Venture Capital for Enterprising Women

Need money for your media startup and happen to be blessed exclusively with XX chromosomes? You might want to apply to appear at the All Things Media venture capital forum for women enterpreneurs, to be held in New York City on Oct. 30.

There, female entrepreneurs will pitch their ideas to venture capital and angel investors. Winners not only get funding, but the chance to team up for coaching with old media hands like Oprah Winfrey and Marlo Thomas.

"The barriers to entry to create a business that can fundamentally change the world have never been lower," Sun Microsystems C.E.O. Jonathan Schwartz told a mostly female group of about 100 Thursday night at a launch party for the forum held at Sun headquarters in Sunnyvale, California.

Venture capital does a great job of matching good ideas with capital, he said, but "it hasn't done an equitable job."

Eight years ago, USA Networks founder Kay Koplowitz created an outfit called Springboard Enterprises to help women find venture funding. At the time, she told the group, less than 2 percent of venture-capital funding went to female entrepreneurs.

Since then, the Springboard has held 17 forums which raised $4 billion in venture finance for 360 companies, a third of which have already cashed out.

The media forum is co-sponsored by the Paley Center for Media (formerly the Museum of Radio and Television), which under C.E.O. Pat Mitchell has been honoring women "who helped shape the history of media" under a program it calls She Made It.

Winners at the forum will be able to draw from that list, which also Katie Couric, Selma Hayak, and dozens of others, for coaching.

"These are extraordinary women," Mitchell said. "How can we draw on what they know and help women find their way — and in this case, find their way to capital?"

Budding media hotshots should head for springboardenterprises.org.

by Russ Mitchell