If you are thinking of starting a company, or raising venture capital, and how happen to be female then Pemo Theodore’s new ebook is for you.
Why are Women Funded Less than Men? a crowdsourced conversation presents a thoughtful collection of advice on how to do it and the challenges you face, drawn from a fascinating set of video interviews. Pemo interviewed VCs, entrepreneurs and advisors, asking them all to speak about the issues and challenges facing women trying to raise venture capital.
In a world more than 95% run by men, and 95% invested in by men, advice for the female entrepreneur is invaluable, and by presenting the advice in short video form, Pemo makes it very easy to absorb and enjoy.
Raising venture capital has never been a problem for me, and as I watched the videos I found myself thinking was I lucky, good, or just really ignorant of the challenge? I very much resonate with the advice to not be aware of your gender as you pitch, to be aggressive and to ignore that you know most VCs are not women friendly – your idea is still great.
I also resonate with the advice from Janice Roberts at Mayfield Fund that you can empower yourself by choosing the right VC. Finding the right investing partner is critical – my advice on how to pick a VC is in this post.
Many of the contributors speak about how important confidence is. So many women let themselves down by expressing self doubt. DON’T. VCs are already taking enough risk – they won’t invest in someone that reveals their fears – and men don’t let on no matter how scared they might be. Be confident, project confidence, and your investors will follow you.
As I said in my forward for the book:
While the facts are that only 3-5% of venture capital goes to female entrepreneurs there is simply no good reason for this to be the case. Women are as strong and smart as men, and often have the advantages of better management skills and stronger team building ability. But today’s venture world is dominated by men looking for the classical male style of leadership and until that changes women need to adapt to the current rules of the game, get funded and win so they can change the game.
It take confidence, courage and authenticity and a healthy dose of advice and encouragement. This wonderful collection of advice, shared experience and often humorous stories will be an inspiration to any female entrepreneur. Pemo interviews across the spectrum: VCs, entrepreneurs, those who have succeeded, some that have failed, all that have learned and share their experience with you. It’s a terrific resource if you are raising money from venture capital, plan to do so for your next brilliant idea or are a VC yourself wanting to unlock higher quality deals by tapping into the female advantage.
The complete videos of Pemo interviewing me on raising money are here and here too.
It was International Women’s Day yesterday and our Gurgaon team celebrated the day by giving roses to each of our female employees in the Gurgaon office and taking them out to lunch. You can see a picture of most of our our female team members below.
FirstRain is an unusual company in that so many of the leadership are women. Myself (CEO), YY (COO) and Aparna (GM India). We all developed our careers based on deep technical training and hard work – there are no quotas in the technology world – and it is both unusual and worth celebrating to have a deeply technical company with almost 50% of the leadership being women (and one woman board member too). It may be indeed be unique, we don’t know. And it is probably a sign that women continue to improve the opportunities they have in our society.
As Aparna (our GM in India) told her team:
“International Women’s Day (8 March) is a global day celebrating the economic, political and social achievements of women past, present and future.
The new millennium has witnessed a significant change and attitudinal shift in both women’s and society’s thoughts about women. We do have female astronauts and prime ministers, more women in the boardrooms, greater equality in legislative rights, and more importantly women’s visibility as impressive role models in every aspect of life. And so the tone and nature of IWD has, for the past few years, moved from being a reminder about the negatives to a celebration of the positives.
2011 is the Global Centenary Year and let’s take this opportunity to celebrate success of all women and especially the India woman Rainmakers.”
A subset of our Gurgaon female team members:
Yesterday I had two opportunities up on stage – but talking about very different subject matters in the two.
First was on stage with our customer – Kevin Bailey from Symantec – talking about how Symantec uses real-time intelligence and FirstRain monitors to provide unique, instant customer intelligence to their sales force – and how FirstRain is integrated into their SymBrain portal. Great fun – and I get a huge kick out of customers talking about FirstRain. More to follow on this – we’ll put up some video from his talk shortly.
Kevin Bailey, Snr Director Global Market Analytics and Strategies, Symantec
One example: FirstRain powering the competitive matrix pages in SymBrain
Second was on a panel at Astia in San Francisco – speaking to a group of young women entrepreneurs about leadership. It is always both humbling and energizing to be asked to talk about my experiences and views on leadership. This panel was part of week long event for 43 women to help them get their businesses started and connect them with people who can help them raise money.
Three terrific women on the panel with me:
It was fun and inspiring to talk about leadership with a hungry, smart group of young women – although as usual I was the most controversial. I do enjoy being provocative — but I was also the token CEO on the panel so I had some fun with that.
I really enjoyed listening to Robin, Renee and Karen’s perspectives. All such different backgrounds and yet we had many shared opinions on how to grow into being a leader. We talked about the importance of being confident, of setting boundaries and acceptable behaviors, of not needing to know it all yourself, how to manage stress (my input: work out and great red wine) and how to build executive teams who compliment your skills.
The most helpful for me was hearing Karen talk about how she took two years to care for both her parents as they fell ill – she cared for them herself in her house for the last 6 months of their lives – and she applied all her leadership and operational skills to make the end of their lives as comfortable as possible. As I navigate my way through the murky waters of ill parents it is comforting to realize I have skills and resources I can bring in to help make their lives easier.
Renee, Karen, Robin, me and Greg
As we announced today – I’ve joined the board of the non-profit group Investorside. This is a trade association with a mission to “increase investor and pensioner trust in the U.S. capital markets system through the promotion and use of investment research that is financially aligned with investor interests”.
The need for a group like Investorside grew out of the mistrust investors felt for research after the research/banking conflicts became visible in 2001. Sellside researchers were promoting stocks long after they knew they were a bad investment, in order to keep the investment banking fees, and so their own fees going.
Today the group’s members are investment research firms “providing research that works purely for investors”.
FirstRain is used by investors and by corporations today – both when the goal is to do institutional grade research from the web. When I was approached to get involved in Investorside, and to serve on the board, I thought it was a very good fit. It’s an opportunity for me to help the research community using my experience in web 2.0 and growing markets, and it’s an opportunity for me (and FirstRain) to continue to grow in our understanding of the research needs of the investment community.
Here’s the expanded mission:
The Investorside Research Association serves its members through three primary functions:
Certifying Research Providers — Investorside certifies that its members are free of investment banking, consulting, and research-for-hire conflicts and provides certified member firms with the trademarked Investorside Seal.
Promoting the Growth of Independent Research — Through Investorside.org, annual conferences and regular media communication, Investorside markets its member firms to individual and institutional investors.
Promoting Government Policy that Encourages the Use of Independent Research — Investorside represents its members’ interests before regulators, law-makers and members-of-industry, promoting the use of investment research that is aligned with investor interests.
