VCs had an idea of what successful founders looked like, and they didn’t look like me

I’m a Latina who was born in a small New England town and attended a small women’s liberal arts college in Virginia. But that’s not how I thought of myself during the early days of getting my company off the ground. When I was heads down in code building TaskRabbit, I thought of myself as an engineer. When I was in the throes of pitch decks and investor meetings, I thought of myself as a founder. My identity and background didn’t factor much into how I spent my time each day, and I wanted to believe they wouldn’t matter when it came to my chances of raising venture capital. READ MORE