Coast & Gender — Female vs. Male & East vs. West — The Startup Investor Ecosystem Revealed
Part 1: Who’s Popular?
There are several dichotomies in the startup ecosystem that one cannot escape. The most topical is the under-representation of women on both sides of the startup ecosystem (entrepreneurs and investors). There is a near constant stream of articles published that discuss — and funds announced that intend to address— this important imbalance. While female investors and entrepreneurs are themselves underrepresented, the funding disparity seems even greater, with the vast majority (90+%) of funding going to male founders.
A less-topical difference, but one often discussed in investor circles, is the difference between the East Coast and the West Coast investor communities. The prevailing wisdom is that between the Coasts, deals are done for different reasons, and at different valuations. West Coast investors are said to make more “vanity” investments and favor anyone with a Silicon Valley pedigree, whereas East Coast investors want to see proof of product-market fit and traction before investing any money. Furthermore East Coast investors complain that valuations are too high, often blaming West Coast investors for allowing the overpricing of otherwise good deals. (“Why?” you ask. Because it is perceived that West Coast investors have “unicorn or bust” investor mentality and don’t care about startups that hit doubles or triples, just home runs. Home runs return amazing returns regardless of the entry price. But getting good returns on a portfolio with some “decent exits” — but no unicorns — requires getting in early, at a good price, with good deal terms.)
I was interested to see if these two dichotomies were reflected in social media: to see if there were trends hidden in the data that could show something interesting about the workings of these different communities. Why might social media data be relevant? Social media reflects — to some degree at least — real life connections, so we should therefore be able to see real social structures mirrored on social media. We might be able to answer questions like: Are women any less connected to the overall community than men? Do they have any more or less followers? Is there a substantial difference in who follows whom? Or who follows what? And what about the East Coast versus the West Coast? Do they tend to operate in different circles? Are their social media followings different?
I set out to find out.
Methodology
For the purpose of my research¹, I used the Twitter handles of 200 members of the venture investment ecosystem.² I focused more on early-stage investors, but cast a wide net. To avoid bias, I went through various Top 100- and Rising Star-type articles from places like Forbes, Business Insider, and Medium, randomly grabbing names from the lists and mapping them to Twitter handles. If someone didn’t have an online presence that was easy to find (some Angels have no Twitter presence) , or they use a company handle as their primary Twitter communication vehicle (not helpful for this purpose), or their tweets were protected (what are they hiding!?), they were discarded. Furthermore, I tried not to allow any VC firms be over-represented in the Cohort, capping any firm to a maximum of two members, gender balanced if possible. Lastly, while I was working on the analysis, if I came across anyone interesting from the investor or entrepreneurial ecosystem, I added them in.
Note that Twitter uses the terms following and followed by, but to avoid ambiguity, I use the terms friends and followers to make it easier to keep the direction of the relationship clear. In the Twitter-verse, your friends are people that you follow. Your followers, on the other hand, are people that follow you. It follows that if someone is one of your Twitter friends, then from their perspective, you are one of their Twitter followers.
The Cohort
Who’s in the Cohort and what are they doing on Twitter? Let’s take a look. Here are two graphs that show who’s in the Cohort and their basic stats: how many folks that they have friended, and how many folks that are following them. We’ll start with friend activity:
It appears from the graph that, using friending as a proxy for engagement, women in the Cohort are about as actively engaged in the Twitter platform as men.
Now the graph with followers instead of friends:
Interesting. With followers as a proxy for popularity, it appears there might be a coastal difference in the popularity between women and men: the most popular members of the West Coast Cohort are predominantly men. We’ll dive into this more deeply later on.
