Better than the "female Steve Jobs"

Earlier this month, my friend and fellow female founder Esther Crawford announced that her company Squad had sold to Twitter for an undisclosed amount. 

“Undisclosed amount” can be a code for a lot of things in the startup world. It can mean a face saving acquihire that does little more than give people jobs. But undisclosed amount can also simply mean the amount wasn’t high enough that a large public company had to disclose it, so why would they? It can still be substantial.

Crawford was clear what kind of deal it was when she wrote this in her post:

“I hope that our exit will tip the scale a bit more toward convincing investors to put money into diverse teams because each success is another proof point that we, the historically under-capitalized and underestimated founders, are a good bet. Invest in women and people of color because we will make you money. In turn, this is a good moment to remind founders that you should choose your investors wisely because when you win you’ll be making them richer and more powerful.”

It’s an important point to make. Because so few of us get funded, we feel pressure to win or we let down future underrepresented groups. When we win, let’s make the point explicitly, lest it be lost on anyone. 

And make no mistake: These deals are significant in aggregate, even if the dollars involved don’t make headlines. 

“Undisclosed sums” can bring vital talent into large organizations. They can also return money to investors rapidly. Any portfolio will have losses, and any portfolio needs a homerun. But those doubles and triples also matter, especially given how long IPO timelines are. 

But there’s something more important about these deals with “undisclosed amounts.” If the founders didn’t raise too much, they can create a new ascendant class of new self-made millionaires who have had a win. 

I saw the impact these deals had in the early 2000s. The world was still so burned from the dot com bubble, that small social media, user generated content and community-related ventures were pooh-poohed by major investors. There were a few, like Peter Thiel and Reid Hoffman, who kept writing checks, and cashed in mightily for their contrarian bets. 

But it was only when companies like Delicious and Flickr started to get snapped up for “undisclosed amounts” that it started to get the press and investors’ attention. These experiments were now worth tens of millions of dollars. They’d raised little capital, because so little capital thought these companies would go anywhere. And so those small deals represented big wins. 

I didn't get it at first as a journalist. "Big deal," I remember telling Chris Sacca, long before he was CHRIS SACCA and back when we still spoke. "It's thirty million here, fifty million there. These aren't numbers that excite anyone."

Those numbers aren't the ones that matter, he said. What matters is that each of these founders are now self-made millionaires. That and early angel investors like Sacca making decent multiples off those rounds also built their names and fortunes. These would become the new ascendant class of decision makers and gate keepers.

Imagine if something similar happened with women and people of color now. We get so focused on wanting the big win to get all the headlines and prove all the investors wrong. And then, when attention is lavished on someone like Elisabeth Holmes to be that thing, and she turns out not to be, the entire women’s movement is set back. 

See also female founders who aren’t at the Elisabeth Holmes level of infamy, but get dragged in the press and frequently lose their jobs in ways male founders don’t for far less offenses. I would argue that white female founders should be held to a high standard; it’s the male founders who aren’t held to a high enough standard that is the problem. But each of these cases show the problem with expecting one female founder to be some messianic figure to change the industries perceptions of backing women. 

Far better than one “female Steve Jobs” or “female Mark Zuckerberg” is a hundred Esther Crawfords. Or even a dozen. It doesn’t take much for the press and investors to take notice. (And, by the way, look at the press every unicorn female founder has gotten. The world won't tolerate a woman acting anything remotely like Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerberg, so that playbook is out.)

Imagine the impact of minting a dozen new millionaire women in Silicon Valley. Women who have actually built companies and returned capital. 

It’s great news that so many more women are in check writing capacities at large firms and boutique firms. But too few of them have actually built companies themselves. 

It brings to mind another shift in the startup world in the early 2000s. Entrepreneurs were en masse frustrated with VCs calling the shots and making the bulk of the returns, when so few of them had built companies themselves. That led to a long industry shift toward VCs with operating experience. 

But that shift hasn’t happened when it comes to female founders, and the lack of women who get funded to begin with is a big reason why. The more of us who build companies and have a win, the faster that can change. If male founders were long frustrated with the disconnect of building a company versus just investing in them, it goes triple for female founders because of the outrageous bias at play. 

Let me tell you first hand: 98% gender bias is unlike anything other white women have professionally experienced in most industries. I thought I knew gender bias before raising capital as a woman. I did not. (And, again, that stat is for white women. It's much worse for women of color.)

My company, Chairman Mom, believes in this so fervently we are doing something to help create more Esthers. We have decided to partner with Janice Fraser, who has run a successful lean startup accelerator, called Advance, for more than a decade. Past entrepreneurs have raved about her ability to get them to focus and distill their pitches, focus on the investors who will actually fund them, and think through pivots and challenges rapidly. Lyft may be the best known of the program’s alums, but many have gone on to raise follow up capital from top firms. 

What Fraser and Chairman Mom are focused on now is how to make this playbook work for underrepresented founders, because the game is different. We are coaching just ten founders at a time. Ten founders for ten weeks starting February 1. 

In addition to Fraser’s magic, I’ll personally help with relevant investor intros and advisers or people who can help get these founders to their goal faster.

But here’s where it gets really exciting: Not only do we have contacts in the venture world, but Chairman Mom itself is a community of thousands of phenomenal women who want to support other women. So in addition to the usual investor demo day, we’ll be doing a demo day for Chairman Mom users.

The hope? Our community will rally around these 10 startups that we’ve lovingly picked and Fraser has worked her magic on for 10 weeks. We can’t all be venture capitalists, but we can all support 10 female founders.

Imagine: What if Fraser could coach you, I could introduce you to relevant Silicon Valley folks, and our community could become your market research, your beta testers, maybe even your first 100 customers?

Now that is an unstoppable combination in addition to women’s brilliant ideas and hustle. It’s how we win together. Does it yield a unicorn or two? I don’t know. But I bet we build a lot of valuable, world-changing companies that could return capital, make female founders into millionaires, and start to build the muscle memory around women and wins. More Esther Crawfords. 

Because if I’ve learned anything as a serial entrepreneur, it’s that underrepresented founders need traction. Traction is the only thing that cuts through the bias and the BS. Lots of places can give you great coaching and intros, but if we can help you get traction, that’s massive.

We aren’t taking a stake in companies. Our incentive isn’t a unicorn, it’s for each of those ten underrepresented founders to reach their true potential, and get the support they wouldn’t otherwise. The support that Esther and I have gotten, but so few women and people of color have. 

This is a small corner of entrepreneurship that together we will change, 10 companies at a time. Sometimes real change has to start small and build. As we build a track record — together, our entire community — we will change more lives until we rewrite a pattern and change an industry. 

Want to apply to take part? Start the process here.

Want to be part of the community that helps our female founders? Commit here and we’ll include you! 

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Sarah Lacy is an award winning journlist, bestselling author and the founder and CEO of Chairman Mom. She has two adorable children, and lives in San Francisco.