A League of Your Own

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"I had to work with so many different constituencies to get this project done," she says. It looked very much like a trial run for starting her own company.

The Women's Business Center Network
Corporate contacts were just the beginning of Lent's networking efforts. "I joined every women's business group I could find," she recalls. And she found plenty. Through the Women's Economic Network, a private group in San Francisco, she gained access to CEOs in the food industry, who schooled her on servicing retailers. Karen Csejtey, the director of the YWCA's Women Entrepreneurs Program in Palo Alto, Calif., used her media contacts to help get Lent covered in the San Jose Mercury News. And at the Center to Develop Women Entrepreneurs, a mentoring program at San Jose State University, Lent met the CEO of a frozen-cookie-dough company who allowed her to warehouse her sample products for free.

Like most of their counterparts in other regions, those groups either didn't exist or were just in their infancy five years ago. Now more than 60 women's business centers are partially funded by the Small Business Administration and by countless more independent nonprofit groups that charge minimal fees, according to Harriet Fredman, deputy assistant administrator at the SBA's Office of Women's Business Ownership, in Washington, D.C. "There have always been small groups around the country, but now they're part of a larger network," says Fredman. Centers that receive SBA funding participate in a monthly conference call with Fredman's office and are also linked through a new Web site that Fredman says received more than 350,000 hits in its first three months.

For Lent, persistent networking at women's business centers opened up a world of contacts that moved her beyond her corporate frame of reference. For others, the centers serve an even more critical role, often training women who have little or no business experience. For instance, Marsha Florio and her partners, many of them former athletes, coaches, and teachers, worked with the Women's Business Development Center in Philadelphia for a year and a half before opening HerSport, a Haddonfield, N.J., sports specialty store for women. "We took a 12-week course at the center and came out with a business plan," says Florio. The course instructor, Linda Karl, used her banking connections to help the partners secure a loan, and center director Geri Swift introduced Florio and her partners to Sherry Black, another course graduate, who produces specialty gift items for women and girls in sports. Black is now a supplier to HerSport. "I don't think we'd be where we are if we didn't have the center as a stepping-stone," says Florio. "They've really taken care of us." The total cost for the course: approximately $500.

The Capital Network
Historically, women have cited the lack of access to capital as one of the biggest barriers to starting a business. "When we first started, women were getting love money and running up their credit cards to start businesses," recalls Hedy Ratner, director of the Women's Business Development Center in Chicago. "Now banks are less resistant, and women are a target market." Women's business centers that once focused almost exclusively on training and education are now more often doing their own microlending, using money they've raised through private investors, the SBA, or state economic-development agencies. They also link clients to the larger banking community through the SBA's prequalification and loan-guarantee programs. "A bank might now refer a client to us for more help on, say, a business plan," says Wendy Werkmeister, president of the Wisconsin Women's Business Initiative Corp. "In the past, she might just get rejected and never cross our radar screen."

Fran Lent's financing challenges were more complex than most founders', given the scale of her idea. Stock options from her husband's former employer yielded $100,000, but Lent needed close to $1 million in seed capital, and she was determined to raise it through the venture-capital community. Her networking efforts led her to F. Noel Perry, managing director at Baccharis Capital, a Menlo Park, Calif., venture-capital firm that is "very committed to funding women-led businesses," says Perry. Lent impressed him as "the quintessential entrepreneur," and he agreed to sponsor her presentation to Investors' Circle, an elite group of individuals committed to socially responsible investing. On the strength of her pitch, Lent landed the funding she needed from Baccharis Capital and another Investors' Circle member.

According to Investors' Circle founder Susan Davis, members' investments in companies led by women have grown from 2% to 25% in the past three years, an increase she attributes to a temporary spin-off of 15 female investors. "The women in the circle felt we weren't getting enough women-led deals," says Davis. "So they formed their own group and raised between $2 million and $3 million." After two years the women investors merged back into the larger group, bringing with them the contacts and experience that had originally eluded the larger group.

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Donna Fenn

Inc. contributing editor Donna Fenn is the author of Upstarts! How GenY Entrepreneurs are Rocking the World of Business and 8 Ways You Can Profit From Their Success (McGraw-Hill, 2009). Both this blog and the book examine the ways in which GenY is changing the entrepreneurial landscape with new approaches to starting, growing, and managing their companies. Learn more at http://www.upstartsrock.com/.

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