Creative Collaboration: Women-Led Start-Ups Standing Stronger Together

What Women-Led Start Ups Do That Every Business Could Learn From is Creative Collaboration.

What we hear about women-led start up ventures, far too often, are the dismal funding statistics - female founders got roughly 2% of venture capital in 2017.

What we don’t hear enough about is this - Despite these staggering funding gaps, or perhaps in spite of them, women led ventures continue to outperform their male counterparts in just about every metric.

Female owned firms generate higher revenues than their male counterparts and they create more jobs. Women executives significantly improve start-up company performance. Women are known to be more effective in senior leadership roles. Women have a higher appetite for growth.

Living in a such a dismal funding landscape women entrepreneurs have had to become fiercely savvy in creating and building businesses. Women have long understood that access to cash is a struggle, so those embarking on start-up journeys know from the get go that they have to build a healthy and sustainable foundation for their businesses if they are to survive. They have to be hungrier, smarter, streamlined, efficient, and practical.

After endless years of institutional bias, it’s generationally ingrained in women to do so.

Now this is not to suggest that the institution bias against women in entrepreneurship, or in any other financial or social realm, has in any way benefitted women. Let’s be clear.  It has not. But it does seem, at a minimum, it’s about time we acknowledge, take note, and learn from these female founders.

And what they are doing with deft and acuity is collaborating.

You don’t need to look too far to see how women entrepreneurs are building, shaping and creating spaces and frameworks for community and collaboration. Women supporting women is the strength of women’s entrepreneurship and crux of keeping their operations lean and successful.

Take for example, the explosion of women’s co-working. Seattle-based The Riveter offers coworking ‘built for women’ and now has multiple locations in Seattle and in LA with plans to open in 6 other cities across the nation including Austin, Atlanta, Portland, Dallas, Denver, and Minneapolis. Similarly expanding, New York based The Wing provides a social club for women, including coworking, and states its mission as the advancement of women through community.  

Online communities like THE JILLS OF ALL TRADES™  are focusing on the growing freelance economy and aggregating a too often fragmented group of women freelancers and consultants, into an online collective of independent professionals. THE JILLS, as their members are dubbed, provide diverse services to businesses of every scale from solos and start-ups to small businesses and corporate giants.  They aim to create a ‘sisterhood for solos’ and tout the merits for women to work as independents and reinforce that this should not equate to working alone.

The newly founded, Madison based, DirectorHERy seeks to connect women-owned businesses with consumers who want to see them prosper through their online directory. And SheEO is tackling the female funding gap, by mobilizing women to build communities to support and fund women entrepreneurs through their model of ‘radical generosity’.

Women want to see women succeed. They know there are droves of amazingly talented women, like themselves, who are eager to work and create, having found very little of what they need or want in traditional workplace settings. They’re their friends, and neighbors, they meet at the gym, at playgroups and book clubs and more recently they’re finding each other through women based co-working spaces and digital community-based platforms.

They are building each other up and encouraging and designing a future of work that works for women. They know the critical importance of developing collaborative, reciprocal relationships within their communities to build their knowledge, their skills, and their teams. They are using collaboration to build businesses and build wealth. They are modeling and leading a new economy - the future of work.

For women led ventures, collaboration is winning over competition and building a strong ecosystem for women entrepreneurs to continue to grow and thrive.

If any of us is to find our path in the new economy, it’s about time we start to look at the women who are leading the way for us, and figure out how we might catch up.

Women- We Have The Power 💪🏼💪🏽💪🏾💪🏿

Women- we have the power to create the working world we want.

And it's not necessarily about shattering glass ceilings. And it might not be about 'leaning in'. 

It's about defining ambition... for yourself. 

Now that might mean the corner office, and the big salary, and the important title, if that's how you define success.  

But it might also mean a self-determined schedule so you can pick your kids up from school, or stay home during the day with babies and toddlers, or keep tabs on your teens while you also find time for your aging parents. 

Your ideas of success might include bopping around to different cities or different countries as you pop in and out of remote desks and offices and even apartments around the world. 

It might mean dabbling in your art, teaching yoga, and generating income on a project by project basis with your talent for visuals and quick wit on social media. 

Your ideas for success might mean time for travel, time for friends, time to read, time to write, and time to keep fit. 

You may be a part-time creative, full time parent, loving and committed daughter, with a clean house and a home cooked meal for anyone who arrives.

This may be your vision for ambition.  And it's critical that we honor and recognize all of these pursuits as ambitious and worthy of financial viability and financial security. 

For too long women have been told that in order to be successful, for their work and their lives to really count, they should want big salaries and big offices.  We've been told that we have to 'step away from ambition' to raise kids, and we have been told to accept and expect that 're-entry' after 'time out' from that singular ambition has inevitable and just consequences. In fact, we have entrenched systems that support this inevitability. We have come to accept the story we're being told about what ambition women want. 

