Martina Welkhoff (WXR Fund) on Gender Diverse Teams Outperforming All-Male Founding Teams by 63%
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The Guest
Martina Welkhoff is the Founding Partner at WXR Fund, which invests in immersive technology startups that are committed to equal gender representation.
Martina is also a former co-founder and CEO of Zealyst, which used data and games to build strong employee relationships and provide insight into company culture. The company was later acquired.
Martina went on to found ConveneVR, which is focused on bringing people together in VR. At the same time, she has been committed to increasing diversity in the technology industry as the board president of the Seattle Women in Technology group.
The Conversation
In this conversation, Martina and I talk about why gender diversity is both culturally and economically beneficial. We discuss WXR Fund’s accelerator program, and the type of impact it can have on the participating companies.
We also explore Martina’s experiences raising money for the fund, and how that differed from raising money as a startup. We then dig into her startup experience and explore some lessons learned.
We also discuss how, over the long term, a giving mindset consistently beats a scarcity-based mindset focused on taking and hoarding.
The Request
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Links From The Episode
- Report: First Round 10-Year Project: Companies with female founders performed 63% better than all-male founding teams
- Report: Women-Led Companies Perform 3x Better Than The S&P 500
- Report: Firms with More Women in the C-Suite Are More Profitable
- Book: Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success by Adam Grant