Here’s a depressing statistic for you: the percent of venture dollars going to companies with a female on the founder team actually dropped from 15% in 2017 to only 12% in 2018.
Overall female entrepreneurs receive less than 5% of all venture funding, despite owning nearly 40% of U.S. businesses, and the percent of female venture capitalists remains disappointingly low at 7%. Solutions to these kinds of entrepreneurial investment inequalities are not easy to find. However, Morgan Slemberger (at the University of Montana Blackstone LaunchPad powered by Techstars), is no less determined to change the system through her program Pursue Your Passions.
Impetus and Current Offering
Several years ago after noticing a significant disparity in the percent of women pitching in the schools startup competition, UM marketing professor Jakki Mohr set out to bring some exciting, inspiring female founders to give lectures to students about their unique experience. Morgan, then picking up the charge, has iterated and expanded the program substantially for the past several years. Today, Pursue Your Passions includes:
- Both physical and virtual pre- or early entrepreneurial and networking coursework: for credit, in some cases, which dramatically elevates the value from a student perspective and makes them take it more seriously;
- Co-curricular supplements: which include an online business basics course, featuring recorded female founder talks, as well as readings and quizzes;
- Student fellowship micro-grants: $500 to explore an idea and cover some of the earliest business expenses, from health department fees for a food business to branding/logo design, all funded by a community of LaunchPad champions at $25-100 per sponsor;
Recruiting Students - Strategically
Morgan uses many of the typical channels to recruit participation in the program: Promoting it with students who seek consultations with the LaunchPad, in regular campus emails from the Office of Research (a cross-campus department the center reports up through), prompting a list of interdisciplinary staff and faculty advocates to mention it to students, sharing information on posters, at campus events, via social media, student announcements in classes, etc. But what Morgan feels may be most important are the specific words used.
Based on research by UM LaunchPad Campus Director, Paul Gladen, several UM professors, and in conjunction with the Kauffman Foundation, the marketing, communication, and language around entrepreneurship (and even the word “entrepreneur” itself) often fail to resonate with young women.
“Pursue Your Passions is called that by design. It's more approachable and focuses on passions versus making money, being an owner, or some other ‘selfish’ interest,” said Morgan. “We have seperate LaunchPad marketing campaigns targeting female students and we use specific language in those communications.”
Morgan is also excited about the diversity within this program’s population: Participants have been extremely diverse in terms of race and ethnicity, age (intergenerational), and participation has been widely inclusive of the LGBTQI student population. Furthermore, while it is certainly targeted at attracting women, every semester there has been at least one male enrollee.
Recruiting and Cultivating Mentors
Strategically using the resources at her disposal, Morgan frequently sources female mentors from PowerHouse Montana, an initiative of the Women’s Foundation of Montana. This effort focuses on connecting women to leadership opportunities, making a partnership with the Pursue Your Passions program, a natural fit. Of course alumni and friends of UM, as well as mentors and advisors from Blackstone, are also important contributors to the program’s participants throughout the year.
“Our community raises their hand all the time for us, and it's amazing,” said Morgan. “It may be a local cultural-thing, but we just have incredible volunteers that are extremely authentic and willing to give of themselves. At the same time, research has shown that access to people in economic and governmental leadership positions is uniquely high in Montana.”
Another important strategy Morgan recommends is creating a board or council specifically focused on supporting a diversity initiative. For Pursue Your Passions, she invites 10-12 individuals to join her board from both inside the university and externally. This results in a creative collaboration that might not otherwise naturally occur. The diverse backgrounds and influence of these focused advocates has proven crucial time and time again in helping Morgan overcome bureaucracy and funding (her two most significant challenges).
Goals and Results
Morgan has a three-fold goal for the Pursue Your Passions program, and within a few years has, impressively, already found quantifiable success in two of these areas.
- Increase female population in LaunchPad database and programming. Result: From 35% female enrollment (which roughly aligns with national average of women-owned businesses) to 48%.
- Increase female participation in annual startup competition. Result: A 35-50% annual increase in female participation across two campus competitions.
- Make more gender parity in Montana startup founders.
“We’ve had a lot of success is targeting those who identify as female with the Pursue Your Passions program. That has been a place where we have made improvements and have had a demonstrable impact on diversity,” said Morgan. “What’s also amazing is how that message resonates with other diverse populations - it attracts a certain kind of person.”
The Future
In the next year, Morgan plans to focus on developing a Pursue Your Passions certification, with concrete economic or regulatory benefits (fast tracked loan applications, for example). Alternatively, Morgan also plans to tackle the other side of the equation, educating investors and lenders who are not aware of how their unconscious biases may be limiting opportunities for female entrepreneurs.
Read more: For more information on the issue of biases in investor Q&A check out “Male and Female Entrepreneurs Get Asked Different Questions by VCs — and It Affects How Much Funding They Get” HBR, 6/27/17.
