Women receive just 2.5 percent of venture capital (VC) funding— and of those, about 0.2 percent are women of color. Women simply don’t have access to the capital that men do.
I recently spoke on a panel of women investors to a packed room of both women and men eager to talk about how to get to gender parity in business. As we talked about market trends we’d been seeing, I mentioned one that seems at odds with the stats just mentioned: Black women and Latinx are starting companies at a faster rate than anyone else in this country. In fact, 78 percent of new women-owned firms are started by women of color. When we got to the Q& A period, a wise woman in the front row directed a question to one of my co‑panelists, a woman who runs a fund that invests in early-stage, women-led businesses, largely in tech.
“You said today that you’ve invested in more than sixty companies,” she said. “Nathalie was talking about how women of color are starting companies more than anyone else in this country. How many of your sixty- plus companies are led by women of color?”
If you identify with what I’ve written so far, I doubt you’ll be surprised to hear the answer: Big. Fat. Zero.
Big fat zero is a big fat problem. Women—and women of color in particular—are starting businesses like crazy, but they rarely grow beyond supporting their owner, too small to court investment. In the case of my co‑panelist who funds women- owned startups, the problem is more complex than simply turning down women of color. She has a pipeline problem that goes beyond race. The entrepreneurs making it into VC conference rooms represent a tiny, privileged sliver of women. They are mostly white and well-off, with institutions like HBS, Goldman, or Google on their résumés.
They’re still kickass founders, and funds like my co‑panelist’s are doing important work. But if you’re like most women, you have no idea how you’re going to get into any investor’s office. You probably haven’t grown beyond solopreneurship or the side hustle because you’ve got one or all of these problems:
· You don’t have personal capital—tens of thousands of dollars in a rainy-day fund —or the spare time to spot opportunities, strategize, and think big.
· You don’t have friends or family who can invest their money or contribute key resources, like time with the family lawyer or a rent-free place to live.
· You didn’t go to fancy schools, so you don’t have ready-made networks and cultural capital to create the client and marketing relationships that would help you jump to the next level.
Without these assets, many bright, entrepreneurial women get stuck in what I have started to call the Valley of Death—that long stretch between a one-woman show and a scalable business that becomes a household name. Many women never make the shift to entrepreneur at all. We’re too busy paying rent or putting food on the table.
This opportunity gap is why I founded BRAVA Investments. We invest in companies not based on whether they have women founders but on whether they can prove that they will economically benefit as many women as possible. My goal isn’t to find a woman and make her into the next Zuckerbergian billionaire so much as it’s to find companies that can level the playing field for a billion women. I want companies that can change systems, by putting money and power in the pockets of many women so they can be armed with those bootstraps everyone’s so fond of romanticizing. Only then will we see women begin to rival men in building companies that change the future of their families and the world.
But I’m impatient, one of my better qualities. So one day I started thinking: BRAVA is important because it attacks the systemic problem, but how do I help the women who are ready to be entrepreneurs today? How do I help all of them make it past the Valley of Death?
I started thinking about something I had seen in South America. In the Andes, where my family is from, indigenous farmers who never had a landline now walk around with two smartphones in their pockets, a technological advance that has allowed them to bank, shop, and even sell their products and services to anyone in the world. They have leapfrogged what outsiders would have thought were absolute limitations on their potential.
And so I started to ask myself—and soon, every entrepreneur I knew—a question: What would be the equivalent of two smartphones in the pockets of every woman in this country who wanted to beat the odds to build and grow a business?
From there Leapfrog was born, a compilation of the best hacks I’ve come across to work around, leap over, or straight‑up annihilate the seemingly intractable hurdles facing those of you trying to cross the Valley of Death, or bootstrap without bootstraps. I’ve called upon everyone I know who has gone from zero to scalable business to share their best secrets. People like:
· Arlan Hamilton, who was sleeping on the floor of San Francisco’s airport when she finally signed the first investor to Backstage Capital, her fund focused on women-, people of color–, and LGBT- led businesses.
· John Henry, a black Latinx doorman who started a dry-cleaning delivery service, grew it to fifteen employees, built an app, and then was acquired for $1 million by one of his vendors—all by the age of twenty-one.
· Kat Cole, who started her career as a Hooters waitress and became the president of Cinnabon and now the COO of Focus Brands, the parent company to Cinnabon, Auntie Anne’s, and Carvel, among others, which together have supported thousands of new entrepreneurs by offering affordable franchise business opportunities.
You’ll learn about their personal experiences with loopholes and shortcuts that work even if you aren’t starting with money, cultural capital, or connections. Use this book to support you as you leap higher and faster than anyone—including we ourselves—thinks possible.
