We love Rachel Yang – a partner at Giant Leap – and her deep, thoughtful perspectives.
As a refresher, Rachel started at Giant Leap as an associate, and is now one of three Partners with an ownership stake in the venture capital firm alongside Will Richardson and Adam Milgrom.
Giant Leap invests in an exciting new wave of founders that have emerged particularly strongly in the past ten years building businesses that aim to generate both financial returns and broader social benefits.
These guys look for people building companies across climate, health and empowerment and education. One of Giant Leap’s latest investments that we really like at MP is Conserving Beauty – a company that manufactures water-free face wipes, sheet masks and under-eye masks for beauty customers. Um, heck yes. We love looking cute – sustainably!
Now, every investor worth their paradigm-shifting deal flow needs a point of view on the breakneck breakthroughs happening in Generative AI (Claude 3.7 dropping last week anyone? The new general AI agent from China Manus?!).
Rachel shares hers below, and talks through what she sees as the huge potential unlock here for women in particular:
For years, I carried a quiet regret: not becoming a software engineer.
Early in my career, I assumed that catching up would take years of training, and while I dabbled in online courses out of curiosity, I never committed the time to reach mastery. There was always a trade-off—other priorities took precedence.
This narrative isn’t unique to me. Women have historically been underrepresented in tech, particularly in senior roles, and the rapid pace of technological advancement only seemed to widen the gap. The focus has rightly been on getting more women into coding, with the long-term goal of closing this divide. But now, the game has changed entirely.
The rise of Generative AI (GenAI) has reset the playing field. Recent data backs this up. A Boston Consulting Group (BCG) study found that women in the tech industry are adopting GenAI tools at a slightly higher rate than men—68% compared to 66%. This is a crucial shift. For the first time, women are not just participating in a tech revolution but positioning themselves as early adopters, using AI to multiply their efforts, enhance productivity, and create new opportunities.
The traditional barriers to entry—years of technical training, coding expertise, industry connections—are no longer prerequisites for making an impact in tech. With AI, women can leapfrog into the space, leveraging their expertise from other industries and applying it in ways that weren’t possible before.
The misconception that deep technical expertise is required to innovate is fading. Today, AI tools allow anyone to automate tasks, generate content, and analyse data without writing a single line of code. This means women who have built successful careers in business, healthcare, education, law, and countless other fields can now apply their knowledge to the tech sector in powerful ways. The intersection of domain expertise and AI is where the real innovation lies—and women have a significant advantage in this space.
Juno co-founder Michelle Gilmore is a great example–Michelle brings 15 years of professional and business experience in the field of customer research to Juno, which she describes as “a competitive moat that you can’t buy in the AI race”. Dr Ariella Hefferman-Marks, the founder and CEO of Ovum (Giant Leap is an investor), is another entrepreneur combining her strong professional background in women’s health with breakthroughs in AI to build a fresh solution to the systemic challenges women face in accessing high quality healthcare.
For me, AI, has provided a way to supercharge my capabilities. While I never became a software engineer, I can build my own AI tools on ChatGPT without coding. I can streamline research, writing, and administrative tasks that once consumed hours of my day, allowing me to focus on strategy, relationships, deal-making, and high-impact work. These efficiency gains have not only improved my productivity but have fundamentally changed how I engage with technology. AI is not just a tool for saving time—it’s a platform for scaling expertise, amplifying impact, and opening new pathways for innovation.
This is why the AI revolution presents such a pivotal moment for women. By engaging with AI now—experimenting, building, and integrating it into our work—we can ensure we are at the forefront, shaping how it evolves rather than playing catch-up once the world has already moved on.
So my provocation following this International Women’s Day? Yes, celebrate women in the workplace, our achievements, lament the status quo and expose what needs to change. But then, take some time familiarising yourself with a new AI platform or experiment by incorporating AI into one of your everyday activities or even build your own AI tool. It doesn’t take long – even just 15 minutes of time – and start the process of upskilling yourself.
The barriers to entry are lower than ever, but the window of opportunity won’t stay open indefinitely. AI is moving fast, and those who get in early have the potential to have the greatest influence. Women have the chance to redefine how we are seen in tech, not as latecomers or the minority, but as innovators, leaders and the majority.
You can follow Rachel Yang on LinkedIn, or take a journey into the broader Giant Leap universe through their website.
