Astia Notes

Carl Schramm OpEd: The Importance of Women Entrepreneurs

2011-10-27T21:19:00.000-07:00

This is a translated OpEd by Carl Schramm, CEO, Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation published in the Turkish, Radikal, October 20, 2011

The Tenacity and Networking It Takes

The former Canadian foreign minister Pierre Pettigrew was possibly the first to state that the era of globalization would count women among its winners. And indeed, women have made great strides, virtually all over the world, as far as their labor force participation and their level of education are concerned.

According to the World Bank, women accounted for 40.1% of the global labor force in 2009. Women now account for the majority of university students in countries including Malaysia, Libya, Venezuela and Iran.

And yet, for all these successes, there is one arena where the progress of women is still very insufficient, on the crucial front of entrepreneurship. Contrary to what many would readily and rightfully assume, especially given women's impressive range of multitasking skills, the ranks of entrepreneurs globally are still rather devoid of women.

That means that, at a time when the world economy, all the way from the United States to Egypt and Bangladesh, is nervously seeking future sources of growth and jobs, the entrepreneurial potential of, roughly speaking, 50% of humanity has not been brought to bear.

If we wanted to launch one initiative across cultures to stimulate economic growth, increasing the ranks of women entrepreneurs would probably the one that yields the most potential.

But in order to get it right, and achieve more than a mere feel-good exercise, it is important to understand the real sources of constraint that seem to keep women from realizing their full potential in this domain.

It is also very important to go after the right target. For all the attention given to micro lending promoting the ranks of women entrepreneurs, what is at least as critical in a global context is to broaden the ranks of women entrepreneurs leading high-growth companies.

When our foundation looked into what's holding women back in the entrepreneurship arena, we did look at education, especially in the sciences, since that is the springboard for a lot of start-up companies with significant innovation and job growth potential.

In the case of the United States, significant progress can be reported: For the past four years, women accounted for more graduates in all fields of the natural sciences than men, except for in engineering. And even there the tide may be turning, as evidenced by the fact that two years ago for the first time ever, more than 50% of the incoming engineering students at MIT were women.

Our research also showed that women scientists, in their subsequent careers, were funded as much as their male colleagues and published just as much as they, so that neither of these two factors can account for women’s underperformance.

Where women did fall far short, however, was at the most crucial nexus -- the switch from research to commercialization. Women, in fact, launch very few start-ups and account for a vastly disproportionate share of intellectual property generated out of university research.

The root cause of this shortfall, according to studies undertaken at Harvard and MIT, is that women, quite strangely compared to what one would expect, have very weak networks in the commercial marketplace. And that, of course, is where the rubber always meets the road.

This is why the case of Olivia Lum, the CEO of Hyflux, is such an inspiration and point of departure. In early June 2011, the Singapore-based Ms. Lum was awarded the title of World Entrepreneur of the Year by Ernst & Young, making her the first woman ever to win the award.

Her life story underscores the potentially transformative power of entrepreneurship. Adopted at birth and growing up in neighboring Malaysia, she got a science degree and joined GlaxoSmithKline, the pharmaceutical firm, as a chemist.

Then, in 1989, she quit her job in order to focus on polluted industrial water, a problem she had first become aware of in her corporate work at Glaxo. From that moment on, she was determined to seize on what has turned out to be a tremendous growth market, the desalination industry.

Olivia Lum credits hunger and poverty, as well as her experience of selling goods on the street when she was a girl -- a task she had to take on in order to earn the money that allowed her to stay in school -- as helping her develop the tenacity it would take to succeed as an entrepreneur.

Two decades on, her firm now employs 2,300 people in Asia, the Middle East and North Africa and it was recently selected by Singapore's national water agency as the preferred bidder for the country's second, and largest, desalination project. Singapore, for its part, is among the world leaders in water management.

Along the way, Ms. Lum did exactly what our foundation’s research had pointed to — that it is a matter not just of vision and talent, but of relentless collaboration and systematic networking that helps entrepreneurs, women or not, to transform ideas into real businesses that can be scaled up.

Contrast her success story with the little known story of Sandra Lerner, one of the co-founders of Cisco, one of today’s iconic IT companies. Equipped with a Master’s in statistics and computer science from Stanford, she launched the company in 1988 while working as Director of Computer Facilities at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business.

While it is pure conjecture whether her staying on at the company would have changed the dynamics for women entrepreneurship in the United States, and she did become wealthy, one thing is certain: The IT industry, as impressive as it has been over the past several decades, is not rife with stories about women entrepreneurs, which makes Ms. Lerner’s involuntary departure in August 1990 all the more regrettable. At least we all know what difference a single individual, Mia Hamm, made in the development of women’s soccer in the United States, long considered a male domain.

As Americans, we can take great credit for having done right by -- and been open to -- the emergence of U.S.-trained foreign scientists as top U.S.-based entrepreneurs, especially in and around Silicon Valley and the IT field.

It seems that we as a nation, indeed as a global population, and going far beyond the confines of the IT sector, have not done anywhere near as well at getting women launched as entrepreneurs in high-growth businesses. Given the tremendous challenges the world economy faces, and especially the needs for growth, innovation and jobs, why not focus on this challenge and make the 2010s the Decade of the Woman Entrepreneur?

[This is translated from an original OpEd in the Turkish paper Radikal. Read the original here: http://www.radikal.com.tr/Radikal.aspx?aType=RadikalHaberDetayV3&ArticleID=1066892&Date=25.10.2011&CategoryID=99]

Why entrepreneurs, why women

2011-10-06T12:55:00.000-07:00

I recently posted a response to an October 3 blog post by Mark Suster (Why Aren’t There More Female Entrepreneurs?), and I thought my comments should be translated more broadly. Below is a version of my post which is intended to clearly articulate the value proposition for:

Why [high-growth] entrepreneurship?
Why women [high-growth] entrepreneurs?

The simple answer to both - jobs and innovation.

A report prepared by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation recently found that all net new jobs created in the US in the last 30 years have been created by high-growth start-ups less than 5 years old.

And further, research from Babson College found that if women high-growth entrepreneurs had the same access to capital as their male counterparts, we would see 6 million new jobs created within 5 years - 2 million of those within year one.

This is the jobs recovery we all seek.

Add to this the fact that we have women at the ready: women are nearly half the PhDs, more than half the college graduates and half the MBAs. It seems a logical missed-opportunity if women are not fully participating (for whatever the many reasons) in high-growth entrepreneurship.

It's about jobs.

Regarding innovation, there is an abundant body of research that demonstrates that innovation and group intelligence are directly correlated to the number of women on the team. Scott Page, University of Michigan and IBM both published work proving this and are great examples to represent the body of evidence.

IBM's findings were that group intelligence is directly correlated to three things:
1) The group member's ability to read each others expressions
2) The evenness of the conversational participation
3) The greater proportion of women

And further, the researchers postulate that numbers 1 and 3 are closely linked.

It's about innovation.

Kauffman Report: Untapped potential holds promise to grow US Economy

2011-09-28T16:09:00.000-07:00

Jobs and economic escalation will follow as more women break through "glass walls" to start high-growth ventures

(KANSAS CITY, Mo.) Sept. 28, 2011 —

Women who are capable of starting growth companies that serve global markets may be the nation's secret weapon for achieving sustained economic growth.

Research shows that startup companies – particularly high-growth startups – are the most fruitful source of new U.S. jobs and offer the economy's best hope for recovery. However, despite the fact that about 46 percent of the workforce and more than 50 percent of college students are female, and that women have risen to top positions in corporate and university hierarchies, they represent only about 35 percent of startup business owners. Their firms also tend to experience less growth and prosperity than do firms started by men.

"Overcoming the Gender Gap: Women Entrepreneurs as Economic Drivers," a new paper from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, explores the reasons behind lower business startup rates among women and proposes actions that would help to realize the promise of female entrepreneurs in escalating the economy.

"There are plenty of highly qualified women in science and technology – industries from which the majority of high-growth companies are born," said Lesa Mitchell, Kauffman Foundation vice president, advancing innovation, and the paper's author. "More women are entering these fields than ever before. However, while women have broken through the glass ceiling, they seem to encounter ‘glass walls' that keep them from venturing out of big companies or structured academic settings to launch their own firms at the same rate men do."

In fact, early in the startup process, women take fewer steps to position themselves to start high-growth companies, according to "Gender Differences in Patenting in the Academic Life Sciences," a landmark study released in 2006 that tracked the careers of more than 4,000 life science research faculty at U.S. universities over 30 years.

While women tended to produce research that was equal to or slightly better than men's, on average, female faculty patented their research at only about 40 percent of the rate of their male colleagues, the study showed. They also tended to rely on formal university conduits to help them commercialize their research, rather than making connections and seeking guidance from private industry. In addition to more actively reaching out to establish new networks – a critical step for would-be entrepreneurs – men had more exposure to industry earlier in the process, with 93 percent of them serving on science advisory boards of high-tech companies, as compared to only 6.5 percent of women.

Other studies show that women might be more inclined to seek work/life balance and therefore shy away from establishing innovative firms that aim for global scale. On average, they also have greater difficulty raising investment capital than men do.

Nevertheless, Mitchell says, these gaps do not represent innate gender differences. They are subject to change and already may be changing.

"Women's entrepreneurship is an economic issue, not a gender-equity issue," Mitchell said. "As more women engage as entrepreneurs to build on their discoveries, new jobs and economic prosperity will follow."

Mitchell recommends three steps to boost female entrepreneurship in the United States:

Not-for-profit initiatives that advance opportunities for high-growth women entrepreneurs need greater funding and support from women executives, philanthropy leaders and industry. Networking and collaborative events between startup founders and big companies are critical to provide women entrepreneurs access to networks that can produce potential customers.
Successful women entrepreneurs and inventors should make themselves visible and available. Role models are critical to young women considering entrepreneurship.
Women must be invited at a much higher rate to join science advisory boards of high-tech companies.

To see original post and to download the full report, visit the Kauffman Foundation website: http://www.kauffman.org/newsroom/untapped-potential-for-expanding-womens-entrepreneurship-holds-promise-to-grow-us-economy.aspx

Application Deadline Extended to August 22!

2011-08-16T10:43:00.001-07:00

We are thrilled with the response we have received to our call for applications, and many that we have spoken to have asked for a few additional days. With that, we are extending the deadline to August 22nd. If you are planning to apply, please let us know so that we can save a spot for you in our on-line screening process. APPLY NOW!

While we do accept applications year-round, companies applying in this round will on-ramp with Astia during our Silicon Valley Program October 10-15. Applicants accepted into the Astia Portfolio benefit from year-round programming, customized advisory services, leadership training, investor connections and peer-to-peer network, all specifically designed to support and accelerate growth.

All applicants receive valuable feedback from Astia community members which in turn can be helpful in growing your business, no matter what the next steps are in your relationship with Astia.

We look forward to receiving your application! Please contact kindra(at)astia(dot)org for more information.

Sharon Vosmek, Astia CEO, Video Interview: European Entrepreneurs are Not Interested in Playing Small

2011-08-05T07:02:00.000-07:00

San Francisco, CA - July 2011

Sharon Vosmek has been CEO of Astia since 2007, originally joining as COO in 2004. As CEO of Astia, Sharon has an unwavering passion and a uniquely well-suited background to drive forward the organization's mission of propelling women's full participation as entrepreneurs and leaders in high-growth businesses, fueling innovation and driving economic growth. Under her guidance, the Astia community of investors, entrepreneurs, and industry leaders has grown ten-fold and now spans North America, Europe and India. You can find Sharon on Astia's blog and on Twitter @Vosmek

INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT:

Pemo: I was wondering if you could tell me a little bit about Astia & how it serves the female entrepreneurial community?

Sharon: Absolutely. Astia is a global organization built on a community of experts focused on the success of women led high growth companies. This is broadly serving the community of high tech, clean tech & life sciences companies.

We work with the companies on access to capital, achieving high growth & developing the executive leadership of the women on the founding team.

Pemo: Great, fantastic. I wondered if you have access to any stats at the moment about how many female entrepreneurs get investment? Anything up to date in that arena?

Sharon: Well what's really interesting is that there's good news & bad news. The bad news is that women still secure less than 10% of venture capital. It hasn't changed much in the last 10 years. The good news, the exciting news & the real opportunity for Astia, as I see it, is that there's great research validating the reasons why we should all care.

Number one, research shows that if women had the same access to capital as their male counterparts, we would see 6million jobs created in 5 years, 2 million of those in year one alone.

That is our economic jobs recovery that we are all seeking right now. Really exciting numbers.

The other really exciting news is that companies that have women in executive leadership roles, along with men, outperform those that don't for their investors & for their shareholders. So there's really great & exciting research while we haven't yet seen the move as it relates to the percentage of venture capital going to women CEOs.

Pemo: I know that you have offerings in Europe. Can you tell me a little bit about the European scene & how that's looking now for women entrepreneurs? I've been gone a while now.

Sharon: Europe's exciting! I find the entrepreneurial ecosystem there certainly abuzz. And what is the real opportunity for Astia in Europe is that we're a global community & we have great access to serial entrepreneurs around the world. So when an entrepreneur qualifies for Astia & joins us, they actually join this peer to peer network which is really strong & can break them out of their local, social entrepreneurial norms & help them access really the high growth, global entrepreneurial opportunity.

What I find about the European entrepreneurs is that they're ready for that! They're not interested in playing small. They're very interested in playing big & I think that a platform like Astia really then enables that to go quickly.

Pemo: I know that the numbers of female entrepreneurs in Europe are smaller than in the States (even though they're small here). So I'm just wondering, are you seeing any movement in that area? Are more women starting to get on board as entrepreneurs?

Sharon: Fantastic question & interestingly globally is a front of mine. I'm actually going to participate in the APEC Conference (Asia Pacific Economic Conference) talking about women in the economy because globally women are almost half the entrepreneurs. Where we are not is in high growth entrepreneurship & that's certainly true here in the US & in Europe. And really why it matters in high growth is what I talked about with job creation. In the last 30 years all new jobs were created by enterprises less than 5 years old.

So we should want women playing in this space. It's really about getting innovation to market & job creation & wealth creation for those women.

But you're right the numbers aren't much better here than they are in Europe. And actually it's not tracked so it's a bit of data that is not tracked that we desperately need.

Pemo: Yes I guess it's a bit disparate because so many different countries are involved in Europe?

Sharon: What I'm excited about though is that I think that the message is getting out. We certainly are seeing at Astia anecdotally an increase in people reaching out to find out about us, finding how they can become involved as entrepreneurs. So we're seeing an increase in our pipeline even if we don't know if that's true in the broader market.

Pemo: Fabulous, well as you know I've always been a very strong fan of Astia & your work. I'm hoping that you continue on for a long time to come. Or hopefully maybe not?

Sharon: We actually have a pretty big goal in front of us. What we've committed to as part of a collaboration with 50 other organizations globally, excuse me 60 now, is we see the opportunity to mainstream the Astia message & really bake in an understanding of why it matters. We see that within the decade we won't need to exist as an organization. What we believe is that women are half of the MBAs, half of the college graduates, more than half of college graduates & approaching half of the Phd's.

There is an abundant pipeline of talented women at the ready. If we show them the path & the opportunity & give them access to the networks, that's all it takes for them to succeed in this space. And then Astia gets to go away!

Pemo: Fantastic! Thank you so much for your time today, Sharon. It's been brilliant getting this feedback, particularly the stats. It's really exciting news!

Sharon: Thank you Pemo & keep doing these, they are great.

Pemo: Thank you

ABOUT THE VIDEOGRAPHER
Pemo Theodore is a startup coach and founder of EZebis: Winning the Venture Game for Women. She video interviews venture capitalists & women founders on the shortfall in funding for women to raise awareness of the challenges that women sometimes face in obtaining investment in startups. She has been an Australian origin entrepreneur in online business for over 6 years since developing her other site, AstraMatch. She has been involved in small business for 33 years in Australia, Canada, Ireland & UK. A certificated business coach with the International Coach Federation, she is founding President of the Ireland chapter of the ICF & was trained by Corporate Coachu.