Women receive just 2.5 percent of venture capital (VC) funding— and of those, about 0.2 percent are women of color. Women simply don’t have access to the capital that men do.
I recently spoke on a panel of women investors to a packed room of both women and men eager to talk about how to get to gender parity in business. As we talked about market trends we’d been seeing, I mentioned one that seems at odds with the stats just mentioned: Black women and Latinx are starting companies at a faster rate than anyone else in this country. In fact, 78 percent of new women-owned firms are started by women of color. When we got to the Q& A period, a wise woman in the front row directed a question to one of my co‑panelists, a woman who runs a fund that invests in early-stage, women-led businesses, largely in tech.
“You said today that you’ve invested in more than sixty companies,” she said. “Nathalie was talking about how women of color are starting companies more than anyone else in this country. How many of your sixty- plus companies are led by women of color?”
If you identify with what I’ve written so far, I doubt you’ll be surprised to hear the answer: Big. Fat. Zero.
Big fat zero is a big fat problem. Women—and women of color in particular—are starting businesses like crazy, but they rarely grow beyond supporting their owner, too small to court investment. In the case of my co‑panelist who funds women- owned startups, the problem is more complex than simply turning down women of color. She has a pipeline problem that goes beyond race. The entrepreneurs making it into VC conference rooms represent a tiny, privileged sliver of women. They are mostly white and well-off, with institutions like HBS, Goldman, or Google on their résumés.
They’re still kickass founders, and funds like my co‑panelist’s are doing important work. But if you’re like most women, you have no idea how you’re going to get into any investor’s office. You probably haven’t grown beyond solopreneurship or the side hustle because you’ve got one or all of these problems:
· You don’t have personal capital—tens of thousands of dollars in a rainy-day fund —or the spare time to spot opportunities, strategize, and think big.
· You don’t have friends or family who can invest their money or contribute key resources, like time with the family lawyer or a rent-free place to live.
· You didn’t go to fancy schools, so you don’t have ready-made networks and cultural capital to create the client and marketing relationships that would help you jump to the next level.
Without these assets, many bright, entrepreneurial women get stuck in what I have started to call the Valley of Death—that long stretch between a one-woman show and a scalable business that becomes a household name. Many women never make the shift to entrepreneur at all. We’re too busy paying rent or putting food on the table.
This opportunity gap is why I founded BRAVA Investments. We invest in companies not based on whether they have women founders but on whether they can prove that they will economically benefit as many women as possible. My goal isn’t to find a woman and make her into the next Zuckerbergian billionaire so much as it’s to find companies that can level the playing field for a billion women. I want companies that can change systems, by putting money and power in the pockets of many women so they can be armed with those bootstraps everyone’s so fond of romanticizing. Only then will we see women begin to rival men in building companies that change the future of their families and the world.
But I’m impatient, one of my better qualities. So one day I started thinking: BRAVA is important because it attacks the systemic problem, but how do I help the women who are ready to be entrepreneurs today? How do I help all of them make it past the Valley of Death?
I started thinking about something I had seen in South America. In the Andes, where my family is from, indigenous farmers who never had a landline now walk around with two smartphones in their pockets, a technological advance that has allowed them to bank, shop, and even sell their products and services to anyone in the world. They have leapfrogged what outsiders would have thought were absolute limitations on their potential.
And so I started to ask myself—and soon, every entrepreneur I knew—a question: What would be the equivalent of two smartphones in the pockets of every woman in this country who wanted to beat the odds to build and grow a business?
From there Leapfrog was born, a compilation of the best hacks I’ve come across to work around, leap over, or straight‑up annihilate the seemingly intractable hurdles facing those of you trying to cross the Valley of Death, or bootstrap without bootstraps. I’ve called upon everyone I know who has gone from zero to scalable business to share their best secrets. People like:
· Arlan Hamilton, who was sleeping on the floor of San Francisco’s airport when she finally signed the first investor to Backstage Capital, her fund focused on women-, people of color–, and LGBT- led businesses.
· John Henry, a black Latinx doorman who started a dry-cleaning delivery service, grew it to fifteen employees, built an app, and then was acquired for $1 million by one of his vendors—all by the age of twenty-one.
· Kat Cole, who started her career as a Hooters waitress and became the president of Cinnabon and now the COO of Focus Brands, the parent company to Cinnabon, Auntie Anne’s, and Carvel, among others, which together have supported thousands of new entrepreneurs by offering affordable franchise business opportunities.
You’ll learn about their personal experiences with loopholes and shortcuts that work even if you aren’t starting with money, cultural capital, or connections. Use this book to support you as you leap higher and faster than anyone—including we ourselves—thinks possible.
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