The Tech Start-Up
Trying to get off the ground before the money runs out.
I hate to admit it, but the life of a female tech entrepreneur is different.
I’m tough, ambitious and at times ruthless in pursuing what I want. Leaning in has never been my problem. But I have learned that female technology founders have to survive in a world where virtually all investors, engineers and other entrepreneurs are male. I’m not suggesting that the challenges are the same for all women in tech. This is my story, and these are my perceptions.
A group of angel investors had invited me to speak at a fancy dinner in the city, and this was my first big opportunity to raise money. I was nervous. Having rehearsed my pitch for days, I arrived at the venue early and started up the stairs. A porter at reception shouted, “Come back!” This was a gentleman’s club, he explained, and I would not be able to use the stairs to reach the event. “Ladies,” he said, took the elevator.
As the guests began to arrive and the room began to fill, I looked around uneasily. Something odd was in the air, but what? Then I noticed. In a room of 60 investors, there were no other women. I’m not easily intimidated, but this threw me. Eventually, one female investor arrived. We made eye contact, and I felt a little better.
This happened three years ago when I started my technology company, Posse. Since then I have raised more than $4 million from more than 50 individual investors, all of them men, most of them in their 50s and 60s. I recently learned that only 3 percent of technology entrepreneurs and no more than 10 percent of venture capitalists are women. When I started Posse, I knew it would be tough, but I never appreciated the scale of operational differences experienced by women in a world almost entirely populated by men.
The relationship between young female entrepreneurs and older male investors is especially challenging and complex. I have chatted with other businesswomen over drinks, and we all whisper the same stories. We all have similar experiences but don’t express them aloud for fear of appearing ungrateful. My supporters have invested countless hours and their own personal money into me and my business, and without it, I would not have left the starting blocks. For that, I am extremely grateful, but I’m sharing my story now, because it would have helped me if I’d known the scope of the task at the outset. Here are some of the things I have learned.
Emotional Support Is Hard to Come By
None of my friends could relate to my challenges, so my first year as a tech founder was lonely. My investors became my mentors, my cheerleaders and my support group. Their advice was great, but the softer emotional support was missing; I was surrounded by helpful people yet felt alone. Male founders, I suspect, enjoy a different relationship with investors. Maybe they are invited to golf or to the pub. As a single woman in my 30s, I can’t call up an investor in his 50s and invite him out for a drink without raising some awkward questions. It’s never vocalized, but we’re all aware of the problem. That said, every relationship is different, and on several occasions I felt as though I struck gold when I developed close working relationships with male investors. So it can be done — I’m simply suggesting that these relationships can take time and be tricky to navigate.
Some Older Men Won’t Relate to a Younger Woman as a Peer
At first, the relationship dynamics with men confused me, so I discussed the issue with a mentor, a high-profile female chief executive of a software company. She offered some straight advice: “Most older men have two settings for younger women in business, wife and daughter, and they’ll box you into either of these roles.” This sounded bizarre, yet often when meeting older businessmen, I can decipher within 30 minutes which role I have been assigned.
At first, recognizing this helped me establish close relationships, yet it came with drawbacks. Emotions that help you bond can also explode, and fall-outs are more extreme than other business disagreements. Once, I had a director who had slotted me into the daughter role. He told me what to do, and I told him how helpful he was. This made him happy, and he spent a lot of time supporting the business.
But when he gave me advice that I didn’t agree with — and that I challenged — he exploded. He seemed to consider it a personal rejection. He tried to discredit me with shareholders and sack me as chief executive. Months later, he resigned from the board. Other directors said they didn’t understand his extreme reaction; they said he was stable and professional in other businesses, where he worked with male chief executives. Since this experience, if I notice someone is relating to me as a wife or daughter, I avoid doing business with him altogether. These relationships are just too risky.
I Don’t Always Get Straight Feedback
I suspect that people are nicer to me because I’m a woman. When my male friends who are founders describe their experiences with venture capitalists, clients or stakeholders, I’m often surprised to hear the frankness of the conversations. They will describe how an investor has said their pitch was the worst the investor had ever seen — or that there is no way their product will work. In three years, doing thousands of meetings, no one has ever spoken to me like that. It would be helpful to get straight feedback, even if it hurts.
I React to Stress Differently Than Men Do
I handle the emotional roller-coaster of running a tech company in different ways than my male counterparts. I push myself hard, because I’m responsible for other people’s money. In fact, early on, when I was finding my footing, I worked around the clock and made a few mistakes. For a while, I had an unfriendly board that hammered me close to the breaking point, and on one occasion, exhausted, I let a few tears trickle down my cheek. It was my natural way of releasing stress. I have seen men in this situation, and they get angry and fight back. It’s their natural reaction, but it wasn’t mine. My all-male board stared at me across the table, dumbstruck, wondering what to do. Tears don’t work in a business setting; I’ve learned to suppress my emotions.
It’s Easy to Find Yourself in Difficult Situations
I raised money by signing up individual investors and asking them to introduce me to their friends. I’ve pitched my business more than a thousand times and about 990 of them have been to men. In Silicon Valley, I’d take eight meetings each day before catching up with advisers for drinks and retiring to my hotel room alone. For weeks, the only women I encountered were the receptionists at the venture capital firms who handed me water bottles and helped me set up my computer before meetings. Angel investor pitches can be worse, especially when I would meet individuals I didn’t know at informal settings like coffee shops or bars.
Once, an investor to whom I had been referred asked to meet at his apartment. It was in a huge complex, and as I wandered through winding staircases to find his apartment, I began to feel uneasy. I arrived to meet a rotund man in his late 50s, puffing a pipe. He offered me a glass of wine as I pulled out my PowerPoint deck, ready to pitch. He plainly wasn’t interested in the business, but he asked me questions for two hours. I knew it was stupid for me to be there, but I was dedicated to my business, needed to raise money and didn’t want to pass up an opportunity. Several times since, I have met potential investors at their apartments. I don’t know if there was any real risk, but it felt uncomfortable. I went ahead anyway.
My Skills Aren’t Always Valued
As a woman, I think I bring different skills to a technology business. I’m more people-focused and instinctual. I talk to customers, using this information to decide what they value about our product and what needs to be changed. Most members of our team are software engineers. They’re all male, and I’ve discovered that I think differently, reaching decisions along a different path than they do. Specifically, I have difficulty convincing engineers that my research is valid. They want numbers. I’ve come to believe that great start-ups are a combination of customer-based intuitive vision and the application of metrics to engineer a good user experience. I’ve learned that, to win over engineers, I must back up my assumptions with data. It’s a powerful discipline, for in combining the strength of both approaches we design better products.
I’m sure there are advantages to being a female entrepreneur. I raised $300,000 that night at the gentleman’s club, and I went on to raise another $1 million or so from the contacts of the people I met there. Being a woman might have helped. It certainly made me stand out. And again, I’m grateful to the wonderful men who have supported me in my journey the last three years.
My advice to a young female founder starting out today would be to develop a support group of other founders whom you trust and to whom you can turn for advice. Avoid doing business with men who relate to you as a wife or a daughter — no matter what you think they can bring to the table. And keep looking for gold — those men who give direct feedback and consider you a peer. It’s amazing how a few people like this can make a huge difference.
But recognize that there will be times when you are stressed and emotional, when you will find yourself in weird and uncomfortable situations. It’s all part of the journey for members of the 3 percent.
Rebekah Campbell is chief executive of Posse. You can follow her on Twitter.