fek: Right click and do the enlarge thing to...

View high resolution

Right click and do the enlarge thing to enlarge or just hold the control button and zoom in with your mouse or just hit Apple and + or whatever you need to do to zoom in. I don’t know. Related.

Every now and then, people forward me stuff from one of the handful of email chains that keep going around about “women in tech” issues and the lack of female entrepreneurs. In nearly every case, they’re managed by people who haven’t tried to start their own company and have no realistic idea of what those issues might be.

Case in point: one recent thread was about making entrepreneurship “safe” for women and it made my blood boil because entrepreneurship isn’t safe for anyone, male or female. It’s an incredibly risky thing to do and there’s nothing about it that is or will ever be safe. Even on the investment side: Early stage venture capital is the riskiest asset class available to an investor.

It also potentially offers the highest returns. I think it’s worth it.

But if you’re looking for a “safe” experience, you should probably stay in your cushy middle management job at a career track company—regardless of your gender. No entrepreneurial experience is safe. Or comfortable. Or smooth. Being a woman in tech is probably the *least* difficult aspect of it—and negligible compared to all of the other challenges.

Which is also why this absurd discussion about women on panels seems so tone-deaf. I can’t think of anything more irrelevant to the success of a startup than whether the CEO is on a conference panel. Being on a panel is a function of recognition of success, not success in itself. It’s good PR, but it’s not an accomplishment.

I went to a women in tech event a few months ago and there were 30 or so attendees, several of whom were mentioned in that infamous WSJ article. I was introduced as a new member of the group and mentioned that i had been doing a startup clinic for 10 companies, seven of which were run by women and they needed advice, mentors and help. Not a single one of the people mentioned in that article—and all of the women mentioned in that article except Yuli Ziv were there—volunteered.

Not one. (And if you need a refresher, here’s the article. Look at the names.)

So the next time someone on a panel complains about the lack of women on panels, I’m going to have to assume that they’re clueless, oblivious, or worse, narcissistic (and what they really mean by more women on panels is that they’d like to be on more panels themselves.)

SO HERE’S MY PROPOSITION:

You’re a female entrepreneur who needs mentors or advisors? Send me a description of your company and a resume.

You’re someone who’s willing to mentor a female entrepreneur (regardless of your gender) and you have entrepreneurial experience? Do the same.

My email is espiers AT gmail. I can only take ten companies for launch school, but this is more scalable.

I’ll play matchmaker, one by one. It’s a hell of a lot more useful to female entrepreneurs than sitting on a panel complaining that there aren’t more of you sitting on a panel.

Source fek