In a world where I am constantly fighting against gender difference, vehemently arguing much of what is perceived as differences is very much a nurture issue – I shall now proceed to write a blog on gender differences in start ups – although, as ever, nothing is black and white.
In the US and Europe, male-owned start ups are generalised as young pups, straight out of college with relatively few connections and money to investment in the business. Female owners tend to be significantly older (40-60) and have their own capital to invest. Immediately, this puts us on a different footing. According to a study from two MBA researchers from Carnegie Mellon, who issued a report, titled High Performance Entrepreneurs: Women in High-Tech, “women-led high-tech start-ups generate higher revenues per dollar of invested capital and have lower failure rates than those led by men.” Heavy self-investment, both financial and personal, seems to be a key driver of how successful a business can be, with a lack of personal investment perceived to be a factor in start-up failure.
So maybe this is less about gender differences per se and more about the age you are when you first start. However, clearly gender plays an impact in this decision – why do women start-up later? Is it because there are less opportunities and options for financing available to us so we have to be in a position to self invest initially? Is it because we have less confidence than our male counterparts in our 20s- this coming to us later in life? Is it because, as a gender, we are more risk averse? But then is that is the case, why are more women than ever entering the start up fray.
From a personal point of view it was about confidence and the idea. The idea came before the confidence – I knew I wanted to support economic empowerment of women, I knew it needed to be scalable and not geographically limited but I didn’t yet know what and how. It took me many years of working both in the not for profit and for profit world to distill this down and as a final step – before standing on my own – I spent 2 years working as an Operations Director of a start up to give me the final bit of confidence to go it alone.
For me, age and experience brought me the confidence to do this and the fact I had invested myself made me feel more honest in approaching my investors. It enabled me to show them the first stages of what we are to become, it was a concrete, workable idea and I don’t know if this is something I could have had the confidence to sell if it was just a concept. So am I female? Yes; have I just turned 40? Yes. So if those are both true, let’s hope the MBA researchers prediction plays out for high revenues and success rate!
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