Venture capitalist Theresia Gouw has trailblazing in her blood. When she was 3, her family left Indonesia to escape persecution under the Suharto dictatorship and start a new life in the U.S.
"When I think about the risks my parents took and how much they gave up so my sister and I could have the opportunities we have, that's what really drives me," Gouw says.
Gouw's personal drive has helped bring much-needed change to the venture capital industry. In 2014, she left the venture firm Accel, where she was the first female managing partner, and co-founded one of the first female-led VC firms, Aspect Ventures. Five years later, Gouw co-founded her second venture firm, Acrew Capital, in Palo Alto, California. Melinda Gates backed both Aspect and Acrew through her investment company, Pivotal Ventures.
The Acrew team has invested in startups including expense-management platform Divvy and hotel booking app HotelTonight, returning a combined $2 billion to investors. One of Acrew's first investments was in the payments startup Finix, co-founded in San Francisco in 2015 by Richie Serna, the son of two formerly undocumented Mexican immigrants. A founder who shares Gouw's passion for changing the face of tech, Serna now has the challenge of pursuing aggressive growth at Finix without sacrificing the company's values.
"You can bring together 100 people from some of the best startups from across all of Silicon Valley, and everybody does something slightly differently," Serna says. "So the question is, how do we make sure that we bring the best skill sets, processes, and practices from all these organizations, but make them uniquely Finix?"