by Chris Shipley

Invariably, someone at each DEMO conference comments on the number
(and usually the lack of numbers) of women on stage. It’s true that as
a population at DEMO, or any technology entrepreneur-laden event,
female founders are in the minority. I meet hundreds of entrepreneurs
each year, and it is the very rare meeting that includes a woman who is
not in the capacity of PR or marketing consultant.

Since the first of the year, for example, I can call to mind exactly
two women among the legion of male entrepreneurs to come through my
office. The numbers naturally lead you to wonder why more women aren’t
starting businesses. Then again, maybe that’s not exactly the right
question.

Women start businesses, lots and lots of businesses, just,
apparently, not technology businesses. Or at least not venture-based
technology businesses, typically the profile of a company that presents
itself for selection at DEMO conferences.

Since I began paying attention to the statistics more than a decade
ago, the numbers on a percentage basis have changed very little. Fewer
than 10 percent of venture-based technology companies have a woman on
the founding team. This startling statistic has led some to assert that
venture is a male-dominated business dismissive, if not outright
hostile, toward women.

I won’t defend the venture business; I’ve heard enough anecdotes to
give at least some credence to that perspective. But I think there is,
at root, something different happening. Women build different kinds of
businesses from men. They have different aspirations and quite often
they fund them differently - usually through organic growth rather than
venture capital infusion. There are exceptions of course. Diane Green
at VMWare, Kim Polese at SpikeSource, and more recently Gina Bianchini
at Ning provide a few examples.

But women-founded startups are often, in my experience, a different
breed and a different funding need. In fact, many young women benefit
more from mentor capital than venture capital, at least in the earliest
days of their young companies’ lives. So an event like Women 2.0’s
Business Plan Competition is extremely useful, giving young women
entrepreneurs a chance to pitch their ideas to a panel of investors and
industry experts (among them, me)

Conceived as the “napkin challenge,” teams with at least 50% female
ownership are invited to submit business ideas on a 7×7 inch paper
napkin, accompanied by a standard business plan document. A panel of
judges vets the plans and invites women with the top ideas to present
at the May 10, 2008 conference. Rather than a promise of funding or a
monetary prize, winning teams will have the opportunity to meet
one-on-one with experienced mentors and investors, including veteran
technology writer and start-up investor Esther Dyson, arguably among
the best advisors a young company could hope for.

This isn’t the sort of thing I normally write about in this column,
but I do want to encourage young women to entrepreneurship of any type.
Information about the competition is available at
http://www.women2.org/?page_id=44#submission_process. The submission
deadline is April 1.

And maybe, just maybe, a tide of smart ideas from smart women
founders will find momentum and that perennial question about women at
DEMO won’t need to be asked in the future.