Good morning, Broadsheet readers! Unwanted advances push women off LinkedIn, gender parity in business leadership could come by the end of the decade, and a startup lets go of ad metrics for an important sponsorship. Have a great Monday!
- End goal. Before Angel City FC started playing in 2022, the cofounders of the women's shoes startup Birdies got a call. They didn't make athletic apparel, but Angel City's president Julie Uhrman wanted to know if they'd be interested in becoming a sponsor of the new Los Angeles-based women's soccer team.
It was a compelling—but unusual—offer. Birdies was part of the 2010s generation of direct-to-consumer startups. Founded in 2015, the startup has raised about $10 million in venture funding. Its founders were used to advertising mainly through Instagram and Facebook, with immediate metrics at their fingertips. Now, they were presented with the opportunity to have their company's name on professional soccer players' jerseys—a much harder-to-measure form of advertising.
