Sexy Unicorns
How the practicality of women’s invention hurts them.
At some point along my Unconform journey, I was curious to learn more about women’s focused funding. I went clicking into several VC websites that focus on women. I also went clicking into some of the biggest VC funds that didn’t focus on any one identity. I was deep in tabs trying to understand the gaps.
Scrolling through the women-first VC funds evoked this strange feeling — that focusing on women needed a real, solid reason. These websites are often full of numbers: stats of how women-led businesses do better, they have better returns, better this, better that. The other funds, which don’t focus on any one identity, don’t have stats. They might “invest in the daring…” — but without a statistical correlation between “daring” and better outcomes. The daring don’t require solid reasoning.
A topic in Katrine Marçal’s book, Mother of Invention, is the lack of investment in women-led businesses. “Women have fantastic ideas, but they are not considered “sexy” enough to receive funding,” she said when I interviewed her. This made me think of how the word “unicorn” has been adapted into the tech lexicon to describe businesses that are “extremely rare and magical” (mostly because they lead to a magical $ exit).
Marçal continues, “Women’s ideas are generally not of that nature — rather they are practical, innovative solutions to fix problems — and come across as “modest” or “not sexy enough” to investors.” And yet, she’s got some great women-led invention examples in her book. Suitcases on wheels, electric cars and more. Those are sexy unicorns to me!
This post is an excerpt from Unconforming: a newsletter about Design for Women. Unconforming goes out every two weeks and also shares learnings from experts, job and other opportunities, examples and articles — all to make an impact in the women’s space. Sign up here to get it in your inbox!
