TRUTH: Women-Led Startups Have Fewer Failures
November 14, 2011 by Kevin Michael Gray
I'm a sucker for start ups… there's something exciting and risky and exhilarating about the ROI that can occurs (very rarely might I add) when a good start up succeeds! Today's featured article is about a rather interesting subject… Women led startups have fewer failures. What are your thoughts? Why do you think this is? Tweet about it @seedingideas
Women own about 40 percent of the private businesses in the United States, according to the Center for Women's Business Research. But according to Astia, a group that supports women-led small companies, women make up less than 10 percent of venture-backed start-ups. As of last year, only 14 women had been funded by Y Combinator out of a total of 208.\
That's a disparity that some, including Cindy Padnos, have found troubling. It's not because of any bias it might imply. Padnos finds the numbers so disturbing because she believes start-ups are missing out on a very valuable resource that are actually quite important for their health. That resource is the presence women.
Padnos started her career as a tech entrepreneur and later served as president and CEO of a software company. These days, she has segued into life as a venture capitalist and has launched Illuminate Ventures, an early-stage venture fund that invests in cloud computing start-ups, based in Oakland. The advisory board of Illuminate Ventures, notably, is two-thirds women.
"I thought I saw a growing disparity between the growth in the number of venture-backable women, and the actual dollars that were going into companies that had women on the founding team," Padnos says. "And I was confused by that."
