Top 5 Challenges for Women Founders and How to Solve Them

As Caroline Criado Perez often says, women are not smaller men. If we were, we wouldn’t face the challenges we face as women founders.

I heard from Annie Rogaski on her Unraveling Pink podcast a few years ago that 95% of the world was designed by and for men. We aren’t even considered in the design of everything from transportation to housing to healthcare to political and social policy.

So it should come as no surprise that as a panelist alongside Rachel Schow of Left Lane Capital at a Canadian Women’s Network virtual event in June, I was asked about the extra hoops that women founders must jump through, and the hurdles we must clear to be successful with our startups.

Here are my top 5.

Note: while there are exceptions, this is what we are generally seeing and in most cases, have the data to support. Don’t come at me with the exceptions and if you have data to support the contrary to any of these, please send me an email at terri.mead.investor@gmail.com.

1. Women generally don’t have the same access to the networks with the resources, whether funding or otherwise, than our man counterparts. And men with the access, don’t open them up to women at the same rate as they do to men. Solution: men, do better. Recognize the bias, acknowledge it exists, and open the damn doors! It’s not charity. It’s leveling the access to opportunity.
2. Women are focused on solving problems that are not being solved or even recognized by a lot of men. This means that women are often solving problems that are not relatable to 92% of the VCs who happen to be men. These problems, and the related opportunities, are not small. Solution: dazzle them with dollars at the beginning of a pitch, find a relatable analogy their brains can understand, and find a way to target interested investors rather than wasting time on those who can’t see opportunity in anything that doesn’t relate to them.
3. Women founders are getting bad coaching from men based on sexism. For example, women founders/CEOs are being told that as their startups mature, they will need to find more experienced CEOs to run their companies. Men founders aren’t told this; they are given the opportunity to grow into their roles as CEOs. Solution: just stop this. If you hear this, call it out as the sexism that it is. Be sure to share the data around women founders doing more with less (because we have to), having greater ROI, and getting to profitability faster (because we have to).
4. Women go to investors with open hands looking for charity rather than appreciating their value and the opportunity they are offering up to the investors. I often remind founders, especially women, that without them and their startups, we investors would have nothing to invest in. Solution: women, remember that you are offering a valuable product in the form of an interesting and potentially seriously lucrative investment opportunity. You aren’t looking for charity. You are looking for investors so you can make them a whole lotta money. And investors, stop taking advantage of the perceived power imbalance and be better humans. You need them as much as they need you.
5. Women founders tend to be more realistic when presenting their visions and their plans. Should be fine right? Showing something achievable? Nope. Investors like the deception of a big dream. Men founders tend to exaggerate their projections and visions. Women tend to show what is truly possible. Investors are looking for big outcomes so of course they (we) are going to want to be dazzled by the big opportunities. Solution: until investors realize that women do have big visions but don’t want to be found to be ‘liars,’ women founders need to scale up their visions because we know that men founders are not going to start right-sizing their projections to something closer to reality. Women, get uncomfortable and put up the big stuff! You aren’t lying. We investors know you are going to pivot seven times ’til Sunday if you are an early stage startup.

Be better. Do better. We all win.

I’ve said it before and I will say it hundreds more times, this is not a zero sum game. We all win when women do better. We women tend to lift others (with some exceptions of course) and we lift our societies.

The problems that women are trying to solve with potentially lucrative startups are big and meaningful problems. Many have been overlooked for so long and they aren’t going away.

So, men, why not get on board, minimize your bias, open up the access, see the opportunities for what they are even if you can’t directly relate to them, and start investing! For real.

And women founders, keep up the fantastic work, truly understand your value, and claim your space, and the investing dollars, that should be coming your way.

Terri Hanson Mead is a SV-based angel investor focused on investing in startups with products and services that expand the power and influence of women. She is on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and is the author of Piloting Your Life, which she wrote to encourage women to design and live a life of their own creation and be the pilots in their own lives.