20-something boys start a company. 20-something boys get given millions. 20-something boys can’t make business model work. 20-something boys meet their first girl and pivot to … *drumroll* “A WOMENS ONLY CLUB FOR THE GIRLIES OF NEW YORK”.

It’s legitimately concerning how much this reads like satire.

While women have (rightly) been mocking the news online, the venture capital firm behind the company, Blackbird, has been notably quiet. We’ve all been waiting with bated breath to hear what they have to say. When it finally arrived, what we got was an apology for how the pivot was announced (which, while annoying, is not the actual problem), followed by paragraphs of defensiveness about how they’re actually doing a good job and why can’t we all just be grateful for that?

“Since Blackbird started deploying our 2022 core fund, we have invested in 22 companies, and 23% of these have at least one woman founder.”

Let’s leave aside the fact that they notably funded 11 male-led companies in a row, and instead calculate that 23% of 22 is five. Five companies that had at least one female founder. Of those five companies, the number with only female founders? Three. How many of the product offerings from these ventures are primarily aimed at women? None.

Because when all-women leadership teams pitch products for women, the data tells us: they don’t get funded. And that’s our real canary in the proverbial coalmine.

Half the population is just too niche

Blackbird – and other VC firms – crow about creating equality by having an equal number of women in high level roles, but at the end of the day every woman who has ever worked in any organisation knows that an equal number of women in particular roles means nothing if the company culture still has a single definition of value.

Every woman I know who has pitched a product predominantly aimed at women has heard from most VCs – if not all – that the product is ‘too niche.’ As though a total addressable market of 3.95 billion people is … small?

This is why women founders are infuriated by this story. It’s not even that a group of boys in their 20’s have the gall to start a “women’s only club”. It’s that if an all-women team stepped into the room with the same idea, the very people who funded Kiki would offer those women mentoring instead of money.

Blackbird went on to say:

“Our virtual mentoring program Giants coaches more than 400 founders every year, 55% of which are female. 50% of the startups in our deep tech focussed incubator program Foundry have a woman or non-binary founder. Our sister company Startmate runs the Womens Fellowship to help women career-pivoting into startups, which has directly resulted in 376 women getting a job in startups or VC or founding a company in the 3.5 years the program has been running.”

These kinds of programs are an easy out for organisations – they talk about them being ‘pathways’ – but the reality is over the last five years, VC funding for women-led companies worldwide has either gone backwards or is completely stagnant.

The percentage of VC funding for women worldwide:

• 2019: 2.8%
• 2020: 2.3%
• 2021: 2.4%
• 2022: 1.9%
• 2023: 2.8%

Net gain in 5 years: 0.0%

These programs aren’t pathways. They’re dead ends.

There is, of course, an easy answer to this problem. If you want more women to get funded, give them the money. It sounds so simple, because it is. And I’m also aware it won’t happen. This problem is endemic. Across the board, women are given platitudes instead of positions. Mentoring instead of money.

Men are allowed to fail, women aren’t

It ties back into a prevailing, perverse concept that the issue is simply women lack confidence. It has become a way to subtly build a narrative where the issue isn’t a lack of access to resources, but a lack of women’s willingness to ask. This narrative allows organisations to skip over taking any kind of meaningful action and instead of actually promoting or funding women, to pay (often male) motivational speakers to lecture us on how we can do better.

In rooms full of women founders, I’m hearing this consistently – women are looking to bootstrap. They’re trying to figure out how to grow without the system. As someone who did exactly that, I support it, but I also understand the limitations that come with bootstrapping. Business is a cash-hungry machine – growth is hindered when you’re limited to cashflow in order to feed it.

Add in the proposed changes around who qualifies as a sophisticated investor (the new rules would count out a large percentage of women who currently qualify, and currently women rely on other women for angel and seed investment) and we’re heading towards a catastrophic disaster. Not just for women leading startups. But for the business ecosystem and, by extension, society as a whole.

A couple of years ago I spoke with someone high up at an Australian VC firm who insinuated the reason women weren’t getting funded was that they weren’t applying.

While it’s impossible to know the exact numbers across the entire industry, estimates show us about 34% of pitches have a women-led team. If we adjust the 2.8% funding percentage to account for the application split, even at a 1:1 ratio women are literally half as likely to get funding. Those numbers took me about five minutes to do with Google and a calculator. Of course the industry is aware of them. Once again, it’s just more convenient to blame everything on women’s lack of confidence than to make any kind of real change.

VCs can gloat about how many women they employ but the real story is in the numbers, and the numbers don’t lie. The needle either isn’t moving or, when it does, it goes backwards.

