Ann Miura-Ko (@annimaniac) has been called “the most powerful woman in startups” by Forbes and is a lecturer in entrepreneurship at Stanford. The child of a rocket scientist at NASA, Ann is a Palo Alto native and has been steeped in technology startups from when she was a teenager. Prior to co-founding FLOODGATE, she worked at Charles River Ventures and McKinsey and Company.

Some of Ann’s investments include Lyft, Ayasdi, Xamarin, Refinery29, JoyRun, TaskRabbit, and Modcloth. Given the success of her investments she was on the 2017 Midas List of top 100 venture capitalists.

In our wide-ranging conversation, we cover many things, including:

How the space race and a NASA dad lead Ann to venture capital

How the venture ecosystem has evolved, especially for women, since 2001

The importance of living through and experiencing an economic downturn

What Ann believes needs to be changed about our education system to adapt to the coming changes

How AI will impact the job market/economy and why Ann is fundamentally optimism

Why we need more women and diversity in tech

How Ann sees developments in blockchain and cryptocurrency affect our society

Why Ann passed on investing in Airbnb

The little known truth about startup success

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