Astia's Kindra Tatarsky joins Incubator Summit: Choose the Right Incubator for Your Startup

2011-06-24T17:27:00.000-07:00

Incubator Summit - Choose the Right Incubator for Your Startup - 6-21-11

Dive right in! The water is fine!

2011-06-14T15:25:00.000-07:00

If last year’s We Own It Summit in New York was a dip of the toe in to the water to see if it was warm enough, then this year’s Summit in London was a dive in to the deep-end followed by a forceful free-style firmly charging to the finish line in 2020.

The Decade of the Woman Entrepreneur is upon us and the collaboration has firmly embraced the opportunity and the challenge this presents. The Summit participants have validated that the moment is now to propel women in to the high-growth, innovation economy – as entrepreneurs, investors, and ultimately beneficiaries of the wealth and influence created.

Our next steps have been identified in the goals below. It is now the responsibility of we, the collaborating organizations, to maintain the momentum and deliver on these shared commitments:

In 2011-12, we will:

Create and implement collaboration processes for research and training.
• The annual research agenda will work to address 1-3 questions annually. This work is critical as the current dearth of data pertaining to women high-growth entrepreneurs is pronounced and does not allow us to measure our progress.
• The training objectives ensure that women gain exposure to the opportunity of high-growth entrepreneurship, investment, and board participation. The goal this year is to create a shared curriculum - via the many that already exists within the collaboration - that provides access to networks and access to maps to success.

Communicate to the market the stories of successful women entrepreneurs and investors as well as clearly articulate the problem, issues and opportunities. This year, we will complete and publish:
• 12 profiles each of female investors & entrepreneurs.
• A statement of why women’s participation matters for key constituents (LPs, VCs, government, etc.)

Take action that we believe will create real and measurable change in the market.
• A group, led by successful VCs, angels and LPs, has been created to raise an Astia Innovation Fund to invest in women-founded, women-led, high-growth start-ups.
• Borrowing from the model used by the Indian entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley a decade ago, we will work to get women to invest in women (as well as the men who love women entrepreneurs), thereby owning the solution for ourselves.
• Where we have influence as industry leaders, LPs, Fund of Funds, family offices, VC firms, government funding agencies, etc. we will work to get women in to decision-making bodies.

The nearly 200 thought-leaders who participated in this year’s Summit have identified the above goals for the coming year as the deliverables that will lead us to the success in 2020.

And for those new to this race, the finish line has been mapped. Through this Summit and this collaboration – and any other means available to us - we will:

• Increase number of women investors.
• Increase number of women high growth entrepreneurs.
• Increase likelihood of success of these businesses.
• Get more women on public and private boards.

Come on – dive right in. The water is lovely!

Cheers,
Sharon Vosmek, CEO

‘This is a Man’s World but it would be nothing, NOTHING without a woman or a girl’ - James Brown

2011-05-24T13:50:00.000-07:00

Guest blogger, Twain Liu on the e-G8 Summit

Let’s start with some inspiring facts before we talk about the e-G8 technology forum which is preceding the main G8 summit this week. Ada Lovelace’s partnership with Charles Babbage in the 1840s led to the invention of the world’s first computer, the Difference Engine. Adele Goldberg’s collaboration with Alan Kay in the 1970s produced a programming language, smalltalk-80, which evolved into Objective-C. This language is what now runs 180+ million of Apple's innovations such as the iPod, iPhone and iPad; innovations that contribute to Apple's bottom line success and make it the world's #1 most valued brand. Meanwhile, Dame Wendy Hall’s contributions to the original WWW as well as its latest form, the Semantic Web, over the last 20 years alongside Sir Tim Berners-Lee and others is what enables technologies to be increasingly intelligent, open and democratic for global society.

These are some examples of what’s achievable when both genders put their minds together and their hands to work in the tech sphere.

The importance of diversity, inclusion and collaboration to foster innovation, informed decision-making and economic opportunity is never more pertinent than today when technologists and political leaders from G8 countries are gathering for a two-day forum in the Tuileries Gardens of Paris, France. Under discussion will be a range of policy issues concerning the Web and mobile spaces, including: innovation, education, intellectual property, privacy and economic growth. The French President, Nicholas Sarkozy, and the advertising group, Publicis SA, are co-hosting the event, which promises to produce agenda items for the main G8 summit happening in Deauville on May 26 and 27.

What’s notable about the list of speakers and panelists at the first ever e-G8 is the sub-optimal ratio of male:female speakers and panelists (approximately 12:1) as well as the absence of representation by consumer groups and banking technologists. The latter’s omission is surprising because it would seem G8 leaders aren’t exploring ways in which technology and better quality data can be leveraged to reduce the likelihood of another global financial crisis:

Therefore, it would seem that e-G8 organizers are missing opportunities to gain more diverse perspectives as well as to tackle genuine challenges that affect ordinary citizens who use the Web and mobile Web. Moreover, women constitute a sizeable percentage of the $ spent online and the e-G8 is about economics. According to Comscore's 2010 report: "In the U.S., women make up slightly less than half the internet users but make up for it by spending 58% of the commerce dollars." Meanwhile, Nielsens reported that US mobile consumer behavior in Q4 2010 shows in an average month, women send and receive 717 SMS text messages, 30% more than the 552 sent and received by men. More information about women's purchasing power online can be read in this TechCrunch article by guest writer, Aileen Lee, Partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.

Why Women Rule the Internet

Interestingly, regarding the under-representation of women on the e-G8 panels, French parliamentarians passed a law on 13 January 2011 to increase the number of female board directors to 20% within the next three years and 40% within six years thereafter:

French law to increase number of women directors

It would have been commendable and encouraging if the French e-G8 hosts had led the way in the implementation of this law and invited more leading women in the technology and policy sectors to contribute to the panels and propose agenda items for discussion. A number of key organizations, including Astia, Women2.org, Catalys t and Arianna Huffington’s WIE (Women Inspiration Enterprise), could have directed the e-G8 organizers towards these women and enabled them to “sit at the big table” --- in the way that Sheryl Sandberg described in her December 2010 TEDTalk:

There are women who aren't "leaving before we leave" and are available for consideration and invitation to participate on policy panels, operational boards and media interviews about the future of technology and global society. It's the responsibility of conference hosts and organisers such as e-G8 as much as of CEO executive search professionals to show initiative and seek those talented women out.

Interestingly, there’s an emerging wealth of research which shows that when women are involved at the board level they boost the diversity of decision-making, companies excel and outperform at the bottom line. For example, Catalyst Research report from 2008 shows Fortune500 companies with 3 or more female board members produced these results:

+ 73% return on sales
+ 83% return on equity
+ 112% return on invested capital

Obviously, the onus is also on female technologists to be proud of our achievements, to make others aware of our progress and to have the vision, initiative, drive and execution to earn those seats at the “big table”. It’s worth observing that, of the female panelists at the e-G8, Sheryl Sandberg is a rarity in that she has direct high-level operational experience at a technology company. More of her type is needed and should be fostered.

It’s vital that this and future generations of women are encouraged to pursue careers at the heart of business operations and where it impacts bottom line revenues: coding applications not only designing and marketing them; being responsible for P+L and not only in a supporting role; and, most importantly of all perhaps, making strategic revenue decisions as CEOs. In this way, when Web 3.0 happens journalists will be able to interview more female tech CEOs than they could in 2010:

The Men and No Women of Web 2.0 Boards (BoomTown's Talking to You: Twitter, Facebook, Zynga, Groupon and Foursquare)

For inspiration, please listen to this recent NYTimes podcast and appreciate some more how women have been at the forefront of technological innovations that have increased economic opportunities and growth for all. Whilst we're at it, let's admire the women at IBM, where they recently built the IBM Watson machine that won 'Jeopardy' and showed us the possibilities of more intelligent machines to filter through all the world's online data:

Clearly, female engagement is what makes the difference between innovation and economic potential versus stagnation and economic impasses.

James Brown’s 1966 soul standard does tell us a truth that’s worth bearing in mind as we take a moment to reflect on how far women have progressed and how much further we still have to go. Outstanding women including Oprah, Madonna and Arianna have walked those paths to show us that women are just as capable of becoming successful media and publishing titans as the Turners, the Rolling Stones and the Murdochs.

Yet there are still opportunities and “giant leaps” to be made, particularly in the technology and policy orbits and in light of the e-G8 forum. For 2012, a key mission statement should be that the ratio of male:female panelists at the “big table” of the e-G8 should be 50:50.

As a technologist, I’d like to close with this picture.

It shows how vision and innovation are what happen when both sides of our brains (50:50) work in synch.

We become.....Conscious!

‘It’s a Man’s World, but it would be nothing, NOTHING without a woman or a girl.’

---
Twain Liu is the founder of a mobile applications company. Her technology interests include: data structures, artificial intelligence and making sense (context) of content. Her career experiences include: technology consultancy; corporate finance; Strategic Investments (TMT) and corporate strategy, CEO-Chairman’s Office, Tier 1 bank; and Zephyr.com which was acquired by Bureau van Dijk.

Women Entrepreneurs Are Trapped Within Glass Walls

2011-05-19T12:03:00.000-07:00

Published on: May 17, 2011

By Lesa Mitchell, Vice President, Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation

This much is known: The next round of economic recovery and growth in the U.S. will be led by new companies. The statistical evidence on that point is clear. While big, established firms employ the most people, it's the high-growth startups -- the new firms on their way to becoming big -- that create the lion's share of new jobs, and become the anchors for new industries. So it has been through every wave of growth in the country's history, from the days of Thomas Edison and Henry Ford to the IT boom of the late twentieth century.

Now here is the lesser known fact: If we want a real recovery, the next cohort of high-growth entrepreneurs cannot just be people with names like Thomas and Henry, or Bill and Steve. We need the women to get involved. The American growth engine can no longer afford to run on half of its cylinders.

Yes, women are starting plenty of new businesses. However if you look closely at the picture, as we have done at the Kauffman Foundation, where I work, you find a vast amount of potential left on the table. In our demographic data, the overall rate of entrepreneurial activity among women is less than 2/3 the rate for men.

And, as other sources along with Kauffman have found, womens' startups under-perform on key measures of growth. Comparatively, few of them even grow to $1 million per year in revenues. Very few build or hire on the kind of scale that can boost a region's economy, let alone show up on the national radar screen.

Part of the disparity stems from the types of companies many women start, such as local retail shops or professional service firms and consultancies. Serious growth and value creation tend to come from innovative startups in science- and technology-based industries. But this is where the gender gap becomes blindingly apparent.

Can you name one woman founder or co-founder who has taken a tech-based company from inception to true global scale? Several already-big firms, such as Oracle and Xerox, have women as CEOs. Meg Whitman joined eBay when it was growing and led it the rest of the way to the top, which is the closest example I can think of.

For the full post, check out “Women Entrepreneurs Are Trapped Within Glass Walls” on Huffington Post.

About the guest blogger: Lesa Mitchell is a vice president with the Kauffman Foundation. She has been responsible for the Foundation’s frontier work in understanding the policy levers that influence the advancement of innovation from universities into the commercial market and the new relationships between disease philanthropy and for profit companies. Prior to joining Kauffman, Mitchell spent twenty years in global executive roles at Aventis, Quintiles, and Marion Laboratories. Follow her on Twitter at @lesamitchell.

Astia as Philosophy - Addressing the Entrepreneur's Paradox

2011-05-02T18:18:00.000-07:00

This month, I have been thinking about what I have termed, the entrepreneur's paradox. Most simply stated, it is the importance of discomfort, juxtaposed with the need for comfort zones - both of which I believe, are fundamental to the success of the entrepreneur.

Get uncomfortable - it will make you grow.

I do my best thinking, listening, and learning when I am outside of my comfort zone. It seems true for most of us, that in strange places with new people we are better able to listen to the conversation before we put forward what we know - or what we think we know.

Get a community - the individual cannot do it alone.

And yet, I thrive when surrounded by an engaged community that lends thoughtful support, constructive input, validating energy, and positive reinforcement. A group of people provide an important source of strength and comfort for the isolated start-up.

I believe to succeed as entrepreneurs - we need both. And I believe that Astia - for the entrepreneur - can be both.

We need ample opportunity to feel challenged and stretched beyond what we thought we were capable of. I am reminded of the numerous Astia founders who had exceptional technical expertise, and who found Astia most challenging for them when they were confronted with owning the business elements like the financials, the go to market strategy, or the fundraising conversations. This stretch ensured they grew as leaders and as founders.

We also need ample moments when we are bolstered by those who align with us. I say it often, "The individual does not scale. High-growth entrepreneurship cannot be done alone." To be successful, the entrepreneur must be able to attract others to their vision. They must be able to inspire others to follow them to the "great unknown" of the entrepreneur's vision, idea, and purpose. And they need this cohort in order to succeed.

Astia is the space where the 'entrepreneur's paradox' can be resolved.

Astia is at the same time the platform for critical thinking - and - the community at the ready. I believe this is one of our greatest differentiators. We are a community that can both challenge and bolster the entrepreneur.

For the savvy entrepreneur, Astia maintains the space for both critical thinking leading to growth - and - supportive community aligned with your success. Food for thought for those of you wondering if Astia is right for you. We welcome the conversation - and accept applications year-round. Give us a call. Together, we may just change your world - as you always envisioned you would!

Wondering if Astia is right for you or an entrepreneur you know. give us a call or drop us an email to info@astia.org.

Shortfall in Funding for Women: changetheratio

2011-03-06T17:41:00.000-08:00

Guest post by Pemo Theodore

Sharon Vosmek Interviews with www.EcoSalon.com

2011-02-11T11:31:00.000-08:00

Sharon Vosmek is being interviewed for an www.ecosalon.com piece. Here are the questions she has addressed, we thought you might be interested in hearing what she had to say.

Are VCs focused enough on supporting women and minority entrepreneurs?

I don't see this as the work of VCs. Their job is to make investments that return the best IRR to their LPs. And what we know about this is that companies that have women in executive leadership, outperform those that do not. Therefore, what we expect to see is a greater number and percentage of investments going in to companies with women in those roles. Not because they need support, but because they outperform the market.

Should they be focused on groups, as such? Why delineate between the bearers of good ideas?

I think the first answer addresses this.

Is there biased against efforts spearheaded by women and/or minorities? Why?

No 1. In our society, men and women are still by-and-large in separate business networks. And no. 2, 95% of VCs and 85% of Angels are men. How this plays out is as follows. VC and Angel investment relies heavily on trusted business relationships - often for early stage investors, the only risk that can be mitigated is that of the individuals involved and if they are known to the investor. Trusted business relationships are always going to win in this scenario. Therefore if you take points 1 and 2, you can see how within the high-growth space, groups who are not naturally in each others' networks, will suffer as a result. Entrepreneurs will suffer because they will lack access to capital. Investors will suffer because they will lack access to the full compliment of deals. This is a societal issue, not one of VC or Angel per se.

Are women and minorities even stepping to plate to play as entrepreneurs anyway? If not, why not?

Yes they are.

What are the benefits of targeting investments in these groups? To society? To theeconomy? To investors?

The benefits are three fold as the question presumes. For investors - higher returns where women are in leadership with men. For society - half the population's talents can be fully realized (women are half of MBAs, half of PhDs, more than half of all college graduates - there is an abundant pool of talent at the ready). For the economy - it means jobs. If women had the same access to capital as their male counterparts we would see 6 million jobs added to the economy in 5 years, 2million in year one alone*. This is the economic recovery we all seek. Seems a simple solution.

