I particularly side with your point four here; finding another woman entrepreneur who has gone before you has been extremely challenging. I make it a point to go out and listen to them if/when I know they are speaking at an event.

I personally have not been siphoned off in the entrepreneur space – at least not yet, but I recall being seen as ‘young and inexperienced’ in professional employment and when I started building my investment portfolio – and being only bite size at 150cm didn’t help my plight haha!

But Janine Allis (Boost Juice) once said something to me that has stuck when I asked her about the challenges of being a female entrepreneur – “Any limitations you place on your gender are entirely yours – besides, men love helping us – particularly older men!”

And I must say, there’s a lot of fun to be had playing in the male dominated space. I wish a lot more women would join me!

Great read Matthew and thanks for the mention.

i stumbled onto this page from google (seems like this page has a fair amount of hits).
we just got back from NextGen (leadership conference). as we were having meetings, we missed having you with us.

Hope all is well. Praying for you!
God bless

Great article! As a female co-founder of “Customise your own furniture online’ startup Evolvex (www.evolvex.com.au) I’d like to first wave my hand up MADLY to identify myself.

Perhaps a controversial offering on my part but I think women are missing from the tech start up scene for some of the reasons you have identified (shortage of female programmers and role models) AND also because unless you have a male co-founder it is REALLY hard to be taken seriously. As a 25 y/o female I’ve experienced many patronising conversations from suppliers, only to have them do a complete 180 when they speak with my older and therefore-must-be-wiser male co-founder of our business. On many occasions we have the same message to send. I have no massive issues with this as in the end the result is positive but I do wonder how things would be if I tried to do things on my own or with another female co-founder.

Perhaps because men prefer speaking with other men or perhaps it’s a validating factor to have a man around but I do think the male dominated nature of the scene means it is much harder for women to break through on their own then it is if she has a male co-founder. This doesn’t apply to all industries – fashion for example is very female friendly.

Thanks for the link–it’s nice to know it’s not just women who are thinking about these issues =). I can’t speak for “all the other” female engineers out there, but for me, it’s not really any of the issues you mentioned. For me, it’s less about “being a founder” than it is about making meaningful impact. I haven’t found something I want to fully commit myself to as a founder, and I don’t want to start a startup just for the sake of being able to slap “CEO” on a business card. I feel like I need to see more things and figure out what it is I want to pursue deeply.

Anyways, just wanted to chime in and tell you my thoughts! Great post =)
Jean

@david – I checked out your blog – nice blog. I see you are really interested in edtech. Btw I heard your moving to melbourne?