Here are some basic stats about the Cohort:
- Cohort: Total=200
- Gender³: Male=130, Female=70,
- Coast⁴: East Coast=77, West Coast=97, Other Coast=13, Non-US=13
- Roles: VC=113, Angel=81, Other Role=6
- Friends⁵: Mean=1,423, Median=869, Max=5,000
- Followers⁶: Mean=131,881, Median=12,493, Max=2,368,369
Engagement
How engaged⁷ is the Cohort with Twitter? Twitter limits folks to 5,000 friends, so with an average friend count of almost 1,500, it’s a reasonably engaged group. The friends chart shows that while half the Cohort has fewer than 1,000 friends, there are some very engaged members who presumably either spend quite a bit of time on Twitter, or use a 3rd-party social media service to “maximize their brand”. For followers, the story is very different. Whereas the average Cohort member has 130,000+ followers, the mean is over an order of magnitude larger than the median, with a few “celebrity investors” having over 1,000,000 followers each. The followers chart shows how the Cohort member’s popularity is heavily skewed in favor of those few, very popular members: with a median of approximately 12,500 followers, it’s not surprising that everyone is bunched up in the bottom-most bucket.
Popularity
There are two easy ways to look at popularity: whom is the Cohort friending, and who is following the Cohort. And I hope there’s a lot of overlap, since if a member of the Cohort “friends” another member of the Cohort, they are also that other member’s follower. It would be strange if at least some member of the Cohort weren’t both friending and following other members of their ecosystem.
Friends
So who are the most popular members of the Cohort? First, let’s take a look at who is friending whom:
Some members of the Cohort are very popular within the Cohort itself — Fred Wilson (#1), Reid Hoffman (#3), Brad Feld (#11), Naval Ravikant (#16) and AileenLee (#20) to name a few — but we also see Marc Andreessen (#2), Elon Musk (#7), TechCrunch (#8), former President Obama⁸ (#21), Kara Swisher (#23), Y Combinator (#26) and First Round Capital (#32) as being quite popular amongst members of the Cohort. On average, about half of the Cohort likes (or at least, friended) the people on the above graph. Very impressive.
So I’m curious! Are things different on the East Coast versus the West Coast? That’s easy to check. We’ll just re-draw the graph with Coast as a filter.
Fred Wilson is the most popular member of the Cohort on either Coast. His long-term success, general nice-guyness, and must-read-blog-for-members-of-the-ecosystem — AVC — probably helps. And TechCrunch is still Top 15ish on either Coast. But the East Coast clearly values Brad Feld more than the West (#8 on the East Coast, but didn’t make it to the Top 25 on the West Coast), and the West Coast clearly favors Elon Musk a lot more than the East (#3 on the West Coast, #15 on the East Coast). Interestingly, former President Obama didn’t even make it to the Top 25 on the East Coast (where he’d be #38 if the chart was wider).
It makes sense to do the same analysis, but based on Gender. Do women and men friend similar, or different, people?
No matter how you slice the data, Fred Wilson is the most followed member of this investor community!
Whether we look at Male or Female Cohort members, Fred Wilson is still the most popular. (Go Fred!) And Marc Andreesen is in the Top 4 either way. Bill Gurley of Benchmark, who was very popular on both Coasts, is #7 for both the women and the men. Equal appeal!
There does, however, appear to be substantial differences in who the different genders have chosen to friend on Twitter. Women favor Aileen Lee, TechCrunch and Kara Swisher far more than do the men, whereas the men have a stronger preference for Elon Musk, Reid Hoffman and Max Levchin than do the women. Oddly, Y Combinator, John Doerr and Bill Gates, all who made it to the Cohort Top 50, were not on any of the Top 25 lists. I thought they’d be some group’s favorite. Hypothesis… busted!
Notable Friends
Lastly, while we’re looking at the Cohort’s Twitter friends, let’s restrict the plot to include only friended accounts that are “Notable”, but not members of the Cohort (e.g. take Fred Wilson and other Cohort members off of the list). We’ll start with Notable People:
The early-stage investor community leans strongly Democratic.
Fascinating! The Cohort seems to lean strongly Democratic, given that they have friended Democrats including: Barack & Michelle Obama, President Biden, Kamala Harris, Hillary/Bill/Chelsea Clinton, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Al Gore, Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer. Whereas Republican friends include fewer notables: Donald & Melania Trump’s archived accounts, Ivanka Trump and Mitt Romney.
