In Conversation: women and entrepreneurship

This ‘in conversation’ explores attitudes to women and entrepreneurship, particularly within new technology businesses. The two Fellows are Eleanor Ford and Sian Prime, who first met when Ford’s company, LikeCube, was selected for NESTA’s 2006 Creative Pioneer Programme (CPP) and Prime was the training and development manager at NESTA. Ford’s internet-based recommendation system received £35,000 of start-up funding from the CPP.

Sian Prime: People tend to believe that they’re always going to have to subsidise their creative output through other avenues such as teaching. I was interested in certain professions where it appeared to me you had to be aged 50 and a man to be taken seriously, but what would it be like if you were a woman in your thirties and had the opportunity to hit the ground running? The CPP wanted to support people like this and worked on the notion of ambition, because I firmly believe that creative thinkers can be strong entrepreneurs.

Eleanor Ford: Absolutely. Being an entrepreneur isn’t about changing the person you are; it’s about accessing the tools you need to make an idea happen. In fact, if there’s anything that the entrepreneur is, it’s someone with the ability to hold a group of people together that have diverse skills. So you need to be able to talk to an accountant and envisage financial modelling, but not actually have every skill to an expert extent. It’s about collaboration.

SP: I totally agree and I think women may be at an advantage in this. David Puttnam recently discussed his memories of the Second World War, where he was at home with his mother. There she was with little income and few resources, yet her ability to eek everything out and come up with innovative recipes and create a network with other women was incredible. Puttnam’s mum wasn’t the exception, this happened on a national scale. He said that it was this kind of monitoring of resources that he doesn’t see so much of in men. In terms of women in innovation, it’s that ability to let go of the thing that they’re less good at while still being able to manage the overall relationship. I see this as a strong and natural way of working.The classic theme to innovation is bringing together two existing things and if you don’t have the skill of collaboration – as Putman’s mother had – then you’ve just got two egos bashing against each other. Women are often labelled as having all the soft skills as if this undermines, but if it’s true that women are better at collaboration, then perhaps there should be more women involved in innovation and entrepreneurship.

EF: I certainly agree that soft skills are undermined. I was at an awards ceremony and the woman next to me started talking about women gaining awards in technology and said: “The thing is, women aren’t the ones with the hard skills, they’re not the techies, they’re generally the ones with the soft skills.” Now, I totally accept that many ideas cannot be done without a partnership with technical experts, but what really struck me was the undermining of those skills that she called ‘soft’. I’m sure that the only reason you can get to an investor and maintain a relationship is through soft skills.

SP: I had a similar discussion recently in which it was suggested that women are more naturally facilitators than entrepreneurs.  I see myself as an entrepreneur and a facilitator. I think the fact that soft skills are undervalued can be a barrier to women.

EF: One of the biggest challenges in terms of the venturing environment in technology is accessing funding. There is money out there, but navigating people into the right place to access it can be difficult.  Nine times out of ten, investors invest in people like them, so there’s a bridge to cross if you don’t fit that image – as in you haven’t done your MBA here or have a City background or you’re not male. I think for someone to go to an investor and say, “I’m not like you but I understand what your needs are and where you’re coming from” can be a challenge – especially when you’re talking about a lot of money.

SP: You’re right that finding funding for start-up businesses is difficult. If you invest early with technology start-up businesses, the likelihood of return is a way down the line. So I think the climate’s not good people aren’t patient enough and the metrics are wrong: investors are looking for too quick a financial return. I think there’s something around investment communities not quite understanding how to access riskier innovative start-ups and risky innovative start-ups not quite knowing how to access and sell themselves back to the investment community. That’s the bridge that needs to be built. And I do wonder whether male venture capitalists worry about businesses that are owned and run by women, in terms of whether they will go off and have a baby or take career breaks.

EF: I agree, but it’s still worth trying! I think the very British ‘egg on face’ stigma is a barrier for entrepreneurs in general. Bob Geldof recently said: “I’ve made so many mistakes; I have just happened to have a couple of success as well.” It’s about shifting that paradigm and encouraging a sense of risk.

SP: That’s an interesting point because there’s a lot of discussion currently among RSA Fellows about failure. I’ve just done some consultancy for the East England Development Agency and they were discussing business development and arguing that instead of just bringing the successes in, shouldn’t you also bring some failures in too? If you’re actually brave enough to talk about what’s wrong, it frees other people up to talk about it. When you’re dealing with big ideas, it’s often necessary to take a few risks. ThinkPublic, another emerging innovative business that impresses me, is a case in point. Its founder Deborah Szebeko is basically trying to redesign the NHS so that it’s delivered from a patient’s perspective rather than a doctor’s perspective. She’s got a great team around her with diverse skills. It’s an ambitious idea but it’s one that really excites me.