Fair Financing

CEO and co-founder, Forum for Women Entrepreneurs

As long as women fill the pipeline feeding venture-backed firms, it'll only be a hop, skip and jump to their own equity-backed firms.

Venture capitalists [typically] fund someone who has been on a successful start-up [management] team. But venture-backed firms with women in top management now [represent] 45 to 50 percent [of the total], increasing the number of women ready for that next step.

Investors also tend to fund technology businesses, where there aren't many women. More women studying science and technology, and programs like the Cal-Tech Women's Center, will help female-headed firms move from the laboratory to the boardroom.

This article was originally published in the January 2001 print edition of Entrepreneur with the headline: Fair Financing.