She Knows How to Play the Game

One simple statistic both motivates and haunts Denise Brosseau: Of the roughly $35.4 billion that VCs invested during the first half of this year, Brosseau reports, only 4.6% went to companies that were led by women. Her personal definition of victory is the increase of that figure to 50%.

"Twenty years ago, the issue was how to get women into the debt markets, how to get basic loans to them without requiring their husbands to co-sign," Brosseau says. "Today, the issue is how to get women into the equity markets. That is one of the last frontiers."

The story of Silicon Valley over the past three decades has been as much about the democratization of capital as it has been about the creation of new technologies. The vast amounts of risk capital entrusted to entrepreneurs to create new companies and to invent new markets have fueled a frenzy of innovation that has reshaped the economy. But democracy for whom? Do men have some kind of monopoly on worthwhile business ideas? If not, what are the obstacles facing female entrepreneurs who are seeking better access to venture funding?

As CEO and cofounder of the Forum for Women Entrepreneurs (FWE), Brosseau, 41, heads a kind of nonprofit accelerator for women-led startups. Based in San Francisco, with chapters in Seattle, Los Angeles, and Denver/Boulder, the FWE serves high-tech and life-sciences companies that are seeking millions in order to get big fast. It is a well-rounded entrepreneurial community that includes first-time entrepreneurs, successful CEOs, venture capitalists, and service providers such as lawyers, who are willing to lend a hand now in hopes of winning business from those growth companies later. The FWE is a network of 1,100 members -- men and women -- that both demystifies the VC process and wires women into it.

"Venture-capital funding is like anything else," Brosseau says. "It's a system that you need to figure out. There are a series of networks that you need to be a part of in order to succeed. There's a process whereby companies get funded, and women have been out of that loop for a long, long time." To that challenge, Brosseau brings both the sense of mission of a committed activist and the pragmatism and agility of a natural-born entrepreneur. "VCs tend to fund people who they know, people who are connected into their network," she explains. "If women are not connected through a business-school classmate or through a buddy who they play basketball with, which is often how the guys are connected, then we just have to create new ways into the network. I can't change the underlying behavior. But I can change who VCs know."

Springing It, Winging It

One of the central vehicles for changing who venture capitalists know is Springboard 2000, a high-profile series of "venture forums" created by the National Women's Business Council in conjunction with the Center for Women & Enterprise and with Brosseau's FWE. The Springboard 2000 sessions showcase women-led startup companies that are seeking from $1 million to more than $25 million in financing from investors. In January, Brosseau kicked off the first such gathering at Oracle headquarters in Redwood City, California. About 350 attendees -- 200 of whom were either corporate, angel, or VC investors -- turned out to see what ideas the women entrepreneurs had to offer. Brosseau told the investors confidently: "We expect that you each will leave today with the intention of investing in a least one of our presenting companies."

Talk about underpromising and over-delivering: Within six months after the event, the 26 companies that were showcased that day had raised more than $185 million.

The mid-Atlantic Springboard 2000, which convened last July at America Online's headquarters, saw 44 pitches, with an extra half day devoted to entrepreneurs seeking early-stage seed funding to meet the demand by angel investors. In November, a third Springboard 2000 gathering was scheduled to take place at the Harvard Business School, and New York and Chicago are expected to be added to the roster for next year.

What makes Springboard 2000 different from countless other high-technology forums where venture capitalists size up business plans -- besides that you'll see more than the same few token women onstage -- is that the entrepreneurs receive extensive coaching to make the most of their minutes in front of investors. Experienced startup players train the recruits on crafting their market projections, refining their presentation skills, and even enhancing their sense of showmanship.