SAN FRANCISCO


CANDACE FLEMING’S RE- SUME lists a double major in industrial engineering and English from Stanford, an M.B.A. from Harvard, a management position at Hewlett-Packard and experience as president of a small software company.

But when she was raising money for Crimson Hexagon, a start-up company she co-founded in 2007, she recalls one venture capitalist telling her that it didn’t matter that she didn’t have business cards, because all they would say was “Mom.”

Another potential backer invited her for a weekend yachting excursion by showing her a picture of himself on the boat ? without clothes. When a third financier discovered that her husband was also a biking enthusiast, she says, he spent more time asking if riding affected her husband’s reproductive capabilities than he did focusing on her business plan.

Ultimately, none of the 30 venture firms she pitched financed her company. She finally raised $1.8 million in March 2008 from angel investors including Golden Seeds, a fund that emphasizes investing in start-ups led by women.

“I didn’t know things like this still happened,” says Ms. Fleming, 37. “But I know that, especially in risky times like the last couple years, some investors kind of retreat to investing via a template.” A company owned by a woman, she adds, “is just not the standard template.”

Though many people say that outright sexism is rare in the technology world these days, the barriers that Ms. Fleming encountered aren’t unusual. Tech communities in Silicon Valley and in other hubs ? like New York, Austin, Texas, and Boston, where Ms. Fleming lives ? pride themselves on operating as raw meritocracies ready to embrace anyone with a good idea, regardless of education, age or station in life.


THE NEW YORK TIMES


JIM WILSON/THE NEW YORK TIMES


Female Tech Entrepreneurs
Face a Variety of Obstacles


Technology advances faster than women in the industry.

For women, though, that narrative often unfolds differently.

Women own 40 percent of the private businesses in the United States, according to the Center for Women’s Business Research. But they create only 8 percent of the venture-backed tech start-ups, according to Astia, a nonprofit group that advises female entrepreneurs.

That disparity reaches beyond entrepreneurs. Women account for just 6 percent of the chief executives of the top 100 tech companies, and 22 percent of the software engineers at tech companies over all, according to the National Center for Women and Information Technology. And among venture capitalists, the population of financiers who control the purse strings for a majority of tech start-ups, just 14 percent are women, the National Venture Capital Association says.

That reality is even more complex when race is factored into the mix. Small percentages of workers in information technology are African- American, Asian or Hispanic, and that number is even smaller for women.

“It’s not like people are making an effort to exclude people, but I see very little diversity in the candidate pool,” says Aileen Lee, a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, the big venture capital firm.

Research indicates that investing in women as tech entrepreneurs is good for the bottom line. Venturebacked start-ups run by women use, on average, 40 percent less capital than start-ups run by men and are increasingly involved in successful initial public offerings of stock, according to a recent white paper by Cindy Padnos, a venture capitalist . “When you have gender diversity in an organization, you have better innovation, and I don’t know where innovation is more important than in the high-tech world,” says Ms. Padnos, who recently founded Illuminate Ventures, which invests in start-ups led by women.

Firms like hers, along with nonprofit organizations like the National Center for Women and Information Technology, Astia and Springboard Enterprises, are trying to fix the problem by raising awareness, mentoring women and introducing them to investors.

“The good news is that Silicon Valley will see this change,” says Monica Morse, a trustee at Astia. “They will chase the person they think will make the money, regardless of whether they wear a skirt.”

Poornima Vijayashanker, 27, an Indian immigrant, said she was starting her company, BizeeBee, making software for small business, out of her apartment in Palo Alto, California, partly because she wants to have a family in a few years and says the tech start-up lifestyle isn’t hospitable to child-rearing. That’s why, she says, many young women prefer working at big companies to starting their own.

“Girls have certain family goals they want to accomplish,” she says. “Working 60 hours a week is difficult because it requires a life sacrifice.”

At the age of 27, Karen Watts became chief financial officer at a sports start-up called Rivals.com. In that job, she realized the value in automating routine paperwork and dreamed up Corefino, which makes business accounting software. She didn’t start it, though, until she had worked at four more companies. “I have to know everything; I have to have it all figured out,” she recalls thinking.

Many analysts and entrepreneurs say that attitude - rooted in a lack of confidence - is the main reason that when women do pursue startups, they often do it later in life than men.

Ms. Watts was also aware that the hurdles for financing were higher for women. Before she pitched venture capital firms, she made sure they had a woman as a partner and had backed companies led by women.

“If they’re not used to women in a senior position,” she says, “you’re going to be fighting a bunch of battles, and being an entrepreneur is hard enough.”


By CLAIRE CAIN MILLER


JIM WILSON/THE NEW YORK TIMES
Karen Watts, left, said that before approaching a venture capital
firm, she made sure it had financed companies led by women.