BREAKING THROUGH

seasoned entrepreneurs. And for many, the experience
is game changing.
However, it can be difficult to find information
about and gain access to available programs, especially
for low income and immigrant women. Many women
simply do not know about such programs, least of all
when they were thinking of or actually starting their
businesses.
“If you ask women do they know where you can
get free help for their business, a surprising number
say they don’t,” says former SBA Administrator Karen
Mills. “When they get free advice and counseling, they
have success.”
Women have to work harder to be taken seriously
In almost any industry, women have to overcome
gender stereotypes that discount their talent and commitment.
Despite the fact that women get nearly 60
percent of bachelor’s degrees, 59 percent of MAs and
52 percent of Ph.D.’s—all of which require discipline
and stamina —they still have to fight the perception
that female founders are less capable and less committed
than their male counterparts.
Those perceptions can negatively affect a woman
entrepreneur whether she is raising money, pitching
clients or hiring engineers. Even people with good intentions
ask women questions they would never think
or dare ask a man. One typical query from investors is
whether a female founder has or is planning to have
children, as a way of assessing her commitment to the
business. Venture capitalists say it’s a legitimate question
since their investment could be at risk if a founder
leaves the company or is out on leave for a lengthy period.
But last year, when an investor asked Food to Eat’s
Kapur that question, even though she wasn’t asking
him for money, she told him she already had a baby,
named Food to Eat.
And while the tech community lionizes 20-something
men in hoodies, for women, youth and gender can
be a double negative. Hodak and Kaupe, whose company
ZinePak counts Walmart and American Express
as clients, encounter skeptics at least once a week. A
senior executive of a major corporation, for example,
told them that he was sure one of their fathers was a
Walmart executive since he didn’t believe they could
have landed the retail giant as a client on their own. In
fact, Walmart was Hodak’s client when she worked for
an advertising agency and the company later became
ZinePak’s first customer.
“Five years into running this business and we still
have to put up with that,” says Hodak of ZinePak.
Even in parts of the real estate business—an industry
in which women head every major residential brokerage
firm in the city—it’s not easy. When Abby Hamlin
was president of real estate developer Swig, Weiler
& Arnow, she became used to other developers, brokers
and tenants calling the company’s owners behind her
back to try to renegotiate the terms of deals. They can’t
do that anymore, now that she is the founder and CEO
of her own successful development company, Hamlin
Ventures. Still, she often faces incredulity when she
says she is a developer.
Rather than take offense, though, Ms. Hamlin says
she smiles, “knowing inside that I have overcome enormous
hurdles to get where I am and feel accomplished
for having done so.”
Most women say they learn to ignore the slights,
the come-ons and the lowered expectations.
“A woman has to be on point and let it roll off her
back,” says Kate Rochlin, co-founder of Immunovent, a
biotech company.
As much as women have to fight for money and
respect, they also fight internal battles with themselves
If women entrepreneurs have to fight for money
and credibility in ways that male founders don’t, they
also often have to battle internal demons, chiefly a lack
of confidence and a smaller appetite for risk. Numerous
reports credit women with less confidence—or at least,
less outward confidence—than men. Many sources interviewed
by CUF, both men and women, confirmed
that view.
Some of that reluctance, say advisors, is women’s
acute sense of personal responsibility for the performance
of their product or service.
“Men walk in to pitch, saying they will have $20
million in revenue in three years and they don’t even
have a prototype,” says Janis Collins, co-founder of
Breaking Through 35