Mike Cassidy from the Mercury News found himself at yet another conference in Sillicon Valley with a panel on female entrepreneurs. The ultimate conclusion was that there just are not enough women in business.
The moderator, sitting on a stage at Stanford University with six female CEOs, noted dejectedly how hard it was to find six female CEOs. A man sitting up front shouted, “And it’s a shame.” There were nods and applause and murmurs of agreement.
And it is a shame. But maybe it’s a shame we won’t live with for much longer. In fact, there are encouraging signs that a new wave of female entrepreneurs is positioning itself to erode the historic gender imbalance in high-tech entrepreneurship.
My optimism comes from two key sources.
First, I caught up with Carol Realini, one of the CEOs on stage at the conference. I asked her for her take on female entrepreneurship in the valley.
It is better for women, she said, even better than just 10 years ago. More women are being taken seriously and doing serious things. She is not hearing, as she once did, that women can’t be CEOs or that women can’t raise money, though raising venture capital is apparently still tougher for women than men.
So, what’s it going to take in 2010, I asked Realini, for us to see more women starting and running companies?
“The challenge of being a woman CEO is, one, you’ve got to get in the game. So, you have to be willing to try,” says Realini, CEO of Obopay, a Redwood City mobile payment company. “And it’s intimidating, especially if you’ve never done it before.”
Photo by pedrosimoes7