As a female entrepreneur and tech CEO, I found two strengths repeated within many other female entrepreneurs or those considering the path. These traits are bankable and a big part of why I support other female business owners.
Pragmatism
We don’t get funding at near the rate men do, however realism and dealing with facts instead of building business plans like a fantasy novel, yields a business that will meet its projections. After helping a young lady with her pitch deck, I sent her to a well-known venture capital investor. He rejected her pitch. The growth projections weren’t steep enough.
I request a meeting with him. He said he needed faster growth than she was willing to project, but he found her product compelling. I asked how many of his portfolio companies reached their growth projections. Less than 8 percent meet their projections and industry standards based on Pitchbook, suggest that less than 20 percent will yield great financial results above returning investors’ money.
I suggested the reason lay in the unrealistic pitch numbers used to convince people to invest. I explained that a woman isn’t going to set herself up for failure and is going to pitch him what she is going to achieve. He didn’t invest, but he did introduce my mentee to a VC firm that funded her with her first $4 million of outside investment.
Willingness to ask questions
I started my business at 26. There were many things I hadn’t figured out yet. I found people are often willing to share their expertise, if you ask quality questions, respect their time, and give them progress updates.
When I was ready to expand my team globally, I had choices between direct hiring personnel, contracting employees, or continuing to only utilize resellers supplemented by my U.S.-based staff. The expansion was needed in multiple countries. I was overwhelmed. I called a speaker with extensive international expertise from a chamber event. He ran a division of a global accounting and consulting firm. I came to him asking which resources I could use to help make the decision.
He deployed a team to take me through the scenarios, from the day-to-day experience they had at their fingertips. It was gracious, enormously helpful, and it solidified a decades-long relationship. All of that, because I willing to ask questions and not be embarrassed admitting what I didn’t know. I wound up with varied solutions based on the country.
I now pay it forward. I’ve helped a woman test her curriculum in a non-profit before pursuing her ideal client. She knew she had to have testimonials and results. It wasn’t a coincidence that the non-profit she donated her time to, was also supported by the CEO she later pitched.
I regularly assist the humble entrepreneur brave enough to admit they need help. These traits strengthened my business and secured our resilience.
The occasional “I don’t know” isn’t a woman’s weakness, it’s a superpower to finding the real answers.
Strategies is a regular Bizwomen feature edited and curated by Ellen Sherberg and written by individual contributors. Sherberg is a longtime reporter, editor and publisher at American City Business Journals, Bizwomen’s parent company.