AILEEN LEE

My dad was a dentist; my mom managed his office.

Over the long term, there will be many more billion-dollar technology companies than there are today.

Women are going to be a huge force in developing Web and mobile companies.

From a pretty early age, I developed an interest in travel. I told my parents I wanted to live abroad, and they said, 'Well, you have to have money to do those things.'

When companies are private, founders can share more about their future dreams with investors; report less; and the shares are illiquid, constraining short-term changes in valuation.

Spend the first six to 12 months building a great product or service that people love, rather than chasing investors. When the time comes to engage investors, you will be meeting them from a position of strength. This makes all the difference.

I really have become very interested at working with and helping entrepreneurs at the early stages of their growth.

I've learned that you really cannot judge a book by its cover.

If someone was having some surgery that was going to put them out for three months, it's something you should consider, with a man or a woman. What is the impact of having the C.E.O. or visionary out for three months?

I played with different words like 'home run,' 'megahit,' and they just all sounded kind of 'blah.' So I put in 'unicorn' because they are - these are very rare companies in the sense that there are thousands of startups in tech every year, and only a handful will wind up becoming a unicorn company. They're really rare.

I'm a first-born child of a Chinese immigrant family, I grew up on the East Coast. And I have to admit, I did not grow up around technology.

I did not grow up thinking that I wanted to be an engineer. I had read some articles about girls becoming increasingly scientifically illiterate and that girls lacked confidence in their capabilities when it came to quantitative skills. And I just thought that was kind of wrong.

It's awesome that you have a female CFO and a female GC, but if you look at the investing partners, and it's 15 dudes, I do think those people are going to get left behind if they don't get with where the world is going.

If a firm hasn't hired a single female partner in its history, I don't think it will finally happen by accident.

What is social proof? Put simply, it's the positive influence created when someone finds out that others are doing something. It's also known as informational social influence.

When I was growing up, I had lots of smart classmates that were girls, but none of us were really pushed into math or computers or anything like that. Girls took AP history and AP English and AP European history. And boys took calculus and physics.

I am committed to ensuring San Francisco remains a center for tech and the innovation capital of the world.

I think it's embarrassing for our industry that we have such low diversity across senior-level management at all of the mainstream, top-tier venture capital firms.

Having been a venture-backed CEO, and having an established background in working with consumer-focused companies, I've built a strong network of entrepreneurs and people who can help startups.

Male founders who come across as Type B are more likely to get the benefit of the doubt.

I grew up in New Jersey and played sports and rode my bike around. It was a really nice time - kids didn't have cellphones then - and you knew everyone in the town.

Some companies are worth paying for up front.

The world is diverse, and having a professional team that mirrors the world is going to be more helpful for us.

I think there are many things that we can do today to make it a better work environment that is more supportive and encouraging of diversity.

There are a lot of benefits to having a team of young people, but there are many benefits to having people who've made a lot of mistakes.