The choice I’ve made, like the choice I see many other women founders moving towards, is to divest from a system that’s hostile towards me. I have a life rule about only staying in places where my presence is celebrated, not tolerated. And certainly not dismissed.

Bootstrapping is a part of this – and so is women coming together to support each other, whether that’s financially or with partnerships. I, for one, refuse to participate in a system that demands I beg men for a 2.8% chance to grow my business. Because raising money shouldn’t come at the price of your self-respect.

It certainly doesn’t for men.

This article was first published by Smart Company. Read the original article here.

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So, what do start-ups and SMEs need to succeed?

1. Passionate founders, who can articulate their vision and inspire potential new hires with the same zeal to bring the Grand Plan to life.

2. Brilliant (hopefully) concepts which set them apart from the ordinary in the market, and a belief that what you do is different to and better than anything else out there. Unfortunately, enthusiasm alone isn’t enough to build a successful empire.  

3. Backers who see the potential in your brilliant concepts and are prepared to risk their money on a venture that could be a spectacular success, or flaming failure. With luck, those backers may also provide the benefit of their experience, or you may find other mentors who’ll act as sounding boards as you feel your way forward.

4. A strong ethical framework. A start-up will face uncertainty, ambiguity and unforeseen challenges. To successfully navigate the unknown the founders will need to have solid, well examined ethical foundations so they can make the right decisions at the right time.  Times of crisis or high pressure are not the times to begin contemplating what you stand for and what you’ll allow. Gut feel will only get you so far.

The first three points are pretty self-evident. Number four might have been a surprise. In amongst the excitement and can-do atmosphere of small companies where everyone pitches in and does amazing things on the smell of an oily rag, taking the time to consider and articulate the values key to you and your organisation might seem redundant. Either they’re obvious to everyone slogging next to you, or they’re something which will evolve and become apparent as success brings more time for those kinds of conversations.

However, we know that doing the hard work at the start and really thinking through your values heads off a raft of problems down the track. For a start, defining your ethical framework is as much about what you won’t allow as much as it is about what you stand for. When you’re out there hustling to build your business, the temptation to say yes to every piece of work you’re offered is immense. How do you balance the need to turn a profit with the importance of working on projects which align with your values? How do you scale up without sacrificing integrity? Making an exception ‘just this once’ is a slippery slope.

As the brilliance of your concept is recognised and your endeavour expands, you’ll be bringing new people onboard – staff, board members and contractors. They may see the exceptions you’re making and internalise that thinking. A clear set of principles and guidelines will get everyone on the same page, particularly if the growth is sudden and doesn’t allow for the same time to be invested in each new hire. Some of the more spectacular recent corporate falls from grace have been the result of seemingly inconsequential and expedient decisions. Creating clarity around expectations and integrity can help make explicit what’s expected of everyone representing your business.

A clear ethical framework also helps customers and other external stakeholders understand your brand. It’s more than having a mission statement and a list of values. They’re easy to write, and to forget. An ethical framework means those words leave the page and become part of your business reality. They inform your decisions, provide the lens through which you make choices and bring your brand to life. Consistency inspires trust and confidence in your products’ consumers, and investors.

And when there are unexpected challenges, standing firmly upon a well-constructed ethical foundation gives you a strong position from which to respond. As the last 12 months have illustrated, sometimes important decisions need to be made with little warning or in fluid situations. The organisations that kept their values at the fore when making their decisions have fared well. Their examples will be remembered.

So, as you prepare to launch your start-up, or build a thriving SME, equip yourself in every way possible for success. And good luck!

The post Here’s why a strong ethical foundation can help your start-up succeed appeared first on Women's Agenda.

In the first episode of the new podcast She Did, You Can, hosts Jo Stanley and George McEncroe make a checklist, detailing exactly what makes a good business idea. They want you to stop wondering and start doing.

 “I’m hoping one day I’ll be a ‘She Did’ as well,” Jo says in the podcast, where she is sharing her experience of launching a new radio station for women, Broad Radio.

Women’s Agenda is proud to be co-producing the She Did, You Can podcast, offering key insights on how to get started and follow through on a business journey — with Jo, who is launching a startup, talking with George, who has already launched a startup with Shebah. Here are a few of the key things we pulled out of the latest ep.

The big idea that just won’t go away

Jo explains the idea for the radio station for women was one that just wouldn’t quit. She described it as a stone in her shoe, as something that’s been whirling around in her thoughts for a few years.

“I’m a lover of commercial radio in Australia, I grew up working on air,” she says. “It’s very male and once you hit 35, you kind of disappear as a woman and it makes me sad.”