*source: Babson College

NYC vs Boston

2011-02-07T11:14:00.000-08:00

What follows is a guest post by Astia NYC Vice President, Rob Delman. Welcome to the team, Rob!

Have you been following the story about whether NYC or Boston has more VC seeds deals? It is like debating who is better, the Yankees or the Red Sox (although we all know the answer to that question!)

According to a study by CB insights, when it comes to seed investments by venture capitalists, data suggests NY’s seed venture capital investments are gaining momentum at a faster rate than Massachusetts. Q1 and Q2 2010 saw an increase in seed venture capital investments in both Massachusetts and New York but the growth rate and the absolute number of deals was greater in NY in both quarters as detailed below.

Venture accelerators like Astia are enthusiastic about the data as we love to see an increase of quality deal flow regardless of the geography. This is more validation that small business and entrepreneurship continue to be the catalyst for growth in our country. The recent announcement by the White House and creation of Startup America reinforces our belief that entrepreneurship and small business are the main drivers of job growth and wealth creation.

Astia and Golden Seeds (www.goldenseeds.com) recently shared a booth at the Funding Post NYC Venture Capital and Angel Showcase in NYC where over 30 VC firms and several hundred entrepreneurs met to see if there was a match of interests. The entire scene was spectacular – clean tech, life science, consumer goods, technology and media sectors were all represented. Some of the ideas sounded futuristic but regardless, the energy was overwhelming. One could not help but feel that the economic recovery was going to happen at that very moment in that very room.

So does it really matter if NYC or Boston has more deals or invested capital? Of course not – what really matters is Astia and other great organizations participate in the entrepreneurial revolution that is again sweeping our nation.

Astia Interview on BloombergTV Street Smarts

2011-02-03T14:36:00.000-08:00

Sitting in this chair, I had to laugh - maybe it was the makeup they were caking onto my face or the audience of people watching me get done up, or maybe it was just my uncontainable joy at how far Astia has come. A year ago I wasn't envisioning Astia being on Bloomberg TV, but you know - if someone had told me this is where I would be today, I would have believed it because that's what our community is capable of.

What brought Astia to Bloomberg TV today? Was it the stellar entrepreneurs that are building our reputation? The all star team of advisors that supports our community? The sponsors who empower us to do what we do and to do more of it? I'm sure you know the answer, it's all of the above.

So how do I manage to balance myself on the stilt-like seat I'm given and serve as representative for all the aforementioned and do it justice in 7 minutes flat? Well, that's just not possible but I did my best to express the Street Smart hosts Carol Massar and Matt Miller just what we're made of and why the viewers should stay tuned for more from the Astia community.

I was joined by Astia client Alexa von Tobel of LearnVest who has been remarkably successful and continues to stay engaged with the Astia community. Alexa spoke on the fact that "in general it's hard to start a business, and I started during a recession." And Astia was there to help, that's what a community does. Sometimes you switch hats - sometime you are the one offering the help and sometimes you are receiving, and that's what keeps Astia alive.

It was easy to gush with enthusiasm when I explained that Astia clients are exceptional. Carol Massar asked me why something like Astia is needed, and simply said men and women are in separate business networks and 98% of venture capital is held by men. How do we address that? Build a support community of men and women.

That's where the pain point lies. It's not that women entrepreneurs, like Alexa couldn't have done it on their own, it's that she's in a high growth market that requires fast capital, fast growth, and real commitment to milestones, which is very unique business process and there are 'been there done that folks' who can aid in finding shortcuts to pathways to success.

Matt Miller wanted to know, why are we doing this? What's the big picture?

Jobs, Innovation and Economic Growth

We're looking for innovation and we're looking for a recovery, and we know that if women had the same access to capital as their male counterparts, we would see 6 million jobs added to the economy in the next 5 years, 2 million jobs in the next year alone (thank you Babson for the numbers). That's our economic recovery right there. Just ensuring that women were able to gain access to capital.

The interview closed with a simple question for Alexa, so is LearnVest hiring? Yes, yes they are.

Astia Invited to Join White House Startup America Initiative

2011-02-03T13:14:00.000-08:00

Last week it was made clear that supporting high-growth entrepreneurs is a proven pathway to job creation and economic growth.

Astia client, Jenny Zeszut, Founder & CEO of Scout Labs and I had the good fortune to be invited to the launch of the Startup America Initiative at the White House on Monday, January 31st. The Startup America Partnership is the private sector counterpart to the Obama administration’s effort to spark high-growth firms in the U.S.

The room was filled with contagious energy as host Aneesh Chopra, Chief Technology Officer and Assistant to the President and Associate Director for Technology within the Office of Science & Technology Policy made opening remarks. His comments were followed by Zoe Damacela, entrepreneur since the young age of 14! Opening comments were followed by a panel of both public and private sector luminaries; Gary Locke, Secretary of the Department of Commerce; Dr. Steven Chu, Secretary of the Department of Energy; Karen Mills, Administrator of the Small Business Administration; Gene Sperling, Director of the National Economic Council; Austan Goolsbee, Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers; Steve Case, Founder AOL and Chairman of the Case Foundation, Carl Schramm, President of the Kauffman Foundation, and Brad Feld of the Foundry Group and Tech Stars.

What was particularly inspiring was the collaboration and commitment on multiple levels from those involved. The Startup America partnership marshals and highlights commitments from private sector institutions that want to spur entrepreneurship in the U.S. From Kauffman and Case Foundations to Intel and IBM to Tech Stars and Astia.

It is critical to note that Astia's participation was made possible through the generous support of AOL, AOL Ventures, The Althea Foundation, Fenwick & West, Moss Adams LLC, and Silicon Valley Bank - who together signed up to match funding received from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation.

These sponsors enabled Astia to commit to serving twice the number of entrepreneurs in North America. (If you are interested in seeing our numbers continue to increase, there is still time to join the sponsor roll and create real and measurable impact for high-growth start-ups.)

In the audience, I was surrounded by entrepreneurs filled with inspiring stories of hardship and success. It was inspiring to be in a room full of the ideas that will lead to future Fortune 500 companies. Entrepreneurs ranged from 19 year old Zoe Damacela, a fashion entrepreneur since age 14, to Astia’s own Jennifer Zeszut, Founder and CEO of software company Scout Labs (sold to Lithium in 2010), which uses technology to determine brand perceptions across the web. Jennifer was one of a small collection of entrepreneurs who were invited to share their stories. Many of you will recall that we honored Jenny at the 6th Annual Astia Awards in December with the Technology Innovator Award. She continues to inspire us with the words she shared this week at the White House:

"Entrepreneurs are a different kind of breed… so, What makes us go?... Think of us as sled dogs… we are born to run and chase new ideas. We don’t wait for people to create jobs for us, we are job creators… And more importantly than just the number of jobs that we create, it is the kind of jobs we create, the kind of work that we do…[it is] passionate work. We love what we do…the work we do is also really productive work. If you want to increase the productivity of America, you should come and walk the halls of any one of our companies… So we are entrepreneurs. Fund us. Support us. Connect us. And let us run, we will help pull America forward."

Our task now is to do just that.

Astia stands committed and ready. We see this initiative to support high-growth entrepreneurs as validation that what Astia has been doing for 13 years is not just important work, it is the proven pathway to jobs, innovation and the economic recovery we all seek.

Stay tuned for more.

And for those of you who don’t know Jenny’s story, keep reading...

My Astia story:

I was a first-time CEO when someone recommended I join Astia. I wasn’t even sure why I would need Astia at the time. I was just about to complete the Scout Labs application and things were going excellently - I was well-funded, had a strong team, etc. When I was selected to be part of Astia and went through the equivalent of CEO Bootcamp – I received business coaches, mentors, speaking coaches, pitch help, VC access and so much more. It was an amazing growth experience. But I didn’t realize just how valuable the Astia network was until Scout Labs, like so many startups do, hit tough times. Our committed funding fell through at the last minute (credit-crunch days of summer 2009) and I was not able to pay my own team. (Miraculously, they all kept working). Externally, Scout Labs continued to grow by leaps and bounds, but it was an incredibly stressful time. Just when I needed it most, the Astia support network, like shoulders, rose up from beneath me to lift me back up. I received encouragement, emotional support, constant phone calls and TONS of VC introductions right when we needed it most. We did secure funding (in the nick of time!) and Scout Labs was acquired – a good exit for all – six months later, in May of 2010. My Astia coaches were by my side through good times and bad will be life-long mentors and friends."

Avaxia Biologics, Inc. to present Key Pre-Clinical Inflammatory Bowel Disease Remission Data at Biotech Showcase 2011

2011-01-24T11:03:00.000-08:00

Avaxia Biologics, Inc. to present Key Pre-Clinical Inflammatory Bowel Disease Remission Data at Biotech Showcase 2011

Wayland, MA (January 5, 2011) - Avaxia Biologics, Inc., a privately-held biotech company developing an innovative platform technology to deliver orally-active antibodies to the gastrointestinal tract, announced today that it has generated compelling pre-clinical data in animal models of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). Avaxia’s orally administered anti-TNF product AVX-470 significantly reduced disease severity in three different animal models and showed superior efficacy to an oral steroid drug in a comparative test of disease remission. Dr. Barbara Fox, founder and Chief Executive Officer, will present these data at the 2011 Biotech Showcase, being held on January 10-12, 2011 in San Francisco, California.

Dr. Fox’s presentation will take place at 3:15 PM on Wednesday January 12 at the Parc 55 Wyndham San Francisco Hotel. The presentation will include positive efficacy data from three animal models of IBD, including statistically significant efficacy in a remission model of the disease. Dr. Fox’s presentation will also include efficacy data from an experiment that compared AVX-470 to an oral steroid in a DSS-induced colitis model of IBD. Dr. Fox commented that, “We believe these consistent and statistically significant results in the standard animal models of IBD indicate that our orally administered anti-TNF product has the potential to become a leading therapy for inflammatory bowel disease, a chronic and debilitating disease of over a million and a half North Americans and four million people worldwide. We are also heartened to observe that our product has shown superior efficacy to an oral steroid drug in a comparative test of disease remission. With these impressive results, and with the support of our scientific advisors, Avaxia plans to enter into clinical trials with AVX-470 in patients with IBD this year. AVX-470 appears to be on track to be the first orally-active anti-TNF antibody for IBD.”

About Inflammatory Bowel Diseases: Inflammatory bowel diseases incur significant personal and societal costs. For example, the primary symptoms of both Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis are abdominal pain, diarrhea and bleeding. These diseases typically present at a young age, and most patients require lifelong therapy. Chronic drug therapy, hospitalization, and surgery are common and are associated with significant morbidity. Approximately 1 million people in the U.S. suffer from these diseases, with the prevalence equally divided between Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis. A study carried out in the early 1990s estimated the direct and indirect economic burden of $1.8 - $2.6 billion per year.

About Avaxia Biologics, Inc.: Avaxia Biologics (www.avaxiabiologics.com) is an early stage company developing orally-delivered antibody therapeutics. The antibodies are designed to treat both diseases of the GI tract and systemic diseases where the disease targets are accessible in the GI tract. Using its proprietary antibody platform, Avaxia is developing products for inflammatory bowel disease, oral mucositis, celiac disease, and diabetes and obesity.

Contact: Dr. Barbara Fox
Avaxia Biologics, Inc.
26 Pemberton Road
Wayland, MA 01778
bfox@avaxiabiologics.com
Ph: 1-508-259-5929

Astia Outlook for 2011

2011-01-15T18:58:00.000-08:00

Dear Investor:

The National Venture Capital Association has gone on record as predicting that we will see a “pick-up” in venture capital investment this year. NVCA President, Mark Heesen goes on to say in a recent press release, that their cautious optimism is a result of the recovering economy, “the improving exit market and a renewed excitement in the IT sector,” all of which “have engendered a confidence among VCs.”

I, too, share his optimism, but I highlight that during the extremely difficult fundraising years of 2008, 2009 and 2010 the Astia portfolio maintained its historically consistent and exceptional success rate.

• Greater than 60% achieved funding or an exit within one year

• Over $940 million raised

• 21 exits, comprised of 2 IPOs and 19 M&As

It is because of the ongoing performance of the Astia portfolio, that we proudly invite you to get to know the Astia entrepreneurs. They hold the promise of innovation and the economic recovery we all seek in 2011.

A very special thank you to the Astia community without whom, none of this would be possible.

Sincerely,

Sheryl Sandberg: Why we have too few women leaders

2010-12-24T19:27:00.001-08:00

Three simple suggestions for how women can fix the dearth of women leaders.
1) Raise your hand and keep your hand raised!
2) Enlist your partner - it will improve your sex life, too!
3) Don't leave before your leave!

Integrating Technology and Cultural Understanding to Improve the Health of Underserved Populations

2010-12-20T14:10:00.000-08:00

sponsored by The Peninsula Chapter, The Global Health Research Foundation, and the Los Altos Public Library

Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Free to all; Cosponsored by the Santa Clara County Library
Refreshments: 7:00 pm
Program: 7:30 pm

Los Altos Youth Center
1 South San Antonio Rd.
Los Altos, CA

Frequently international health improvement programs designed to reach medically underserved populations fail because they are missing the key ingredients of sustainability and cultural integration.

By incorporating technical innovations and advanced computational techniques, along with integration of the cultural context of health and disease, The Global Health Research Foundation (GHRF) has developed a “Toolkit for Sustainability” to measure health outcomes and inform continuing improvements in health for medically underserved populations. GHRF tools allow program managers to pool multiple factors affecting health and disease, then determine and test key related variables. GHRF tools also allow resources to be tracked and appropriately targeted so that locally led health improvement efforts are integrated within the community and thus sustained. These tools have been successfully implemented to assist Uganda in its Malaria Surveillance Program through a rapid return of data to track the disease.

GHRF is assisting the Fresno County Asthma Coalition in delineating the role of pollution on the rapid rise of asthma in Fresno’s at risk populations. Recently, efforts have been focused on assisting the Kingdom of Bhutan’s Ministry of Health in providing effective, affordable health to all citizens, and in incorporating environmental preservation in its health improvement programs. The cultural background for these efforts are discussed as a major issue in implementing programs.

Erica Weirich is a practicing Physician and Stanford faculty, who lives and works in Los Altos Hills. With degrees in Medicine and International Development Policy, she has worked in maternal and child health in remote Northern Pakistan, reproductive health in the Republic of Georgia, and on Refugee Health in London, England.

Facebook, Fashion…and Flamethrowers?!

2010-12-20T14:04:00.000-08:00

Women-led Casual Gaming Startup to Launch Fashion Creation Application

San Francisco, CA – December 13, 2010 – San Francisco-based company Real Life Plus (RL+) announces the launch of Style Studio and Fashion FaceOff, Facebook applications where users create 3D fashion designs and promote them in a fun-filled rating arena.

If looks could kill, this application would be in jail. Style Studio is comprised of easy-to-use tools to create 3D fabrics, clothing and outfits. Fashion Faceoff lets users be judge, jury and executioner to decide the fate of would be designers around the world. Budding fashionistas can rise through the ranks and earn points to purchase virtual goods inside any RL+ product. Flamethrowers and other instruments of destruction can be used to destroy designs deemed unworthy. It’s couture war!

“I wanted to create something easy enough for my mom to play, yet cool enough for my 15 year old nephew to try,” says Terry Redfield, Founder and Chief Creative Officer for RL+. “My goal is to make applications and virtual spaces that all tie together into one exciting experience.”

Both Style Studio and Fashion FaceOff may be downloaded at www.realifeplus.com.

About Real Life Plus
Our mission is to create a virtual entertainment space that is fun and simple to use for everyone. We focus on creating a comfortable environment to meet friends. Our motto is fun in 30 seconds or less, whether you are creating your own clothing brand with our easy to use tools, taking on a job activity to earn currency or meeting people just like you in our immersive 3D space.

The Real Life Plus Development and Community Team consist of social enthusiasts and traditional game/mobile developers that are looking to create the next generation of casual games and social experiences. The RL+ Team each have 10+ years of experience and are driven by a passion for social media. Team members have worked on popular games such as The Sims 2, Resident Evil, Toy Story, Tomb Raider, Psychonauts, SpongeBob Squarepants and Madden NFL.

Real Life Plus. It's Reality - Made by You.

Exceptional female entrepreneurs wanted!

2010-12-15T06:50:00.000-08:00

Astia calls for applications to join its accelerator programme in Europe

LONDON and AMSTERDAM, 15 December, 2010 – The premier venture accelerator for women-led high- growth companies, is calling for applications from UK and European start-ups to join Astia and participate in its prestigious Entrepreneur Programme, to be held in London in March 2011. Technology, Life Science and Clean Technology companies are encouraged to apply.

Founded in Silicon Valley and held annually in Silicon Valley, New York, and London, Astia’s Entrepreneur Programme is transformative - providing entrepreneurs with access to a broad range of resources and experts that ensure access to capital as well as the successful growth of their businesses.

“I have seen the calibre of female entrepreneurs that Astia supports with its network and programmes and very much looking forward to the class of 2011 Astia Europe,” said Sherry Coutu of Cambridge Angels.

A handpicked group of just 255 companies across the globe have been invited to become part of the Astia programme since 2003. Invitations are extended only to those companies that pass Astia’s robust screening and qualification process.

Since 2003, more than 60% of the companies showcased at Astia Investor Forums have secured funding or an exit within one year, totalling more than $750 million raised and 21 exits including two IPOs.

“The programme has produced exceptional results over the years – our funding success rate is unmatched in the market,” commented Sharon Vosmek, CEO, Astia. “We are excited to see the growth and adoption of the Astia model in Europe.”

Participants in the European Programme in London will spend five days, 14-18 March 2011, in a series of workshops, one on one sessions and discussions with investors, entrepreneurs and business professionals designed to provide a blueprint for successful fundraising and growth strategies. This is followed by an eight-week advisory period which includes investors, CEOs and business professionals from the Astia community of over 1000 men and women. Select companies will then present to the investment community at the Astia Investor Forum on 12th May 2011. Prior Forum attendees include Accel, Octopus Ventures, Index Ventures, Atomico, and the Technology Strategy Board.

Janneke Niessen, COO and Co-founder, ImproveDigital, Astia Europe class of 2010, said, “We had an amazing week in the Astia European programme, talking to many interesting people and learning a lot. We know Astia can deliver a lot of opportunities to us, and we are looking forward being part of it! The Astia programme and community are invaluable to us in developing high growth and international plans of our company – and we have been able to establish extremely important relationships with outstanding investors and advisors through the Astia programme.”

Simone Brummelhuis, Vice President, Europe, Astia, said, “I am delighted to be rolling out Astia’s programme in Europe for 2011. The UK and Europe are bursting with entrepreneurial ventures, many of which are led by superbly talented women. We want to provide these women with access to the rich network and expertise that Astia has to offer. I encourage all ambitious female entrepreneurs to apply.”

The deadline to apply is 7th February 2011. Apply via www.astia.org. Online screening will be done by investors, CEOs and business professionals until February 18th, followed by in-person screening on February 24th.

Contact Simone Brummelhuis at simone@astia.org

###

About Astia

Astia is a global not-for-profit organization with a distinct focus and mission – to propel women’s full participation as entrepreneurs and leaders in high-growth businesses, fueling innovation and driving economic growth. Guided by a proven philosophy that gender diversity is an essential element of innovation, Astia works with start-ups around the world as they access capital, grow their businesses, and hone the leadership skills of their founding teams.

The Astia model of engaging a community of 1000 experts to the benefit of the select start-ups it serves has resulted in an exceptional success rate: since 2003, over 60 percent of companies that have participated in the Astia Investor Forums have secured funding or achieved an exit within one year of presenting, totalling more than $750 million dollars raised and 21 exits, including two IPOs. Headquartered in San Francisco, Astia delivers programs for entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley, New York, London and India. Astia has also had significant press coverage in major media channels including The New York Times, Businessweek, Forbes and The Financial Times. For more information, visit www.astia.org.

Astia Sponsors

Astia is generously supported by The Three Guineas Fund, Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, Microsoft, Fenwick & West, AOL, Lowenstein Sandler, Moss Adams, Morrison & Foerster, PriceWaterhouseCoopers, SNR Denton, SVB Financial Group, Osborne Clarke, US Trust – Bank of America, Wells Fargo, AngelSoft, Cisco, Iron Creative, IF Communications, Tier One Partners, J. Sagar Associates, Alloy Ventures, AOL Ventures, Asset Management, Hummer Winblad Venture Partners, Illuminate Ventures, Levensohn Venture Partners, Golden Seeds, Prolog Ventures, StarVest Partners, and Rose Tech Ventures.

"I'm taking my cow, that cow belongs to me!"

2010-12-12T23:25:00.000-08:00

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's surprise appearance at the TED Women conference

Embracing the Beauty of Balance

2010-12-09T18:26:00.000-08:00

Halla Tomasdottir: A feminine response to Iceland's financial crash

What is the right time to be an entrepreneur?

2010-11-30T14:11:00.000-08:00

The following is a guest post by Esha Tiwary.

This is one question I’ve been thinking about for a while, and that often comes up in conversations. It is an interesting one because it seems to have a “publicly acceptable” answer, regardless of what the individual might personally believe. It is a favorite topic of academicians to disseminate wisdom on, quite ironically I must add. And it is definitely one that has given every budding or struggling entrepreneur a sleepless night or two.

Of course, the well-known answer is, “When you have gathered enough relevant experience.” Everyone knows how important experience is to build a successful business. You can’t possibly know what to do if you haven’t been doing the exact same thing for the past 10 years. Current entrepreneurs will agree because that’s what they were told and they went and got the experience. Investors will agree because this is the only easy filter they can apply to choose amongst the hundreds of proposals they see every year. And academicians, well, serial (and hence, experienced) entrepreneurs make the best business school case studies!

Allow me to propose something drastic. The above answer is wrong. And it is wrong for the simple reason that the question itself is incorrect. I think the right question is, “What is the right attitude to be an entrepreneur?” It is a state of mind and not a biological age that determines when one is ready to be an entrepreneur. And no place better exemplified this than the Astia Doing it Right program this year. It was supremely inspiring to see the absolute range of entrepreneurs there – from a 21 year old to women who had been in the industry for two decades before taking the plunge. And one thing they all had in common was the spark – the desire to build something amazing.

A thing to note is also that you needn’t always have “the idea” to be able to take the plunge. One of the women I met at Astia said that one day she just decided that she wanted to build her own business. And once she made that decision, everything sort of fell into place. Because let’s face it, the right attitude and effort can turn the most commonplace of ideas into a stroke of genius.

- Esha Tiwary

Esha is the Head of Business Development at Embrace, one of the companies selected in the Doing it Right program this year. She is a graduate of Harvard Business School and Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur.

Guest conversation from Astia VP Europe, Simone Brummelhuis

2010-11-05T14:09:00.001-07:00

Astia is a community of experts, building women leaders and accelerating the funding and growth of high potential, high growth women-led start-ups.

I have read and heard this many times, it's on the Astia website, the reason of its existence, it became for me almost a mantra.

And as of this week I know, I have seen that the mantra is true.

I have never seen a group of experts more committed, more experienced, more qualified than this week. And I have never seen a group of women entrepreneurs who are so eager to be leaders and to accelerate their high potential startups. I am overwhelmed, and I am not the only one, the entrepreneurs are overwhelmed, both by the experts as well as their peers.

Last week I arrived in San Francisco -after a 22 year absence- much too long. And the occasion to visit San Francisco is the 2010 Astia Doing it Right Silicon Valley Program.

A full 43 companies and 58 entrepreneurs made it through the rigorous screening of joining this week’s program. Most are North American companies, 2 companies from Europe, 1 company from India and 1 company from New Zealand in industries of clean tech, life-science, enterprise software, medical devices, leisure and retail products.

Many of these female entrepreneurs have built a business before, some in a corporate environment, some have successfully exited their previous businesses. Some of the startups already raised their angel money, and are connecting with Astia for the institutional rounds of funding. Some of them are serial entrepreneurs or -as one woman calls herself- Startup Junkies. But what has been clear from the outset is that the class of 2010 is quite special.

I came to watch, to learn, to support the European companies, and, above all, to get ready for our European Astia program which will take place March 14-18, 2011.

From the first day of the program with a panel of impressive alumni Astia entrepreneurs - who where in the 60% success rate of Astia companies getting funding - to the last day of the program: it has been a roller coaster of panels, workshops and round tables with impressive investors, entrepreneurs, corporate heads and service providers with bios that each read as novels.

The entrepreneurs have -inter alia- stood up to present their ideas, listened to seasoned entrepreneurs who have uncovered their go-to-market strategy, calculated their financial projections together with financial wizzards, shaken hands with illustre giants of the tech industry, given out business cards to gatekeepers of venture capital firms, and established relationships with the global corporate giants.

The week was packed from morning to evening, there was no escape but go for it; a steep learning curve for all the women-led companies as never before. Also, never before were so many men and women of outstanding caliber together to support women-led companies. Tom Kosnik of Stanford, Dan'l Lewin of Microsoft, Bashkar Gorti of Oracle, Bill Reichert of Garage Technology Ventures and Bill Campbell, Chairman of Intuit. And who says that there are no women in global high positions? With Shellye Archambeau of Metric Stream, Eileen Gittens of Blurb, Andrea Zurek of XG Ventures and Renee Knee of Hewlett Packard, Astia brought forward outstanding rolemodels.

And on top of it, there was Female Internet Hero, Susan Wojcicki of Google who presented her case to give her support to the Astia female entrepreneurs.

As one of the first employees from 1999 at Google (she let her garage to Sergey and Larry), now a top 10 leader in Google and responsible for 97% of Google's turnover, while being a mom of 4 children, she puts in practice her own advice: Have a mission and you and other people can work harder for you, collect the best insights and make them your own, continue innovation and not perfection and believe in the impossible and it can become true, and KEEP GOING!

The great things is, that it's all applicable to the Astia class of 2010.

We want this in Europe too!

Simone Brummelhuis joined Astia in 2008 as a member of the Astia European Advisory Board. A former attorney, today she runs Astia Europe as the Vice President of that market. Simone lives in Amsterdam with her husband and three daughters.

Open Letter from the CEO to the new Astia companies

2010-11-01T11:26:00.000-07:00

November 2010

Dear Entrepreneur,

Welcome to Astia!

Today begins your relationship with a ten-year-old community that spans the globe and seeks to ensure your success as a business and your success as an entrepreneur. We focus on what matters most to high-growth entrepreneurs – skills and networks. We know that it takes specific skills to succeed in high-growth markets and that those skills can be learned (think “not recreating wheels”). Of equal importance, it takes a network to connect you to your investors, customers, suppliers, employees and acquirers (think “the individual does not scale”).

All of this we know because of who we are. We are a community of entrepreneurs, investors, industry leaders, and others who influence and benefit from the high-growth, innovation ecosystem.

Our model is extremely unique, in that it is:

High touch – over 1,000 advisors work to help our entrepreneurs grow their businesses and achieve success. On average, Astia Advisors spend over five hours per week with our companies during the Doing It Right program.

Highly customized – the Astia screening process gives us critical information that enables us to build a program and an Advisor team designed for each company and entrepreneur’s specific needs, based on stage and location of company, market opportunity, technology, CEO experience, and every other bit of information you have provided. This approach is how we will continue to work with you long after your experience at the Doing It Right program.

High impact – since 2003, our clients have averaged a greater-than 60% success rate – a level unparalleled in the industry. Each Advisor relationship is tied to measurable results. This is not a networking group. This is a group that delivers real and measurable results for the entrepreneur.

In today’s uncertain investment climate, you must focus on your business. Let us join you in that effort. As I said at the beginning of this letter, Astia is a community – and as of today – Astia is you!

Yours sincerely,

Astia CEO Sharon Vosmek Participates in Women’s Entrepreneurship Conference at The White House

2010-10-12T12:09:00.000-07:00

SAN FRANCISCO | October 12, 2010

Astia named in Opening Session as providing great leadership to women entrepreneurs

Astia, the premier Silicon Valley venture accelerator for women-led high growth companies, today announced that CEO Sharon Vosmek participated in the Women’s Entrepreneurship Conference convened by The White House Council on Women and Girls, the Small Business Administration, the Department of Commerce, and the Department of Treasury on October 4, 2010. Astia was named in the Opening Session by Karen Mills, Administrator US Small Business Administration, as providing great leadership and was invited to share with these agencies the learnings, perspectives, and experiences unique to women high-growth entrepreneurs. The day was comprised of opening keynotes followed by working break-out sessions to discuss challenges and solutions moving forward.

While women have made great strides in growing businesses and creating jobs over the past few decades, significant challenges still remain. This Conference brought together a mix of business owners, women leaders, advocacy groups and government officials to address the critical challenges, opportunities and public policy initiatives needed to move the women’s business agenda to the next level. The event was a clear sign of the Obama Administration’s commitment to creating opportunities for women and fostering their entrepreneurial spirit.

“I commend The White House Council on Women and Girls, the Small Business Administration, the Department of Commerce, and the Department of Treasury for convening this conference and recognizing the important role of women entrepreneurs in the economy,” said Sharon J. Vosmek, CEO of Astia. “I was honored to be invited to the conversation to ensure that the unique needs of high growth companies were discussed, as compared to small businesses and micro enterprises.”

According to Astia, two of the greatest challenges for high growth women entrepreneurs are:

• Access to networks. Men and women in different networks is a societal issue that is magnified in the investment or fundraising scenario and a gender inclusive approach is needed. Currently there are too many women-only solutions and this approach excludes women from opportunities to which they should have access.

• Self-assurance. Women still self assess lower than men, and therefore their business aspirations are often understated. With access to diverse networks and advisors and the opportunity to scale the business, women succeed.

A new report focused on these challenges, titled “Women-owned Businesses in the 21st Century,” was released at the conference. This report was prepared by the US Dept of Commerce, Economics and Statistics Administration for the White House Council on Women and Girls. Key findings of the study shared with the group included:

• Women owned businesses contribute $1.2 Trillion to the US Economy;
• Women owned businesses lag behind their male counterparts in growth;
• Key causes for the lag continue to be access to capital and industries chosen by women (i.e. healthcare and education);
• Between 1997 and 2006, majority women-owned firms in the U.S. grew at nearly twice the rate of all US privately held firms;
• Currently 10.1 million firms are owned by women, employing more than 13 million people, and generate $1.9 trillion in sales.

In her opening remarks, Karen Mills, Administrator of the US Small Business Association named Astia and Dr. Patricia Greene of Babson College (pictured in photo above) as key to the day’s conversations. Speakers at the event included Tina Tchen, Director of the White House Office of Public Engagement & Executive Director of the White House Council on Women & Girls and Valerie Jarrett, Sr. Advisor to the President & Chair of the White House Council on Women & Girls. Approximately 120 people were in attendance.

About Astia
Astia is a global not-for-profit organization built on a community with a distinct focus and mission – to propel women’s full participation as entrepreneurs and leaders in high-growth businesses, fueling innovation and driving economic growth. Guided by a proven philosophy that gender diversity is an essential element of innovation, Astia works with start-ups around the world as they access capital, grow their businesses, and hone the leadership skills of their founding teams.

The Astia model of engaging a community of experts to the benefit of the select start-ups it serves has resulted in an exceptional success rate: since 2003, over 60 percent of companies that have participated in the Astia Investor Forums have secured funding or achieved an exit within one year of presenting, totalling more than $750 million dollars raised and 20 exits, including two IPOs. Headquartered in San Francisco, Astia delivers programs for entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley, New York, London and India. Astia has also had significant press coverage in major media channels including The New York Times, Businessweek, Forbes, The Daily Telegraph and The Financial Times.

