BREAKING THROUGH

usiness lifecycle. There’s a popular monthly “Meetup”
group called Atlanta Female Founders Club where
women can network and share stories. Georgia Tech
runs mentorship and incubator programs for female
business owners (some government-funded) that give
participants the chance to pitch their products or services
to big Atlanta-based corporations, like Delta. A
new venture capital firm, Valor Ventures, is targeting
investments in “gender diverse founding teams.” A
lending and training institution called ACE (Access to
Capital for Entrepreneurs) provides funds to qualifying
early-stage founders, especially minority and low-tomoderate
income women. The list goes on. An active
local Women in Technology (WIT) chapter advertises
its full slate of networking and educational programs
with the catch phrase: “The fast track in Georgia just
got more interesting.”
One of Atlanta’s most successful new fast-trackers
is Lucienne Ide, founder and CEO of a digital heath company
called Rimidi, which develops software products
to help patients manage chronic illnesses like diabetes.
Ide says she drew upon many of Atlanta’s educational
and entrepreneurial networks to help get her business
going. “I earned my M.D. and Ph.D. at Emory and in the
early stages of our company, I went back to my mentors
there who had experience starting companies to commercialize
scientific research,” says Ide. “I’ve also had a
tremendous mentor at Georgia Tech who is an expert
in health IT and the evolving models of healthcare delivery.
Having people like this who believe in our vision
is key to getting through the ups and downs of the
startup life.”
While women entrepreneurs in Atlanta are undoubtedly
making strides, Atlanta faces challenges
similar to other cities when it comes to scaling its
women-owned businesses. According to our analysis of
data from the U.S. Census, the average women-owned
business in Atlanta had revenues of $135,772, which is
15th among the 25 largest U.S. cities and just a fraction
of the revenues earned by male-owned businesses in
the city ($635,000). Moreover, just 2,886 of the 28,172
women-owned businesses in the city—or just 9.8 percent—had
one or more employees.
Ide says one of the “downs” for female founders in
Atlanta is the perpetual struggle for significant financial
backing. “Funding is always a top issue that needs
to be addressed. There is obviously a gender gap in
the investment community…female entrepreneurs are
showing up to the pitch events but the room is always
full of men,” says Ide.
Theia Washington of the Women’s Entrepreneurship
Initiative agrees. “There’s a challenge around investment
for minority women in particular,” she says,
“and it’s a challenge for women who fall outside of that
high-tech space to still be recognized and validated as
a business that’s worthy of investment. We have work
to do.”
Still, some successful female business owners think
that compared to other U.S. cities, Atlanta’s accessto-capital
scene is more navigable. Anisa Telwar is the
founder of a bourgeoning Atlanta-based beauty products
company called Anisa International. She has been
at it for 23 years now, but she remembers how hard it
was to get funding when she first began landing deals
to supply makeup brushes to major cosmetic industry
clients like Revlon, Loreal, and Esteé Lauder. With giant
orders to fill, Telwar needed more capital and fast.
“I walked into a big New York City bank and they
looked at me like I was crazy, but I had banks here in
Atlanta saying it was no problem,” says Telwar. One
local banker in particular, Ling Chiang of Summit National,
was able to secure Telwar her first $50,000 line
of credit. “It was a gold mine to me at the time,” she
says. “And he was super-supportive of me. He asked the
right questions, he referred me to an affordable accountant
to get all my financials cleaned up. And he was able
to keep extending us as the business grew. I don’t think
I would have been given the same opportunity if I was
in New York.”
Today, Telwar’s business is shipping 25 million
brushes a year and employs more than 600 employees
globally, with a manufacturing plant in Tianjin, China,
and a showroom in New York. But Telwar keeps her
headquarters anchored in Atlanta. “Every city has its
problems and challenges, and we still have a lot of work
to do to open more doors for women, but I’ve been able
to grow with the city. So much is changing here and I’m
proud of that.”
Breaking Through 49