Venture Capital Forum for Women Business Owners

Female entrepreneurs looking for capital still have a few days to sign up for a chance to court investors at the nation’s first venture capital forum for women-owned businesses.

Springboard 2000, scheduled for January in Redwood City, Calif., will give 25 to 30 West Coast women-owned firms an opportunity to pitch their business plans to more than 300 angel investors, venture capitalists and corporate investors.

Why a forum exclusively for female entrepreneurs?

Because they’ve traditionally had a tough time breaking into the chummy funding networks that power technology hotbeds such as Silicon Valley, says Denise Brosseau, president of the Forum for Women Entrepreneurs (FWE), a San Mateo-based nonprofit that promotes high-tech entrepreneurship among women. Although women-owned businesses represent one of the fastest-growing areas of the economy, they are getting only a sliver of the venture capital dollars invested annually in young companies.

Part of the reason is that women long have been underrepresented in the technology sector. But Brosseau said a critical mass of tech-savvy female entrepreneurs is now rising to the fore, many of them unknowns to the investment community.

“It’s not about the numbers [of women in technology] anymore; it’s about access,” Brosseau said. “We want people to recognize the talent and opportunity for investing” that exists in these women-owned firms.

Attendance at Springboard 2000 is by invitation only. To submit an online application to showcase your company, go to FWE’s Web site at https://www.fwe.org and click on the Springboard 2000 icon. Deadline for presentation applications is Friday. Angels, venture capitalists and other investors interested in attending may also apply online.