Inspiring Female Entrepreneur - Karen Darby

I've just discovered this wonderful entrepreneur from the UK called, Karen Darby. Here's a woman says she felt she knew she wanted to run her own business from around the age of 8. She took on lots of jobs as a youngster, and lied about her age to get a job at a laundromat. She set up her own telemarketing company at the age of 22, and after 7 years had 200 employees and was making 4 million pounds. In the 90's she had two kids and started to work for herself again, training up customer call centers. In 2003 she set up a new business called, 'simplyswitch'. She was thoroughly passionate about the business as it was responsible for helping people get a good deal on switching between services (phone, energy, etc). She loved the business, and finally decided the time to sell the company in 2006 for 22 million pounds (approx $44M). Below is her list of top tips for success, and here's a link to a terrific interview with her - full of much sound advice and wonderful insight on the why behind her decisions.

Here's her tip list to succeed as an entrepreneur.

Do what you love
Create a white hot burning desire
Create leverage – commit to doing something with determination
Maintain a laser beam focus on your business idea
Use someone else’s money – seek funding opportunities
Be a rhino – learn how to handle rejection
Employ smart people + network like crazy – surround yourself with a strong team
Be enthusiastic
Live the brand – you are the best possible PR for your company
Give yourself a check up form the neck up on a regular basis
Hypnotize yourself – tell yourself you’re wonderful and your ideas are
wonderful
Know when not to listen – especially to negative comments
Double your failure rate
And remember most of all - timing is everything.

Wait a Minute - Where are the Women Going?

After growing in number for a few years the number of female CEOs in the Bay Area is declining. Why is this?

Fewer women received venture capital funding in 2007, and there are fewer women in CEO positions, only 13 in the bay areas largest 400 companies/Fortune 500 companies. The article published in the San Francisco Business Times, by Lindsay Riddell. They quote Wendy Beecham as saying more women are opting out than there were 10 years ago. They also quote that percentage of female CEOs receiving venture capitalist funding was at 3% for 2007. Why don't more women receive funding?

Two issues come up - first, when asking venture capitalists who do they lend money too - they say people they know - because women have smaller networks that automatically reduces the number of women who are going to get an opportunity to get funding. A second issue is also how big a game you talk. Women are more likely to be conservative with their success estimates, thus putting them in a less strong position when negotiating and trying to win funding.

So the numbers for 2007 map to a story we have heard before: we need to get out and network with all that will be useful to us, not just women, AND next time up our success capability.

Yes, Yes - More Thoughtful Efforts on Technologies for Women!

It was fun to read the blog posting yesterday, 'No Pink Phones - A New Twist on Technology for Women'. I have tried to keep my blog postings also free of pink-ness where possible, because making a current technology pink doesn't mean to say it's addressing the womens market.

I credit Dr. Ying Chen for setting up La-Yin with putting her action where her heart is and setting up her own business to, 'create experiences for modern women by fusing High-Tech together with fashion and style'. The products from La-Yin currently includes different styles of USB keys, laptop covers, mobile straps.

It would be wondeful to see some of this exterior technology style influence the technology itself. What are womens needs of the items that we are attracted to dress up. For instance consider the Amazon Kindle (reader), imagine if that was designed for a female audience how might it differ in design? are there any distinct features or aesthetics that should be considered differently to accomodate needs? I haven't yet had an opportunity to use one, however what I'd like to see again is if the product team was predominantly female in the first place and considering a predominantly female market how may the product have emerged differently. Today its often consideration after the fact. Take a look at the Kindle and see how you might design it differently.

Getting Above the Glass Ceiling Before It Forms

Blogher.com has just hosted it's conference. Sounds like it was a wonderful event. The one fact that I picked up from the NYT article was that among internet users 14% of men blog, and 11% of women, however when it comes to top bloggers it is rare to find women's names in the list.

Who sets the rules for which candidates are selected for top listings? We need more influence in these lists, but again its legacy of a old system to judge new contributions. I use google alerts to help me keep up with topics to post on this blog. I love receiving custom news snippets about things I care about, I can never tell if I'm not paying attention to enough main stream news/technology media, or whether I don't find it appealing because of bias in the content (not the reporting but the styles don't resonate with my needs). There is more data today about our buying purchase power, our income, and our capability to set up businesses. I would love to see as new avenues for communication become available or new topics get hot women are able to play stronger roles in the first rounds, so as to not leave us on the outside trying to get in after the fact. Any ideas how we can do this?

Yahoo! Award Women with Dollars to Start Businesses

Another step in the direction of increasing the number of women being given encouragement and cash to follow their dreams, and mine too in that it will lead to more great quick moments. Yahoo! received over 5,000 applications for their entrepreneurial competition to win a $20K cash grant, and $5K web site start. They announced the winners a few days ago. Many of the ideas submitted focused on "creative solutions to real life issues and interests such as the environment, needs of children with disabilities, and lifestyle pursuits such as home decorating". They now how 6 months to pursue their business and a chance to win an additional $10K grant. Their progress can be viewed at this site: http://seedsforsuccess.smallbusiness.yahoo.com/ It also includes notes from their mentors as well. I so wish I had more time in my life to keep up - I need to be able to read by running my finger over text when my eyes are shut (anyone patented that technology yet?)

Sites for Women over 40 - My point exactly!

See, see, the momentum is building and women are doing it for themselves! A new website for women over 40 because the founders (including the famous: Whoopi Goldberg, Peggy Noonan, Lily Tomlin and Candace Bergen, and the financial backers: ) didn't think the web was designed for people like them. The site is called WoWoW .

I have visited the site a couple of times and as yet haven't been wooed into WoWoW. The site is pretty sparse of real content as it appears to be dependent upon questions being posted by the site and is then riding on comments from viewers, and an editorial style comment on the comments. Also the design of the site seems to be lacking (see attached graphic)- it seems a mash of styles with whitespace and times-roman font - however that could be me having a browser problem. Must make a note to check it out in a different browser.

I think the founders are correctly identifying a niche that needs a substantial filling but I'm not convinced that this site is the site that's going to do it. The backers have put in $1M, and they have some ad-support from Citi and Tiffany, but not sure that will do it, according to a blog post.

Take a look at WoWoW and tell me what you think of the site? Future hit site or flop?

Pitch like a Women at Women 2.0 Open Mic Session

When I started this blog I wanted to call it Web 2.0 for Woman 4.0, as I head towards that age this year I really feel that there is this tremendous opportunity for more businesses to adeptly position more technology at this band of life and be successful. At the same time I realize that technologies are being developed predominantly by guys and they might not be of the right mind set to get creative in the this lucrative space for Women 4.0 (plus or minus).

I am excited to see groups like Women 2.0 get established to support women in the development of ideas and the nuturing of startups. To quote the quote on their site, “every day, 420 women go out and start their own businesses — twice the rate at which men do so. And these businesses are growing revenue, profits and jobs faster than business as a whole.” — Margaret Heffernan, Forbes.com." - there is tremendous innovation going on by women, and why shouldn't more of it be in the technology sector? I've watched panels on blogs such as Y-pulse that highlight CEOs who are barely out of school (both male and female), the cost of initial entry into a web-based business is so low that fledgling sites can exist and refine themselves before the big costs hit. More women need to embrace the lower cost of entry and give it a try.

Women 2.0 has Pitch 2008 coming up. This is an opportunity to network and get feedback on your napkin ideas - what are you waiting for? Take a moment to submit your idea, and make it more than a mental moment, what's the worst that can happen?