For more information, visit www.astia.org.

Improve Digital publishes first ‘market map’ of European online display advertising industry

2010-09-14T02:45:00.000-07:00

Publishers struggling to tell their ad networks from their ad exchanges and their DSPs from their agency trading desks have a new tool to help them keep pace with the sub-sectors of the online advertising world. In response to frequent customer requests, Improve Digital (the largest European sell side platform, or yield optimiser) has gathered information from its offices and partners in the UK and Europe and mapped the current European online display advertising ecosystem¹.

'2010 – Display Advertising Market Map Europe', which includes definitions of the various industry sub-sectors, is available to download for free from: http://www.improvedigital.com/market-map-2010

Digital advertising continues to benefit from sophisticated technology that enables increasing effectiveness. As a result, more and more players have entered the market, while others have been taken over by the larger players. A specialist in the sector, Improve Digital is regularly asked to clarify the roles played and the relationships between companies in the industry. With a map already available on the US market (courtesy of GCA Savian), Improve Digital believed an equivalent of the European landscape was required.

This decision was reinforced by the findings of a survey carried out by Improve Digital earlier this year. This revealed that 90 percent of publishers believe that if digital marketing is to reach its potential, the sector must ensure that it provides comprehensive information that is easily understood by people outside the industry. Even those within the sector feel that information is not always forthcoming – nearly a quarter for example said that the difference between an ad exchange and an ad network is not clear.

“The online display advertising market has changed beyond all recognition over the past few years,” explains Joëlle Frijters, CEO of Improve Digital. “This is good news because it encourages all-important innovation, but it can make it difficult to understand the complexities, even for people working in the industry. The US market map has proved popular and useful, and we wanted to make it equally easy to have an 'at a glance' view of the European ecosystem. At the same time, the dynamic nature of the sector means that the positioning of the different players changes fast and on a continuous basis, so this is very much a ‘snapshot’ of the current situation, as perceived by various partners and premium publishers in the market.”

Note 1: The current version of ‘2010 – Display Advertising Market Map Europe’ has been prepared gathering information and knowledge from Improve Digital’s largest publishers and demand partners in the UK and Europe. Special thanks to Elevage Media, Sembassy and Market Edge.

Is there a movement for women helping women?

2010-08-27T18:39:00.000-07:00

During a recent interview with a reporter from the New York Times I was asked, “Is there a movement for women helping women?”

I think she was surprised by my answer – “No! But there should be.”

OK, I did modify the answer - but only by a bit. It is my observation that there is a current flurry of tweets and blogs and even proper new stories (like the one she intends to do) about the dearth of women entrepreneurs and shouldn’t we all be doing something to solve it. I will even concede that it has gotten to the point that folks like Brian O’Malley at Battery Ventures are reaching out to me to tell me that the last “3 of my last 4 investments have been founded by women!” (exclamation point by Brian). Clearly there is something shifting. The new new thing seems to be having a woman in your portfolio! (exclamation point added by me.)

However, my caution is that this feels less like a movement and more like a bubble. My thoughts, that I shared with the reporter, were that this movement needed three things that it currently lacks to give it the foundation that it needs. I take these learnings from TiE – which in its short 13 years has taken Indian entrepreneurs and investors from the margins to the center stage.

We need a philanthropic investment. It is my observation that successful women need to be the ones to really get this agenda properly funded. Organizations like Astia, FWE&E, Women 2.0, Anita Borg – we all struggle on a string to create real impact for women. That needs to change! At TiE, the Charter members wrote (and still write) meaningful checks to fund the network. They knew that no one else was going to do it for them.
We need investment from women in women. Once again, taking a page from TiE, women investors need to step up – and stop fearing that investing in a woman makes them an activist investor. Men don’t feel the same when they bring a man in to the portfolio. And at TiE it was part of the agenda – to get wealthy Indians to invest in Indian entrepreneurs. Thanks to groups like Golden Seeds and Phenomenelle Angels, and individuals like Janet Hanson at 85 Broads and Cindy Padnos at Illuminate Ventures, there is a bit of this happening. But we need to make it the expected activity.
We need a committed, actively involved network to ignite this movement. We need this movement to have voice and dare to challenge the status quo. TiE did it 13 years ago, and we at Astia can do it today.

Stay tuned for more about how I think we can achieve these together. For now, enjoy our update and many upcoming happenings.

Gender, Technology and Entrepreneurship

2010-08-09T09:14:00.000-07:00

The following is a guest post by Jennifer Hill, Chair, Astia NYC Advisory Board

In late July, I joined an esteemed group of students, professors, entrepreneurs, technologists, lawyers and media voices from the New York City and Boston technology communities for a day of provocative thought and discussion, courtesy of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School. The day’s events were hosted by the eloquent Vivek Wadhwa, Senior Research Associate with the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School and an executive-in-residence/adjunct professor at the Pratt School of Engineering at Duke University. Mr. Wadhwa’s opening presentation, “Entrepreneurship: where are all the women and minorities?” focused on the dearth of women and minorities in high-growth entrepreneurship (i.e. characterized by Silicon Valley-like success), the rise of the Indian community within Silicon Valley and the importance of early science, math and technology-focused education. (For an inspiring view on how even small amounts of entrepreneurial mentorship, education and path-building can positively impact young women, please visit the Roshni Academy.)

The statistics Mr. Wadhwa presented on minority participation in the Silicon Valley workforce were staggering: African-Americans account for only 1.4%; Hispanic-Americas: 4.7%. Yet within the time period of 1995-2010 Southeast Asians rose to account for nearly 15.5% of tech companies founded within Silicon Valley. The reason? They funded themselves. Mr. Wadhwa’s central thesis is similar to that which many communities have quietly advocated and practiced for generations: support your own. Look to your own communities - those more likely to understand your moral/cultural/ethnic values - as the first port of call for capital investment. Use your personal and local networks as a launchpad. Indeed, angel investor groups such as Golden Seeds already institute this belief by means of its practice of investing capital into predominantly women-led companies.

Yet perhaps more interesting than the topic of different gender and minority communities underwriting forays into entrepreneurship was the roundtable discussion in the afternoon led by Mr. Wadhwa and Professor Oliver R. Goodenough, a professor of law at Berkman and the Vermont Law School. Chief among the topics, which ranged from investment, mentorship and the entrepreneur’s perspective of capital raising, was the issue of “gender and entrepreneurship” versus “female entrepreneurship”. Does substituting a neutral term for a feminine one change the tone of the discussion? Does it enable both sexes to view the notion of entrepreneurship as a natural path instead of a separate, distinct, and sometimes stigmatized undertaking? (Responses to this last point were perhaps more comfortably discussed within an academic setting.)

The notion of “female entrepreneurship” seemed to unleash a set of gender-associated “caricaturistics”?!, such as differing risk tolerances, false senses of fear in not attaining perfection – which affected entry into entrepreneurship, use of organic versus outside capital resources, time and speed of company growth rates, concern over declaring themselves as experts without a track record, the notion of sharing - the prevalence of feeling more comfortable launching a company with a co-founder, and entitlements to success. The roundtable audience included both genders and a span of generations. The term “gender” versus “feminine” somehow caused the conversation to seem more meritorious instead of polarizing.

Out of the conversation about “why” came the wellspring of ideas of “what next”. Four key themes emerged:

(1) Mentors. Mentors. Mentors. Find them early in your career as possible. Change them along the way as you evolve. Identify role models; the media can help wit this as new ones are emerging at faster rates.

(2) Teach innovation, computer science skills and the power of entrepreneurship earlier in school – especially to young girls.

(3) Keep lists of talented women across generations, industries, and professions as recommendations for panels, speaking engagements, and the like.

(4) Ask women to step up to the plate and start a company. The White House Project encourages people to invite women to run for political office. Why not apply the same vision to entrepreneurship? Ask a talented woman you know whether she has considered starting a company? Keep asking. Within every one of us is the opportunity to launch something outstanding.

Astia is doing its part to accelerate companies within the vein of these recommendations, especially in the area of mentors, or – as Astia refers to them – “Advisors.” Companies selected to join the Astia community are introduced to four key advisors to accelerate their companies faster. Aside from providing engaged advice and guidance in a variety of areas from financing, law, technology, marketing, CEO leadership development and the like, they also open up their personal networks to the benefit of the companies. For more information about Astia’s advisor program or to learn about becoming an advisor, please check out the Astia website. Serving as an Astia advisor is an outstanding way to quickly make a positive impact with an entrepreneur and her high-growth company.

If you have not explored Astia’s website, then I encourage you to do so. Get to know the outstanding community of entrepreneurs, investors, advisors, technologists, marketing experts, strategists, lawyers, business development professionals and more across a variety of industries. Astia is a growing ecosystem of global professionals who are now and will become the leaders of tomorrow.

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Jennifer Hill is an attorney. She serves as Chair of the Astia Board of Advisors in New York City as well as on the Board of Directors at AOL Small Business.

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You can watch video here>>

TheDeal Magazine: Closing the VC Gender Gap by Mary Kathleen Flynn

2010-07-02T11:38:00.000-07:00

Venture capital remains an old-boy network, with only 14% of VCs being women and women receiving less than 10% of venture funding. At the recent We Own It Summit, VCs, angel investors and researchers focused on strategies to boost female participation in the venture-backed ecosystem. In The Deal's video montage, we hear from Kristine Brandt, director of Invesco Private Capital, Astia CEO Sharon Vosmek, Kauffman Foundation vice president Lesa Mitchell and Silicon Valley Bank senior vice president Megan Scheffel. - Mary Kathleen Flynn

Closing the VC gender gap from TheDeal TV on Vimeo.

Astia VP NYC, Jennifer Hill

2010-05-01T05:20:00.001-07:00

What a fantastic day in New York City!

This morning I had the pleasure of appearing as a guest on MSNBC’s Your Business television show – filmed at NBC Studios in Rockefeller Plaza. Hosted by JJ Ramberg, journalist and co-founder of GoodSearch.com, I was joined by Cynthia Franklin, Senior Associate Director of the NYU Stern Berkley Center for Entrepreneurial Studies.

Today’s episode centered on two women entrepreneurs – and one male entrepreneur -- capitalizing on the vast potential of tailoring products to the female market:

• Erika Wilson, creator of Purse Flats, foldable ballet shoes that fit neatly into a stylish and elegant clutch purse.

• Tish Ciravolo, founder and President of Daisy Rock Guitars, the first brand of guitars strictly for girls.

• Frank Davern, founder of Cool Girl Decks (formerly Cool Girl Skateboards), skateboards geared specifically to girls.

As entrepreneurs passionate about their particular fields (guitars for Tish and skateboards for Frank), both zeroed in on the fact that the existing market’s product selection left a void: young women. Indeed, women worldwide make or influence at least 64% of all purchases across categories(1). However, what struck me about each of the entrepreneurs’ stories is a particular characteristic present in successful entrepreneurs: they make everything relevant.

Take Tish and Daisy Rock as a prime example. A guitarist from high school onward, Tish enjoyed a vibrant rock music career throughout the L.A. area. Her lifelong passion for music – and the guitar – was a gift she wanted to share with her two young daughters. Her dream was that “every girl who wants to play guitar is welcomed and inspired to do so(2).” Fueled by this dream – and her daughter Nicole’s drawing of a picture of a daisy – Tish realized that by making guitars more visually appealing, balanced in size and weight for women and girls of all ages, and tailoring the tools to create a welcome and inviting experience, more women and girls would pick up a guitar.

With that vision, Tish launched Daisy Rock Guitars offering rock, bass, electric, acoustic, and more in fun colors, shapes and sizes to fit the needs of female guitarists of all ages. Her products are valued by more than 150,000 women and girls worldwide in 26 countries, including famous professional artists such as Avril Lavigne, Joan Jett, Heart’s Ann and Nancy Wilson, Dolly Parton, and even men(!), including the Cure’s Robert Smith and Chris Stein from Blondie(3). She transformed her love of music into a business and channeled her passion and energy into a platform for female empowerment through music.

Tish is a phenomenal example of an entrepreneur who connected the dots from her background, passions, skills and industry experience into a new path that expanded a market and launched an entrepreneurial venture. In other words, she made everything relevant. Through such links many great challenges are solved, new paths found, and inspiration ignited into action that adds to innovation.

Entrepreneurs find inspiration everywhere – from a chance conversation, an otherwise ordinary data point, or even a prior experience that left them wanting for a solution. The relentless desire to pursue a dream enables them to see and form connections that might not otherwise be found. By evaluating, examining and applying accumulated experiences, a new business can be created. This is a lesson for all of us -- regardless of whether our goal is to launch a new venture or simply to adopt a different perspective to a pressing situation.

Inspired by this week’s guests, I encourage each of you to take a page from their books and spend a few moments pondering how you can make your accomplishments, skills, beliefs, passions, creative inclinations, adventures and hobbies relevant in a new innovative way. You might just find that you are launching the next great company …

[1] Michael J. Silverstein and Kate Sayre, Women Want More: How to Capture Your Share of the World’s Largest, Fastest Growing Market (Harper Business 2009).
[2] Tish Caravalo – Founder and President, Daisy Rock Guitars (2010).
[3] Id.

Out of the Loop in Silicon Valley

2010-04-20T15:24:00.000-07:00

By CLAIRE CAIN MILLER, The New York Times
First published April 16, 2010
San Francisco

CANDACE FLEMING’S résumé boasts a double major in industrial engineering and English from Stanford, an M.B.A. from Harvard, a management position at Hewlett-Packard and experience as president of a small software company.

But when she was raising money for Crimson Hexagon, a start-up company she co-founded in 2007, she recalls one venture capitalist telling her that it didn’t matter that she didn’t have business cards, because all they would say was “Mom.”

Another potential backer invited her for a weekend yachting excursion by showing her a picture of himself on the boat — without clothes. When a third financier discovered that her husband was also a biking enthusiast, she says, he spent more time asking if riding affected her husband’s reproductive capabilities than he did focusing on her business plan.

Ultimately, none of the 30 venture firms she pitched financed her company. She finally raised $1.8 million in March 2008 from angel investors including Golden Seeds, a fund that emphasizes investing in start-ups led by women.

“I didn’t know things like this still happened,” says Ms. Fleming, 37. “But I know that, especially in risky times like the last couple years, some investors kind of retreat to investing via a template.” A company owned by a woman, she adds, “is just not the standard template.”

Though many people say that outright sexism is rare in the tech world these days, the barriers that Ms. Fleming encountered aren’t unusual. Tech communities in Silicon Valley and in other hubs — like New York, Austin, Tex., and Boston, where Ms. Fleming lives — pride themselves on operating as raw meritocracies ready to embrace anyone with a good idea, regardless of education, age or station in life.

For women, though, that narrative often unfolds differently.

Women own 40 percent of the private businesses in the United States, according to the Center for Women’s Business Research. But they create only 8 percent of the venture-backed tech start-ups, according to Astia, a nonprofit group that advises female entrepreneurs.

That disparity reaches beyond entrepreneurs. Women account for just 6 percent of the chief executives of the top 100 tech companies, and 22 percent of the software engineers at tech companies over all, according to the National Center for Women and Information Technology. And among venture capitalists, the population of financiers who control the purse strings for a majority of tech start-ups, just 14 percent are women, the National Venture Capital Association says.

That reality is even more complex when race is factored into the mix. Small percentages of workers in information technology are African-American, Asian or Hispanic, and that number is even smaller for women.

“It’s not like people are making an effort to exclude people, but I see very little diversity in the candidate pool,” says Aileen Lee, a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, the big venture capital firm. She says this could reflect the different educational paths men and women follow in high school and college: men, for a variety of reasons, are more likely to pursue computer science and engineering degrees and subsequently rise through start-up or management ranks.

