一位女性創業者籌資時如何屢敗屢戰 最終贏得風投青睞大綱
It’s slim pickings if you’re a female entrepreneur hoping to raise money. A recent study from Babson College found that venture capital firms with female partners are more than three times as likely to invest in companies with female CEOs than firms led by all-male teams, but the percentage of women in the VC industry has dropped from 10% to 6% since 1999—and only 2.7% of VC-backed companies have a female CEO.
對於想要籌資的女性創業者來說，機會其實並不多。美國巴布森學院（Babson College）最近的一項調查顯示，如果一家風投公司擁有女性合夥人，那麼其選擇投資女性CEO所領導企業的概率，是投資純男性主導企業的三倍多。然而，風投公司中的女性比例正在下降，從1999年的10%降到6%。同時，僅有2.7%獲得風投注資的企業是由女性CEO掌管。So what’s a female founder to do?
那麼女性創業者該如何應對這種環境？
If you’re Emily Weiss, you shrug off rejection. The 29-year-old founder of beauty blog Into The Gloss recently raised $8.4 million in funding; she plans to use the capital to scale her new skincare line Glossier. “I’m not afraid of being told ‘no’,” she says of her journey to millions. “It was an important exercise in understanding different funds and learning which would be the best fit for me.”
如果你是艾米麗o韋絲，你可能就會對風投的拒絕淡然處之了。這位29歲的美容博客Into The Gloss創始人最近獲得了840萬美元的融資，她計劃用這筆資金擴展其新的護膚品系列Glossier。“我不怕別人對我說‘不’。”在分享如何獲得數百萬投資的經驗時，她表示，“瞭解各路資金並清楚哪些纔是最合適自己的，這一點至關重要。”
Rather than just licking her wounds when an investor turned her down, Weiss pushed for feedback so she could continue iterating her business plan. “So much of venture capital is pattern recognition,” she says. “I sat across the table from many men who might not have necessarily understood the difference between foundation and tinted moisturizer.” Weiss handled male VCs beauty illiteracy by tweaking her pitch to emphasize her success—her blog’s 8.5 million monthly pageviews—and discuss the market needs her company addresses in the $454 billion beauty market. “The onus is on you to make your idea compelling,” says Weiss.
如果被投資者拒絕，韋絲不但不會氣餒，反而會積極要求對方提供反饋，爭取再一次闡述其商業計劃的機會。“很多風投看重的是業務模式。”她指出，“但是坐在我對面的很多男士們，可能根本不知道粉底液和潤色面霜的區別。”在面對這些對美容一無所知的男性風投人士時，韋絲把發言的重點放在自己的成功上——她的博客每月有850萬的訪問量；此外，她還會介紹，在價值4,540億美元的美容市場上，她的公司所針對的是哪些市場需求。“你的任務就是要讓自己的想法聽上去很有吸引力。”韋絲總結道。Before her most recent fundraising round, Weiss found a trusted investor in Forerunner Ventures’ Kirsten Green. Green’s firm, which is known for helping to launch wildly successful e-commerce companies like Warby Parker and Birchbox, provided seed funding for Into the Gloss. “Kirsten dove deep, asking the most questions because she is also a consumer of these products,” Weiss says. “I could feel her conviction and I knew that when we said yes to working together it meant as much to her as it meant to me.” Green was also Weiss’ connection to Thrive Capital, which led Into the Gloss’ most recent fundraising round.
在最新的一輪成功籌資之前，韋絲找到了一名值得信賴的投資人——電子商務風投公司Forerunner Ventures的柯爾斯頓o格林。衆所周知，這家公司幫助成立了不少極爲成功的電商公司，比如眼鏡公司Warby Parker和美妝公司Birchbox等，格林的公司也爲Into the Gloss提供了種子資金。“柯爾斯頓深入挖掘，廣尋問題，因爲她也是這些產品的消費者。”韋絲表示，“我能感受她的信念，我知道當我們談妥合作的時候，無論對她還是對我來說，都是意義非凡的。”韋絲還通過格林聯繫到了興盛資本公司（Thrive Capital），該公司領投了Into the Gloss的最新一輪籌資。Hadley Mullin, a partner at private equity firm TSG Consumer Partners, says the gender imbalance in the investment community does not make sense—especially at firms that invest in consumer brands, as women drive household spending. “For male and female entrepreneurs alike, having a woman investor can bring credibility when discussing product positioning and expansion opportunities,” she says. Mullin adds that while some male investors have a track record of working well with women entrepreneurs, female investors tend connect more easily with products created by or for women.
哈德利o穆林是私募股權公司TSG Consumer Partners的合夥人，她認爲投資界的性別比例失衡現象並不合理，尤其對那些投資消費品牌的公司來說，因爲通常都是女性在主導家庭支出。穆林表示，“不論男性還是女性企業家，在探討產品定位和擴張時機的時候，擁有一位女性投資人都能夠爲其增加可信度。”她還補充說，儘管一些男性投資人也能夠與女性企業家合作良好，但是女性投資人往往更容易理解那些由女性企業家打造的產品，或是針對女性消費者的產品。But, for the time, the investment world’s poor gender dynamics remain unchanged. Weiss says that women entrepreneurs need to take matters into their own hands and work hard to articulate what makes their businesses valuable and distinct. It’s an uphill battle, but she says it is well worth the fight: Finding strong funding partners, she explains, can allow female entrepreneurs to create brands that matter.
遺憾的是，投資界性別失衡的狀況暫時不會改變。韋絲認爲，女性企業家需要更加主動，努力展現她們企業的價值和獨到之處。這是一場艱苦的鬥爭，但是韋絲認爲值得付出，因爲尋找到強有力的資金夥伴，能夠讓女性企業家創造出有影響力的品牌。“I approached fundraising as an opportunity to align myself with partners who have more varied experience and diverse backgrounds than I do, to help bring Glossier to life,” she says. “I’m so fortunate to have aligned myself with Kirsten; it was like finding a needle in a haystack.”
“我將融資視爲一個契機，能夠使自己有機會與那些擁有更豐富的經驗和多元化背景的人合作，幫助Glossier真正煥發出生機。”她表示，“雖然這像大海撈針一樣困難，但是很幸運，我找到了柯爾斯頓。”（財富中文網）
