I loved the points that Kat Gordon made in her recent guest post on Inc.com:
http://bit.ly/15vVKYE

“1). Women are amassing wealth, influencing spending, and driving tech
usage at rates well beyond men. By 2030, women will control two-thirds
of the nation’s wealth.

2). Founders are most likely passionate about something that meets a
need or interest that originates from their own life experience.

3). If 19 out of 20 meetings are with male founders, how do VCs hope to meet the needs of the true market: women?”

I couldn’t agree more.  As an investor, it’s very easy to get lulled into simply responding to inbound inquiries.  We’re all so busy, that we could spend all our time simply on entrepreneurs being introduced by friends.

Yet if we follow this path of least resistance, we simply reinforce the current patterns, like a wagon wheel in a rutted dirt road.

Smart investors need to set aside time to proactively seek out and nurture relationships, both with female founders and with potential female founders.

Many of the most important events in my career resulted from relationships that began years before, and that I nurtured with no particular end in mind.  In most cases, those were relationships with young men, which means that, like many, I have more work to do to live up to my beliefs.