WOMEN now outnumber men at elite colleges, law schools, medical schools and in the overall work force. Yet a stark imbalance of the sexes persists in the high-tech world, where change typically happens at breakneck speed.

And analysts say more than social equity is at stake. A dearth of ideas and participation by women in the technology churn has business consequences as well.

The latest Web start-ups — for socializing, gaming and shopping — often attract more women than men as users. And many products from tech giants are aimed at women. But when Apple unveiled its new mobile computing device, it called it the iPad — a name that made many women wince with visions of feminine hygiene products.

Research indicates that investing in women as tech entrepreneurs is good for the bottom line. Venture-backed start-ups run by women use, on average, 40 percent less capital than start-ups run by men and are increasingly involved in successful initial public offerings of stock, according to a recent white paper by Cindy Padnos, a venture capitalist who compiled data from 100 studies on gender and tech entrepreneurship.

“When you have gender diversity in an organization, you have better innovation, and I don’t know where innovation is more important than in the high-tech world,” says Ms. Padnos, who recently founded Illuminate Ventures, which invests in start-ups led by women.

Firms like hers, along with nonprofit organizations like the National Center for Women and Information Technology, Astia and Springboard Enterprises, are trying to fix the problem by raising awareness, mentoring entrepreneurial women and introducing them to investors.

“The good news is that Silicon Valley will see this change,” says Monica Morse, a trustee at Astia. “They will chase the person they think will make the money, regardless of whether they wear a skirt.”

Even so, some people say substantial barriers still confront women trying to scale the technological peaks. “It all boils down to education and accessibility and role models,” says Anu Shukla, who has founded three tech start-ups. “There aren’t enough women entrepreneurs because they don’t see enough women entrepreneurs ahead of them and successful.”

The same still holds true in the tech world’s corporate corridors.

“As you look around the entry-level management positions, even just the ranks of engineers or product people, there just aren’t many women,” says Carol A. Bartz, the chief executive of Yahoo. “So therefore, mathematically, it tells you it’s impossible for them to move up and run something.”

MATH and science classes at Ms. Fleming’s all-girls high school in Albany weren’t as good as those at the all-boys school across the street, she says, so she trekked there and quickly became accustomed to being the only girl in the room. At Stanford, men outnumbered women by three to one in her engineering classes.

For Poornima Vijayashanker, an Indian immigrant, college was also a time when the promise of an engineering career first became apparent. Although all the men in her family were engineers, she spent her childhood dreaming of becoming a lawyer.

“To me, engineering seemed like a 9-to-5 job,” she recalls. “It wasn’t glamorous or exciting.”

It wasn’t until a computer science class at Duke that she “first understood what engineering was all about — building something very quickly and being able to play with it.” She double-majored in computer science and electrical engineering — inspired, she says, by the many young women who were professors in the department.

Ms. Vijayashanker, 27, became the only female engineer at Mint, a personal finance Web site started by a friend from Duke that was sold to Intuit for $170 million last year. Now she is starting her own company, BizeeBee, making software for small business, out of her apartment in Palo Alto, Calif.

But she is weighing a new set of challenges. Though she is just a decade younger than Ms. Fleming, she has seen enough entrepreneurial women encounter obstacles that she is trying to navigate around those issues — like timing motherhood, for example.

Ms. Vijayashanker is starting her company now, partly because she wants to have a family in a few years and says the tech start-up lifestyle isn’t hospitable to child-rearing. That’s why, she says, many young women prefer working at big companies to starting their own.

“Girls have certain family goals they want to accomplish,” she says. “Working 60 hours a week is difficult because it requires a life sacrifice.”

Unlike Ms. Fleming and Ms. Vijayashanker, Karen Watts never got the engineering bug. Ms. Watts, the 38-year-old founder and chief executive of Corefino, which makes business accounting software, was taking college math classes by the time she got to high school, but engineering didn’t grab her attention.

“It just never dawned on me to do it,” she says. “You’re just sitting there pecking away. I need more human interaction.”

That attitude is prevalent among young women. Girls begin to turn away from math and science in elementary school, because of discouragement from parents, underresourced teachers and their own lack of interest and exposure, according to a recent report by the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology and the Computer Science Teachers Association.

Just 1 percent of girls taking the SAT in 2009 said they wanted to major in computer or information sciences, compared with 5 percent of boys, according to the College Board.

Only 18 percent of college students graduating with computer science degrees in 2008 were women, down from 37 percent in 1985, according to the National Center for Women and Information Technology.

One reason is that engineering has a serious image problem, many women in the field say.

“There’s a really strong image of what a computer scientist is — male, skinny, no social life, eats junk food, plays video games, likes science fiction,” says Sapna Cheryan, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Washington who has researched why few women choose computer-science careers. “It makes it hard for people who don’t fit that image to think of it as an option for them.”

Women in tech cheered this year when Mattel announced that Barbie, its perennially popular doll whose careers have included supermodel and executive, would have a new calling as a computer scientist (complete with her own hot-pink laptop).

A doll, however, is still a doll. Showcasing flesh-and-blood tech entrepreneurs who are women — and have lives beyond writing code — will go a long way toward encouraging more girls to study computer science, Ms. Cheryan says.

While Ms. Bartz of Yahoo, along with eBay’s former chief executive, Meg Whitman, and Hewlett-Packard’s former C.E.O., Carly Fiorina, offer tangible examples of women who have reached prominent positions in Silicon Valley, other role models like them are scarce.

Many of the dozens of women interviewed for this article mentioned Marissa Mayer, a senior Google executive who is also a media fixture, as someone who gives them hope. Jessica Verrilli, who works on business development at Twitter, has met Ms. Mayer a couple of times.

“Little does she know that in my mind, it’s been really meaningful,” she says. “As a woman working in tech, I really do admire other women who have had successful paths.”

At Stanford, female graduate students in computer science are encouraging freshman women through a group called Women in Computer Science. “It helps to show a human being who does computer science and says, ‘I also really like going to the theater or listening to music,’ so younger women can see you still have a personality and do technology,” says Maria A. Kazandjieva, a doctoral candidate and co-president of the group.

When women take on the challenges of an engineering or computer science education in college, some studies suggest that they struggle against a distinct set of personal, psycho-social issues.

In a study of 493 undergraduate engineering majors’ intentions to continue with their major, men tended to stick with their studies as long as they completed the coursework, while women did so only if they earned high grades.

“Women’s intentions to persist in undergraduate engineering were dependent upon higher academic standards compared to men,” concluded the study, published in 2009 in the Journal of Science Education and Technology.

Even women who soldier though demanding computer science and engineering programs in college don’t subsequently create tech start-ups on a par with their male counterparts. Analysts say another set of issues can persuade female engineers and computer scientists to pursue other paths after they leave school.

TWO weeks after Ms. Fleming’s second baby was born, when she was cooped up at home and exhausted, the phone rang. It was a Harvard professor she knew. He said that he had developed an algorithm to monitor people’s comments about businesses on social media platforms — and that he needed someone to turn the idea into a company.

Ms. Fleming bit.

She wrote the business plan while breastfeeding, and, after hiring two engineers, held meetings with them perched on her child’s bouncy blow-up castle.

“I get the biggest high out of bringing teams together, achieving something with a group,” she says. “That’s why I work. That’s why I love it.”

On her way to becoming an entrepreneur, Ms. Watts has followed a slightly different route from Ms. Fleming.

At the age of 27, after brief stints at an accounting firm and start-ups, she became chief financial officer at a sports start-up called Rivals.com. In that job, she realized the value in automating routine paperwork and dreamed up Corefino.

She didn’t start it, though, until she had worked at four more companies. “I have to know everything; I have to have it all figured out,” she recalls thinking.

Many analysts and entrepreneurs say that attitude — rooted in a lack of confidence — is the main reason that when women do pursue start-ups, they often do it later in life than men.

Ms. Watts was also aware that the hurdles for financing were higher for women. Before she pitched venture capital firms, she made sure they had a woman as a partner and had funded companies led by women.

“If they’re not used to women in a senior position,” she says, “you’re going to be fighting a bunch of battles, and being an entrepreneur is hard enough.”

She learned how to handle male-dominated pitches early in her career, when Rivals.com was buying another start-up. She was in the conference room, pouring a cup of coffee, when the other company’s executives and lawyers walked in. They proceeded to discuss the lowest bid they would accept, as if she wasn’t there.

“They assumed I was the admin,” or secretary, she says. When the group sat down to negotiate, she adds, “Their faces went white as ghosts.”

She was 31 when she started Corefino and decided not to have children. “I don’t know how I could have my own newborn and run this company,” she says. “I just didn’t want to shortchange the child or shortchange the job.”

Ms. Watts’s decision is one that many female engineers weigh. They also say the tug-of-war between work and family is more acute at tech start-ups because of the long hours they require — and the take-no-prisoners culture of Silicon Valley.

According to the National Center for Women and Information Technology, 56 percent of women with technical jobs leave their work midway through their careers, double the turnover rate for men. Twenty percent of them leave the work force entirely, and an additional 31 percent take nontechnical jobs — suggesting that child-rearing isn’t necessarily the primary reason women move on.

Many are pushed to pursue supervisory and management jobs instead of “individual contributor” jobs involving deep technical expertise, according to a recent study by the Anita Borg Institute, an organization that explores the impact of women on the technology field.

“There really needs to be more effort from companies and from educational institutions to engage women in the innovation process from very early on,” says Caroline Simard, director of the institute’s research initiatives and co-author of the report.

FOR women who choose to leave their jobs to raise children, returning to technical careers after a leave is harder because technology changes so quickly and skills can become rapidly outdated. Some women also leave promising jobs earlier than men because they discover that the workplaces themselves can be lonely.

Ms. Vijayashanker says she “first started to notice women were leaving the field” at her first engineering job at Synopsys, the chip design company, when the only other two women on her team took jobs that involved interacting personally with customers. It was a pattern she recognized from college, when other women who were engineering majors chose careers in business or medicine instead of technology so they could interact more often with other people.

She says she ended up being the only woman in a department dominated by men who were born overseas and in cultures where women didn’t work outside the home.

“Management didn’t quite understand how I fit into the culture and team there,” she says of Synopsys. Ultimately, she was laid off.

Yvette Huygen, a Synopsys spokeswoman, confirmed that Ms. Vijayashanker had been employed there, but said that per company policy, she had no further comment.

Later, when Ms. Vijayashanker joined Mint, she also wanted interaction with other people, but, she said, “the guys went into their rooms and coded all day.” So she started a weekly group lunch and hired an intern so she could write programs with a partner.

WHAT makes investors smile or frown on new companies led by women? Venture capitalists uniformly say they wouldn’t turn down a promising start-up simply because a woman founded it.

“The supply of women C.E.O.’s is lower than the supply of men, but to go from there to assuming there’d even be a bias? It just never happens,” says Rory O’Driscoll, a managing director at Scale Venture Partners. “You’re just trying to make a buck.”

But research indicates that gender exerts a powerful influence on where the money goes in Silicon Valley. Venture capital firms with senior female investors are more likely to attract and close deals with women-led start-ups, concluded a Kauffman Foundation report.

That may be because data show that people are more trusting and comfortable working with people of their own sex, says Toby Stuart, a Harvard Business School professor who studies the topic.

He says that some men are reluctant to invest in women’s start-ups because “there are enough things that can go wrong with a high-risk, early-stage venture that if you’re worried about any interpersonal dynamic issues, why not do a deal that takes that out of the equation?”

Networks are crucial for fund-raising, because most investors don’t look at pitches that come over the transom. Since an overwhelming majority of venture capitalists are men and have gotten to the firms via start-ups or business schools — both places where women are underrepresented — women have a harder time gaining access to the Valley’s boys club, analysts say.

“Women tend to network with women, and men tend to network with men,” says Sharon Vosmek, C.E.O. of Astia. “It plays out on the golf course, in the boardroom and it’s certainly playing out in high-growth entrepreneurship.”

Ms. Fleming, who recently resigned as Crimson Hexagon’s chief executive because she felt she had drifted too far from the creative side of the business, is thinking of sending her 6-year-old daughter to an after-school science club, “to break the stereotype and introduce her to the fact that math and science are fun.”

Ms. Vijayashanker says she has seen more complaining than action about the dearth of women in tech, so she is outspoken about the topic. On her blog, Femgineer, she writes about “my experiences as a little femgineer in a mengineer’s world,” and speaks at conferences.

“If we want more women to be in tech, then we have to have a set of role models,” she says.

Ms. Watts said she has become a huge fan of women’s groups, like the Forum for Women Entrepreneurs and Executives. She mentors women at Stanford’s business school and meets regularly with a group of female C.E.O.’s so they can remind one another that they’re not alone.

For those with a bottom-line approach, analysts say it makes a difference when women are in the garages where tech start-ups are founded or the boardrooms where they are funded. Studies have found that teams with both women and men are more profitable and innovative. Mixed-gender teams have produced information technology patents that are cited 26 percent to 42 percent more often than the norm, according to the National Center for Women and Information Technology.

In a study analyzing the relationship between the composition of corporate boards and financial performance, Catalyst, a research organization on women and business, found a greater return on investment, equity and sales in I.T. companies that have directors who are women.

Silicon Valley shows signs of changing, albeit slowly. New organizations are sprouting up for young women in tech, like Girls in Tech and Women 2.0. One-quarter of the partners at Kleiner Perkins, the venture capital firm, are women, and some of the hottest start-ups — including Gilt, Hunch, Ning, Eventbrite and Meebo — were founded or co-founded by women.

They could change things for the next generation of girls aspiring to engineering careers and women already entering the field, Ms. Fleming hopes. “If their success becomes visible, so girls can identify with it, they will think, ‘Oh yeah, anyone can do this,’” she says.

Original Source: New York Times©
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/18/technology/18women.html

Astia Grows Women-Led Startups: In Conversation with Women 2.0

2010-04-14T16:02:00.000-07:00

Observations From SXSW

2010-03-18T12:12:00.001-07:00

I just made it back from Austin’s South By Southwest (SXSW or South By for short). Think spring break meets TED: part music & film festival, part interactive conference, and part college party.

As a panelist addressing entrepreneurship, it was a privilege to be a part of the agenda. As an industry veteran I was pleased by the number of women I saw on panels, in the halls, and as keynotes. It appeared to me that almost one third of the speakers were women. Cool and good on you SXSW for getting women to the party!

We are the consumers of the technology: 55% of all "social gamers" are female and women comprise 56.2% of Facebook’s audience

We are increasingly the founders and CEOs of these companies: last year 12% of venture capital went to women CEOs and Founders in both the US and UK; and we are the fastest growing sector of new venture creation in the U.S. (50% of all new companies were started by women), growing at five times the rate of all new firms.

We are going to be the inventors of the technology in the future: in 2008 women were 57% of the undergraduate degrees, 18% of the Computer and Information Science degrees, and 15% of the Computer Science degrees; and 28% of computer scientist were women. (source: NCWIT)

Now let’s work on getting South By (and other tech conferences) to be a more comfortable place for women to participate - because almost as soon as I arrived I started receiving tweets and texts – mostly from women - about their perceptions of the scene.

There were some really basic things that should not be done at a professional conference that wants to attract diverse talent. Period. If we really want women and minorities to come to the party, the party must change. And I do not mean political correctness run amuck. I mean real change that includes some basic respect for people’s differences and what will or will not make them feel a part of the community.

I am going to make a HUGE assumption here that people would like to see more diversity at gatherings like South By. With that is mind, I thought I would get the conversation started by highlighting what I think SXSW did well and where they left me out.

What they did well:

Every panel I visited had at least one woman.

There were two female keynotes (one more than I have ever seen at a comparable conference) that drew big crowds.

SXSW gets it that people need to connect in person and create real relationships that will last. This message resonates with women; we value our relationships and will invest time and energy in them.

