Jenny Lee: Chinese women in tech

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Jenny LeeVenture capitalist Jenny Lee talks China’s tech boom and the surge of female leadership.

The worst kept secret in Silicon Valley is that tech firms have a major gender diversity problem.

Men dominate the top jobs and very qualified women are still fighting to break that thick glass ceiling in the tech world.

In China, it’s a very different story.

In fact, according to official statistics, China’s tech start-up scene has boomed in the past two years, with more than 4.8 million companies registered since March 2014 to May 2015.

And women founders were behind more than 10% of these new ventures.

As one of the world’s top-ranked venture capitalists, Jenny Lee is at the forefront of China’s tech boom.

She became a managing partner at GGV Capital in 2005 and has been a key player in some of the company’s most successful deals – including investing in Xiaomi, one of the world’s largest smartphone manufacturers.

“The phone itself is not something that blew me away. …What was exciting about Xiaomi was the vision of the product and then the team,” explained Jenny Lee.

Jenny Lee: Chinese Women in Tech

Venture Capitalist Jenny Lees discusses China’s tech boom and the surge of female leadership.

She’s also the only woman among the top 10 on the 2015 Forbes Midas list – meaning the tech startups she chooses to invest in, all “turn to gold.” Lee feels that her gender actually helps her as a venture capitalist, or VC as she calls them.

“Leveraging the complete set of skill sets that we can have, whether it’s a decision on the fly or whether it’s being just emotionally there to support them [men]. Those are skills that I think women VC’s, actually we, have it innate in us,” said Lee.

Jenny joined May Lee from Shanghai with her message that success in the tech world isn’t about gender – it’s about passion.

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