Women-Run Southland Firms Join Hunt for Venture Funds
Three Los Angeles-area entrepreneurs will be among 27 presenters Thursday at the nation’s first venture capital forum for women-owned businesses.
Laurie McCartney, chief executive of L.A.-based EStyle.com; Santa Monica’s Menekse Gencer, co-founder of Vistify; and Kathleen Chien, who runs the Industry office of 51net.com Inc., will be pitching their business plans in front of several hundred potential investors at Springboard 2000 in Redwood City, Calif.
The forum is the first of three organized this year by the National Women’s Business Foundation in partnership with other women’s groups and some major technology companies. The national initiative aims to open up male-dominated investment channels to female technology entrepreneurs, who have had a tough time breaking into the clubby funding networks that dominate tech hot spots such as Silicon Valley.
A slew of A-list venture firms, including Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Softbank Venture Capital, are taking part, looking to fund the next big thing.
McCartney will be looking to bag her third round of financing after raising more than $15 million to launch EStyle’s first company, Babystyle.com, an infant and maternity e-tailer that debuted last year.
Meanwhile, Gencer and her partners, two Intel expatriates, are trying to line up their first big venture score. Vistify has developed an Internet counter-top appliance to help time-starved consumers shop for groceries, order restaurant meals and perform other household chores online.
“A lot of women entrepreneurs are all addressing the same issue,” Gencer said. “How to make life easier for working women.”
Chien’s firm operates a Chinese-language online recruiting site and weekly employment newspaper to help companies doing business in China hire native professionals and managers. The services are targeted at big U.S., Japanese and European multinationals, but 51net.com also is aiming to serve China’s fast-emerging private-sector firms.
Chien and her three partners, all former consultants with Bain & Co. in China, gave their company its distinctive name because 51 is a homonym for “no worries” in Mandarin.
“We’re trying to help companies find the right candidates more quickly,” Chien said. “Right now that can be hard to do if you don’t have the right people on the ground.”
The other two Springboard 2000 venture forums are slated for the fall in Dulles, Va., and Boston. For more information, check out the https://www.springboard2000.org Web site.
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Times staff writer Marla Dickerson can be reached via e-mail at marla.dickerson@latimes.com.
