Sequoia’s First Woman Partner Is Raising Capital, and Standards (Correct)

In 2017, shortly after becoming a venture capitalist, Jess Lee attended a startup conference in Los Angeles. Her badge identified her employer as Sequoia Capital, an Apple Inc. and Google backer that was gearing up to raise more than $12 billion in several new funds. Under most circumstances, that’d be enough to get a VC mobbed, but the crowd largely ignored Lee, the first female investing partner at Silicon Valley’s most prestigious firm. “No one was even looking at my name tag,” she recalls. In lieu of standing around, she retreated to the bathroom for a while to answer ...