Entrepreneurial women overcome the many roadblocks - Building Gender Balanced Business

• It’s hard enough for a man to start a successful business, but women face particular impediments, which makes the recent surge in the number of women-run new companies particularly laudatory.

• Only 6.8% of 2008 venture capital went to companies founded by women, according to Dow Jones VentureSource. Just 1 in 5 of U.S. compamies with annual revenue of $1 million or more is owned by a woman, according to the Center for Women’s Business Research, in part because only 3% of women-owned companies ever reach the $1 million mark, half the rate for men-owned firms.

• Still, along with a surge of new businesses started around the world by women, US women are creating companies at twice the rate of men.

• Amy Millman, president and founder of Springboard Enterprises, which connects entrepreneurial women with investors, told BusinessWeek that funding nevertheless is plentiful for female entrepreneurs. “[I]t’s much cheaper to start a business now than a decade ago,” she said.

• Millman foresees a big explosion of women-run businesses in science-based firms to go along with recent growth in such fields as business services.

• But women starting companies must be be more aggressive and less risk-averse, Millman said, despite market conditions.

The BusinessWeek article