Ladies, bring us your business plans
Venture capitalist Bruce Macfarlane says women are a better risk than men, yet they rarely ask him to back them
One of our portfolio companies is taking advantage of this gender difference to build its business. It is acquiring local GP surgeries and consolidating them into a business that takes care of all the red tape and frees the doctors to focus full-time on practising medicine. One important driver for this business is that the generation of doctors who started out in the 1960s and are now retiring can no longer expect to pass over the practice to a junior who will devote the next 30 years to continuing to build and nurture it. That junior is now most likely to be a woman — and female GPs, by and large, are seeking flexibility in their careers. Thus the company can acquire surgeries from retiring GPs and use flexible working practices to create greater efficiency in operating the combined practices. The chief operating officer of the company is a woman, as it happens.
The paucity of women in venture capital extends to the providers as well as the recipients. There are few women business angels: senior figures such as Anne Glover, managing partner of Amadeus Capital Partners and former chairman of the British Venture Capital Association, are very rare. It is really too bad because many of the qualities necessary for success in high-risk, early-stage investing are the very things women tend to be so good at — mentoring, collaboration and patience — and all of these will be in even greater demand as the economy falters. On the other hand, women wouldn’t have backed all those overpromising, underperforming men in the first place. And then where would the venture capital industry be?
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Sharon Vosmek, CEO, Astia
June 16th, 2008 9:54amThis is a well thought out piece that clearly reflects upon the core issue entrepreneur programs should be prepared to address if they would like to see more women participate. Risk for women is best mitigated by information and understanding. If VCs and Business Angels spend time exposing the opportunity and process of raising capital in a clear and thoughtful way, they will see more women participate. Women like to know how things work and can potentially play-out before opting in themselves. I work for a Silicon Valley-based, entrepreneur-focused organization that just does this for women-led, high-growth start-ups - quite successfully with a greater than 60% funding success rate for the companies we serve. We are just launching our UK program this fall. I do hope the UK investment community will be ready to participate in the process of pulling back the curtain and showing how things work here.
To read more and to find out how to contact us: http://www.astia.org/