Women

Jean Hammond – Angel Video Interview Series

[This post is part of an on-going series of video interviews with members of the start-up community - see a list of links to the full series here.] Jean Hammond is an institution in the Boston start-up community. She’s a Sloan MBA with a ton of entrepreneurial experience in the digital signal processing and networking space who […]

Jean Hammond Reflects on Recent Angel Capital Association Conference

Angel investors were in Boston/Cambridge Massachusetts during the week of April 4th for the National Angel Capital Association National Conference. For many angel investors, the conference provided a venue where they could get insight into 3 or 4 issues that have challenged early stage investors for a long time. The 2011 version of these issues viewed through the lens of angels who like investing in angel groups bring interesting complexity to the problems investors face. I found that a lot of the angels were discussing reaching scale and, interestingly, matching that with “right sizing” what we do.

TCN Board Member Launches Celiac Therapy Startup in Cambridge

Born from research in Australia, new Cambridge startup ImmusanT Inc. has launched to commercialize a therapy that aims to treat celiac disease like a simple allergy with regular injections of a therapy.

Entrepreneurial Women in High Growth Startups

Over 130 women (and a few men) attended last week’s second annual TCN Women’s Entrepreneurship Breakfast to discuss how to increase the success of entrepreneurial women in high growth startups.

Janet Kraus, Co-Founder and CEO of Spire and Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Harvard, proved to be an engaging and insightful moderator of the panel, which featured Diane Hessan, President and CEO of Communispace, and Rudina Seseri, Principal at Fairhaven Capital.

We know that women are launching high growth startups more than ever. Yet even in Boston, an entrepreneurial hot bed, companies lead by women don’t seem to aim as high or clear as many hurdles. TCN and Boston’s entrepreneurial community organized a breakfast event at Microsoft’s NERD Center on December 1^st to focus on the challenges around women’s entrepreneurship in Greater Boston.

So what does the landscape look like? We know that women are more efficient, have fewer failures, submit more patents, and are heavily involved in IPO’s. But is not all sunny: there still very few female investors, while women take on less capital than men. How many women are actually starting companies, and what are the successes they’ve celebrated and the challenges they’ve faced? What are the hurdles that women continue to face in starting high growth companies? Here are some statistics and questions to consider, taken from the opening presentation from the Women’s Breakfast.

1. There are currently 8 million U.S. businesses that are owned by a majority of women. If U.S.-based women-owned businesses were their own country, they would have the fifth largest GDP in the world, trailing closely behind Germany, and ahead of countries like France, the United Kingdom, and Italy.
2. It pays to be in Massachusetts! Nationally, women make up 8% of all company founders; in Massachusetts, women make up 27% of founders. Massachusetts has the highest rate of female founders in the country.
3. Between 1997 and 2004, the number of women-owned companies grew by 28.1%. That’s nearly three times the rate of all privately held businesses with employees.
4. The average venture-backed company run by women has 12% higher revenues than the average of those run by men but, on average, 33% less capital committed.
5. In 1988, 4% of the 134 firms that went public in the US had women in top management positions. In 2009, all but two of the 19 high-tech IPOs had at least one woman officer.
6. Women-led companies with more than $1 million in revenue are twice as likely as male-led companies to get debt capital rather than equity capital.
7. Only 8% of entrepreneurs backed by venture capital are women.
8. Angel groups are actively working to promote women entrepreneurs through the formation of groups focusing on women-led companies, such as Golden Seeds and Illuminate Ventures, and through the syndication of deals from these groups with other angels.
9. Women now represent just over 15% of angel investors, but only 5-7% of partner-level high-tech venture capitalists in the U.S. Firms with women investment partners are 70% more likely to lead an investment in a woman entrepreneur than those with only male partners.

Read more:

• CB Insights, tracking of 165 internet companies and their 300+ founders receiving Seed or Series A funding from VCs from Jan to June 2010
• The End of Men by Hanna Rosin in The Atlantic, July/Aug 2010
• “High Performance Entrepreneurs: Women in High Tech,” performed by a team led by founder and CEO Cindy Padnos of Illuminate Ventures
• “Where Are All the Women” Resource List by Mass Challenge

With these statistics behind us, why don’t women ask for external funding at the same rate as men? Is there still a difference between women and men when it comes to the entrepreneurial path?

There are many resources in New England to help women develop high growth companies:

• Astia
• Babson College’s Center for Women’s Leadership
• The Boston Club
• Boston Women in Finance, Inc.
• Center for Women & Enterprise
• The Commonwealth Institute
• Girls in Tech
• Golden Seeds
• Massachusetts Small Business Development Center Network
• MVVF Women’s Collaborative
• Simmons School of Management
• State Office of Minority and Women Business Assistance
• Springboard Enterprises
• Women Entrepreneurs in Science and Technology
• Women In Technology International
• WPI Venture Forum

The Capital Network provides education, resources, and a community for entrepreneurs seeking funding. We join the larger community in the challenge of answering these questions and building a sustainable ecosystem for womens entrepreneurship. Learn more about us at www.thecapitalnetwork.org.