Women Entrepreneurs Tackle BIG Ideas

Female entrepreneurs are still receiving little capital.  Wired reports:

“Startups with a woman founder raised $25 billion in the first half of 2021—more than the total amount raised by women any full year prior.”

While the incremental changes are noticeable, we aren’t close to where we need to be.

After years of witnessing these founders' struggles and limited access to capital, Dr. Silvia Mah, partner at Ad Astra Ventures, who helps women founders grow innovative startups tackling big ideas, is determined that there are certain things the VC industry can do to level the playing field.

Here are three. 

Helping Black Women Entrepreneurs Start and Expand a Business

A growing number of firms have opened their treasure chests to Black woman entrepreneurs. They, in turn, are often using the financing to help other Black women start or expand a business.

The median seed funding raised by a Black woman founder is $125,000, nowhere near the national median of $2.5 million in 2020, according to ProjectDiane. In the first half of 2021, Crunchbase data revealed that only 0.34% of capital went to businesses run by Black women.

The article for Black Enterprise Magazine goes on to say that more efforts are surfacing to provide funding to Black women, or people of color in general, such as the Goldman Sachs’ One Million Black Women initiative, Fortune reported. One firm that is seeing the capital flowing steadily is the Fearless Fund, which works to increase Black representation in venture capital and support women of color.

Learn to Love Uncertainty

What’s keeping you up at night?  That's a key question to ask a business owner or top level executive if you want to find out what's really going on with them.

Being a small business owner myself and a formally trained facilitator, I decided to take a different approach and asked 20 presidents of small businesses in marketing, interior design, insurance and a variety of other industries what’s allowing them to get a good night’s rest.

Here are the highlights of what they shared, one being "Learn to not just live with but love uncertainty."

How a Business Owner Can Sleep Like a Baby During Tough Times, by Laurel J. Delaney for American Express.

Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs) Provide Affordable Financing to Women

Congress created Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs) in 1994 to provide affordable financing to women, minority, and other underestimated entrepreneurs.

CDFIs hope, through financing, is to help women entrepreneurs rebound faster and grow stronger, healthier businesses despite the pandemic.

CDFIs are mission, not profit-driven. They have lower requirements regarding years in business, credit score (or no credit score), and collateral. Entrepreneurs still have to prove that they're creditworthy, but CDFIs work with entrepreneurs whom banks typically turn away. CDFIs have proven that financing women- and minority-business owners are NOT risky.

Think of them as first responders for women entrepreneurs.  How will you use a CDFI loan to become a healthier, stronger business in 2022?

Source:  Our esteemed colleague and friend, Geri Stengel, who contributes to Forbes on a regular basis.  She is a big supporter of women business owners.

Begin Again

©2022 Laurel J. Delaney.  All rights reserved.

"No matter how hard the past, you can always begin again." – Buddha