Women entrepreneurs are "it"
Although women are starting businesses at twice the rate of the national average, the reality is that companies with women CEOs only attracted a paltry 2.9% of available venture funding last year, according to VentureOne, a subsidiary of Dow Jones, down from 4.52% in 2006. In fact, this percentage has dropped nearly every year from a high-point of 7.55% in 2002. To get behind why women-owned businesses have received so little venture funding, we talked to Sharon Vosmek, CEO of Astia (www.astia.org), a non-profit organization dedicated to assisting women-led companies with access to equity funding, achieving and maintaining high growth, and leadership mentoring. To be fundable, a business must show a significant growth opportunity – and here’s where Vosmek says women literally fall short, as they tend to be much more conservative on their estimates of market opportunity than their male counterparts. Learn why.
