More Recognition and Capital for Inner City Business

If you picked up a copy of this week’s magazine, I hope you caught our story and Michael Porter’s commentary about doing business in the inner city. The two pieces were pegged to this year’s Inner City 100, a ranking of fast-growing companies located in America’s inner cities. The annual roundup is compiled by the Initiative for a Competitive Inner City, a nonprofit Porter founded in 1994 to foster economic growth. (We also published an online special report in early May that includes a slide show with profiles of the top 25 companies in the 2010 ranking and video snapshots of a selection of 10 of them.)

What didn’t make it into our coverage was a mention of ICIC’s call for nominations for its 2011 ranking. So here goes: The nomination period is open now through the end of September. Private, for-profit companies in poor urban areas are encouraged to apply via this form on the ICIC website. More info about the ranking is available on this page.

In addition to the ranking, ICIC runs a financial education and capital matchmaking program called Inner City Capital Connections that is also looking for participants. Companies can apply using this form.

Both programs are free.

View the original article here

Why Venture Capital Firms Need More Women Partners

I moderated a panel yesterday at the inaugural We Own It Summit in downtown Manhattan. The daylong event, hatched through many meetings of the minds at 24 organizations including Astia, the Kauffman Foundation, and Springboard Enterprises, was meant to drum up practical ideas on boosting women’s participation in high-growth entrepreneurship.

My panel was about venture capital. To set the scene, I cited data from the Center for Women’s Business Research that show that while about 41 percent of private companies in the U.S. are owned by women, only 3 percent to 5 percent of them get venture capital. Then the panelists, experienced entrepreneurs and equity investors Heidi Messer (World Evolved), Diane Mulcahy (Babson College), Divya Gugnani (Behind the Burner), and Anu Shukla (KM), candidly described their experiences on both sides of the funding table to an audience of about 45 women and a handful of men. One of the big (if obvious) takeaways: venture money is available but there are still plenty of gender-related obstacles. After that, the discussion began, with panelists and folks in the audience kicking around prescriptions for improving the odds.

Cindy Padnos, managing director of Illuminate Ventures, said increasing the number of women partners at VC firms was key, since those firms with at least one woman partner are 70 percent more likely to lead investments in a woman-run company than those VC firms with only male partners. (Padnos’s firm recently published a whitepaper aggregating new research on women entrepreneurs.)

Of course, it’s not just about adding women partners—the firm’s culture needs to change, too. Padnos told the audience this anecdote: “When I go out with these women-led companies and introduce them to women [venture capital] investors, I frequently hear a comment that shocked me—and when I thought about it, I realized they were right. They say, ‘I’m a new partner here. I’ve already done one woman-led deal. I can’t do another.’ Now substitute another male-led deal, Indian-led deal, Asian-led deal; anything else and you would think that person was absolutely out of their mind. But in reality when they’re in a partnership where they’re the only woman partner…and they are a junior partner in the firm and they’ve made one bet already on a woman, they’ve got to see it through successfully before they feel comfortable taking on another.”

View the original article here