Page 39 - Forbes - Asia (July - August 2018)

FORBES ASIA
FROM INDONESIA TO SILICON VALLEY

A Woman of Firsts

How Theresia Gouw became America’s richest female venture capitalist.

BY ANGEL AU-YEUNG
heresia Gouw, 46, began got hooked on business development. “I You have an engineering degree. Jump over
forging a path decades ago was working in a building with a thousand to the dark side.’”
that led her to become a top engineers, and I realized what I liked most Jump she did, joining Accel as an invest-
American venture capitalist. was product management,” she says. “But ment associate in 1999. During her 15 years
T She was the irst person in her the people who moved out of frontline en- at Accel she led a series of highly success-
high school in a small town outside of Buf- gineering and into [product management] ful investments, including real estate listing
falo, New York, to go to Brown Universi- roles all had M.B.A.s.” So ater graduating site Trulia and cybersecurity irm Imperva,
ty. In the 1990s she was the irst female in- from Brown in 1990, Gouw studied for the both of which are now public. But the bulk
vestor at Palo Alto-based venture capital GMAT and took a management consulting of her fortune comes from her involvement
irm Accel Partners. She then became the position at Bain & Co. in Boston. hen she in an investment that one of her Accel part-
irm’s irst female partner and irst female got an M.B.A. at Stanford. ners, Jim Breyer, took the lead on in 2005:
managing partner before leav- the then edgling Facebook.
ing Accel four years ago to co- “We had looked at a lot of
found Aspect Ventures, one of other social media platforms
the irst female-led venture in- before, and some of them ac-
vesting irms in Silicon Valley. tually had a larger number of
A woman of many irsts, users,” Gouw says. “But we’d
she makes her debut this year never seen anything like Face-
on Forbes’ Self-Made Women book’s daily active usage at the
list with an estimated net time. Two thirds of users were
worth of $500 million, much using it every day, and half of
of it linked to Accel’s early in- them were using it two hours
vestment in Facebook. At As- a day. hat was the thing that
pect she recently oversaw the really stood out at the time.”
irm’s irst billion-dollar IPO. Less than two years ater
Born in Jakarta to parents Facebook’s historic IPO in
of Chinese descent, Gouw im- May 2012, Gouw let Accel to
migrated to America in the “Going public is kind of like when kids graduate from college and enter the real world.” start her own venture capi-
early 1970s with her family tal irm, Aspect Ventures. Co-
when she was 3. “We let in the end of the Shortly ater graduating from Stanford founded with fellow veteran investor Jenni-
[Suharto] political revolution when ethnic in 1996, she teamed up with several other fer Fonstad with their own money, Aspect is
Chinese people were being targeted,” she classmates and raised $1 million in ven- an early-stage venture irm that focuses on
says. In Indonesia her dad was a dentist and ture funding to cofound Release Sotware, cybersecurity, the future of work processes
her mother was a nurse, but they were both a company that enabled payment technol- and digital health-and-wellness sotware.
forced to start over when they came to the ogies in the sotware industry. “We grew Aspect has raised $350 million since
U.S. “My dad got a job as a dishwasher and into a reasonable size around 1998 to 1999, its founding in 2014. he second fund, an-
went back to school at SUNY Bufalo in and we were getting ready to ile an S-1 and nounced earlier this year at $181 million, in-
order to get his dental certiication to work go public,” she says. “But at the same time, cludes Melinda Gates and Cisco CEO Chuck
in America,” she says. we were at our third CEO change in 12 Robbins as investors. he irm scored its
Bucking the trend in her high school, months, so I thought that was probably not irst billion-dollar exit when cybersecurity
where only 40% of her class went on to a good sign for my stock.” irm ForeScout listed last year. For Gouw it
higher education, Gouw enrolled at Brown While searching for her next role, a Re- was the fourth IPO investment of her career.
ASPECT VENTURES University in 1986 and majored in engi- lease board member pushed her toward “Going public is kind of like when kids grad-
neering. During summer internships at
the venture capital world. “He said to me,
uate from college and enter the real world,”
she explains. “It’s always really exciting.” F
General Motors and British Petroleum, she
‘You’ve been part of an engineering startup.
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