Welcome to the A16Z podcast. I'm Michael Copeland. We were lucky enough to have the founders of three venture capital firms down to A16Z recently.

Anne Winblad of Hummer Winblad ventures, Aileen Lee of the new firm Cowboy Ventures, and Teresa Gow of another new firm, Aspect Ventures.

They were joined by Lisa Lambert from Intel Capital

and Andreessen Horowitz's own Margat Wenmockers

in a conversation that examined the basics

of venture capital, the tech trends that each are keen on today,

as well as the path that each of these women took

to get where they are in the venture capital world.

Margaret Wenmockers moderates the conversation.

There's a whole set of topics, but for those of you want to be in this chair one day,

I'd be interesting to hear what your path has been into the VC job. And do you want to start?

Sure. First of all, I have an undergraduate degree in mathematics and a minor in computer science.

So I started early investing in software as a track for my career.

I worked for a year as the assistance program with the Federal Reserve Bank in Minneapolis and quit my job and started as a track for my career. I worked for a year as a systems program with the Federal Reserve

Bank in Minneapolis and quit my job and started as a software entrepreneur where actually

did, for better or worse, write some of the code. When my company was acquired in Minneapolis,

I moved out here to Silicon Valley. And my intention was to continue being an entrepreneur.

But John Hummer wanted to start a software firm and

stalked me for about a year and a half.

He's tall, so that's scary.

He's the tallest venture capitalist, I think.

I could be the shortest, perhaps. And, you know, what,

...