"There are so few women in the first place, that's the initial problem. Women, like men, need to find peers to connect with, develop camaraderie. I've tried to address this issue by launching the Women's Entrepreneur Festival.  It is a place where women can connect and be heard.  Although many of us may share similar qualities, generally, women network differently than men do. We have priorities, go home to see friends, need time for ourselves and tend to separate our social and personal lives from our professional lives. Men typically have less delineation of their lives and are happy to go to any event vs the few that are worthwhile." - Joanne Solomon Wilson   ​

One of the founding partners of Gjelina's, Robert Schwan, gave me a tour of the restaurant when it first opened on Abbot Kinney Street in Venice, California. The interior took approximately two years to design and all materials were from recycled or repurposed natural materials, with specific pieces in the Ladies' lavatories ordered from Italy.

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​I asked Joanne what some of the common mistakes she has noticed within her own set of entrepreneurs (male or female) whom she had invested in? 
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"I've noticed there are initially some red flags, mainly to do with execution. That is why I invest in people, not ideas. There was one entrepreneur whom I wasn't sure was capable of executing what I thought was a great idea, and yes, it didn't work out in the end, but it's important for me to invest in an entrepreneur who can surround herself or himself with great people, stick with their thesis and be a scrappy, tenacious decision maker, and not be prone to analyse something to death; to be a big picture thinker, and be able to build a team to get things done." 

Joanne also added, "If you're a vegan, you have to marry a vegan. You can't marry someone who loves meat and BBQ all the time; those things may initially work out, but not in the long run...You have to be with someone who holds the same values as you do." ​
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There was also a seed round recap blog post that Joanne had made which I found very impressive as well as alarming. If founders made it a habit to recap seed rounds then that sets a bad precedent for investors and creates a negative atmosphere for angel investment. I asked Joanne what was the outcome of that incident?

"I think it's important that as a Founder to be transparent and honest and if you're evasive, it gets you nowhere. However, I can understand in that situation that particular Founder I had invested in felt it was necessary to go out and get as much money as possible, especially for an early stage company. I still want to see that Founder succeed even if I got screwed.  We even had a chat for 10 minutes the other day when I was asked for advice, however, I do not condone that kind of behaviour, as it's not something I think Founders should do because it creates less trust within the angel investment community." 

I asked Joanne about the future of eCommerce, what her thoughts were on brick-and-mortar shoppes?
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"I don't think brick-and-mortar will go away. It's in a state of transition. For brick-and-mortar shoppes to stay relevant in the eCommerce era, there has to be an experience you want to go into, have excellent customer service, the ability to take classes. People want to be part of a community, breathe fresh air, do stuff with their kids. It can't just be  about selling and buying, there has to be an experience that you can't have while clicking buy on online shoppes." ​

It is also true that many cultural icons often write books later in their lives. Former military generals write about their experiences in the military, politicians write about the dreams of their parents, and scientists can author biographies. Mr. Khosla's rather interesting but myopic observation that "scientists can become philosophers and writers but philosophers and writers cannot become scientists" is probably referring to cultural scientific icons, such as Einstein, who has written a biography, and in fact, many people from different professions have written biographies, but I think what Mr. Khosla is missing here is that most scientists nor philsophers nor writers often do not possess the will to transition to other careers. Aside from scant biographies written by ghost writers, I hardly think there are many scientists who decide later in their lives to become philosophers or vice versa- rather, philosophers such as Deleuze, Descartes and Wittgenstein would easily be dismissed by Mr. Khosla, however their work today, along with many other philosophers have been the inspiration of many scientific theories, and I daresay, decades ahead of scientific trends, serving as the impetus for scientific research by questioning the various traditional methodologies of their time.
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If we were to simply categorise Mr. Khosla as an eccentric billionaire who has lost touch with the population at large, I think would do him a great injustice. Like many immigrants, his incredible work ethic and prescience in computer science in the early 1980s lead him to become founder of one of the most iconic companies in the United States. Mr. Khosla started his career at the age of 20 by selling soy milk in India before he moved to the United States to found Sun Microsystems. As part of that generation in which a technical education paved the way out of poverty, he has every right to believe that an engineering degree had more weight in his success and the founding of Sun Microsystems than a liberal arts degree, although despite the obvious bias, as he also states, is that today's society has since changed from those early Silicon Valley days, and American education, as it is currently today, is not equipped to tackle the challenges of a rapidly changing, technological society.

A scene from the Hollywood movie, The Intern (2015) in which Robert DeNiro plays a senior citizen who becomes an intern after retirement at an eCommerce startup founded by Anne Hathaway's character. ​

Louis Vuitton quatrefoil monogram on coated canvas ​

From 114BC to the 18th century, during the time of the establishment of the Silk Road, in which several trade routes were established from China to India to Persia to Europe, the quatrefoil gained popularity and spread throughout India and to Europe, and to France, where in the 19th century, Louis Vuitton derived inspiration into his flower + quatrefoil motif that would become symbolic of the Louis Vuitton luxury brand. The quatrefoil also gained popularity in architecture- and became popular in designs of Cathedrals, where many people associate the quatrefoil with Christianity. However, the design itself was derivative from the Han dynasty in China, in which the quatrefoil was present in many bronze emblems and ceramics.
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An image from the 2014 Chanel Ready-to-wear fall/winter collection with the set design in a supermarket setting. Karl Lagerfeld poked fun at flash sales, and said he longed for the modern women to return to an era in which they would get dressed up to go to everyday places, such as the supermarket. ​

After the departure of Etsy Founder Rob Kalin, Etsy allowed large manufacturers to enter the Etsy marketplace, hoping to scale the business into the next phase. However, as a result, Etsy is now inundated by numerous resellers posing as artisans, damaging the Etsy brand. ​