Our Story
I am a female entrepreneur & I spent 5 years trying to source funding for an online matchmaking business in Europe. Last year I had to admit failure. I lost everything but have been fulfilling a promise to help women entrepreneurs have an easier time to get funded. I started video interviewing venture capitalists, angel investors & women founders (who were successfully or not funded) & posting those interviews on my blog
EZebis &
youtube. One video interview made it to
Wall Street Journal & another to
Business Insider. I have self funded this project for 8 months & have exhausted all my funds but not my creativity or passion. I will be unable to continue the project unless I can access further funding.
The Impact
Our aim is to continue raising awareness of these issues for women entrepreneurs & startups & empowering them by featuring women role models & funders in our video interviews. We would also like to develop channels to facilitate more women to feel confident in achieving funding for their businesses through a book, video interviews & online coaching. We need funding to continue developing information channels to inform & highlight this issue.
The statistics for women achieving funding are very low: 3 to 5% get venture funded, less than 10% even if you expand that to include the entire team & any of the co founders. Around 16% women achieve Angel Capital. Data shows that the percentage of dollars going into women led companies have actually declined by about 30% over the last 10 years. Source Illuminate Ventures, thanks to Cindy Padnos for her untiring work for women entrepreneurs.
The video interviews have added many conversations to the issue many who may not normally be heard & highlight the problems & possible solutions viewed from all these different angles. The interviews are becoming a valuable resource for women entrepreneurs both in identifying women friendly investors along with information about how to be successful in achieving funding. There are a few women's organizations such as Astia, NCWIT, Anitaborg who are contributing in various ways to help women. However no-one is offering anything similar to our project. Funders are humanized through video & advise on how to be successful with their firm making them more accessible to women. Women founders share their stories & how they surmounted challenges along with their tips for success. This really highlights these unsung heroines & role models of which women have not as many as men. To ensure that this information source is available for everyone we also provide transcripts for each video.
What We Need & What You Get
A book with urls for video excerpts is planned & in process of being written (outline is already completed). More professional video interviews of venture capitalists, angel investors & women founders & a professional videographer is required to polish the videos & editing procedure. An intern is required to transcribe the interviews to continue to expand the information available for women entrepreneurs. We have lost half of the video interviews made & edited to date via a dysfunctional external hard drive and need a data recovery company to reclaim these files.
Book = $5,000
Videographer = $5,000
Intern =$1,000
Data Recovery = $2,000
Total = $17,000
Other Ways You Can Help
Share this link with others & support women in being able to access funding easily when & if they need it.
