Who said it’s a man’s world alone? Gone are the days when men ruled the world. It is the era of the woman. According to the statistics provided by the U.S. based Center for Women’s Research, it is seen that women own 10.6 million businesses and make annual sales of $2-5 trillion every year. And these figures are increasing!
This year the theme for the International Women’s Day celebration is: “The Gender Agenda: Gaining Momentum.” Some groups also added a plug to it saying, “A Promise is a Promise: Time for action to end Violence against women.” On the eve of the International Women’s Day, Idyllic Software takes pride to salute three successful female entrepreneurs who are now the inspiration of many men and women.
Sara Blakely of Spanx
Who doesn’t want to look two inches less with confidence? Sara Blakely, too, was behind this bandwagon. She wanted to look better and searched high and low for the best slimming undergarments. Tired and vexed, she could not find any she liked! However, destiny had plans that she would be the one to carve out a design of new-age underwear to help women to amp up their style Q with a proportionate, sleek shape.
She launched her own startup with $5,000, and today she is one of America’s billionaires. But her journey was not a bed of roses. She pitched her idea before the hosiery mills which were male dominated. In one fateful conversation with a Neiman Marcus buyer, she pitched, “I gave new meaning to putting your butt on the line.” When she saw her customer was unsure, she immediately told her, “You’ve got to come with me to the bathroom!” Sara accompanied her and twice she emerged wearing her well-known white pants – first with and then without Spanx. “That instantly sold her,” Blakely said.
Her idea was different and original, crazy and innovative. This gave her a chance to make her pitch stand viable before the reputed hosiery mill owners. She challenged the traditional “competitive male” view of business and shattered it with a blow. Her business idea and her product demonstrate the importance of a small business that balances masculine and feminine qualities.
Rashmi Sinha of Slideshare
She headed the U.S. to do her PhD in Cognitive Neuropsychology. After successfully completing it from the Brown University , Rashmi Sinha moved to San Francisco to conduct her post doc research. But destiny had some other plans for her! She soon got bored with her regular lab work and started to develop a soft spot for web technology. She hardly knew that the love for the burgeoning technology could actually open doors for her own startup venture. She co-founded Uzanto, a user experience consulting company which now boasts clients like eBay and Blue Shield to name a few.
In 2005 she launched her first product MindCanvas and co founded Slideshare a year after, whichhas become an icon of its own. More than 60 million unique visitors have registered for Slideshare, which include big corporate names like Hewlett Packard, IBM, O’Reilly Media, The White House, NASA, State of Utah and the World Economic Forum. The story does not end there, Sinha’s Slideshare was named one of the World’s Top 10 tools for education & e-learning in 2010, and Sinha was included among the world’s Top 10 Women Influencers in Web 2.0 by FastCompany.
Alexa von Tobel of LearnVest
We have often heard that money and women are like two different worlds. They are never in sync with each other. It is a common male chauvinistic attitude that spells women don’t understand how to handle money. Challenging this male prejudiced opinion, Alexa, the 28 year old entrepreneur, developed her product called LearnVest.
She started her career with the investment giant Morgan Stanley but soon left it to follow her entrepreneurial dreams. With just $75,000 she launched her business. Soon she recruited eminent advisors like the former CEO of the Huffington Post and former COO of DailyCandy. Along with her team, she managed to secure $1.1million seed funding, and in 2009 she launched the website. In no time, more than 100,000 members signedon to get their start on learning about investments.
Alexa became a role-model among many women for her sincere intent challenge the financial industry patriarchy. Her company still aims to help young women develop good financial habits early on in life. Today, her company has raised over $6 million in funding and it’s increasing every year.
We are happy that year after year women are taking the entrepreneurial route and walking in tune with their male counterparts, leaving behind the stigmatized outlook that creates gender bias.
We at Idyllic Software firmly believe in gender equality. Hence we would love to work with female entrepreneurs on launching their dreams and developing a business relationship. Do you have an idea that you would love to see turn into reality? We would love to hear about it!