Aileen Lee

When I was growing up, I had lots of smart classmates that were girls, but none of us were really pushed into math or computers or anything like that. Girls took AP history and AP English and AP European history. And boys took calculus and physics.

The world is diverse, and having a professional team that mirrors the world is going to be more helpful for us.

There's an opportunity to make your board - and your company - smarter by adding diversity, especially of gender.

If a firm hasn't hired a single female partner in its history, I don't think it will finally happen by accident.

The role and importance of females in companies can make a big difference.

Female users are the unsung heroines behind the most engaging, fastest growing, and most valuable consumer Internet and e-commerce companies.

It's awesome that you have a female CFO and a female GC, but if you look at the investing partners, and it's 15 dudes, I do think those people are going to get left behind if they don't get with where the world is going.

Savvy companies are quietly changing up their boards of directors and teams, and this is giving them better collective intelligence, more community admiration, and better financial results.

When companies are private, founders can share more about their future dreams with investors; report less; and the shares are illiquid, constraining short-term changes in valuation.

In the future, the best retail sites will know you much better and show you things that are much more relevant.

If someone was having some surgery that was going to put them out for three months, it's something you should consider, with a man or a woman. What is the impact of having the C.E.O. or visionary out for three months?

Sequoia is a firm that a lot of people across tech and the Valley look to, and I think they're setting an important example in adding new diversity to their team.