The program book was thoughtful enough to recommend I wear comfortable shoes (although I love my heels).

Crowd sourcing of panel topics and speakers: the impact was that you hosted relevant conversations where women were represented.

Where they left me out:

A corporate sponsor missed it when the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders were the headlined guests. Really? Really?

Speaking of sponsor’s value alignment: Miller Light as a sponsor? Nothing screams college party quite the way that beer does.

The emphasis on night-time activity came off as more college party than comfortable networking space.

I leave it to my Latino / Latina friends to comment on the bag tag that said “nothing worth stealing in here, amigo” (included in the schwag bags). I won’t be using mine.

Where were the female VCs? I know a lot exited their partnerships this year, but none?

Crowd sourcing of panel topics and speakers: a not so great way to source topics from under-represented groups in technology.

As a conference that challenges its attendees to look at new business models and paradigms and new ways of engaging with our communities and society more broadly, how can we do it better next year?

I would like to hear from you – all of you – especially my female counterparts who found it difficult to find their own voices at SXSW and asked me to speak up. We each need to own our voice if we intend to create the change we desire.

Entrepreneur's Bill of Rights

2010-03-03T13:45:00.000-08:00

The following is a guest post by Lara Druyan, General Partner, Allegis Capital and member of the Astia Investor Advisory Council.

I was recently on a panel for SVASE in which I was asked what opinion I had for entrepreneurs raising money. This question arises pretty regularly. So I thought I would take a stab at memorializing some of these thoughts.

Raising cash especially in the current environment is hard. However entrepreneurs have power in the process. Hopefully you have a selection from whom you raise money. Sometimes that isn't the case and you take money from whomever is willing to invest. If you do have a choice or even if you don't you should understand from whom you are taking money. This sounds evident except many entrepreneurs don't know much about either the firm (if a venture fund is involved) or the partner at that firm (often more important than the firm itself).

Entrepreneurs, you have a right to know the person and firm to which you will be wedded in your endeavor and make no mistake you will be getting married. You know for better... for worse... In other words, do as much diligence on your investors as we do on you. To help you with this I suggest the following:

1) Ask for CEO and Founder references. Call people on the list and not on the list. LinkedIn is a great resource to enable this activity.

2) Be urgent about the process the investors are going through when evaluating your company. Are they asking for customer references as a "way to get started" in diligence? Or are they offering their own customer introductions as a form of diligence? Note: asking for your customer references should come late in the process - not at the beginning.

3) Do your homework about the firm. Do they typically make seed investments? Later stage? If you're raising a seed round think carefully about pursuing a $400M fund's money.

4) Find out how many boards your prospective investor is on. Hint: more than ten means that the investor is not going to spend much if any time with you.

5) Figure out what matters to you in an investor. Are you seeking leads, advice, recruiting help? Assess the fit between your needs and what your investor offers (as told by references).

Remember even if it doesn't feel like it you do have power in the financing process.

++

Lara Druyan is a General Partner at Allegis Capital a Silicon Valley based venture capital firm. Allegis invests in early stage companies developing enabling technology and software to serve emerging markets. Specific areas of interest include: enabling hardware devices, enterprise software solutions, broadband and wireless delivery techniques, and Internet infrastructure and services.

Astia in Conversation with TuitionCoach

2010-03-02T14:00:00.001-08:00

Astia client, TuitionCoach, the leading website for personalized college financial guidance, was recently acquired by SimpleTuition, Inc. the premier destination for personalized student loan research and comparison. Astia CEO, Sharon Vosmek, interviewed TuitionCoach CEO and Founder, Monisha Perkash, to discuss the exit and her next moves.

SV: Congratulations on the recent acquisition of TuitionCoach! In a tough year it is impressive to see this exit. Can you talk about what the acquisition process was like for you as a founder and how you dealt with the opportunities and challenges along the way? And tell us a bit about your new role at SimpleTuition.

MP: Thanks, Sharon. Well, I'd say one word describes best what the acquisition process was like: roller-coaster (wait is that two words?). In completing an acquisition, there are so many moving parts (market-timing, financial goals of the respective parties, legal issues, technical issues, and logistical issues). Also, many parties are involved including the Company's founders, the team, and various classes of shareholders, as well as the interested acquirers' management teams, employees, and Boards. And of course, each of these parties has opinions about the course of things. So while on one hand, you're excited about the prospects of an acquisition, on the other hand, with so many moving parts and so many parties involved, you are bound to hit some rough patches along the way. Hence, the roller-coaster.

How we dealt with opportunities and challenges along the way: communications and negotiations. Through this process we learned the importance of understanding the goals of each party, highlighting the areas where there is alignment, and speaking frankly about areas where there isn't. That's where the real work is... getting to alignment, if not in goals, then in acceptable outcomes. And it's through these difficult discussions that we often realized whether a prospective acquirer was a good fit or not.

My new role at SimpleTuition is VP Advisory Products; I'm the general manager for a suite of existing and future web-based tools that provide families with personalized advice on the paying-for-college process. This role is a pretty natural extension of what I did previously with TuitionCoach.

SV: As the founder and CEO, can you speak to the vision you originally had for TuitionCoach and how does that map to the path that the company actually took?

MP: Actually, this acquisition allows us to get even closer to the vision that we originally had for TuitionCoach: to be the trusted online destination for college funding assistance. It turns out this vision was one that is shared by SimpleTuition; what differentiated our two companies was that we addressed consumer needs at different points in the customer lifecycle. Also, TuitionCoach and SimpleTuition held a common value: that there needs to be greater transparency in the paying-for-college process so that families can be better informed consumers of higher education. So, in many ways, we shared the same DNA which made the acquisition even more compelling.

SV: TuitionCoach built a distinguished online service that parents, students, financial professionals and counselors could all benefit from. How did you identify the target market for your site?

MP: We provided offline financial aid counseling to thousands of families before we ever wrote one line of code. From working with them, and also from being aware of those who could not afford private consulting, we knew that there was a huge demand for affordable yet personalized college funding guidance. So we conducted focus groups to further understand their pain points and devised automated solutions that would address their needs. We like to think that we are to private college financial consultants what TurboTax is to accountants.

SV: Your company has strategically and effectively used modern technologies such as webinars and Paul’s Corner blog. How did you decide on this strategy and what are the next steps for the site going forward?

MP: The Internet provides such a rich medium for interactivity and to "humanize" a guidance process you can't get from just reading a book. So, in building TuitionCoach we explored technologies and strategies that would provide customers with the richest, most robust user experience. You'll see even more of this approach in an upcoming redesign of TuitionCoach.

SV: You have been with Astia since 2007. Tell us a bit about how you came to us and how your relationship with Astia affected your business?

MP: I first got to know Astia by coming to one of its workshops on entrepreneurship. In that room of predominantly women, I witnessed a unique atmosphere: one that fostered collaboration, mentorship, and humility, elements that I hadn't always found present in a roomful of zealous entrepreneurs. Because our start-up was also raising capital, we decided to apply to Astia. It was one of the smartest things that we did. Through the mentorship (and tough-love) I received, my business plan was transformed and my pitch was sharpened. Through the Astia network, I was able to gain access to top-notch legal and financial advisory. And most importantly, I was surrounded by an incredible community of fellow entrepreneurs who not only helped me with day-to-day challenges, but also inspired me to keep going, even through the toughest of times.

SV: Oh, and of course, whenever we see an entrepreneur like you exit, we have to ask… when will you be starting your next start-up and do you already have something that you are tossing around in your head?

MP: My new employer might read this interview, so ask me later. Just kidding! The answer is I'm really not sure. I do know that I've been bitten by the bug for entrepreneurship and it will always be a part of who I am. And what is yet another very positive aspect of our recent acquisition is that I do play a very entrepreneurial role at SimpleTuition and still feel quite energized by working towards that huge vision we've had all along.

2010-02-22T14:50:00.000-08:00

Posted by Sarah Tavel, Adventurista: http://www.adventurista.com/2010/02/why-arent-there-more-women-in-startups.html

Sunday, February 21, 2010

Why aren’t there more women in startups? Some new data.

(Hat tip to Christine -@cklemke, COO of Sense Networks- for help on this post!)

It’s become a common question: Why aren’t there more women in venture funded startups? I speak to venture backed startups all the time. Unfortunately, more often than not, I don’t see a single female on the executive team roster. Over time, I’ve developed a hypothesis. For some reason, in the rare occurrence when I speak to a female CEO, it’s felt to me that I’m much more likely to find another female face on the company roster. It got me curious: Is this true? Are there actually more female executives in female-CEO led companies than male-led companies? If so, there are a number of implications.

To answer this question, Christine and I have done some good ole fashioned data collecting. Unfortunately, this has been a much more time consuming task than we had expected, so we’ve only gone through the US portfolio of three VCs: Accel, my firm Bessemer, and Sequoia (210 companies in total).

Given the small sample size, and the hot-button nature of the subject, let me first disclose what this data set is *not*:

It is *not* statistically significant. There were only eight female CEOs in the sample set.
It is *not* a complete data set. 210 companies out of several thousand.
Christine and I originally pulled this data Sept-Oct 09, so some of it may already be out of date.
Also note: I only counted VP and higher level executives and I excluded companies that didn’t list their executives team on their website *and* didn’t have a LinkedIn profile for the company (i.e. I couldn’t get accurate data). I also excluded companies that only had one executive (the CEO) for the obvious reason they haven’t hired any executives.

Given all those caveats, why publish the data? I can’t help but think this is an interesting dataset to understand, and the initial results are intriguing enough that I think it is worth trying to get more data. That said, Christine and I just can’t do it ourselves. So this blog post is actually a plea for help: I’m posting the data set in Google Docs here. It’s read-only for everyone, but if you’re interested in contributing to the document, please email me and I’ll invite you.

Okay, okay. It’s not complete. You get it. So what did I find in the intial sample?

There were 1219 male executives (90% of sample) vs. 134 female executives (10% of sample).
3.8% of the CEOs were women (8 out of 210). (Which coincidentally, is around the percentage of women who are CEO of a Fortune 500 company – 3%.)
125 of the 210 companies (60%) did not have a single female on the executive team.

For the 134 female executives, the breakdown of the executive roles held by those women is (I thought this was interesting and not what I expected):

Now the money question: In male-led vs. female-led companies, if we exclude the CEOs in both cases, what percentage of the executive team is female on average?

If this turns out to be directionally correct, there are a number of repercussions. But in the absence of a more complete data set, I'm reserving judgment for now. If you're interested in helping flesh out the data set, please drop me a line!

Astia in Conversation with DegreeArt

2010-02-17T06:20:00.000-08:00

Astia client, London-based, DegreeArt.com is an online marketplace the enables art lovers to acquire the works of new and emerging artists. Astia VP Europe, Evie Mulberry, shared a conversation with DegreeArt founders Isobel Beauchamp and Elinor Olisa to learn more about the story behind the business.

EM: What inspired you to found DegreeArt.com?

DA: We had identified that there was a need to break down the traditional barriers associated with buying, owning and collecting contemporary art. The Internet was the ideal vehicle to bridge the gap between emerging, talented artists and the art buying public.

EM: How do you find your "Artists of the Future"?

DA: We identify and recruit artists who not only posses artistic talent but crucially who, with our support, have the skills required to sustain a career as a practicing artist. This is essential to ensure their work will not only hold its value but represent a potential investment.

EM: DegreeArt.com is considered the UK leader in providing contemporary, affordable art by emerging artists. How did you establish this notoriety?

DA: By making art accessible. The art market is notoriously difficult to crack and we are immensely proud of the name we have established and our brand positioning. Identifying art that people not only want to own but which is created by promising artists has been crucial.

EM: Elinor, you recently stated that “not only is the emerging art market surviving, it has been experiencing considerably more attention than before the markets crashed”. What do you anticipate in 2010 as highlights for the market?

DA: Our top three predictions for the emerging art market in 2010 are:

1) There is an increased insistence from buyers for credible, quality art which is as strong technically as it is conceptually

2)We are seeing increasing numbers of first time buyers accessing art as a way to invest in something tangible and enjoyable

3) We are expecting to see a considerable move away from purely conceptual projects and a return to painting and sculpture at this year’s degree shows as artists look to create work that has wider commercial appeal

EM: You have now participated in Astia’s first European Doing it Right (May 2009), presented at the first Astia European Investor Forum (June 2009), and most recently attended London's Doing it Right programme (February 2-3). How has your participation been impactful for your business and as individuals?

DA: Astia has taken us out of our comfort zone, asking us to evaluate our business and to understand what needs to be done to realize the full potential of the company. Following the June programme, the February Astia days provided us with a valuable opportunity to look back at what we have achieved in the past 8 months and to focus on what we need to concentrate on going forward into 2010. As individuals it has undoubtedly given us a keenness to continue in our goals.

EM: Having participated within Astia's global community, how do you similarly provide a robust network and support for your artist community?

DA: Being an artist is often a solitary existence and the same is true for running your own business. As Astia does for its community, we provide artists with a support structure enabling them to draw on the experiences of others and to request advice enabling them to further their careers and gain greater confidence as the refine their practice.

EM: What is next for DegreeArt.com?

DA: We are working hard to monopolize on our successes of the past years and to ensure that the momentum is not lost. We are seeking to reach broader markets with as we grow the business and ensure that those who have previously felt excluded from the art world are provided with access to all that it has to offer.

You can follow the DegreeArt story, browse the art collection, and purchase your own favorites directly on their website: http://www.degreeart.com/

Get it or Bust

2010-02-01T12:36:00.000-08:00

Special Report from Inmaculada Martinez, Managing Director, Investments Advisor, STRADBROKE and Astia Community Member.

At the end of December, most papers in the UK run articles accounting everything that went on during the twelve months prior. Lazily scanning my Sunday paper, here came this snippet of an article entitled “The Double X Factor.” The first sentence caught my attention: “In terms of machismo, running a hedge fund is the closest the financial world gets to flying a fighter jet”, observed Christopher Swann on REUTERS Breakingviews.com. I almost gagged. Good Lord not another article on “Barbarians at Gates” or any of that 1980s Gordon Gekko palaver. If there is one thing that as a woman makes me want to smack someone in the face with my handbag is comparisons that create perspectives of the world from a male viewpoint, as if this single tunnel vision would encompass all humanity. Most women have no interest in piloting fighter jets or any other kind of speed artifacts. Excitement associated to risky actions, like speed, is not an enjoyable situation for all peoples. In fact, one could almost draw a direct correlation between adrenaline rushes caused by risky activities and testosterone levels. Against this backdrop, Bloomberg L.P. conducted a study showing that female hedge-fund managers outperformed their male counterparts between 2000 and 2009 – delivering 9% annually, against 5.8% for men. “Double X” funds did particularly well during the crisis, shedding only 9%, compared with the 19% lost by male-run funds in 2008. Bloomberg’s conclusion was that women tend to pursue “less extreme” strategies, and that they save on fees by trading less. In fact, female resilience looks particularly attractive given the industry’s high blow-out rate. Unfortunately for investors, Double X funds are hard to find: it is reckoned that women run just 3% of some 9,000 hedge funds.

Many women hesitate to launch their businesses because the word “entrepreneurship” is tainted by the media with “risk” connotations. These days, when getting fired from a job because of financial crises is more often than not on the regular menu, and being promoted as fast as your male counterparts or paid as much as they make is still not achieved, the thought of taking ownership of one’s professional life does not sound so risky anymore. Most women entrepreneurs that I meet launch their businesses because they feel capable of delivering their visions, want to be their own bosses and have a sense of higher accomplishment when they create product offerings that beat what is available in the market. They do it because they believe they can do it better than the SC Johnsons, the Nokias, or the Googles of this world. What they lack is how to raise funding.

