Do you believe Female Founders are getting nowhere with funding?
The reality: businesses are complicated.
There are a lot of moving parts so it’s up to you to make your deal make sense to an investor.
If you allow yourself to believe that they’re not investing in you because you’re female, you’ve succumbed to what psychologists call “learned helplessness” and letting that be your stopper. It’s like imaginary Kryptonite that stops you in your tracks.
It’s really not about your gender unless you let it be. You’re real challenge is to convince an investor that you can do something more interesting with his/her money than s/he can.
Successful entrepreneurs accept this and look for any way possible to go through, around or over obstacles… and then keep going.
Think of Walt Disney pitching Disneyland over 600x, Colonel Sanders pitching Kentucky fried chicken over 1100x… How many times did Jack Canfield pitch publishers on Chicken Soup for the Soul?
Perhaps a different approach would be like Scott Cook of Intuit who asked VCS, “Why should I let you invest in my company?” Or, as Oren Klaff of Pitch Anything teaches, YOU need to be the “prize.”
It’s not that you’re a woman. Like all entrepreneurs, you need to better articulate, demonstrate, and build a better case for your business funding. It’s the same issue all entrepreneurs face: “Why your product? Why now. Why from YOU?”
Regarding female VCs, Heidi Roizen comes to mind. She is a very intelligent, pragmatic and thoughtful businessperson who has founded and funded companies.
My own experience comes from starting, building and running a successful software company. I coach all kinds of entrepreneurs with wonderful ideas, either personally or through my business planning software Biz Plan Builder.
Burke Franklin, CEO Business Power Tools
This blog is my response to a LinkedIn Article by Caroline Fairchild
