Good morning, Broadsheet readers. Hillary and Bill Clinton became grandparents over the weekend, and Marissa Mayer is under pressure from a persistent activist investor. Read on to hear my take on why Silicon Valley’s “NFL moment” may never happen. Have a great Monday!
EVERYONE'S TALKING
•Starboard's latest target. The investment firm is calling on Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer to explore the possibility of a merger with AOL. The firm's CEO sent a letter to Mayer last week asking her to cut down on costs and slow what he deems to be a rampant spree of acquisitions. With a market value of $3.5 billion, AOL would be a smart way to use part of the $5 billion in cash Yahoo will receive from selling a portion of its stake in Chinese tech giant Alibaba, says Starboard. Yahoo's head of M&A, Jackie Reses, said during Fortune Brainstorm Tech in July that a merger with AOL was a nonstarter. WSJ
ALSO IN THE HEADLINES
•Chelsea Clinton's big news. On Saturday, Clinton announced the birth of Charlotte Clinton Mezvinsky. The baby girl is the first grandchild for Bill and Hillary, who wrote in a statement that they are "thrilled to be with our daughter and her husband as they welcome their daughter into the world." As Hillary considers whether to run for president in 2016, many people joked on Twitter that it was smart of Chelsea to name her daughter after a city in the key swing state of North Carolina. Time
•The best headline of the week. Amal Alamuddin, a dual-qualified English barrister and New York litigator, married George Clooney over the weekend. Journalist Amanda Rose headlined her story: "Internationally acclaimed barrister Amal Alamuddin marries an actor." Too good. Business Woman Media
•Are we listening to Syria's women and girls? Melanne Verveer, the former U.S. Ambassador for Global Women’s Issues, is asking the United Nations to step up its efforts to help women and girls living in global conflict areas -- especially Syria. "How is it that women and girls make up the highest number of refugees and displaced populations, and yet, they are the least visible?," she asked in The Daily Beast. The Daily Beast
•'A bunch of guys in the room.' In the wake of the highly-scrutinized Ray Rice case, the NFL is reconsidering how it recruits and retains top female talent. “Until they hired a raft of consultants and promoted the woman in charge of social responsibility, it was a bunch of guys in a room. They didn’t have any expertise on the pathology of domestic violence,” a source told the New York Times. Commissioner Roger Goodell spent three hours Saturday night at the headquarters of the National Domestic Violence Hotline, perhaps to appear like he is learning more about the issue. The league says it is focused on bringing more women and minorities into key leadership roles. NYTimes
•Leda Braga to manage $8.3 billion fund. BlueCrest Capital Management is spinning off its computer-driven hedge funds into a separate investment firm, Systematica Investments. Braga, the firm's former head of systematic training, has a proven track record of success at BlueCrest that led to her appointment as the new fund's top manager. Bloomberg
•The 400 richest Americans. Forbes released its annual list of the 400 wealthiest Americans, and it includes 47 women this year. The price of entry to The Forbes 400 was a record-high $1.55 billion. A newcomer on the list is Elizabeth Holmes. With a net worth of $4.5 billion, Holmes is the CEO and founder of blood diagnostics firm Theranos. Read Fortune's June profile of Holmes here. Forbes
BROADVIEW
Why Silicon Valley’s ‘NFL moment’ may never happen
Last week, The Wall Street Journal asked: Will Silicon Valley Have Its NFL Moment? The column explored how poor treatment of women in tech has been a problem practically since the industry’s inception. Yet, unlike in the NFL, discrimination and abuse in Silicon Valley has yet to reach a crisis point that has led to radical change. It also can be more subtle, in that many female tech entrepreneurs may not define questionable behavior as discrimination or abuse when it is happening.
Danae Ringelmann, the co-founder crowdfunding site Indiegogo, says her team was rejected 92 times by venture capitalists when searching for investment. Ringelmann is one of many women who have a hard time getting funding (less than 7% of venture capital funds go to women-led startups), yet she says it's always difficult to know what is discrimination and what isn’t.
“It is always hard to know if something is happening to you because of objective reasons or subjective reasons,” says Ringelmann. “It is easy to call yourself a statistic. But it is hard to know if your company is not getting a call back from investors because you are a woman, or because they just don’t like the business model.”
Click over to Fortune.com to read my full story.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
•The economics behind paternity leave. As Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe pushes for more women to stay in the workforce, his focus on offering more paid maternity leave may be misguided. If mothers are the only members of the workforce spending more time at home taking care of children, it could worsen job discrimination against them and make them less likely to continue their careers, writes The Atlantic's Gwynn Guilford. The Atlantic
•Sallie Krawcheck: Beyond lean in. To get more women into positions of leadership across industries, "the United States should leave the ranks of Papua New Guinea and Oman as one of the very few nations in the world without paid family leave," writes the former Bank of America exec and current CEO of Ellevate. Keeping more women in the workforce also would increase the country's retirement savings and improve company performance, Krawcheck added. HuffPost
• Women negotiate better for themselves... but only if they’re told it’s okay. In a recent experiment, women who were expressly told wages were negotiable talked their way into higher pay by a ratio of more than 3-to-1. A majority of remaining female participants, however, negotiated their pay downward. HBR
ON MY RADAR
Carly Fiorina in 2016?National Journal
NFL growth is only about women Businessweek
The unrepentant bootlegger NYTimes
Michele Bachmann: Declare war on Islamic State Bloomberg
QUOTE
A huge lesson for me was having kids. I just evolved very quickly to realize that this was not all about me, and I took those lessons and applied them to the workplace. The things you learn raising a child are great skills for nurturing a team and bringing a project to life. You take obstacles out of the way, encourage them and set goals that are tough but can be achieved.
Penny Herscher, CEO of business analytics firm FirstRain.
