Male Tech Founders are Missing out
Let me start by saying that my startup, iomob.net has three male founders and a predominately male team. Even most female founders I know don’t blame us for our gender imbalance and some go as far as to say that we should not even make an extra effort to find more women to join our team. The best will emerge and if they are male, so be it.
I disagree with this view and argue that most male founders in tech are mostly connected with men in tech and have networks that favor men over women, and in some cases have inherent biases towards hiring more men for their team.
Just a few years ago I published my third book, Post-Capitalist Entrepreneurship (PCE) where I presented evidence and arguments for a new type of collective entrepreneurship that is not aligned with our core understanding of capitalist enterprising. In PCE I highlight the growing inequalities our global economy has been generating along with the growing environmental concerns exacerbated by our industrial, wasteful ways and fossil fuel dependence. The economy we have today has largely been built and managed by men. I believe we need more women in leadership and more women on tech teams that aspire to transform our global economy.
Iomob is a small startup with big global ambitions to democratize and decentralize mobility ecosystems in cities and regions around the world. With such aspirations, we owe it to ourselves and our partners to seek more balance in our team. While the photo above of our team taken a few months ago makes me sound like a hypocrite, there are two amazing, brilliant and inspirational women on our team that were not there that day we took the team photo.
Over a year ago, when Iomob was just a concept formed by the three founders, I set out to find someone to help us with communications. Rather than rely on my own flawed and biased networks I went outside of them to specifically find a great woman to lead our communications. I reached out to Akasha Indream, AKA Miss Blockchain, who had done a lot of communications work to ask if she knew someone from the Women in Blockchain (WIB) community where she was active who might fit. To my surprise she said she might be able to contribute and if not, she gave me another contact as a possibility as well.
What surprised me most was that she was actually interested in the role but still suggested another candidate to me as well. I will admit if the shoes were reversed I would not have offered a competitor to the role. Akasha has turned out to be a fantastic hire, helping Iomob build a growing global community across various channels and creating a growing awareness for our vision and traction amongst key stakeholders.
On April 15th, Iomob’s executive was expanded with the addtion of Liz Chee as COO and VP of Business Development. Like Akasha, Liz has been quite active in the Women in Blockchain movement. I have known Liz since the very early days of Iomob when she was co-founder and COO of another blockchain project, HIT. I have known for a long time that if she ever became available I would do whatever I could to attract her to join Iomob at a senior level. Not because she is a woman but because she has an awesome track record in software companies (a decade with Microsoft), as a founder of a software startup (HIT) and because I knew she is an A hire and the founders at Iomob made a decision when we started the company that we were going after A hires. As it turned out, when Liz did in fact become available we had a lot of competition for her, as five other companies made her offers. Not surprising really, given her global recognition as a Remarkable Woman in Tech!
We are ecstatic to have two smart, seasoned, ambitious senior women in important roles for Iomob. I realize we are far from balanced yet but we are on the right track. Recently we had an offer out to a senior software engineer who was both female and a minority but unfortunately she rejected the offer. We will keep trying however as we are convinced that Iomob has a better chance to achieve our global ambitions if our team better reflects the global market for mobility services.
About us: Iomob revolutionises how people get around. We are a technology platform for mobility. We enable seamless, multimodal journeys across an open network where any participant can interact and connect with any other. It is an open, neutral system where large transit organizations, major service providers, startups, and independent operators can be integrated into a single user’s journey. In short, the Internet of Mobility.
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