I do wish women with a chip on their shoulders would stop getting all aggro about observations that are not prescriptions. You saying "that's not true" is just as globalizing as "this is true."
There is just something about women and product businesses that's weird. I recently put on a conference about bootstrapping paying products only, and I looked for ages to find a single woman bootstrapper like myself. They can't be found.
There are uncountable zillions of women freelancers, women running agencies, women coding, women designing, women writing, women coaching.
There are way more women running tech startups that have VC funding than there are with bootstrapping.
I can name 5 to 7 female founders with VC off the top of my head -- to my mind, they have better brand name recognition than male founders (the only men I can think of by name, I know personally).
But, after days and days of searching and mining my (RL) social networks, I was able to identify only ONE single fellow bootstrapper (and she's "only" part of a 4-person team). And she's not from The Land of Opportunity, if you know what I mean.
Outside of tech, there are lots of women who've gotten loans or other capital to make ands sell physical goods, of all the risky-ass things they could do. Or restaurants, shops and cafes.
So, obviously there are many women who are not afraid of entrepreneurship and not really risk-averse. Selling specialty shoes or front-end web dev is much, much riskier than creating a paying digital product, and less remunerative than doing a startup with funding. (And most of those funded startups are "social long shots" -- not product businesses.)
I don't have the answer, but there is something weird going on there. But I don't think it's an external thing. Nobody is keeping those other women down.
That said, I'm a married woman in my mid-20s. I married when I was 24 and launched my product business right after. If I ever wanted to have kids (which I do not), I would definitely wait, because the "have it all" thing is definitely a myth. You end up either shortchanging your kids or your work, unless you're totally unstoppable (and who is?).
There are way more women running tech startups that have VC funding than there are with bootstrapping.
Really? I'm not so sure. Perhaps it is just hard to hear about the women that are bootstrapping tech companies. Companies that are being bootstrapped typically are pre-traction, and have not received the buzz in the tech media that comes with raising a funding round.
Women aren't launching tech/web/software companies at twice the rate of men, so that's irrelevant. Few other fields do VC the way tech/web/software does.
Correlation, causation, everybody's heard that old saw. I certainly didn't say what you claim I said. What I said was: Few other fields do VC the way this one does. By which I mean, most fields don't do VC.
At all.
VC is almost purely a tech/bio/med thing. Most small businesses - which is what startups are, by the way - take loans. That's how it usually works.
There are lots of bootstrapped companies that are not "pre-traction," and, in fact, making hundreds of thousands of dollars (or millions). You'd be very surprised. The "startup" press (including HN) is a real echochamber, and this lack of awareness about bootstrapping is one of the side effects. Check out my speaker list at http://schnitzelconf.com.
That's why I asked everyone I knew - and asked them to ask everyone they knew. I have my feet planted very high on the hierarchy of "famous devs" in more than one circle, so my reach is greater than the average joe. In addition to browsing every women entrepreneur's directory I could find. Including http://startupprincess.com. No joy.
Nary a female product bootstrapper around. Except the lady who's part of the team at Mite.
Agreed, but once a company is already making lots of money I tend to drop the "bootstrapping" adjective to refer to their present state of operation. :)
There are a few women in the NYC startup scene who are "bootstrapping" their companies for months (or longer) until they have revenue or are ready to raise funds.
Your speaker list looks great. And if you are only looking for women coders, who have built successful product companies, that have never taken VC then I agree they are hard to find! But keep in mind that there are not many startup teams that raise VC where there is a founding female coder either.
Hi Marilyn. Awesome. But by "pre-traction" are you referring to List Central? Because, by my definition, that isn't a product. Bootstrapping to me means you have to charge.
It's not that hard to find women heading up traditional web 2.0 properties, like social networks and social media tools (that don't charge).
Wooohoooo!! Welcome to the beautiful land of products that make money. It's a nice place to be!
Let me give you a little piece of advice-- unstealth yourself!
When we shipped Freckle, we had $1500 in monthly billing at the end of the first round of 30-day trials, because we put up a little teaser page just like this (for our 2nd SaaS product): http://charmde.sk/.
We had about 400 names on it, from tweeting and talking about it, and a pretty decent conversion rate on that. That headstart was worth at least $18k that year (and probably more, since our main factor for growth is word of mouth). We now have 320 names on the Charm list and that's a much narrower audience, so I think our actual rate of emails vs audience is even better.
Typically speaking, "stealth mode" doesn't do a lick of good for paying products. Most people are too stubborn to make a paying product to begin with, much less copy one that isn't out yet. On the other hand, people love the opportunity to put their name in for a new product that will help them -- and if you don't capture their email, they'll just forget about it.
I'm a female bootstrapper and I know many more in my network. My contact info can be found in my profile; feel free to DM me next time you put on a conference.
There is just something about women and product businesses that's weird. I recently put on a conference about bootstrapping paying products only, and I looked for ages to find a single woman bootstrapper like myself. They can't be found.
There are uncountable zillions of women freelancers, women running agencies, women coding, women designing, women writing, women coaching.
There are way more women running tech startups that have VC funding than there are with bootstrapping.
I can name 5 to 7 female founders with VC off the top of my head -- to my mind, they have better brand name recognition than male founders (the only men I can think of by name, I know personally).
But, after days and days of searching and mining my (RL) social networks, I was able to identify only ONE single fellow bootstrapper (and she's "only" part of a 4-person team). And she's not from The Land of Opportunity, if you know what I mean.
Outside of tech, there are lots of women who've gotten loans or other capital to make ands sell physical goods, of all the risky-ass things they could do. Or restaurants, shops and cafes.
So, obviously there are many women who are not afraid of entrepreneurship and not really risk-averse. Selling specialty shoes or front-end web dev is much, much riskier than creating a paying digital product, and less remunerative than doing a startup with funding. (And most of those funded startups are "social long shots" -- not product businesses.)
I don't have the answer, but there is something weird going on there. But I don't think it's an external thing. Nobody is keeping those other women down.
That said, I'm a married woman in my mid-20s. I married when I was 24 and launched my product business right after. If I ever wanted to have kids (which I do not), I would definitely wait, because the "have it all" thing is definitely a myth. You end up either shortchanging your kids or your work, unless you're totally unstoppable (and who is?).