The climate for women-driven entrepreneurship is improving in Massachusetts, but women could benefit from a statewide "entrepreneurial hub" that would allow more women to collaborate and share resources.
That recommendation is one of several included in a report released Monday. The Women’s Entrepreneur Initiative (WEI) Study concludes that for them to continue to make gains, women business owners need better access to resources, financing, expertise and networking.
“What we found from a comprehensive literature review was that women are the fastest growing, highest performing and most economically underutilized subsegment of entrepreneurs,” said Constance Gamache of Deloitte Consulting, one of the lead analysts of the study.
Women represent 45 percent of all American business owners, according to data collected for the report, and that number continues to grow.
“Women-owned businesses in the latter half of the past decade grew at more than two-fold the rate of all other businesses, and if you slice this data even further,” Gamache said, “women of color-owned businesses have grown fourfold.”
The advancements come despite significant funding challenges. Women who founded businesses or own businesses received less than half the investment capital as businesses founded by men, the report reads. In terms of return on investment, the women generated 78 cents per investment dollar, while men generated only 31 cents.
“This growth and performance," Gamache said, ”has resulted in $1.9 trillion in national revenue over the years 2014 and 2019.”
Cory Thomas, the chairman and CEO of Rapid Seven and the NAACP Social Justice Committee, said he welcomes the research because it helps show where there are constraints and biases that effect women in business.
“Gender, race and economic disparities are all interrelated," Thomas said. "And reports like this with a focus on action will help us transform the entrepreneur, our economy and our society.”
The report is titled, It’s Her Time: Women Entrepreneurship in Massachusetts.” It's a collaboration of the Boston Mayor's Office of Women's Advancement and the Massachusetts Competitive Partnership, and Deloitte Consulting LLP.
At a virtual event where the report was released Monday, several successful entrepreneurs spoke about their experiences as women business owners.
Dr. Sangeeta Bhatia, the Dorothy Wilson professor of bioengineering at MIT said mentoring and finance are two key focus areas.
“Access to mentors can show you kind of a roadmap for how to start a company, but not just who to call," Bhatia said, "[but] how to have access to the venture capitalist and who to put on your board.”
Dr. Daphne Koller, a professor of computer science and a MacArthur Fellow at Stanford University, said there are still a lot of impediments to the path forward for young girls in the areas of STEM and entrepreneurship, including the lack of a network.
“It’s really important when building a company,” Koller said, “to have the people that you know who could connect you to the right kind of other people, and especially in the world that we live in today where talent is such a scarce commodity.”
Researchers did an extensive review of existing literature around women entrepreneurs, surveyed 102 women entrepreneurs in Massachusetts, and held 13 in-depth interviews with women entrepreneurs.
