preconceptions you had about chino-wearing venture capitalists with their fancy MBAs are handily confirmed today in a snapshot of the industry’s demographics provided by the National Venture Capital Association.
In fact, even your preconceptions may not have prepared you for this. A startling 86 per cent of the VCs who actually make decisions about investments are men (at least that is according to the people who responded to the survey, by the NVCA and Dow Jones Venturewire.)
Equally startling is the finding that 63 per cent of VCs have MBAs, while only 19 per cent have engineering backgrounds. So much for the ability to empathise with the struggling entrepreneur. And, yes, Harvard comes out top, as the alma mater of roughly one in eight venture capitalists (Stanford, which produced one in 11, came second.)