Also, the Cohort seems to care a lot about what Tech Titans have to say, with Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Eric Schmidt and Steve Case all in the Top 10. Lastly, the Cohort seems generally interested a diverse group from the Media & Entertainment field: Kara Swisher, Stephen Colbert, Ezra Klein, Nicholas Kristof, Rupert Murdoch, Sarah Silverman, Jerry Seinfeld, and Lady Gaga to name a few.
Can we learn anything interesting if we look at this data, filtered by Female/Male, or East/West? I hope so! Let’s look at the gender comparison first:
There’s a gender self-alignment bias: women follow women, and men follow men.
This is again fascinating! While much of the list is similar between women and men (e.g. Obama at #2, AOC at #13 & #12, Trump at #19 & #14, etc.), there is clear evidence of gender alignment! Kara Swisher is the hands-down favorite for the women, whereas Elon Musk the most beloved among the men. And — in a clear nod to gender bias in the entertainment category — the men’s Top 25 has Conan O’Brien, David Pogue and Jerry Seinfeld (none of whom are in the women’s Top 25), whereas the women favor Arianna Huffington, shonda rhimes and Issa Rae, (none of whom are in the men’s Top 25). Whoa!
Coast-wise, what differences might we expect? West Coast politicians on the West Coast, East Coast politicians on the East? Here’s what we’ve got:
Elon Musk is the most popular non-member of the Cohort: a fan favorite of Men, East & West.
Interestingly, there’s no substantive difference between the East and West Coasts. Elon, Kara and former President Obama are all in the Top 3 on both Coasts. And political party-wise, I suppose it makes sense that, if as we saw earlier, the entire Cohort is left-leaning, the East and West Coasts would also be left-leaning, since both the East and West Coast investment hubs are in “Blue” parts of the country.
Lastly, we’ll look at Notable non-people:
Another illuminating chart. Ecosystem-related entities abound, with four in the Top 7: Y Combinator, Sequoia (#3 on this list, but #1 on the shortest-common-word-with-all-the-vowels list), Greylock and 500 Startups. After ecosystem-related entities, media companies come in 2nd with TechCrunch, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, WIRED, Medium and CrunchBase all in the Top 10. Lots of other interesting entities are in this friended list, including: SpaceX, Tesla, NPR and — where’d this come from? — the CIA (at #50)!? I’ll conclude with shout out to the Female Founder’s Fund, of whom I’m a fan, at #33.
Let’s look at this by gender and coast. Gender first:
Hmmmm. What to conclude? TechCrunch is popular! #1 for both men and women. And Elon Musk’s projects (SpaceX and Tesla), while popular with the men (both in the men’s Top 15), don’t even make it the women’s Top 25. Male Hero Worship? This is somewhat unexpected, since Elon Musk was #3 for the women. They follow him, but not his (amazing!) companies. While I don’t see any pattern in the women’s preferences, it’s worth noting that the Female Founder’s Fund is #15 for the women, but not even on the men’s Top 25 list.
OK, now the Coast breakdown:
TechCrunch is the #1 followed media company by investors: men, women, East and West.
TechCrunch is still #1. And perhaps not surprisingly, the West Coast rates SpaceX and Tesla higher than does the East Coast. Anything deeper in the Coast data? Not that I can see. Naturally, there’s a difference in the order, but many of the same entities are in the Top 25 of both coasts.
I’ll conclude the Friended Account Analysis with a personal note: as a very long-time and loyal reader of both publications, I’m happy to see The New York Times and The New Yorker in the various Top 25s. Thanks folks! Also glad to see National Geographic (my collection goes back to 1979) and Science Magazine in the Top 50.
Followers
OK, we looked at popularity through the lens of friending. How about the Cohort’s followers? By whom are they being followed?
Another revealing graph. Note there are only a few members of the Cohort on this list: Dave McClure (of 500 Startups) at #4, Arlan Hamilton(of Backstage Capital) at #16, Trace Cohen (Investor with NYVP) at #20, and Jenny Fielding (former Managing Director of TechStars NYC) at #31. These Cohort members are perhaps the most loyal members of the Cohort, since they are following more members of the Cohort than almost every other Twitter user on the planet! (For reference, the Cohort has 26.3 million followers!)
