Watson Wire: Supporting Austin’s Women Entrepreneurs

I created the Mayor’s Task Force for Austin Women Entrepreneurs as part of my ongoing effort to shift our economic development paradigm and focus on ensuring Austinites can participate in and enjoy more of our prosperity.

Carla Stanmyre McDonald , founder and managing director of the investment firm Dynabrand Ventures, led the task force as its chair and she brought together an impressive array of women leaders to dig into the question of how we can level the entrepreneurial playing field in Austin. To that end, the task force surveyed more than 300 Austin women entrepreneurs, held five focus groups and conducted numerous one-on-one interviews with our city’s women business owners.

I highly recommend spending some time with the task force report, which does an excellent job of laying out the landscape for women entrepreneurs and the obstacles they face.

On a national level, women-owned businesses account for 39 percent of all U.S. businesses, and they’re outpacing the rate of growth of companies owned by men. Despite huge funding disparities, women start-up founders generate higher revenues than their male counterparts and the average return on investment for women-owned businesses is double that of men-owned businesses.

On some measures, the situation is worse in Austin than nationally – and that’s unacceptable. While 1.8 percent of national venture capital dollars went to women founders in 2023, that really ridiculously small number was even lower in Austin. It was less than 1 percent in Austin, even though Austin ranks sixth nationally in venture capital count and value.?

The bottom line: “While Austin is a land of opportunity for scores of entrepreneurs, many entrepreneurial women feel excluded from the city’s thriving innovation economy.”

And that means, for our community’s bottom line, that we’re leaving money and opportunity on the table. That makes no sense for anyone.

The task force identified three big obstacles:

• Obstacle #1: Access to capital
• Obstacle #2: Access to a broader, more helpful network
• Obstacle #3: Access to more affordable goods and services

The work of the Mayor’s Task Force for Austin Women Entrepreneurs provides an important roadmap for how we as a community can move forward. I’ve already started working with the City’s Economic Development Department looking for the things we can move on immediately and how we can improve our outreach and public resources.

For example, the task force noted that Austin women entrepreneurs lagged behind their national counterparts when it comes to federal Small Business Administration grants and recommended we work with our federal partners to open a Women’s Business Center in Austin. A full-service SBA office in Austin would bring federal staff and resources to support local banks and non-profit lenders to increase access to Austin small business community including federal contracting.?

Access to childcare was a key issue for the women entrepreneurs who responded to the survey. It’s also a key issue for me and the Austin City Council, which has prioritized childcare in our economic development negotiations and provided a property tax exemption for qualified childcare centers. We’re also exploring some options to better support women entrepreneurs, including a possible pilot program for subsidized childcare services.

Several of the task force recommendations, such as creating a local angel investor group for women entrepreneurs, will require private investors and a commitment from our business leaders. I intend to work with folks to get us moving on these initiatives.

As the task force concluded, making progress for our city’s women entrepreneurs requires “a collective commitment from all Austinites – from policymakers, nonprofit directors, and community leaders to venture capital investors, mentors, and educators – to see themselves as agents of this transformation our community needs.”

Well, this policymaker absolutely sees the transformation our community needs and thanks the task force for the excellent work. I look forward to Austin leading, changing for the better and celebrating our successes of our women entrepreneurs.