{"id":2245,"date":"2013-10-27T21:21:50","date_gmt":"2013-10-28T02:21:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.feedthebeast.biz\/?p=2245"},"modified":"2022-07-12T15:49:39","modified_gmt":"2022-07-12T20:49:39","slug":"an-action-plan-for-women-entrepreneurs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.feedthebeast.biz\/index.php\/an-action-plan-for-women-entrepreneurs\/","title":{"rendered":"An Action Plan for Women Entrepreneurs (Part 2)"},"content":{"rendered":"
Given that timing is everything in business, if you\u2019re a woman entrepreneur you might want to consider that your time is now.<\/strong><\/h5>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Women<\/a>In Part 1<\/a> of this two-part post, I talked to Andrea Guendelman<\/a> and Fran Maier<\/a> about the challenges facing women entrepreneurs. Female tech entrepreneurs, in particular, are few and far between, and they get funded far less often than men. Part of the reason is that angel investors and venture capitalists are predominantly male (85 per cent and 95 per cent, respectively) so they tend to relate better to male than female entrepreneurs. There is clear evidence that a subtle gender bias<\/a> is at work in the VC industry.<\/p>\n

That said, women entrepreneurs need to shoulder some of the blame, too. They\u2019re less inclined to be \u201cdealmakers\u201d and they tend to shy away from math and computer science, the bedrock of countless tech startups. Nevertheless, a 2012 Harvard Business Review report<\/a> gives women entrepreneurs plenty to cheer about. After interviewing over 7,000 business leaders, Jack Zenger and Joseph Folkman, co-authors of A Study in Leadership: Women Do It Better Than Men<\/a> (2011), reported that women\u2019s leadership skills are superior to men on many levels. It\u2019s definitely worth a read, but it also raised some important additional questions in my mind:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Do women \u201cthink big\u201d?<\/li>\n
  2. Where are the female VCs?<\/li>\n
  3. How can women entrepreneurs get on a more even footing with men?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    For answers to these questions I turned to three fast-rising entrepreneurs:\u00a0Sara Sutton Fell<\/a>\u00a0from FlexJobs,\u00a0Kelly Hoey<\/a>\u00a0from Women Innovate Mobile and\u00a0Meena Mansharamani<\/a>\u00a0from GoGo squeeZ and\u00a0Pup to Go.<\/p>\n

    Do women \u201cthink big\u201d? <\/strong><\/p>\n

    Does it matter? Yes it does. It can mean the difference between getting funding for your startup or not. When funders are being pitched, whether it\u2019s on Shark Tank or Sand Hill Road, there\u2019s one question they never fail to ask: How big is your market? Behind this is the unstated question: Does this person \u201cthink big\u201d?<\/p>\n

    Serial entrepreneur Sara Sutton Fell remembers her personal experience pitching VCs. Fell, who is CEO and founder of FlexJobs<\/a>, a global provider of telecommuting, freelance, part time and flex time job opportunities, says that for venture capitalists \u201c\u2026 it\u2019s go big or go home. VCs are simply not interested in a 10 per cent return over ten or twenty years.\u201d That just ties up their capital \u2013 capital they could use to buy into businesses with high growth and highly profitable exit strategies. VCs invest to exit.<\/p>\n

    Fell bootstrapped her first company, JobDirect, by raising money from friends and family, and then attracted funding from angel investors and venture capitalists. But it took time. And vision. And big thinking. \u201cWe weren\u2019t playing small. We couldn\u2019t. Not when you\u2019ve spent $200,000 on three relational databases and don\u2019t have any revenue for eighteen months!\u201d Women entrepreneurs \u201ctend to have smaller visions and goals than men, but investors aren\u2019t interested in financing a startup unless there\u2019s a big return.\u201d Fell certainly had a big vision for a potentially huge market. This attracted venture capital and an exit plan, and within a couple of years she and her partners sold JobDirect to Korn\/Ferry for 8 digits.<\/p>\n

    Where are the female role models?<\/strong><\/p>\n

    Fell says that one reason women entrepreneurs don\u2019t think big is simply the lack of high profile female role models. Just as today\u2019s male entrepreneurs look to role models like Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg for inspiration, women entrepreneurs look to other entrepreneurial women. But unlike their male counterparts, they often come up empty. Even the best and brightest need inspiration. Google\u2019s Sergey Brin admitted that \u201cwhenever Larry and I sought inspiration for vision and leadership, we needed to look no farther than [Steve Jobs].\u201d<\/p>\n

    Where are the female rock stars? There\u2019s no doubt that Facebook\u2019s Sheryl Sandberg and Yahoo\u2019s Marissa Mayer are extremely influential role models for women, and rightly so. But they do not technically qualify as entrepreneurs, because they didn\u2019t start a company or build one from the ground up. As a result, their experiences and challenges are not always that relevant to startup women. The closest high profile role model for women entrepreneurs might be Oprah Winfrey, but her climb to success is an unusual one.<\/p>\n