And it is an acceptance of these systems that promote a one size fits all definition of ambition that indeed preserves this system. We have all become comfortable with it. There are more men named John and James at the helm of Fortune 500 companies than all the women leaders. There's roughly a 20% pay gap between women and men working the same positions with women receiving 80% of what men do.  Just under 20% of the US Congress comprises of women. 

And yet, we all know many, many women who are doing remarkable things every single day for themselves, their families, their communities, their companies, their organizations and for each other. And they may or may not be running a Fortune 500 company. 

Aren't these women also ambitious? Isn't their work also valid and valuable? 

We know, that, of course, it is. But if we are to change the tide and create the working world we really want for ourselves, then women must begin to tell new stories of ambition and we must honor and support these stories. 

It is the danger of the single story of an ambitious women that limits our potential. 

And so let's start to create the working world we want. A working world that honors, celebrates and supports, both socially and economically, the multitude of women's stories of ambition.  

We can shape a new working landscape for ourselves and for the future.

We will rise by lifting each other.

 

the law of the changing landscape

Our JILLS have great things to say and we're so happy to share it! 

In this post, Paloma Kenney, JILLS Member and Attorney and Principal at Kenney Law LLC discusses the explosion of the Freelance Economy and the legal and legislative conundrum this future of work is having in the U.S.  

"Legislative Changes to Transform the Corporate Gig Economy Leaving Some Workers Out in the Cold"

In May of 2017, an estimated 85% of workers had at least one side job, and, among them, 54% worked two. (1) A trend that's likely to continue; LinkedIn predicts that, by 2020, 43% of the U.S. workforce will be freelancers enabled in part by technology. (3) The desire to increase earnings or gain unique work experience helps drive the gig economy; and, for many young people, it's often a way to make ends meet. (4)

The sudden explosion of the "side hustle" has, in some ways, made the gig economy the wild west of flexible employment. States lack dedicated laws to help govern and protect freelance workers many of whom lack benefits and health insurance. In response, many workers' groups are beginning to lobby for new tax legislation. (5) Earlier this year Washington introduced a bill that would require employers to pay into a benefit fund for independent contractors. Similarly, New York is beginning to introduce a ride-transaction fee for the same purpose. 

This new tax may be beneficial for gig workers "employed" by large umbrella corporations, such as Uber and Airbnb, who can afford to pay the tax and would be required by law to contribute to the fund; however, for those out on their own, there's only more uncertainty.

Will solo gig workers have the option or be forced to pay the tax/fee like a corporation in order to gain access to the larger benefit pool? Or will solo gig workers fall outside the tax/fee requirements leaving them to continue to fend for themselves as self-employed?  

Even if legislation is successfully passed, the new tax/fee may cause a widespread shift among those corporations already dipping their toe into the gig economy. Corporations may decrease their use of gig workers in an effort to avoid paying a tax similar to worker's compensation for a group of transient and often rotational workers. 

For example, if a corporation often hires giggers to write blog posts or modify their graphics, would that corporation simply begin to look internally for talented employees interested in garnering company-wide recognition for such a unique and visible project? 

One of the largest legal issues pertaining to the gig economy is worker classification. Dan Eaton from the San Diego Tribune argues that regardless of whether legislative changes are made on a state or federal level (a separate topic up for debate) lawmakers should resist making a classification that falls between employee and independent contractor. (6) He believes this change could cause a cascade of legal claims since workers already litigate for employee re-classification. Unfortunately, re-classification may be the only way a line can be drawn for tax or fee purposes.

The inability to classify solopreneurs, giggers, and freelancers has implications beyond employment taxes or benefit fund fees. For instance, reporting employment history and making sense of wages is key when filing for unemployment, renting apartments, purchasing a home, and applying for loans and credit cards. While Eaton may have good reason to warn against a third classification, it may be a necessary evil to help alleviate the uncertainty and inability that gig workers have in legitimizing their work for important applications and governmental purposes. 

Brian Chesky, Airbnb CEO and co-founder, hopes that the company will one day have created millions of new entrepreneurs worldwide. While the gig economy may at times appear to be a disorganized conglomerate of individuals all seeking to provide a unique, on-demand service, it's thoughts like Chesky's that may eventually transform the traditional definition of entrepreneur. For many, entrepreneur still connotes an individual that raises money, headquarters in a physical location, and helps create jobs for the local economy.

Chesky's vision, along with the millions of individuals inventing their own positions, expands this definition to include those who have never sought funding, but rather built their business from savings or pure sweat equity. It includes individuals who will never have a brick and mortar location beyond their home office and those who will never hire additional employees. One day soon the majority of workers will have a string of roles, proficiencies, and skills that follow their name in place of the traditional one-profession title. For most states, the law cannot evolve quick enough to resolve the complexity of fluid, non-standard employment sweeping the nation.

Reposted with permission by Paloma Kenney. Original link found here.