Investors
Linda
Bernardi, author of ‘Provoke: Why the Global Culture of Disruption is the Only
Hope for Innovation’, is
undoubtably one the most personable provocateurs I’ve ever had the pleasure of
speaking with. The fact that she is as inspiring as she is interesting is
a bonus. Once I read her insightful and thought provoking book, published
in November of 2011, I knew I wanted her to launch the 2012 Season of the
Innovation Interview Series.
Linda wears an wide variety of hats, she is: CEO of StraTerra Partners, a technology strategy consulting company focussed on new tech adoption; an an early-stage technology Angel Investor in the US, Europe and India; and a board member for several commercial and not-for-profit organizations. Her work with the Bernardi Leadership Institute sees her training in large enterprises and academia as well as engaging entrepreneurs internationally in Innovation Based Leadership™. If that weren’t enough, ConnecTerra, the company she founded in 2001, provides RFID tech to large enterprise IT. All of this underlines that Linda knows what she’s talking about when it comes to ‘Capital I’ Innovation – and yet, as engaging as all of that is, none of it is why I was so determined to interview her for this series.
Kay
Koplovitz is a cable television visionary and
was the first woman to head a television network
when she founded USA Networks under the banner of Madison
Square Garden Sports in 1977. She led USA Networks to first place in cable primetime ratings and it remained there for 14 years. In 1992, she launched the Sci-Fi Channel which has become a top ten rated cable network known for innovative drama and mini-series. In 1994, she launched USA Networks International
into 60 countries worldwide.
In 1998, President Clinton appointed Kay to chair the bipartisan National Women’s Business Council. She used this platform to launch Springboard Enterprises, in a move to get women to “think big” about their growth companies and to raise venture capital to fund them. Springboard, her shared vision, has screened over 4000 companies and presented 360 of them since its first forum in 2000. These companies have raised over $4 billion in capital and are returning positive results to investors at record rates.
The
Startup Genome is looking for a critical mass of women to participate in the
Startup Genome Project in order to aid their discovery of the DNA of women- led
startups. By joining the project, you will be adding the dimension of
quantitative data to their quest.
The Startup Genome has already learned that approximately 70% of the startups in their dataset scaled prematurely. I am very interested to see if the same pattern holds for women, because through the interviews I have conducted over the last year, the consensus has been that women tend to be perfectionistic, moving slower but more surely than their male counterparts. Is it possible that the more careful nature of women may cause them to fail less?
We have a huge problem folks… We simply don’t have enough women
investors in hi-tech and startups as a whole around the globe. Why not?
Let me start off by saying that ‘women’ are the larger demographic ‘purchasers’ globally. Women are constantly making purchase decisions and very involved in making global ‘buy’ decisions.
I was recently quite taken with the statistic that the largest percentage of the wealthiest (self made) women in the world are in China, in real estate.
Women are highly educated, earn significant incomes and have access to wealth.
So, the question is why do women shy away from investing in startups globally?
In 1996 Jacki Zehner was the youngest woman, and
the first female trader, to be made partner at Goldman Sachs. After leaving the
firm in 2002, Jacki became a founding partner of Circle Financial Group, a
private wealth management operation, consisting of a small group of women
committed to effectively managing their families’ assets and philanthropic
activities.
Throughout her life, Jacki’s main focus has been the social and economic empowerment of women: she’s a philanthropist, serving as co-chair of Women Moving Millions, vice-chair of Women’s Funding Network, and she is the president of the Jacquelyn and Gregory Zehner Foundation. Jacki also serves as advisor for various other organizations, working to advance gender equality for women and girls. Here is her story.
It must be great, you just started your business, and the investors are fighting for a piece of the cake. A couple of examples of young companies that raised finance recently:
ZAARLY
The NextWomen are running a Pitch Evening with Investors on November 29th in Amsterdam. The event, done in cooperation with Astia and sponsored by Microsoft Biz Spark,
aims to support women-led businesses prepare and practice their
investment pitches with a real panel of investors, while running initial
screening of high growth entrepreneurs for the Astia & Microsoft Bizspark.
I interviewed Jason Mendelson, Partner 
Milena Cvijanovich started her own architecture practice 18 years ago and has since re-invested profits in various projects and businesses, becoming a very successful investor as well as entrepreneur. Female Hero Milena is on the lookout for the right team member to join her latest company, fair-trade luxury marketplace Ethnosphere.
Here's what Milena had to say when we met her:
Hervé Lebret manages the Innogrants @ EPFL (the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne), a program supporting startup creation. The program includes grants to entrepreneurs and conferences where role models share their entrepreneurial experience with students and researchers. From 1997 to 2004, he was with Index Ventures, the pan-European venture capital firm which invested in Skype, mysql, Virata, Addex, Genmab. He began his career in academia in electrical engineering and applied mathematics at ENSTA and ONERA (Paris). He is also the author of the book Start-Up, What We May Still Learn From Silicon Valley. Hervé Lebret is a graduate of Ecole Polytechnique (Paris) and Stanford University. He holds a PhD in Electrical Engineering from Université de Rennes. You can find Herve @ his blog & on Twitter: @hlebret
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