It’s a line from the famous musical “My Fair Lady”: “Why can’t a woman be more like a man?” In Silicon Valley these days, the question is often the opposite: Why can’t a man be more like a woman?
Women are not only underrepresented in the Silicon Valley workforce, but when they pitch ideas for startups, they can have a hard time getting male investors to pay attention.
Shelly Kapoor Collins is listening.
As a managing partner at Propeller Venture Capital in San Francisco, Collins has seen the way women’s startup ideas often get short shrift from her male colleagues. Take Glam Squad, an app that brings hair and makeup services to a client’s door. The app was preparing to launch services in a new market, Washington, D.C.
“I just don’t see the link between beauty on-demand and politics,” Collins recalls a male colleague saying. To many women, it was obvious. Collins, who attended the Glam Squad pop-up in a Hilton hotel suite hours before a White House correspondents’ dinner, saw first-hand that dozens of women were standing in line for hair and makeup touch-ups after a long day at the office so they could be camera-ready for photos and TV interviews.
“Politicians in D.C. make appearances on TV,” Collins said. “People are on the road. They need privacy. If someone can come to you while you’re working, rather than you going to a spa or salon, isn’t that better? It’s about efficiency.”
Similarly, Collins’ male partner passed on a startup called Barnraiser, a Pinterest-like online community that helps makers in the world of sustainable food showcase their wares, ask for crowdfunding and sell their products. Collins went back later and said yes.
Statistics are stacked against women — just 7 percent of all venture capitalists are women according to a TechCrunch analysis, and women received less than 3 percent of all venture funding in 2016, according to a report in Fortune in March. It’s no wonder that Collins wants women to have better access to money, networks and markets.
“We have a good old boys’ network,” she says. “We need a good old girls’ network.”
To help that along, Collins, 45, created the Shatter Fund, which invests solely in women-led businesses. She is also hosting a Shatter Summit at the Battery social club on Tuesday, May 9, where invited guests will hear from speakers including investment banker Linnea Roberts of Goldman Sachs, Jimmy Choo founder Tamara Mellon, angel investor Dave Morin of Path and Facebook, and Craig Newmark of Craigslist, among others. (A #WomenWhoShatter T-shirt for $29.99 launches on www.shatterfund.com on May 11.)
Collins, a married mother…