Mercury News interview: Ann Miura-Ko, co-founding partner, Floodgate Fund in Palo Alto

Mercury News: Mercury News interview: Ann Miura-Ko, co-founding partner, Floodgate Fund in Palo Alto

child of Silicon Valley's high-tech culture of innovation and risk-taking, Ann Miura-Ko is a good fit for her role as one of the valley's influential venture capitalists.

Growing up in Palo Alto, the daughter of a rocket scientist, she baby-sat for a serial startup founder and showed an early interest in robotics. That interest ultimately led to an electrical engineering degree from Yale and a doctorate in operations research, management science and engineering from Stanford.

Even before she completed her doctorate last year, she was working with Mike Maples Jr., the venture capitalist who is her partner at Floodgate Fund, a Palo Alto micro-cap venture firm that specializes in early-stage startups.

One of a relatively small number of women in venture capital, Miura-Ko, 34, has developed a reputation as a penetrating thinker on trends in technology, innovation and the role of investment, particularly as it affects Silicon Valley. We recently spoke with her about those subjects. The interview has been edited for length.

Q You've said that people haven't fully recognized the power of the Internet yet. What do you mean by that?

A I think that most people look at the Internet and say that all the innovation that has needed to be done has been done, that with social networking, this is the last generation of innovation.

Q Isn't it possible that this is the valley's last great wave of next new things?

A My point is that the real power of the Internet wasn't the interesting businesses created upon it. The real power was comparable to the Gutenberg press or the Industrial Revolution. It created a new business mindset and new ways of innovation. With the Gutenberg press, there was an incredible, dynamic flow of information created as the result of it, with the ensuing Enlightenment period and the ability of academics to debate ideas, question religion. All that happened from one simple innovation of being able print more information in one day than you could by hand.

What the Internet has created is the democratization of entrepreneurialization. The creation of new businesses is a completely new process.

Q In what way?

A Back when I started graduate school, costs were being drastically reduced because of the early stages of open-source and commoditized technology. Four or five years later, students were just slapping things onto the cloud. With a couple hundred dollars on their credit card they can get started. That is a huge idea that hasn't come to fruition until today. The result of that is that every single engineer out there can be an entrepreneur.

Q Has that changed the role of the venture capitalist?

A The initial seed-stage development cost has been drastically reduced. I believe that capital itself in a lot of ways has been commoditized. Now, it really is, "What do I bring to table besides dollars and cents?"

At Floodgate, we focus on what we call the learning and discovery mode -- the stage in which a startup company is searching for a scalable business model. Companies at this stage have unique needs and are not just a small version of a large company. They have yet to figure out the product that fits a compelling customer problem. They have unique legal, recruiting, PR and strategic needs.

Q You're involved with the Stanford Mayfield Fellows Program, which coaches engineering students who think they might want to become entrepreneurs. What's that like?

A I've taken my three students to board meetings, to pitch sessions, to generally see what life as a venture capitalist looks like. Some will go on to be founders of companies. It's amazing to be part of that life-changing experience, to see the light bulbs go on in their eyes when they see that they can found a company, too.

Q Is that particularly a Silicon Valley phenomenon?

A Stanford is a fairly unique animal. It's not something I see universally. I've gone to Columbia, to NYU, to talk to engineering students about staying off the street, staying off of Wall Street.

Q What do you mean by that?

A This is something I feel passionately about. If you go to a lot of the schools on the East Coast, and you're a pretty good engineering student, one of the tracks that is very attractive is to go into a more quantitative role at an investment bank or a hedge fund. It's financially lucrative. They are offering freshman summer internships. A startup is not nearly as prestigious to these engineering students. So it's educating them on, why wouldn't you want to go work for a no-name company and have a tremendous impact, versus going to Wall Street and doing mergers and acquisitions?

Q A recent study found that about 10 percent of venture capitalists are women. Is it difficult working in a predominantly male field?

A I just never really pay attention to that. If I walk into a room and I'm the only female, I don't notice it anymore. I think it's important for women to adopt that mentality if we want to play a large role. The thing I love about the tech community here is it is completely merit-driven. If you have something to add to the conversation, people will listen to you. If you don't, male or female, people won't listen. Silicon Valley, it's not a male culture, it's a technology culture that woman can be very passionate about. The presence of women in an industry is not an excuse for whether women should be in that industry. We should find our path into it.

Contact Pete Carey at 408-920-5419.

Ann MIura-Ko
Age: 34
Born: Los Angeles; moved to Palo Alto at age 4
Education: Yale University, electrical engineering, 1998; Stanford University, doctorate in operations research, management science and engineering, 2010
Position: Co-founding partner, Floodgate Fund in Palo Alto
Previous employment: McKinsey; Charles River Ventures
Home: Menlo Park
Family: Married, two children

5 things about ann mIura-ko1. She was a member of a Yale team that designed four soccer-playing robots. The team took fourth at the 1998 RoboCup competition in Paris.
2. She plays piano. Favorite composers are Bach and Brahms.
3. Her dad is a rocket scientist.
4. Her third child is due in September.
5. She likes to sing loudly in the shower.