一位女性创业者筹资时如何屡败屡战 最终赢得风投青睐

It’s slim pickings if you’re a female entrepreneur hoping to raise money. A recent study from Babson College found that venture capital firms with female partners are more than three times as likely to invest in companies with female CEOs than firms led by all-male teams, but the percentage of women in the VC industry has dropped from 10% to 6% since 1999—and only 2.7% of VC-backed companies have a female CEO.

对于想要筹资的女性创业者来说，机会其实并不多。美国巴布森学院（Babson College）最近的一项调查显示，如果一家风投公司拥有女性合伙人，那么其选择投资女性CEO所领导企业的概率，是投资纯男性主导企业的三倍多。然而，风投公司中的女性比例正在下降，从1999年的10%降到6%。同时，仅有2.7%获得风投注资的企业是由女性CEO掌管。

So what’s a female founder to do?

那么女性创业者该如何应对这种环境？

If you’re Emily Weiss, you shrug off rejection. The 29-year-old founder of beauty blog Into The Gloss recently raised $8.4 million in funding; she plans to use the capital to scale her new skincare line Glossier. “I’m not afraid of being told ‘no’,” she says of her journey to millions. “It was an important exercise in understanding different funds and learning which would be the best fit for me.”

如果你是艾米丽o韦丝，你可能就会对风投的拒绝淡然处之了。这位29岁的美容博客Into The Gloss创始人最近获得了840万美元的融资，她计划用这笔资金扩展其新的护肤品系列Glossier。“我不怕别人对我说‘不’。”在分享如何获得数百万投资的经验时，她表示，“了解各路资金并清楚哪些才是最合适自己的，这一点至关重要。”

Rather than just licking her wounds when an investor turned her down, Weiss pushed for feedback so she could continue iterating her business plan. “So much of venture capital is pattern recognition,” she says. “I sat across the table from many men who might not have necessarily understood the difference between foundation and tinted moisturizer.” Weiss handled male VCs beauty illiteracy by tweaking her pitch to emphasize her success—her blog’s 8.5 million monthly pageviews—and discuss the market needs her company addresses in the $454 billion beauty market. “The onus is on you to make your idea compelling,” says Weiss.

如果被投资者拒绝，韦丝不但不会气馁，反而会积极要求对方提供反馈，争取再一次阐述其商业计划的机会。“很多风投看重的是业务模式。”她指出，“但是坐在我对面的很多男士们，可能根本不知道粉底液和润色面霜的区别。”在面对这些对美容一无所知的男性风投人士时，韦丝把发言的重点放在自己的成功上——她的博客每月有850万的访问量；此外，她还会介绍，在价值4,540亿美元的美容市场上，她的公司所针对的是哪些市场需求。“你的任务就是要让自己的想法听上去很有吸引力。”韦丝总结道。

Before her most recent fundraising round, Weiss found a trusted investor in Forerunner Ventures’ Kirsten Green. Green’s firm, which is known for helping to launch wildly successful e-commerce companies like Warby Parker and Birchbox, provided seed funding for Into the Gloss. “Kirsten dove deep, asking the most questions because she is also a consumer of these products,” Weiss says. “I could feel her conviction and I knew that when we said yes to working together it meant as much to her as it meant to me.” Green was also Weiss’ connection to Thrive Capital, which led Into the Gloss’ most recent fundraising round.

在最新的一轮成功筹资之前，韦丝找到了一名值得信赖的投资人——电子商务风投公司Forerunner Ventures的柯尔斯顿o格林。众所周知，这家公司帮助成立了不少极为成功的电商公司，比如眼镜公司Warby Parker和美妆公司Birchbox等，格林的公司也为Into the Gloss提供了种子资金。“柯尔斯顿深入挖掘，广寻问题，因为她也是这些产品的消费者。”韦丝表示，“我能感受她的信念，我知道当我们谈妥合作的时候，无论对她还是对我来说，都是意义非凡的。”韦丝还通过格林联系到了兴盛资本公司（Thrive Capital），该公司领投了Into the Gloss的最新一轮筹资。

Hadley Mullin, a partner at private equity firm TSG Consumer Partners, says the gender imbalance in the investment community does not make sense—especially at firms that invest in consumer brands, as women drive household spending. “For male and female entrepreneurs alike, having a woman investor can bring credibility when discussing product positioning and expansion opportunities,” she says. Mullin adds that while some male investors have a track record of working well with women entrepreneurs, female investors tend connect more easily with products created by or for women.

哈德利o穆林是私募股权公司TSG Consumer Partners的合伙人，她认为投资界的性别比例失衡现象并不合理，尤其对那些投资消费品牌的公司来说，因为通常都是女性在主导家庭支出。穆林表示，“不论男性还是女性企业家，在探讨产品定位和扩张时机的时候，拥有一位女性投资人都能够为其增加可信度。”她还补充说，尽管一些男性投资人也能够与女性企业家合作良好，但是女性投资人往往更容易理解那些由女性企业家打造的产品，或是针对女性消费者的产品。

But, for the time, the investment world’s poor gender dynamics remain unchanged. Weiss says that women entrepreneurs need to take matters into their own hands and work hard to articulate what makes their businesses valuable and distinct. It’s an uphill battle, but she says it is well worth the fight: Finding strong funding partners, she explains, can allow female entrepreneurs to create brands that matter.

遗憾的是，投资界性别失衡的状况暂时不会改变。韦丝认为，女性企业家需要更加主动，努力展现她们企业的价值和独到之处。这是一场艰苦的斗争，但是韦丝认为值得付出，因为寻找到强有力的资金伙伴，能够让女性企业家创造出有影响力的品牌。

“I approached fundraising as an opportunity to align myself with partners who have more varied experience and diverse backgrounds than I do, to help bring Glossier to life,” she says. “I’m so fortunate to have aligned myself with Kirsten; it was like finding a needle in a haystack.”

“我将融资视为一个契机，能够使自己有机会与那些拥有更丰富的经验和多元化背景的人合作，帮助Glossier真正焕发出生机。”她表示，“虽然这像大海捞针一样困难，但是很幸运，我找到了柯尔斯顿。”