In my 2010 objectives I have taken upon myself at Stradbroke to make it the year that I help some women finally get it together and go for it with their entrepreneurial plans to create big global companies, not just small to medium sized businesses that they can run on the side of bringing up babies. I am talking about the Single Ladies (With or Without The Ring On It) that will go for it for real, to build global successes and not just vehicles that they can run from home to earn the extra cash for the household.

When the barriers went down in media broadcasting, the Oprahs (Winfrey), the Ellens (Degeneres) and the Tinas (Fey ) took the top. Daytime television is what brings the dollar bacon to the networks because this is the primetime spot for the viewers who hold the purchasing power of most households. The night airwaves are too competitive and hence more fragmented. The music industry is also crowning the new revenue earning queen bees – Madonna, Beyonce, Lady Gaga, whilst the little fairies like Taylor Swift are sweeping all the awards back to the hive. The barriers in these industries were monolithic for decades. Nowadays, they’re finally down.

Oprah, Ellen and Tina took the helm of their projects and became producers, creating their own production companies and hence controlling their own product - Oprah now has an “end-to-end solution” because she finally owns her own network. Silicon Valley needs to back more female entrepreneurs because it needs to create an ecosystem of synergies, rather than a myriad of businesses driven by the same dynamics. If women in television and music can create multimillion dollar successes, there must be women capable of delivering the same value in other entrepreneurial ventures that have to do with technology, the sciences or commerce.

The reason why there are no more women-driven technology businesses shares the same answer as to why there are no more women film directors. In both industries, for a project to be put together as an attractive venture to be funded can take years. Moreover, for a funded project to yield financial success can take years as well. In television and in the music industries the acid test is performed on smaller vehicles: a pilot or a single song. Audience focus groups, gigs in small venues, a million cushioned tests to assess if something is going to be a flop or a hit or is worth the money to fund an entire series or an album and world tour. The assets created by startups or the film industry are enormous labours of love that can bring boxoffice results of hundreds of millions or come in below investment and lose money for everybody.

There are not that many women in technology and not that many others directing films because the money people do not trust them and do not buy into their ideas. Funding is still a people’s business of handshakes, lunches, hunches, and connecting with the other person. It is a business of obsessive follow-ups and throwing rejections over one’s shoulder and keeping on going. If this shocks you, please go to the Internet and try to find for me which woman film director has been nominated for an Oscar since the beginning of the awards or who got Best Picture. The answer is two times has the Oscar gone to female nominees in these categories: Best Picture to Jane Campion “The Piano” (1990) and Best Director to Sophia Coppola for “Lost In Translation” (2004). The rest are all men. This is the oddest, most bizarre situation ever to be analysed. Weird as it may be, it is a reality that hits you in the face. This past May, during the Cannes Film Festival, Jane Campion dared to speak openly about what we all keep behind doors: that “the studio system is kind of an old boys’ system and it’s difficult for them to trust women to be capable.” Why is this so?

Taking creative and unproven projects to fruition requires one to be almost “obsessed” with them. It is not about being “driven” but actually being absorbed by it. Genetically, women cannot become absorbed in some self-delusions because we are programmed by our DNA to take care of other people under our care and not be too self-focused. We also take rejections personally. In Campion’s words, “I think women don’t grow up with the harsh world of criticism that men grow up with, we are more sensitively treated, and when you first experience the world of film-making you have to develop a very tough skin.”

If you want investors to trust you, show them that determination, that vision of “get it or bust.” It is okay to be obsessed with achieving success for your project. It is okay to chase people on and on and on until they agree to meet you. I have seen films being funded because of this never-ending chasing. I raised money in the middle of the 2000 dot-bomb after all VCs in Europe rejected us (except for 3i who backed me also in other ventures afterwards) . The Skype founders had almost 50 investor meetings in London and only Index Ventures believed in them and their business. The film “Slumdog Millionaire” almost went straight to video if it weren’t for its producers who fought with tooth and nails to get rid of the original investors (Warner Independent) and found new ones. More female businesses will be backed if the women behind them “go against nature” and take their fund-raising like a crusade.

If you are reading this and wonder how you are going to get these skills and find within yourself this passion and self-belief, join Astia. This is precisely the kind of know-how that we are all here to share with you and instill in your business.

Announcing the 2010 Silicon Valley Investor Forum

2010-01-13T12:56:00.000-08:00

It's another big week here at Astia with our 8th annual Investor Forum this Thursday, January 14th in San Francisco. This exciting event gives 33 life science, clean tech, consumer and enterprise companies from the Astia Doing It Right program the opportunity to present to the investor community. We are proud of this year’s group and know that the investors who will be in attendance are anticipating the event - already three of the companies have secured funding and another three are in due diligence as a results of participating in the Astia program.

In addition to the presentations by our high-growth companies, there will also be a presentation by the Non Profit Global Health Research Foundation which was selected as a pro bono client by the Astia community for its innovative approach to health care in poor countries.

The Investor Forum is scheduled from 12pm-8pm - continuing into the evening to allow for the Angel community to fully engage. Tickets are still available here: http://www.astia.org/content/view/1439/1156/

As always, the Forum will be an exceptional opportunity to network with entrepreneurs, VCs, angel investors, Corporate VCs and senior execs of emerging companies.

Here are this year’s presenting companies:

Consumer Products:
18Rabbits
Samara Innovations

Retail:
Marbles the Brainstore

Clean Tech:
BioVantage Resources
Ennovationz
Exergy Systems
Renewable Fuel Technologies

Life Sciences:
AdhereTx Corporation
AgilityBio
Arriva Pharmaceuticals
ChiroSolve
ConcentRX
DesignMedix
Eragen Biosciences
GangaGen
Global Health Research Foundation
Kemeta
PROFUSA

Business to Consumer Technology:
Carat Exchange
CareerApple
Coveted List
ecouture
GenGreen Digital Media
givezooks!
GoldMail
HarQen
Kiboo
PRIVO
ReferQuest
Qlubb
RumbaFish
w2wLink

Gaming:
Real Life Plus

Due to the overwhelming response from the investor community, the location has been changed to accommodate the nearly 300 registrants.

Note the new location:

Microsoft Conference Center - San Francisco
Westfield Center
835 Market Street, 7th Floor
(between 4th and 5th Streets)
San Francisco, CA 94103

And Purchase tickets here: http://www.astia.org/content/view/1439/1156/

Cheers and we look forward to seeing many of you tomorrow!

Happy New Year! We got interns for Christmas, what did you get?

2010-01-09T09:57:00.000-08:00

Welcome to 2010! We like it better than 2009 already.

Why?

Already this year, three Astia clients secured funding in the last two weeks, two more are in due diligence, we have an Investor Forum on January 14 with over 100 investors confirmed, Moss Adams renewed its sponsorship of Astia for a 4th Year, and the Astia Advisor community continues to deliver on the promise of working with our clients to shortcut their pathways to success (if you are an Astia client, add your comments to this post about your team of Advisors).

And there is more happening inside of Astia...

Astia NYC welcomes four new interns (3 MBAs + 1 Ph.D.) this semester from Columbia and NYU Stern. We look forward to everyone getting to know them throughout the year.

Carolyn Simnett Branco (Columbia Business School ’11): Carolyn joins us for the Spring Semester to focus on Astia’s business development efforts and new client services. Formerly with Google in California and Buenos Aires and UBS Investment Bank, Carolyn brings a passion for entrepreneurship and deep digital media and technology experience.

Eileen Puklin Faucher, PhD: Eileen will serve as our resident Life Sciences expert moving forward our Life Science initiatives on the East Coast. Eileen has worked with Columbia University's Office of Technology Ventures and with Lux Capital Management and has held a variety of scientific research roles, including with the ËTH in Zürich, Switzerland. In addition to her work with Astia, Eileen currently conducts experiments as a postdoctoral research scientist at Columbia.

Stephanie Palmeri (Columbia Business School ’11): With deep strategic consulting and web marketing experience at Sitaro Consulting, Accenture and Estee Lauder Companies, Stephanie brings a hands-on digital media integration and strategic campaign perspective to the team. She mentors entrepreneurs through the InSITE program and is organizing the first ever Entrepreneurial Panel for Columbia’s Women in Business conference: “Redefining Business, Reinventing Yourself” on February 19, 2010.

Avanti Paranjpye (NYU Stern ’11): Avanti is focusing her applied mathematics and publishing background on finance, entrepreneurship and innovation at NYU Stern. She has received several academic and research awards and looks forward to a career in strategic business development upon graduation.

Together, Stephanie and Avanti will be focused on client management. Their work will be to ensure Astia companies derive measurable impact from our community.

We are thrilled to have such talent available to us and delighted to have them on board. Please join us as we welcome them to Astia!

Oh, and do let us know what you got for Christmas and how your 2010 is shaping up.

New York Entrepreneur Week

2009-11-24T09:45:00.001-08:00

Special Report from Jennifer Hill, Vice President, Astia

This past week, New York celebrated the largest entrepreneurship movement throughout the state: New York Entrepreneur Week (NYEW). Within the heart of the Big Apple, hundreds crammed into classrooms at Columbia Business School (and thousands watched live online) to hear from NYC’s leading entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, angel investors, industry leaders, technology press and more.

On Wednesday, I had the opportunity to moderate the NYEW Town Hall Meeting: Entrepreneurship Policy: Where Are We? Where Are We Going? How Will Entrepreneurship Revitalize the United States?

Joining me as panelists were:
• Adam Oliveri, Managing Director at SecondMarket (an online marketplace for illiquid assets)
• Luis Antonio Marquez, Director General of the Mexican Private Equity Association (over 45 funds and $12B under management)
• JiNan Glasgow, Founder & CEO of Neopatents (patent research and analytics company)

The lively discussion touched on a variety of topics, including how to restore liquidity to the U.S. markets, prominent sources of funding outside of the traditional venture capital / angel investment /high net worth individuals, and the role of tax credits. Yet some of the more interesting ideas grew from issues the panelists are tackling right now within their businesses. Here are a few highlights.

(1) Unlocking the value of intellectual property can be one the strongest ways to trigger innovation.
JiNan Glasgow, founder and CEO of Neopatents, believes that everyone has the power to create – and her work globally has focused on transforming ideas into reality and creating positive impact from them. Creating commercially valuable assets from ideas through intellectual property and entrepreneurial activity is the number one way to impact the economy. Patents and trademarks are the most highly valued intellectual property types, whose value can be leveraged if businesses know how to do it right. Strategic development requires answers, not just data, to inform investment and business decision-making. JiNan works with companies of all sizes – from start-ups to publicly traded companies – to leverage patent information to stimulate and accelerate innovation and to monetize the value of intellectual property to fundraise and grow the enterprise.

JiNan shared that many large public company have dozens of patents “sitting on the shelf” which can be used to test and develop new business lines, especially in an economic downturn when excess resources can be inexpensively deployed in new ways and start-up costs continue to reduce. Companies often find that that strength of such intellectual property secures investment from trusted sources which then enables a new company to grow on its own, often freed from the traditional timeline and pace of the founding company. Such opportunities often create further investment to combine efforts with emerging companies who have additional R&D, which accounts for a variety of early-stage acquisitions.

(2) Innovation will continue to prosper if illiquid markets can be accessed.
Adam Oliveri, Managing Director at SecondMarket, shared with the panel the benefits of secondary markets. The steady decline in IPO activity over the last 10 years and the dramatic rise and then sudden fall of M&A activity has left a market void for company exits attractive to investors. Increasing regulatory and administrative burdens also encourage companies to stay private longer, which challenges liquidity outlets. SecondMarket exists to give buyers and sellers a private secure marketplace to effect transactions -- subject to state and federal securities laws -- while providing a robust set of data, analytics and valuation tools instantly accessible online.

(3) What is the most surprising trend affecting cross-border transactions between the United States and Mexico?
Luis Antonio Marquez, Director General of the Mexican Private Equity Association, commented that U.S. venture capital firms have been investing south of the border both directly into private equity and venture capital funds and directly within Mexican enterprises. Mexico’s strong innovation and technology programs allow foreign investors to receive last mile grants when partnering with Mexican manufacturers, further stimulating investment. Mexico also encourages commercialization of pre-approved intellectual property – such as patents -- and will use foreign investment, technology and human resources to do so. For aspiring entrepreneurs, some of the strongest innovation can actually be found within the government and its research programs, which allow people to commercialize its pre-approved patents. Last and mostly interestingly, Mr. Marquez reminded us that the U.S. enjoys a Hispanic population of greater than 40 million people which represent the same GDP as Mexico. Savvy states such as Arizona and New Mexico are creating Hispanic Entrepreneurship Programs that provide training, resources, and capital to new businesses within the respective states and across the border leveraging Mexican commercial resources. As the segment of the population continues to grow, we can expect the cross-border development between the U.S. and Mexico to equally prosper.

To learn more about Astia on the East Coast, contact jhill@astia.org

Marrone Bio Introduces Innovative iPhone Application

2009-11-16T12:03:00.000-08:00

Astia client Marrone Bio Innovations recently introduced a first-of-its kind pesticide tank mix calculator application for use on the iPhone. Astia sat down to talk about the exciting, new application and upcoming developments with Marrone Bio Founder and CEO Pam Marrone.

SV: Marrone Bio has distinguished itself as a company looking to drive innovation in the agricultural market, with a strong technology presence such as an eLearning course on biopesticides. How did Marrone identify the need for a mobile application and what was the development process like?

PM: It is a given that we are innovators in R&D. But our Board, with some IT VCs, thought the sales and marketing side of ag pesticides was not very innovative. They challenged us to be innovative in sales and marketing too! So we developed and launched the first ever online biopesticide course for our customers (pest control advisors) to get 2 credit hours of continuing education units and gain more knowledge and awareness of biopesticides and our products. We have been talking to customers and noticed they are using smart phones more and more. They like the apps on the iphone to use out in the field.

SV: The iPhone application is very exciting and modern, what can we expect to see from Marrone Bio in 2010?

PM: We have more practical ag apps on the drawing board and a second module for our biopesticide university online.

SV: As the CEO and Founder of Marrone Bio, can you give us a background on the company’s origins, what it set out to achieve and how it developed?

PM: I started the company in 2006 to continue what I started at my previous companies - to discover, develop and market effective and environmentally responsible natural products for pest, weed and plant disease management. This time, however, we are putting more products into development in parallel so that we will have a more diverse and larger pipeline to ramp up revenues faster. We now have two products on the market, a product waiting approval at the EPA for controlling invasive zebra and quagga mussels and 4 more in development.

SV: This fall, Marrone Bio was recognized as a New California 100 Innovative Business by Golden Capital Network and Hamilton Lane. What are some of Marrone Bio's best practices for creating a culture of innovation?

PM: We hire people who can think out of the box, ask a lot of questions and know what they don't know because my experience is that innovation is suppressed when scientists are too insecure to admit when they don't know something. Also, it is normal that after a time everyone gets set in their ways so we try to challenge employees to think of different ways to solve problems and overcome obstacles. Mistakes are tolerated if the situation is analyzed, lessons learned and the same mistake is not repeated.

SV: Can you give us an overview on your company’s philosophy and how Marrone Bio is leading the pack on sustainable agriculture?

PM: Global food production with need to double to keep up with increasing population. To do this, food must be produced in the most sustainable manner possible. We think natural pest management products like ours are a major part of the future food system by providing providing better yields and quality while keeping the environment and people safer, reducing pesticide residues, and preventing pests from developing resistance. We have the largest biopesticide pipeline and are the only company discovering extracts of microorganisms and plants that kill insects, weeds, nematodes, and plant diseases. Our focus is on innovation - providing novel, greener solutions to unmet needs.

SV: Having worked with Astia since 2006, and being awarded the Innovator Award for Clean Tech in 2008, what have you found the value of the Astia program and network to be?

PM: Astia helped me hone my pitch to investors, introduced me to a fabulous network of talented women entrepreneurs with the same problems and issues that I have, and provided visibility to a fledging company.