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10/20/13 | Uncategorized

Disparities in Gender are Affecting Growth Rate of Female-Run Startups

An article in GOOD points out how gender is one factor affecting the growth rate of entrepreneurs and discusses stats about women entrepreneurs that were revealed at the Women 2.0 conference.  

By Jessica Schimm (Assistant Editor, Women 2.0)

There are a lot of entrepreneurs out there, but whether they can continue to grow their business after they start it is another question. GOOD recently put out a piece about how disparities in gender is affecting entrepreneurs growth, citing that  only “12 percent of women are likely to meet someone who could greatly expand their business or idea.” GOOD reports:

“Most Americans are familiar with the run-of-the-mill entrepreneur, engaged in so-called “subsistence entrepreneurship”—or someone looking to support a business and maintain its livelihood…Where the disparity lay is in knowing a growth entrepreneur, so-called “gazelles,” writes Paul Kedrosky, the survey’s author and contributing editor to Bloomberg Television. Growth entrepreneurs breed job-producing, GDP-adding machines that “[grow] more than 20 percent a year and [have] more than $1 million is sales,” he writes.”

The article also reports that the Women 2.0 conference (learn more about our upcoming conference) revealed that women-led private tech companies overall do better than male-owned companies.

“…women-led private technology companies are more capital-efficient, achieve 35 percent higher return on investment, and, when venture-backed, bring in 12 percent higher revenue than male-owned tech companies,” writes Karen E. Klein, reporter for Bloomberg Busnessweek.”

Women 2.0’s CEO Shaherose Charania said that cheap online resources are what’s breaking down the barriers for entrepreneurs. GOOD sums it up:

“What this means is that walls keeping people from entrepreneurs are slowly crumbling away, fostering the kind of collaborative and imitative atmosphere gained when sharing the same space as like-minded, able entrepreneurs. And even though today’s ecosystem makes it easier for middle-aged men of modest income to find their business-backers, as tech more fluidly connects people across gender or income groups (and as women-owned businesses, small or large, keeping proving successful) that holding may soon change.”

 

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Jess headshotJessica Schimm (@JessicaSchimm) is the assistant editor at Women 2.0. She is a recent graduate of San Francisco State where she earned a B.A. in journalism and was the editor-in-chief of SF State’s Her Campus chapter. She has a strong interest in women’s issues and writes about them on her blog Women Who Run San Francisco.

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