Female founders need a break

by Simon Court

I spend my professional life helping founders to succeed. Most, but not all of them by any means, are men. International Women’s Day prompted me to look for female success stories and happily, I found lots of them, in many parts of the world. I gave away a dozen copies of my new book, Founder’s Legacy: Fifty Game-Changing Leadership Lessons for Building a Great Business to women who were nominated for their brilliant leadership.

Take Jessi Roesch, Founder and CEO of Downland in Austin, Texas. Her company is pioneering regenerative soil practices that are good for human health and the environment.

She has over a decade of experience driving transformation at startups, unicorns and enterprise companies. One woman who worked with Jessi said this about her: “This woman has truly been instrumental in helping me gain a deeper understanding of myself as both a leader and a woman. I am in awe of her inspirational qualities and feel incredibly fortunate to have had the opportunity to work closely with her for an entire year. Her unwavering commitment to emphasising and honing individual strengths and skill sets has enabled me to define and shape my own unique leadership style in ways that I never previously considered possible.”

Girls need to see role models like Jessi and her much more established counterparts Sarah Blakely (Spanx) and Whitney Wolfe-Heard (Bumble) so that they think about pursuing a career in entrepreneurship too.

Back in the UK it also is encouraging to see initiatives like the women-led high-growth enterprise taskforce chaired by Anne Boden, founder of Starling Bank. Because we need to make sure the system helps women to succeed. As Anne says in her introduction “Women routinely face multiple barriers in the entrepreneurial sphere, and when it comes to achieving high-growth, many of these challenges are compounded. For example, in 2022, of the UK’s multi billion pound venture capital funding, female entrepreneurs routinely received less than a 2% share of the investments made each year.”

Despite these positive stories, the uncomfortable truth is we have a long way to go before we can genuinely claim to have created a level playing field. Only 15% to 20% of startups worldwide have at least one female founder. Only 14% of angel investors in the UK are female. Perhaps even more concerning is that only 54% of Gen Z women believe that women have as much of a chance as men to earn a management position at work – the least confident of all generations. Things should be getting better with every generation, but progress has stalled.

So I was very grateful for the chance to talk to Nadia Edwards-Dashti, a champion for diversity and inclusion who is herself a formidable leader. She is one of the founders of Harrington Starr, an award-winning recruitment company, host of the wildly popular Fintech’s DEI Discussions podcast and contributor to Forbes and many other publications. We had a frank conversation about the challenges women face and what we can do about them to accelerate progress. She told me about the many uphill battles that female founders face to be taken seriously in male-dominated industries working against quiet discrimination and stereotypes.

Although the chat covered many areas, three distinct topics caught my attention.

1. Be prepared to engage in difficult conversations

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1stVjK_hpGxk3yrUqsJ8RjM5kSUOeLW8c/view?usp=drive_link

In today’s rather polarised world it seems to be hard to ask questions, listen to another’s point of view and maybe even change your mind. Too often we argue to win, not to find the best outcome. As I talk about in Founder’s Legacy, the most difficult conversations are where opinions differ, the stakes are high, and emotions are strong. We veer away from such conversations for many reasons. But displaying empathy to someone who we might find challenging gives both parties the chance to see the other side of the argument—and this can build bridges. Being willing to discuss openly and properly listen to those who are experiencing challenges firsthand is not always comfortable. Online these conversations can become heated, but actually, Nadia welcomes these conversations because they represent engagement.

Nadia eloquently pointed out: “I think this International Women’s Day there’s been a lot of real stuff online. There’s been a lot of posts and a lot of talk that has created quite a venomous debate on how we move the needle, how we drive forward inclusion. Now, there’s loads of stuff that I don’t like. I don’t like the thought of lowering the bar; how patronising is that? However, we’re talking about it. It means that more people are becoming aware of it. We’re getting more used to understanding what the problems are. The fact is that even in all those comments (such as in the comments under the FT’s recent piece “Lack of female-led ‘unicorns’ shows the need for change in the VC world”), people were talking about the system. I don’t agree with the way of looking at the system and how to fix it that were mentioned in the comments, but at least, we’re having more conversations around it.”

2. Inclusion isn’t just for periods of growth

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1stVjK_hpGxk3yrUqsJ8RjM5kSUOeLW8c/view?usp=drive_link

I asked Nadia: “In a tough economy, like the one we have been in for a while, people are under pressure to get results quickly, and this is not the best friend of improving diversity and inclusion is it?”

Nadia’s response? “The economy has been a killer for inclusion. As a recruiter, selling on transferable skills or potential has gone completely to pot. Clients tell me we don’t have time for inclusion right now, we’ve got to get the business moving. It makes me question them, you don’t have time for your people right now? You got to get the business moving? Who is going to move your business? We have made this mistake over and over again and it’s time to wake up and stop.”

3. Good men need to be braver

https://drive.google.com/file/d/12bOAdeO6cT2UFhInYRed04_nDorDga0T/view?usp=drive_link

I was especially interested in what she feels men can do to help address the injustices. Nadia states that she wants men to be more than just allies but stakeholders, a term mentioned (potentially even coined) by Barbara Sessa at Mastercard who Nadia interviewed in the past. So it’s time for all of us, especially us men, to speak up whenever you see doors closing to women. As Nadia told me, women are tired of speaking up and carrying the emotional burden of vocalising their issues, they want action.

Nadia told me: “To all the good men that think gender equality is equality for us all, let’s level the playing field. I don’t want you to support me. I want you to do it, and I will also support you. My belief is men should be overbearing and let’s drive gender equality for us all. What holds a lot of really good men back is they may be thinking, I don’t want to step on your toes, I don’t want to be out of line. If you realise you are starting a race 50 metres ahead, and it’s a 52 metre race, stop and drag me forward with you, and drag my children forward, as I would yours. That takes boldness, that takes courage.”

This really made me pause and reflect. I hope it does you too.

The current situation is not only unjust it is also a colossal waste of talent and opportunity. A recent BCG study of 350 startups found women founders delivered higher revenue, burn through cash at a slower pace and exit sooner and at a higher rate. Women make amazing leaders because they are often more emotionally intelligent and suffer less from the hubris that men can demonstrate.

Investors typically consider themselves rational decision makers driven by returns but they are frequently unaware of their own biases. As I say in Founder’s Legacy “You might think that investors are deeply rational and data driven. But the truth is they are as influenced by their emotions as anyone else. Their herd mentality, their fear of missing out, and their intuition may override their cold calculations.” Investors need to become more self-aware because if they do, they’ll make more money and be doing the right thing.

Yet we live in a world where, as one VC shared anecdotally, some female founders are afraid to share news of their pregnancies, concerned that investors will call their commitment into question.

Gender equality is good for all of us. We need to work together to make it a reality.