Recent legislation such as California’s AB 168 and Hollywood’s “Time’s Up” initiative aim to raise awareness and turn the tide of gender inequality. As a female entrepreneur, I can relate, and I wasn’t all that surprised when I read a Shopify blog post about the bias women business owners tend to face when funding their ventures.

Did you know?

• In the U.S., women-owned businesses constitute 42% of all businesses but, in 2019, only 2.3% of VC funding was invested in women-owned businesses.
• Small business loan applications submitted by women are rejected more frequently than men’s and, when approved, women pay higher interest rates.
• In 2018, the average loan size for women-owned businesses was 31% less than that of men-owned businesses.

When I founded Katalyst Group, back in 2006, it didn’t even occur to me that investment was an option, even though my male peers had no qualms about raising capital for their ventures.

When I was growing up, women just weren’t socialized to ask for investment and there were very few female role models to pave the way, so I self funded. I’m proud of the company we’ve built but being less bootstrapped would have enabled us to be more more strategic about our growth along the way. Click here to read the full Shopify article.