“When content is driven through a male lens, which so much of radio is, in a lot of ways you’re presenting content in an apologetic way, so that you’re not upsetting people.”

For Jo, this was the beginning of her start-up journey and she knew the idea was good too, because quite a few people had told her at different times she should start her own station.

Does your idea fill a need?

George McEncroe is the founder of Shebah, Australia’s first female-only ride sharing company. Shebah began because George could see some gaping holes in the ride-sharing market, especially when it came to the needs of women.

“I’d registered twice to become an Uber driver. I felt very, very anxious about it and I was also the owner and operator of four children all under age 18. I couldn’t get them safely transported,” she explains.

“My sons didn’t really care about riding their bikes all the time, but my daughter was not doing that. She felt scared…she’d been yelled at out of cars since the time she was about 12. You know, the same old stuff that I’d gone through…truckloads of blokes driving past, tooting.”

“Only 6 per cent of our cab drivers are women, that’s telling us something. Then I saw only 10 per cent of Uber drivers are women.”

Is it a need that a lot of people have?

As George shares in the podcast, the idea has to fill a need that a lot of people have. A ‘niche’ idea probably won’t cut it.

“The number of people who say to me Shebah is a niche idea…” George says.

In reality, women aren’t niche – they make up 51 per cent of the population. And women have a right to feel safe and secure when they use ride-sharing services. George says she knew the need was real, and it went far and wide.

“You’ve got to feel it [the need] at a molecular, bone marrow level,” she explains.

Passion is important

“If you’re going to start something that’s never been done before…that’s going to take some grind,” George says, so it’s essential your passion for the idea is deep and unwavering.

While going through the process of launching her radio station, Jo says she’s discovered that her passion needs to big, because, as she puts it, there are some really boring days when you’re running a start-up.

“I have this visualisation that I have this energy orb in my hand, and there’s all these women waiting out there for this gift…and I’ve got to honour them,” she says.

And as George says, there’ll always be a reason not to do it. Sometimes, you’ve just got to take the leap.

“You’ve got to ask yourself: how am I going to feel if somebody else takes this and runs with it?” George says. “If that makes you want to vomit, you’ve got to go…”

“I want to cry and kick in a wall at the thought that someone else might do it,” Jo says. “Other people may do a version of it, but it won’t be mine.”

You can listen to She Did, You Can, wherever you get your podcasts.

The post Key tips on how to know if your business idea is a good one appeared first on Women's Agenda.

So why does this continue to be the case? Are too few women interested in the industry or are there just significant biases still prohibiting them from getting ahead?

According to a new white paper conducted by KPMG and Think & Grow, startup leaders are calling for better hiring processes, saying a persistent boys club holds the industry back and blocks women from getting a fair bite of the cherry.

Based on in-depth qualitative and quantitative research with over 26 experienced startup board members and founders in the UK, Australia, US and New Zealand, the white paper explored best practice across the recruitment industry in those nations.

Worryingly, it found that 65 percent of startup boards don’t appoint members via a formal process and instead source members through personal and professional networks, with limited use of professional recruiters.

Perhaps unsurprisingly then, 72 percent of all male-run start-ups had failed to appoint any women to their boards, while in Australia that number was slightly reduced with 62 percent of start-up boards sans women.

Most board members mentioned that suitable board members were typically sourced via the start-up Founder’s network (professional 58% and personal 27%).

Change appears far from afoot with 76 percent of start-ups failing to have any diversity targets or metrics in place.

“Although women-led businesses are one of the fastest growing segments of entrepreneurship, only 38% of startup boards in Australia have female members. This barely hits the diversity quota set by the Australian Institute of Directors in 2016,” says Amanda Price, Head of High Growth Ventures at KPMG Australia.

Price adds that as a result of “boys club” culture, women are missing out on board positions because they lack experience in VC roles which they aren’t being referred for.

“Research shows that women are not being referred to for board roles due to the lack of Women in VC (venture capital) and investment roles. This is something the VC’s are working hard to change and it highlights how vital this is to facilitate a thriving and diverse ecosystem.”

If this trend continues and start-ups fail to address this underrepresentation of women adequately, the tech industry runs the risk of “insularity” says Price.

“Diversity extends beyond skills and experience,” she says. “As globalisation and the shifting demographics of markets and the workforce make startups more dependent on diversity, a board built on homogeneous relationships has the inherent risk of insularity.”

“What we need to do to support Australian startups is to re-write the playbook – by providing a guide and insight into what best practice should look like. As well as identifying ways to increase diversity, and set benchmarks for governance that enable founders to perform at their best.”

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