Women Entrepreneurs and VCs by Susan Danziger, CEO of ZIGGEO
October 7, 2019
Susan Danziger, founder and CEO of Ziggeo, explains her experience with fundraising for Ziggeo. She also speaks on the topic of women entrepreneurs and some challenges that they might face.
“VC’s like to invest in people that are like them”, Susan Danziger
Fundraising
After meeting with several VC’s, Susan Danziger found what she had initially been looking for. She secured early rounds of fundraising. But after some reflection, she questioned whether or not that was truly what was best for the company.
Traditionally, success for early stage companies is thought of as being funded heavily.
After seriously analyzing the situation, she came to the conclusion that not only was funding not necessary but it was even maybe hurtful to the company. She found a better route.
Every entrepreneur will find their path to be unique so some standard ideas of success may not be applicable.
Assessing the circumstances and concluding yourself that fundraising is something important should take priority over following a cookie cutter plan that doesn’t take into account the unique nature of each company.
Very few Women Entrepreneurs receive funding from VCs
Unfortunately, there’s still prejudice against women in the field of entrepreneurship. While there are several reasons for this, Susan Danziger partially attributes this to the lack of female employment in VC roles.
This is turn leads to a lack of representation for female entrepreneurs.
Typically, people like to invest in people who are like them.
If most VC’s are males, they may invest unequally in male entrepreneurs due to illogical reasons. This hurts the entire entrepreneurial ecosystem because if gender is playing a role in investment choices, merit is overlooked.
Investors are not giving a fair opportunity to the best companies.
Apart from appearances, prejudice against women may stem from the traditional roles of women in regards to family life. Raising children and things of that nature may subconsciously lead investors to believe that women entrepreneurs cannot handle the workload of a startup and family life.
Don’t be afraid to step away from traditional ideas of success.
Susan Danziger urges female entrepreneurs, and all other entrepreneurs alike, to question whether or not they even need money from VC’s. Often times startups do in fact need fundraising. The point she tries to emphasize is that the pursuit of what other people say you need shouldn’t outweigh the company’s actual needs. Every company operates differently, is under different management, and has different goals.
About Susan Danziger
Founder and CEO of Ziggeo
Susan Danziger is the founder of Ziggeo featuring video APIs and SKDs named “best video API” by API World in 2016 and 2017. Named a Woman of Influence 2016, Susan won the 2016 SmartCEO Brava Award, and was appointed a Fellow to the Royal Society of Arts. She previously founded Video Hack Day. This hackathon celebrates video innovation. She also founded DailyLit, a company that pioneered digital serialization. Susan speaks four languages (English, German, French, and Italian). She loves to travel the world, and is an avid ping-pong player. She is based in New York City.