Is there bias against women entrepreneurs in the tech industry? Maybe, maybe not. I don’t believe it would hinder you if you stick to the Bootstrap First, Raise Money Later strategy. The media promotes funding as the holy grail. The VCs want you to believe that Entrepreneurship = Funding. No. It isn’t. Entrepreneurship = Customers
Julie Castro Abrams, Managing Partner at How Women Invest, discusses her firm’s investment thesis.
During this week’s roundtable, we had Julie Castro Abrams, Managing Partner at How Women Invest discussing her firm’s investment thesis. As for entrepreneur pitches, we had Nikki Cao from Canada and Prashant Teyshetye from Austin, Texas, discussing their ventures. You can listen to the recording of this roundtable here:
This conversation not only highlights Susan and VIDA’s journey but is an excellent analysis of the Pharmaceutical Services space. If you’re looking to do/doing a startup in this field, the conversation should be illuminating. Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born and raised?
Sramana Mitra: It’s true about men also. Unless you come from our kinds of backgrounds, you don’t reach this community. If you come from an average background, you don’t have much of a choice than go through the bootstrapping route. We belong to a very privileged elite class of people who have access. Most of
Sramana Mitra: You believe there is a bias from customers? Aparna Dhinakaran: No, I think there is a bias in the tech industry itself. In general, there are not that many women that go into AI. I don’t think that we can argue that we’ve reached a neutral point. If I saw that in reality,
Sramana Mitra: So what use cases did you find the maximum traction in? Aparna Dhinakaran: AdTech click-through rate is a common use case. Fraud is a big one. Lending is a big one. Demand forecasting is another big one. There are these common use cases. Sramana Mitra: Are you direct selling?
While we have made a lot of progress, the tech industry remains male dominated. My mantra has always been: Do not strive to be a great female entrepreneur. Strive to be a great entrepreneur. Period.