What can we learn from this graph? Crunchbase, at #2, clearly has a strong social media team that’s actively keeping abreast of, and connected to, the ecosystem. More importantly, we see numerous entrepreneurs! And that makes a lot of sense, as an important part of being a fundraising founder is knowing the investor ecosystem. Who’s here? To name a few at the top of the chart:
- Danielle Morrill (#1), Cofounder & CTO at Firstparty
- Ruben Harris (#3), CEO of Career Karma
- Liz Stefan (#8), Co-Founder & CEO of Nifty Learning
And in addition to founders, we naturally find other members of the investor ecosystem who didn’t make it into the Cohort (for no particular reason other than random selection and a self-imposed 200-person limit). For example:
- David Haber (#5), General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz
- Christoph Janz (#7), Managing Partner at Point NineCapital
- Ashley S. Liu (#15), Associate at The Venture Collective
And there are several other investors and funds in the list. All of which makes sense: the broader investor/entrepreneurial ecosystem should be intertwined with any arbitrary cohort of early-stage investors.
Is there anything to see if we break down whom the followers are following by gender and coast? Here are all four breakdowns:
There seems to be a slight bias for Cohort members to favor their gender and coast, which is not unexpected. But without a deeper (and time-consuming) dive in each specific follower, it’s hard to see what other conclusions can be mined from this. I leave a deeper analysis as an exercise to the reader.
Up Next
See here for Part 2: Popularity by Gender, Bias & Loyalty. And stay tuned for Part 3: The Network; and concluding with Part 4: What’s in the Tweets?.
Footnotes
[1] Though I am calling this “research”, I am neither a social scientist nor a data analyst. Methodology and conclusions are entirely suspect and possibly wrong.
[2] I did my best to assign members of the Cohort to their correct coast (cross-referencing with Linked-in) and gender (see below). Where I got it wrong, I apologize. Contact me if I’ve made any errors and I’ll gladly correct then.
[3] The distinction between sex and gender, while important, did not seem pertinent to this analysis. I checked with various sources that purport to think deeply about the correct way to report on sex and gender in demographic data (U.N., JAMA, etc.), and while I learned a lot, I concluded that anything more than a single attribute (gender or sex) was beyond the scope of this article. I chose gender over sex, as for these purposes, identity seemed more relevant than genotype. NB: The code I wrote to generate the charts and graphs has support for gender other than female and male if, despite my best intentions, I got it wrong.
[4] I wanted to look at East Coast versus West Coast dichotomies, but after assembling the Cohort, there were some pesky individuals living and working in non-coasty places like Houston and Boulder: they got assigned to a coast called “Other”. Similarly, some members of the Cohort live in places like Paris and London: they got assigned to “Non-US/Int’l”.
[5] friend \’frend\ n: 1) People whom you follow on Twitter. 2) One attached to another by affection or esteem.
[6] follower \’fä-lə-wər\ n: 1) People who follow you on Twitter. 2) One that follows the opinions or teachings of another.
[7] For the purpose of this analysis, engaged means how many friends they’ve chosen to follow, not how often they tweet. We’ll get to that later.
[8] I’m going to be using presidential titles inconsistently on purpose. Where convenient for the narrative, President Biden and former presidents (e.g. former President Trump) get a full title. But if for instance I needed to group former President Clinton, his wife, and daughter together, in a narrative context in which I’m using first names, I might refer to them as “Hillary/Bill/Chelsea” (where the order of the names would be their relative order on the chart to which I’m referring.)
Acknowledgements
I would be grossly remiss if I did not thank Chris Oates of Legislata. Chris and I have been colleagues for most of the past year, and he kindly “lent” me some starter code when I expressed an interest in learning the R programming language. He was also very patient with some now-they-seem-dumb questions about statistical analysis. This article is the result of me needing a project to work on while learning R, and could not have happened without his initial encouragement.
