Women Founders: Step Up, Speak out, Lean In

I spent last weekend in Guayaquil, Ecuador, attending the first-ever Start up Weekend Women’s Edition in South America. I attended my first Start up Weekend Women’s Edition more than a year ago in San Francisco. Observing attendees at these women-focused events in two different parts of the world taught me that gender-specific entrepreneurship support is a global need.

In case you aren’t familiar, Start up Weekend is a program of Up Global that starts on a Friday night with about 100 people in a room, about half of whom pitch a business idea over the course of a 54-hour weekend in cities all over the world. A team of volunteers, mentors and judges assists the teams in developing their business plans, building minimum viable products and perfecting their pitches so that a winning company can be selected by Sunday.

Although the Ecuador event was supposed to be a “Women’s Edition,” females accounted for about half of the attendees, whereas women at the San Francisco event made up about 90 percent. As the pitches in Ecuador began Friday evening, I was more than a little dismayed that the first pitch was by a man. By pitch three, I was squirming in my seat, and after pitch five, I couldn’t help but jog up to the front of the room, grab the microphone and state, rather emotionally, “This is a women’s edition, and I want to see women pitching!” In my head I was screaming, “Step up, lean in, speak out.” I asked the women in the audience who wanted to pitch and many raised their hands, so I encouraged them to do so and said I wanted to see at least one woman pitch for every man who was pitching.

You might think this reticence for women to step up at a relatively co-ed entrepreneurship event might be expected in this part of the world. Yet, in a survey at San Francisco’s event, one-third said the fact that the weekend was focused on women was the main reason they were there. Another third said it was an important reason for being there. This, in a country where women’s entrepreneurship is much further along than most of the rest of the world, and in San Francisco, a pretty progressive city. So, I guess it shouldn’t have surprised me that women weren’t jumping up and pushing to the front of the line to pitch their ideas.

In fact, I should fess up about my own reservations to speak out, short-lived as it was. When I was listening to the pitches in Ecuador, getting more worked up by the minute as the men were pitching, I decided to say something. I asked Raul Morena, founder of ibillionaire and another judge for the event, to come up with me and translate. While my Spanish is fine, it is limited enough that I was worried I couldn’t clearly articulate what I wanted to say. I wasn’t confident in my own abilities to get my point across. Well, needless to say, as I started speaking in English, my emotions got the better of me and I switched into Spanish before my translator could speak, so he just quietly handed me the microphone with a smile and let me continue.

As I reflect on my own moment of stepping back, I was reminded of something that Maria Cirino of .406 Ventures, a venture capital firm, said when I was interviewing her for my next book on entrepreneurial finance. She said, “We need to see that naturally [women] lean back, and we need to proactively change that if we want to get places.” I saw this in women throughout the weekend, including in myself. Women need to be consciously aware of their tendency to hold back while it is happening so that we can change this. When we lean back, we are holding ourselves back. We need to address both the reluctance of individual women as well as the more systemic societal forces that constrain our progress.

I’m happy to say that by the end of that Friday night in Ecuador, 19 of the 42 pitches were from women and about half of the 16 that were selected as finalists were women. One of the finalists pitched at the very end after being strongly encouraged by one of the female mentors.

It was interesting to watch the dynamics after the pitches in Ecuador. The finalists had an opportunity to lobby for team members. The women were markedly more reserved, while the men were literally up on chairs yelling out their needs and recruiting teammates. The need for women to be more assertive was painfully poignant that evening.

I’m a big supporter of events and activities that focus on women because, while the reality is that not every woman needs gender-specific events like this (perhaps even the minority), there are a lot women out there with huge potential who are going to feel more comfortable stepping up and gaining experience in a setting where they aren’t the only woman in the room. So organizations, activities and programs that focus on women are going to be extremely beneficial for these women. (See for example: MergeLane, Springboard, Astia, #40forward).

Back to Guayaquil, the 16 teams worked with mentors all day Saturday and most of Sunday. Sunday evening, which happened to be International Women’s Day, final pitches began in front of a row of judges, including me. The companies were mostly tech and apps (remember, they only had 54 hours to build a minimum viable product), but they varied in terms of market and industry. For example, the start ups ranged from a personal chef app (Help Me Cook) that allows you to reserve a chef to come to your home and cook a meal for you and your guests, to a sports/athletic app (TOA) that allows you to find cycling clubs, Cross Fit gyms and safe running routes and to buy running shorts. Another company that ranked near the top was called Bella, which has an app and website that allowed you to find someone near to give you a massage, cut your hair or do your nails. In the end, the winner was AmaSuana, which provides a type of panic button app that will instantly notify your emergency contact and the local law enforcement of your location if you are under distress.

Obviously, the businesses still need a ton of work, but I was really impressed with what the top teams were able to build over the weekend. In fact, I plan to follow up with them and help them pitch to accelerators like TechStars (U.S.), NxtpLabs (Argentina), Start up Chile (Chile) and MergeLane (U.S.).

I returned to the United States energized to help the Kauffman Foundation, where I am a senior fellow, support and collaborate with organizations that work in Latin America to further develop support for young startups, such as accelerators, mentoring, co-working space and financial capital. The startup ecosystem is not as well developed in Ecuador as it is in countries like Colombia and Chile, but after seeing the talent and energy of these budding young entrepreneurs, I think that situation will soon change. Medellin, Colombia is hosting the Global Entrepreneurship Congress next year, and I expect to see a lot of young entrepreneurs participating from Latin America.

Tomorrow I am leaving for Milan, Italy, the host of the Global Entrepreneurship Congress in 2015. Wednesday, I am moderating a panel called Moving the Needle On High Growth Women’s Entrepreneurship. I plan to highlight the activities of groups like Up Global and MergeLane, as well as provide tangible ideas for any country looking to build their base of high-growth women entrepreneurs.