{"id":1965,"date":"2019-06-09T08:00:40","date_gmt":"2019-06-09T12:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.wework.com\/ideas\/?p=1965"},"modified":"2020-04-17T16:10:16","modified_gmt":"2020-04-17T20:10:16","slug":"this-is-why-more-women-owned-businesses-are-thriving","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wework.com\/ideas\/professional-development\/management-leadership\/this-is-why-more-women-owned-businesses-are-thriving","title":{"rendered":"This is why more women-owned businesses are thriving"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

WeWork\u2019s 2019 Global Impact Report<\/a> reveals how WeWork helps individuals and businesses thrive, energizes neighborhoods, and accelerates economic growth in 75 cities around the world. Here are some of our community\u2019s stories.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2017, Krystyn Harrison left her career in management consulting and started Prosper<\/a>, an interview- and career-coaching app. As a self-described \u201cserial entrepreneur\u201d (she had previously started two other businesses), Harrison\u2019s desire to start things was strong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI wanted to build something,\u201d she says. But her insecurity was holding her back. \u201cI was struggling with self-doubt. Meanwhile, I thought everyone else around me was superconfident, when the reality was that everyone was equally as nervous.\u201d She overcame it, eventually, launching Prosper two years later and never once looking back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Harrison runs Prosper out of Toronto\u2019s WeWork 1 University Ave<\/a>, and if she ever has another crisis of confidence, she merely has to look around at her fellow members, many of whom are also female business owners with companies in stages similar to hers. The impact extends far beyond Toronto. Globally, 39 percent of all senior roles\u2014executives, senior managers, managers, and sole proprietors\u2014at WeWork member companies are held by women, according to WeWork\u2019s 2019 Global Impact Report<\/a>, compared with just 24 percent worldwide outside of WeWork.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI feel like WeWork provides a safety net\u2014you have a support system that helps you create your dream, whatever that is,\u201d says Mabel Luna, CFO at beverage brand Kombrewcha<\/a> and founder and adviser of boutique financial-services firm A Business Collective<\/a>. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of need for community regardless of the size [of your business], regardless of what reach you have. People want to make an impact, and I think WeWork helps especially women to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Luna, like Harrison, has a background in corporate America: She worked as both an auditor and a manager of financial operations before launching A Business Collective in 2014, with the aim of redesigning the financial culture of startups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In her years in more traditional office settings, Luna says she found a limit on the support and growth opportunities available to women. But the playing field is changing, and those barriers largely installed by traditional gatekeepers are beginning to come down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI know it sounds simple, but if women are listened to about what our needs are, men will start to understand that we think a little differently, but we bring a lot to the table,\u201d says Luna, a member at Brooklyn\u2019s WeWork 134 N 4th St<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is especially pertinent in fundraising, where, as of 2018, just 9.65 percent<\/a> of decision-makers at venture-capital firms are women\u2014and where female-founded startups raise just 2.2 percent<\/a> of venture-capital investments. When it came time for Harrison to begin building Prosper, she was realistic about the challenges she might face.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere were a lot of \u2018nos,\u2019 a lot of rejection,\u201d says Harrison. \u201cI\u2019m sure men deal with [that] at an investor table just as much as women. But I do believe that in fundraising, women struggle with confidence around something that may not be sound.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Harrison says that in fundraising, the gender gap even extends into something as fundamental as revenue projection: Women have a tendency to understate their numbers, whereas men will more typically overstate them. But in the end, she says, some of the most profitable companies are led by women, given these more-conservative financial estimates, among other research-backed reasons<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The more women get comfortable at the investor table and in other deeply male-dominated industries\u2014and share their knowledge and experience with other women\u2014the more their collective confidence will grow. That\u2019s been the experience of Twenty Twenty Studios<\/a> founder and executive producer Sarah Gerber. She found strength, solidarity, and confidence in her community of family and friends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When Gerber founded her company, which creates storytelling for purpose-driven brands, in 2010, she admits that she could have benefitted from a different kind of supportive network\u2014the professional one that Luna encountered at WeWork. But Gerber\u2014who also serves as the CEO and co-founder of gender-equality nonprofit Zero Gap<\/a>, launched in 2017\u2014understands, in retrospect, just how influential a career support system can be for female entrepreneurs getting their businesses off the ground. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat was definitely a very formative process for me,\u201d says Gerber, now a member at WeWork 1111 Broadway<\/a> in Oakland, California, of growing her own professional network, \u201cand really build the foundation of not just my work but my work identity.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now nearly 10 years into her entrepreneurial journey, Gerber is able to rely on her own community of female business owners. This includes her Zero Gap co-founder, Mira Veda, who is a fellow WeWork member at the same location and to whom she was introduced by a WeWork community manager. Gerber is intent on passing along those relationships, and her mentorship, to her fellow female business leaders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThose relationships have been so valuable, not just for connections, but general encouragement,\u201d says Gerber. \u201cIt\u2019s particularly important for founders and people with smaller teams because it can be so lonely. And it doesn\u2019t have to be.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

WeWork offers companies of all sizes space solutions that help solve their biggest business challenges.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n