    Corporate executive and entrepreneur Meena Mansharamani<\/a> has a slightly different perspective. She believes there are plenty of women role models. \u201cWhat\u2019s needed is more high profile promotion of successful entrepreneurial women.\u201d Mansharamani knows whereof she speaks. She\u2019s managing director of\u00a0Materne North America\u00a0which owns GoGO squeeZ<\/a>, a leader in squeezable 100% fruit pouches for kids and families. She\u2019s also the co-founder (with Cie Nicholson) of Pup To Go<\/a>, a Manhattan start-up that manufactures, markets and sells a high quality, high comfort dog carrier that keeps dogs (and their super busy owners) happy. \u201cWomen need to be showcased the same way men are,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

    Women-focused promotional conferences such as Startup Phenomenon Women<\/a>, Women 2.0<\/a> and Astia<\/a> help do that. But based on my limited research, the business press could do a better job covering these events. They could send more reporters to profile more of the participants, and feature their stories more prominently, rather than tuck them away in the \u201cLife and Culture\u201d sections.<\/p>\n

    Mansharamani thinks women need to be a little more assertive. Of course, for women there\u2019s a very fine line between being assertive and being confrontational, and women have to be careful when walking that line because, as Mansharamani notes, \u201cassertiveness in women is not always as well received as it is in men.\u201d She advises women entrepreneurs to make good use of their networks because networking is definitely a strength for women. Her own entrepreneurial experience backs that up. When she started Pup To Go, she was surprised at how big her own network was. She tapped it to find the designers and tailors and marketers she needed to help her turn her concept into a business.<\/p>\n

    Where are the female VCs? <\/strong><\/p>\n

    Who better to answer this question than Kelly Hoey, \u201cone of five women changing the world of VC\/Entrepreneurship\u201d according to Forbes<\/a>. Hoey is co-founder of Women Innovate Mobile<\/a>, a startup accelerator focused on women entrepreneurs. In her LinkedIn profile, Kelly refers to herself as a catalyst, but non-stop global business networker might be an equally good description. Hoey is well aware that she\u2019s a rare bird in the VC world, because less than 10 per cent<\/a> of high-level venture capitalists are women.<\/p>\n

    Why so few female VCs? Hoey responds with a question: \u201cWhy are there so few female investment bankers? Lack of role models. If women don’t see role models in a particular sector, it becomes harder for them to see themselves being successful there.\u201d That\u2019s a big reason why venture capital hasn\u2019t been a career path that women even considered. At least until now. \u201cThe rising tide of female entrepreneurship has brought with it a new wave of female VCs,\u201d says Hoey. \u201cThis wave includes Katherine Barr<\/a> at Mohr Davidow, Jeanne Sullivan<\/a> at Starvest, Kathleen Utecht<\/a> at Comcast Ventures, Aileen Lee<\/a> at Kleiner Perkins, Joy Marcus<\/a> at DFJ Gotham, and others.\u201d<\/p>\n

    \"Women<\/a><\/p>\n

    Hoey certainly believes in the power of women entrepreneurs. That\u2019s why she and her partners Deborah Jackson<\/a> and Veronika Sonsev<\/a> founded Women Innovate Mobile. WIM is the first accelerator program to invest in mobile startups with gender diverse founding teams, and provides women-owned mobile tech companies with seed funding along with mentoring, resources and office space. WIM\u2019s investments include Appguppy<\/a>, Loudly<\/a> and SQL Vision<\/a>. Hoey and her partners understand how vital it is for\u00a0women-owned startups to get early \u201cseed stage\u201d funding (\u201cconcept\u201d stage funding) so they can hire people and generate revenues so they\u2019re eligible for next stage (Series A<\/a>) funding by institutional VCs.<\/p>\n

    When I asked Hoey who was most likely to become the next female billionaire, she quickly mentioned Sophia Amoruso<\/a> of Nasty Gal fame. Nasty Gal<\/a> is a hugely successful online fashion emporium. Seven years ago, Amoruso began selling one-of-a-kind vintage clothing on eBay, and Nasty Gal was born. Today, the company boasts revenues of $240 million, and sales growth is in the triple digits.<\/p>\n

    How can women entrepreneurs get on a more even footing with men? <\/strong><\/p>\n

    The data show that high growth companies \u2013 meaning scalable tech companies, for the most part \u2013 are the biggest drivers of employment growth in North America. Yet tech startups have traditionally been the preserve of young men. The good news is, more and more women are entering tech fields, and according to informal polls by Women 2.0, the number of women starting tech companies nationally has doubled in the past three years. Inc magazine\u2019s Abigail Tracy<\/a> notes that the number of venture capital deals going to female founders is on the rise in 2013 according to the data from PitchBook<\/a>.<\/p>\n

    \"Women<\/a><\/p>\n

    Over the course of these two blog posts (see part 1 here<\/a>), we\u2019ve covered a lot of ground and in the process gathered a checklist of the strengths and weaknesses of women entrepreneurs. What\u2019s been missing so far is action. What can be done to inspire and create more female startups? Here is a quick summary of the recommendations I received from Andrea, Fran, Sara, Kelly and Meena:<\/p>\n