Advice from Women Entrepreneurs [Women 2.0 & Stanford Women in Business - Sat 5/10/08]

Beyond the Spark: Entrepreneurship Redefined
Sponsored by Women 2.0 & Stanford Women in Business

Many other blogs which covered this conference, including the wonderful official Women 2.0 conference wrap-up.

See my May 10 microblog at FriendFeed for the other blogs.

My focus here is the advice & stories that the women presenters offered to the 95% female audience.

DRAFT (Part I): Fri 5/30/08 6 pm PDT



Shaherose Charania at Women 2.0 (LinkedIn, Facebook)

Will women see "world problems as opportunities"?

Julie Sarpong from The Prince's Trust - offering practical solutions to help change young lives - travelled from England.

"It's a pleasure to be at a function where men are in the minority."

-------------------------------------------------------------
10 am Fireside Chat: “The future of entrepreneurship: What is fueling the fire?”
-------------------------------------------------------------
Chris Shipley, co-founder of Guidewire Group in 2004 - Visit her blog or e-mail her at chris@demo.com (LinkedIn Facebook)

"There are more women here than I've seen pass thru my office in all my years." (later amended to "for business purposes").

Chris liked the "business plans" prayer flags in the back of the room.

Rachel Payne, Senior Program Officer, Program Development Google.org (LinkedIn Facebook)

Rachel said it was intimidating in the beginning to work with Sergey Brin and Larry Page. Google is always concerned with the "big picture" and affecting 100+ million people.

Google.org is the semi-charitable arm of Google (some profit, some non-profit), which has the advantage of being able to "lobby" as corporations can't. Might be both a funding organization and an operational organization.

They focus on 3 areas: (1) Climate Change (2) Global Public Health (3) Global Development, and have 5 core initiatives

How do you focus on supporting & accelerating entrepreneurs in the third world?

(A) In many countries, the best job is a government job. It's not like the US entrepreneurial environment.
(B) Why are there so few non-US female entrepreneurs (outside microfinance)? Rick is too high!

Chris Shipley added
(C) In some countries, the word "entrepreneur" = "scammer"

Micro-ventures? Earlier were called Micro-Equity. How do we provide Risk Capital to SMEs (Small & Medium Enterprises)?

Question: Kenya/Tanzania - How do you stimulate players in the SME space?
(A) Only 2% of SMEs ever get financed?
(B) Using mentors from Google is NOT scalable.

Ghana - Joseh Tacky sells meat foods. Most meat in Ghana is bought in the open air. 1st 'Believe It and Become' alumni spoke at TED.

Question: How can we demonstrate that the sector as a whole is viable?

Question: What is Google.org's biggest success so far?
Planet Read - learn to read by watch 'same-language subtitled' Bollywood songs. In one year, 200 million people in India are learning to read.

Not everyone is a good "social entrepreneur", but as Bill Drayton says "Everyone is a change=maker!"

------------------------------------
11:10 am Offered audience members 6 $50 certificates to share their stories (we only heard from 3 people).
------------------------------------

Next to come - pics & descriptions of the amazing 3 entrepreneurs from the audience.