When Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg visited in April, a dialogue began brewing within Boston’s business community. A report released Wednesday by the New England Venture Capital Association reveals now is the time to turn that conversation into action, however, with 70 percent of local entrepreneurs saying the city’s startup community is either sometimes or not at all inclusive to female entrepreneurs.
NEVCA surveyed 100 Boston-area entrepreneurs to decipher the inclusiveness of the city’s startup community toward women, as well as discover how many women currently hold leadership positions.
Although there is a growing list of venture capital- or angel-backed companies spearheaded by women, the survey found more needs to be done in terms of providing females access to funding.
Only eight percent of female entrepreneurs claimed being a woman had a positive impact on their fundraising, while another 64 percent described the city’s startup community as “sometimes inclusive” to female entrepreneurs. Although 30 percent did peg the community as welcoming, the statistics are still eye-opening.
“Our motivation in collecting this information is to acknowledge what we all know to be true: women founders and leaders in startups are too few and we’d like to see more of them,” said NEVCA Executive Director C.A. Webb in an email to BostInno, admitting she wasn’t surprised by the findings. “We can’t solve the problem just by naming it, but it’s an important step.”
Moving forward, NEVCA has vowed to both track the number of local female entrepreneurs receiving venture financing and continue the conversation about how to attract and retain more women in tech.
Thirty-three percent of survey respondents reported there is no female representation on their management team, while 37 percent laid claim to at least one.
In a release, Izhar Armony of Charles River Ventures pointed to the success of three female entrepreneurs the firm has backed: Paula Long of EqualLogic and DataGravity; Tushara Canekeratne of Virtusa; and Maria Cirino of Guardent. The trio has collectively created more than 7,000 jobs and over $2 billion in shareholders’ value.
“We would love to see more of those startups led by women,” Armony said.
NEVCA President Steve Kraus, a partner at Bessemer Venture Partners, echoed Armony’s statement, saying:
We want women who are coming up through the ranks of some of Boston’s fastest growing venture-backed companies to, like many of the men they work with, leave those companies eventually and start their own. And we want women founders to move to Boston to start their companies because they know this is the best place in the world to be a woman running a startup.
During NEVCA’s April “Lean In” breakfast, Brent Grinna, founder and CEO of Evertrue, did ask Sandberg for advice on how to achieve better gender balance at early- or seed-stage startups. She responded by acknowledging startups might need to look harder for candidates, since women tend to be more risk averse than men, but that the key is “being explicit that you are for women” and that you want to make your company "a family-friendly place."
Companies can start making small changes now. When asked what we, as a community can do, Webb responded:
So many things. We can build the pipeline by encouraging more men and women with technical skills to share them with girls through coding camps, and math and science tutoring in local schools. Others of us can lobby for computer science education throughout public schools. We can reap the talent of great young women coming out of undergraduate and graduate programs by actively recruiting them into accelerator programs and tech companies. And we can all increase our self awareness in recruiting, hiring and professional development so we make sure that both men and women succeed inside the companies we're building. I highly recommend reading Sheryl Sandberg's book, "Lean In" as one helpful step. Men and women can both learn from the highly practical tips she shares about helping women advance inside companies.
As Sandberg said in April: “We can do this. We can do this if we lean in together.”
Related:
