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February 2006 Straight Talk from Female Entrepreneurs
by Theresa Johnston In the decade after she left Stanford and became a successful partner at a top-tier venture capital firm, Jennifer Gill Roberts noticed a funny thing. More than half the business students in her MBA Class of ’93 had tried to contact her—but relatively few were women. Some classmates she didn’t remember, yet she took their calls as a courtesy to her fellow alums. As she said during a recent campus panel discussion, “These guys would call up and act like they were my best friend. I don’t think women are as shameless about networking.” Roberts, who worked nine years at Sevin Rosen Funds before founding a West-Coast based emerging venture fund, Maven Venture Partners, was among 30 successful female executives invited to share their experiences with second-year business students this fall as part of a new pre-term seminar, Entrepreneurship from the Perspective of Women. Among the topics: How to use networking to advantage? What particular challenges do women founders face in raising venture capital or managing a board of directors? What’s the best way to manage difficult conversations and negotiations? And how can entrepreneurial women find balance between their careers and family responsibilities? Linda Wells, MBA ’93, executive director of the School’s Center for Entrepreneurial Studies, says the idea for the non-graded course came out of a conversation she had last year with Amy Love, CEO of the Forum for Women Entrepreneurs and Executives, the nation’s premier professional organization for women entrepreneurs, executives, and their business system partners. Wells was concerned about the paucity of female entrepreneurs on her mailing list: Out of 72 Stanford alums who attended the Business School’s first entrepreneur reunion in October 2004, only three were women. At the same time, Love was looking for a way to encourage young women who might be predisposed to entrepreneurial careers. They recruited Business School professors Garth Saloner and Kathryn Shaw to run the class, and Love provided a list of 50 successful female venture capital executives and entrepreneurs from her organization who might be guest speakers. As it turned out, the female execs were more than willing to share their stories from the trenches, and students, both women and men, eager to hear them, quickly filled the 15 allotted seminar seats. Another dozen students helped Saloner and Shaw in 2004-05 by writing case studies for the class even though they would be graduating and couldn’t take the course themselves. “I think that speaks volumes about the passion our students bring to this subject,” says Saloner, the Jeffrey S. Skoll Professor of Electronic Commerce, Strategic Management, and Economics. Throughout the intensive weeklong course in September—one choice on a menu of seminars for second-year MBA students—individuals and panelists spoke candidly on topics ranging from bootstrapping and negotiating skills to sexual harassment, office fashion, and the effects of long working hours on their marriages. Many agreed that it’s tougher for women to raise venture capital—in part because women often don’t have the time or inclination to participate in traditional male bonding activities like after-hours drinking or golf outings, which can lead to connections and favorable references. Still, there are ways to penetrate the boys’ networks. “I don’t play golf,” said Roberts of Maven Venture Partners, “but I do talk about what my athletic pursuits are; I’m a long-distance runner. Or you can bond over other common interests, like music or art. One thing that surprised me when I had kids is that every man I knew in venture or as a CEO wanted to talk about his kids. I didn’t bring it up, but they seemed much more comfortable [discussing the subject] with a woman. It was a great avenue for bonding.” Heidi Roizen, AB ’80 and MBA ’83, managing director of Mobius Venture Capital, a technology venture fund with over $2 billion under management, noted that many female would-be CEOs unconsciously sabotage their chances for venture capital funding by the way they communicate. “Women entrepreneurs have a tendency to say ‘we,’ whereas a man CEO will say ‘I’ and be more aggressive, something a venture capitalist looks for.” She added that female executives must show particular confidence when discussing business-related statistics. “Men actually think women are bad at math, and a lot of times, I’m sorry to say, women appear to be bad at math. I’ve seen women continually make those key errors where you ask them about their gross margin and why is it that way for the first year? They can’t articulate an answer. And that is a super big turn-off in the venture capitalist community.” Lara Druyan, general partner with Allegis Capital, urged the future female CEOs not to fear taking up “air time” to get their points across, and suggested they always wear a jacket when making presentations. “Don’t worry that you’re being too male or too aggressive,” she said, “because those are things that are going to make you sound sure of yourself.” Other panelists cautioned, though, that there’s a fine line between sounding authoritative and being intimidating. Roberts recalled that in her thirties she over-prepared for every meeting and dressed much more conservatively, until a male colleague confessed that he was a little intimidated by her. “I started exhibiting a little more style and bringing up my sense of humor, and I started feeling more comfortable,” she said. Career timing and work-life balance are subjects of great interest and anxiety to many ambitious young women MBAs. As Saloner explained, students come to entrepreneurship with a whole host of myths. Some think they have to be entrepreneurs from the moment they graduate, forsaking the traditional corporate ladder altogether. Others fret about the impact business ventures will have on their marriage and children. “Students have all these life aspirations,” he said, “and what they learned is that you don’t have to do them all at the same time. You can carve out periods where you do different things. It’s a marathon, not a sprint. You can stage it and find the right time to do all the different pieces and have it all at the end. You just can’t have it all, all the time.” Allyson Campa, MBA ’91, founder of Bravanta Inc., a provider of online incentive and recognition programs, had similar advice for the students. “Most of us wouldn’t advocate becoming an entrepreneur right after you graduate,” she said during an afternoon panel discussion on “Financing Your Venture.” “Take the time to be prepared so that when the time comes to do it, you’ll have whatever skills you need.” After class, several panelists said they welcomed the chance to break from the isolation of their executive roles and vent, while students appreciated the chance to hear such an interesting assortment of female entrepreneurs. “As we saw and listened to the comments of entrepreneurs in this class, one of the most striking conclusions is that female entrepreneurs have a very wide variety of objectives, products, and personalities,” said Shaw, the Ernest C. Arbuckle Professor of Economics. “Entrepreneurship takes many forms—from VC supported to home-grown smaller businesses—so different approaches can be successful for different reasons.” Sara Ellis, a second-year student who founded her own boutique consulting firm before coming to the Business School, agreed, adding that the course “absolutely” will affect her career path. “In particular, I am more likely to consider getting some corporate experience prior to launching my next company,” she said. “Because 30 different women talked to us about their experiences, I realized how the styles, personalities, and companies of women entrepreneurs don’t have to look a particular way. They come in all shapes and sizes!” |
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Straight Talk from Female Entrepreneurs
