Many Things Can Be True at Once
Four Takeaways from Xena Tech Summit in Berlin
Have you ever left a conference where each speaker was SO excellent, that you wanted to speak with each of them after every session? My fan girl modus was in full effect at the Xena Tech Summit. Inspired by what I heard, I transformed my learnings into notes we can all use.
Xena’s mission is to close the gender gap in tech. They tackle this from various angles, or tracks, as they called them at the Summit. Tracks that day included: Engineering, VC/Inclusive Funding & Hiring, and Product.
My main takeaway area from these tracks can be summarized like this:
1️⃣ Leadership: Developing that skill at work while empowering teams
2️⃣ Product: Mindfully building tech solutions resulting in societal good
3️⃣ Inclusivity in VC: Opening the doors of venture from within
4️⃣ Pathways: Learning from career trajectories to find your own path
Here’s what I took away, for you to put into action, too.
1) Leadership: How to develop it and empower teams
Meta’s Rija Javed kicked off the Summit with a keynote on leadership that touched on the role of teams and culture. Rija believes your role is not solely defined by a job description. She seems allergic to hierarchical terms like ‘junior.’ Rather she says, your job is to make the company and people around you successful.
So how can you do that? Through a mode of flexibility and adaptability, she has perfected over the years. Although Rija started as an engineering individual contributor, she has since managed larger projects which meant scaling up finance and ops teams — aka non-tech functions.
“Your job is to make the company and people around you successful.” — Rija Javed
Rija encourages ‘unblocking roads’ and ‘removing distractions to pave the way’ for others to be successful. If you avoid micromanagement, you can instead set up an environment for a team’s success. She also uses her ‘megaphone as a leader’ to translate the message when bringing people up to speed on topics, adding her voice to translate what the team needs to know.
TIP from Rija: Influencing culture from the bottom-up and top-down is a big part of leadership, where your actions and message should align. And if you’re wondering how to get to a great culture: empower your people with trust and autonomy.
In her career, she consistently picked problems that are hard to solve. (And by doing so, it seems she became more core to the company.) Her management style involves a 3-prong approach asking: 1) What are the business goals? 2) What are the individual’s interests? and 3) What are the teammates’s skillsets and potential?
If you can figure out an individual’s motivation, you then have a key to how they fit best into your organization. It takes trust to get that answer, since that may involve an employee with eventual departure plans. Rija says you must create an environment where people will be successful and you have to lead from the front, setting a good example. Finally, she also sees value in cross-functional business units, where teams align and support each other.
Another experienced speaker Rohit Argawal of Soundcloud (and whose main message is the title of this essay), echoed this sentiment saying: Performance = Environment + Individual. And that environment is steeped in cultural values. Rohit says that senior leaders need to be able to: 1) Recognize talent and 2) Deeply understand the connection between people and business problems. He says your organization and products are a function of your people.
“You are effectively the sum of your people and their potential (including their capabilities and talents; so put them in a position to maximize that.” — Rohit Argawal
TIP from Rohit: Be mindful about bringing people into your organization. Honor their potential and honor your customers; the closer alignment of these two aspects results in more success. Rohit welcomes challenges and even did so for the live audience as well, but to quote Bezos, you have to ‘disagree and commit.’
2) Product: How to build something meaningful
Rohit wisely asked: “How do you build something that people are willing to exchange value over?” The answer could be found in a lot of different talks that day. Customer feedback was a must. This was apparent from a startup presentation by Preply, who shared how to query users to gain as much info as you can about their expectations on cost.
“How do you build something that people are willing to exchange value over?”
Clue’s CPO Rhiannon White’s fascination with user preferences was contagious! She always asks: what do people love or loathe? As Rohit said above, she also asks: ‘What’s valuable enough that they’ll pay for it?” Rhiannon focuses on JTBD, or Jobs To Be Done. In Clue’s case, they are moving through a journey with each user, who is part of their growing community (this author included.)
It’s a linear progression where you can’t skip this flow of steps: Trust (the main driver of which is accuracy); Orient (rely on cycle imagery to know where you are in time); Empower (what can you do about your status and choose your reaction); and Comfort (Your experience is unique to you, yet many others go through it.)
This menstrual cycle app is SO much more: It is a method of visualizing and recognizing pain severity; it is a way of relaying information to your health care provider, and a method of education on topics that need more light: endometriosis, fibroids, menopause, and more. Clue is so serious about content that they say: “Content strategy is product strategy,” and that they ‘solve for pain via content.’ They also aim to close a research gap, since historically, women have been largely absent from clinical trials. That is a product with a big mission!
