The Findings Behind the Debate

The following details are highlighted from the last debate.

Please click here for the full debate output. The next output from the debate "Women learning to love debt and embrace equity" will be available in due course.

The Rise of the Self-made Woman

Enlightened Men and Brave Women, Is the Glass Ceiling Self-Imposed?, Sharpening the Awareness of Finance, Navigating the Financial Labyrinth, How Level Is the Playing Field?, Boxing That Fear of Failure

Present:

• HERTA von Stiegel: Executive Chairman, Stargate Capital Investment Group (Forum Chair)
• MIKE Jatania: CEO Lornamead Group
• GITA Patel: Director Stargate Capital Management Ltd
• TIM Campbell: Founder, The Bright Ideas Trust
• AVIS Charles: Managing Director, AVIS Charles Associates
• DIANE Benussi: Partner, Benussi & Co
• CLARE Logie: Director, HBOS Women

Enlightened Men and Brave Women

HERTA: Forget China, India and even new technologies, says The Economist – for the past 10 years the Number One vector for growth has been women. But it needs enlightened men and brave women to act together to level a very uneven playing field – "enlightened men" because women can't change the world alone. And "brave women" because so many with potential don't have the courage to embrace their own femininity. So many women try to become men because they think that's the only way to succeed. But, if you're trying to be someone else, you are always going to be second best.

TIM: The highest numbers of individuals starting their own business are those who have been disadvantaged in some way at work – black and ethnic minorities and women. These people don't want to go on banging their heads until it aches, so they find another avenue, usually by starting up their own enterprises.

HERTA: Having been an investment banker for most of my career, I'm surprised how few female university students – some of the brightest and best in the land – don't realise that that they can have a really meaningful career in business. That's why we need to provide inspiration – we need to be role models.

MIKE: The entrepreneurial culture is gathering momentum in Britain and women are the beneficiaries. For women, there must be some frustration, however, about the corporate leadership positions that seem inaccessible. It's a negative, but it must be a motivator. But I'm finding more enlightened men these days who are supporting their wives' ideas. It's another encouraging shift in attitudes and culture.

HERTA: The assumptions we've made about retiring at 65 are just out of the window, because we're living longer, more successfully and healthier. We are not going to rely on a pension to retire. We're not going to shut down at 55 or 60. Many of us will start our own businesses. Another window opens.

GITA: Women are big influencers of spending. They're the foot soldiers on the ground, identifying the niches, the gaps. Some have spent most of their careers building huge brands for other companies and they're now confident enough to say they can do it for themselves. That's one of the biggest drivers.

AVIS: Woman have decided they may have to look after themselves. We may not be able to depend on husbands.

Back to top

Is the Glass Ceiling Self-Imposed?

TIM: You have a choice – if the corporate sector is not for you, engaging in the entrepreneurial culture is now another option. You then create your own enterprise where you can be a board member immediately.

AVIS: The glass ceiling idea is probably self-imposed. In the fashion industry, if we are talking about a glass ceiling, colour could be it. But I haven't seen that glass ceiling personally because I think you have to decide whether to class yourself as ethnic minority, or a woman in business. The driver has to be you.

MIKE: Whether you're Indian, black or a woman, it's a mindset. We never classify ourselves as a British-Asian business. Ours is a mainstream business. If you think like that, then the ceilings don't exist for you. Brave women just don't have ceilings.

DIANE: The biological imperative contributes most to the fact that women don't make it to the top. Women biologically have a different instinct. As they go up the career path, men will walk away from their families in a way that women won't. If there is a family crisis, it almost inevitably falls on the woman to cope with it.

HERTA: In Scandinavia, the real breakthrough came when it was required for men to take paternity leave. That is what changed the culture.

Back to top

Sharpening the Awareness of Finance

GITA: When women entrepreneurs come and present their businesses, they won't oversell their strengths. They will be transparent about their weaknesses and limitations. They will not over-project their numbers. But the guys will come up with big numbers, an attractive graph – and then ask you why you aren't writing the cheque!

HERTA: The difference between how men and women present their business plans is unbelievable. Women have a story that's pages thick but with just a few pages of financials. Very often, they don't talk about how the investor is actually going to make money. Men will have much more of what the average VC is looking for – solid financials. Women have to start thinking about how to make their financial case persuasively, address the investors' concerns and recognise that a lot of people are not going to read the story in between.