In Bumble’s Director of Engineering Rosemary Hitchcock’s closing talk, she explored how the Bumble dating app has a large and lofty goal: to make the internet a safer place. They use their product and tech to further that mission. They focus on countering harassment (aka cyberflashing), e.g. using AI to detect blur effects to create a more respectful environment. Bumble also uses profile verification to detect deception. All of these efforts are in service of their mission.
TIP from Rosemary: 1) Look at your business through a lens of kindness and safety. Then test the workflow. 2) Build a diverse and inclusive culture 3) Emphasize education: for example, create a strong partnership with legal as well as member & customer support 4) Encourage cross-collaboration 5) Employ continuous learning: ‘You need to keep pace with dodgy innovation.” (like deep fakes, etc.)
3) Diversity in VC: How to open the doors from within
We heard a crackling session from HV Capital’s Anna Ott, who confessed that when HV brought her aboard four years ago, neither she nor the firm fully knew what was expected of her in terms of DEI. Anna advises portfolio companies to be more diverse in their decisions and hiring. With her internal HR work, she aims to do what is right in the firm and to also have the ‘credibility to practice what we preach.’
She encourages everyone to ‘check your privilege’, educating leaders on how to transform their power to empower others and “open doors from inside.” She also welcomes feedback as a way to reflect, encouraging people to “think about why others may hate/avoid you.” If you listen carefully, you can understand and try your best to do better.
Anna shared her ‘50 Hacks for Inclusive Hiring’, which she has turned into a playing-card-sized deck for easy distribution. There was a mad dash to grab a set after the session. Anna challenges your thinking to examine and admit biases; saying them aloud reduces their influential power. She also discussed the mental load of ‘DEI policing’ and encourages having a coach who can support you if that is part of your role.
We also heard a panel with Melina Sanchez of Aenu, Julian Riedlbauer of Drake Star, and Carla Schell of Auxxo. Moderator Patricia Russ guided them through a conversation that revealed their decision-making techniques, data-driven tracking, enhancing diverse networks, and navigating LP’s interest in diversity, which according to Julian, is increasing.
The question arose on how C-levels can become more diverse post-funding, how to diversify deal flow, and how to grapple with the need for more female founders in deep tech and AI sectors. Melina shared that she is proof of a non-traditional background making it work in VC, and suggests broadening your definition of diversity beyond gender. Carla shared how Auxxo as a co-investor brings institutional or lead investors more access to female-founded or mixed-gender teams, especially in climate teach and energy.
TIP from the panel: Similarity bias is real: Like attracts like so ensuring a more diverse investment team means bringing more diverse network effects and expanding the talent pool for new investments.
4) Career Development: Paths make sense in hindsight
Alina Bassi, of Founderland and now Ananda Impact Ventures, shared her career path from chemical engineer to entrepreneur, to the non-profit space, to Impact VC. Alina says entrepreneurship has been the best way to ‘learn everything all at once.’
Her main learnings included: Finding your community, working with a coach, listening to your gut and taking your time, and understanding VC ( its size, vertical, deployment, fund size, and return pressures).
She also shared key tips for other investors: Show respect for founders; Build longer, less transactional relationships; Be as transparent as possible; Show fast conviction /reveal any dealbreakers and finally: ‘It’s better to say no than not respond.’
“It’s better to say no than not respond.’” Alina Bassi
Valerie Bures-Bonstöm of XangeVC delivered an engaging talk on her professional path as a successful entrepreneur in the fitness space who continually refined her business acumen. She gave a shout-out to her Startup Success Team and relayed a compelling story about her encounters with investment angel and tennis legend, Steffi Graf, which ultimately taught her two things: You are the owner of your story, and you never really have a clue of ‘who is important in the room.’
Valerie explored the role of AI, and how it will change the game for ‘rule-bound things.’ Her attitude is that in a threat vs opportunity situation, it is up to all of us to get creative: Good leaders and C-Levels know this. She sees an AI career wave where we can harness aspects of AI to improve our work without being intimidated by it. She also pointed out how domain knowledge will be ever more important as LLMs and GenAI become more prevalent. (This is a theme that keeps popping up for me in my conversations with startups, especially at Earlybird’s Vision Lab.)
To Wrap:
On that note of courage, thanks to Alisha Louwrens and all the people behind the Xena Tech Summit who shared their ideas that day. Alisha rocked the stage. Together, Summit speakers and guests gave me much to consider during Women’s History Month.
As the title above says, ‘many things can be true at once’. And that captures the spirit of this event: we have to navigate multiple truths to close gaps. I will take these learnings with me in my work at Earlybird Venture Capital where I build up our communications. I hope this was a useful read for those at the Summit or those who may have missed it.
📸 All photos by Elisheva Marcus.
Please find me on LinkedIn, X, Instagram, or follow my articles on Medium, which focus on tech communication and empowerment. Happy IWD Day 2024!