DIANE: One thing women lack is the love of money – they are not obsessed by money. Men are driven by testosterone and money, and women are just not. Money does not drive them, as long as they've enough to feed their children. I think that, for women, money is actually a turn-off.

Back to top

Navigating the Financial Labyrinth

TIM: The biggest lack is access to finance – people don't know where to go to get money. But people also want access to real-world business information – to people who've actually been there, done it and got the T-shirt to prove it. We need to help with the rules of engagement – where to secure finance, mentors, and advisers.

CLARE: Women are much more reticent than men about going to financial institutions to ask for money, and then they tend to ask for the bare minimum. They don't want to look cheeky or arrogant, they want to be realistic. It also takes longer for women to get to the point of requesting finance – anything up to seven years from the germination of an idea. And women, on average, use 30% of the start-up capital that men use. So they're under-capitalised from the start.

TIM: The best entrepreneurial advice I had was to retain full control of my company for as long as possible. Failing that, if you have to raise money, we need to do more to take all the mystery out of the roles of venture capitalists and business angels.

GITA: Venture capital has a dreadful reputation from the women's perspective. They call it vulture capital. They can never even get to the negotiating table. They don't know how to navigate their way through.

HERTA: In the United States, women entrepreneurs are very comfortable with leverage. But the equity side is something else. People are very loath to give away equity unless they really have to.

GITA: Women are looking for more than money, they're looking for us to open deals and to provide influence. There's so much inequality in the distribution of funds that we need to set up a proper business angel network that opens up a deal-flow. Women don't participate in business angel networks as they're operating at the moment because, when they take their ideas to these business angels, these guys simply want to steal them.

HERTA:

There's a funding gap affecting women. We identify a need for private equity to be more "female friendly" in assessing women-led propositions. Women entrepreneurs need wider access to leaders willing to provide leverage – sympathetic, woman-friendly equity partners able to ignite the spark of entrepreneurialism.

Back to top

How Level Is the Playing Field?

HERTA: Factually, women are becoming wealthier. But we doubt the adequacy of current wealth management approaches to suit women's needs. For a bank, there's a clear message: you ignore 50% of the population at your peril. Don't be asleep on your watch, there's a huge market opportunity.

DIANE: I create a lot of women millionaires every year through divorce. But banks will not loan to those women, even though they know they've got an almost caste-iron guarantee that they're going to walk away with several million pounds. They will not loan to them for their fees. These women are absolutely stymied. They have no control of money.

GITA: In Europe including the UK, women get some 2.5% of venture capital. In the US, it's 5-6%. It's a global issue. That's why some women's businesses remain small, because they're self-funded from friends and family or with angel money.

HERTA: I think we need to be very aware of the prejudices that do exist. In the States, an experiment was done with identical business plans, some with a male named attached as CEO, and some with a female name. The businesses allegedly run by men were 300% more likely to get funds.

AVIS: When I started my business, the bank said that, as much as it was a really good idea, there was absolutely no way they would look at it unless my husband was guarantor on the loan, or that we went into that business together. It was just that, if you're married, you needed to have your husband's guarantee.

HERTA: The statistics are quite compelling: in the hedge fund industry, the funds managed by women perform better. In private equity, companies run by female CEOs are actually using less capital and are performing better. But very few people know these things. So we are talking about data that is out there but very, very few people know it. There is clearly a breakdown of information.

Back to top

Boxing That Fear of Failure

TIM: We need to promote the entrepreneurial mindset. Our American cousins don't have our fear of risk. We need to persuade more people to say: I have felt the risk and jumped the chasm – and it's OK!

HERTA: We have to learn to box the fear of failure. If you ask people why they are not doing something, invariably the number one thing is because they fear failure. I think, if we need to teach people anything, it is how to fail forward – how to box the fear by admitting: I may have really fallen flat on my face, but I have learned something from it.

AVIS: At the beginning, I would have been really worried to take on debt. There's the worry of your home and your children. As a man, you just go out and do it, and you have almost this belief that the money will come in somehow.

Back to top